"Maybe they'd let you stay in the waiting-room," suggested Malcolm. "It
is always good and warm in here. I'll ask the station-master. He's a
friend of mine."

"Oh, no! No, don't!" exclaimed the tramp, hastily, pulling his old hat
farther over his forehead, as if to hide the scar, and looking uneasily
around. "I wouldn't have you do that for anything. I've had dealings
with such folks before, and I know how they'd treat _me_. I thought
maybe there was a barn or a hay-shed or something on your grandmother's
place, where we could lay up for repairs a couple of days. The beast
needs a rest. Its foot's sore; and Jonesy there is pretty near to lung
fever, judging from the way he coughs." He nodded toward the boy, who
had placed his chair as close to the stove as possible. The child's face
was drawn into a pucker by the tingling pains in his half-frozen feet,
and his efforts to keep from coughing.

Malcolm looked at him steadily. He had read about boys who were homeless
and hungry and cold, but he had never really understood how much it
meant to be all that. This was the first time in his ten short years
that he had ever come close to real poverty. He had seen the swarms of
beggars that infest such cities as Naples and Rome, and had tossed them
coppers because that seemed a part of the programme in travelling. He
had not really felt sorry for them, for they did not seem to mind it.
They sat on the steps in the warm Italian sunshine, and waited for
tourists to throw them money, as comfortably as toads sit blinking at
flies. But this was different. A wave of pity swept through Malcolm's
generous little heart as he looked at Jonesy, and the man watching him
shrewdly saw it.

"Of course," he whined, "a little gen'leman like you don't know what it