"There's something you don't often see, nowadays," spoke up Tom
after a while.

He nodded back up the road. Coming in the same direction that
the boys themselves had traveled was a faded, queer-looking old
red wagon, much decorated on the outside by a lot of hanging,
swinging tin and agate ware.

"That's the old-fashioned tin-peddler that I've heard a good deal
about as being a common enough character some forty years ago,"
said Prescott. "Our grandmothers used to save up meat-bones,
rags and bottles and trade them off to the peddler, receiving
tinware in return."

"The man on that wagon was doing business forty years ago," remarked
Tom. "In fact, judging by his appearance, he must have been quite
a veteran at the business even forty years ago."

A bent, little old man it was who was perched upon the seat of
the red wagon. Once upon a time his hair had been tawny. Now
it was streaked liberally with gray. He was smoking a black
little wooden pipe and paying small attention to the sad-eyed,
bony horse between the shafts. There was a far-away, rather dull
look in the old peddler's eyes.

Just before he reached the boys, whom he had not seen, he took
a piece of paper from his pocket, pulled his spectacles down from
his forehead and read the paper.

"I don't understand it," muttered the peddler, aloud. "I can't