the ropes of the game, and how to beg at back doors.

Hugh, on the other hand, was more interested in the man himself than
in his limited possessions. He saw that the other was past middle
age, for his face was covered with a bristly beard of a week's growth,
verging on gray. His cheeks were well filled out, and his blue eyes
had what Hugh determined was a humorous gleam about them, as though
the man might be rather fond of a joke.

He was the picture of what a regular tramp should be, there could
be no getting around that, Hugh determined. He rather believed
that, like most of his kind, this fellow also had a history back
of him, which would perhaps hardly bear exploiting. Doubtless there
were pages turned down in his career, things that he himself seldom
liked to remember, giving himself up to a life of freedom from care,
and content to take things each day as they came along, under the
belief that there were always sympathetic women folks to be found who
would not refuse a poor wanderer a meal, or a nickel to help him along
his way.

Apparently he had been just about ready to sit down and make way
with his meal at the time the boys arrived on the scene; for he now
took both tin carts from their resting places over the red embers of
his fire, and opening the package produced the bread and the bologna.
This latter looked big enough to serve a whole family of six; but
then a tramp's appetite is patterned very much on the order of a
growing boy's, and knows no limit.

Having spread his intended food around him as he squatted there, the
hobo gave the boys a queer look.