"Same here. We'll travel a way together, eh?"

The two boys had met under rather strange circumstances. Early that
morning Jack Darrow, the stout one, had awakened from his sleep in a
pile of hay in a farmer's field. Close to him was another youth, whose
name he had inquired as soon as the owner of it awoke.

Then the two boys discovered that their conditions in life were very
similar. Both were orphans, about the same age, Jack being sixteen and
Mark fifteen years, and neither had a place he could call home.

"My folks have been dead for some years," said Jack, in telling his
story to his companion. "I was hired out to a farmer in the upper part
of New York, but he worked me so hard and treated me so mean that I ran
away. I've been tramping ever since; don't my clothes show it? You see
I was forced to go without taking my many trunks along," and he laughed,
for he was of a jolly disposition.

"My people are dead also," said Mark. "I had a job with a man going
around the country with a traction engine, threshing wheat and oats at
different farms. But he used to beat me, so, one night, I ran away."

"And didn't bring any extra clothes with you, either," put in Jack.

"I never owned any to bring. I only had the one suit I wore."

And after that the boys had told something of their experiences and
become very friendly.

The two boys walked on for a while in silence, kicking up the dust of