A tear coursed down the man's forlorn face and he shook his head
dejectedly.

"You can't sleep forever in empty freight cars, picking up scraps to
live on, you know," said Bart.

"I'll live there till I find what I came to Pleasantville to find!"
cried the man in a sudden passion. Then his emotion died down suddenly
and he fell to trembling all over, and cast hasty looks around as if
frightened at his own words.

"Don't mind me," he choked up, starting suddenly away. "I'm crazy, I
guess! I know I'm about as miserable an object as there is in the
world."

Bart ran after him, drawing a quarter from his pocket. He detained the
man by seizing his arm.

"See here," he said, "you take that, and any time you're hungry just go
up to the house and tell my mother, will you?"

"Bless her--and you, too!" murmured the man, with a hoarse catch in his
throat. "I'll take the money, for I need it desperately bad, but don't
you fret--it will come back. Yes! it will come back, double, the day I
catch the man who squeezed all the comfort out of my life!"

He dashed away with a strange cry. Bart, half decided that he was
demented, watched him disappear in the direction of a cheap eating house
just beyond the tracks, and started homewards more or less sobered and