knows what portrait public opinion paints of him. At all events I'm a
harmless hobo and quite willing to pay when I put my fellow-man to
inconvenience. I live in the mountains by the sentence of my doctors."

"Lunger, eh?" Burton nodded his head comprehensively, but quite without
sympathy; and the guest bowed his assent.

"Some folks turns lungers away," commented the host reflectively, "but
that's only in the summertime when the vacation boarders kicks on 'em.
As for me, I don't take in boarders summer _nor_ winter, but when the
snow drives a man in I don't drive him out."

"So they accept us in the winter, do they, and cast us out in the summer
when the ribbon-clerks come?" Edwardes spoke musingly, yet amusedly, and
in his accustomed manner of self-communion. "After all, men are much
alike everywhere, aren't they? The lepers must not walk the streets of
Jerusalem, but they may sit in full concourse at the Jaffa and Damascus
gates where their wrappings are brushed by every caravan that goes in or
out."

Ham, who was just entering, stood on the kitchen threshold in time to
hear a man, whom he had never seen before, talking casually of the world
beyond the seas. Perhaps this man knew, too, the cities that brought
conquerors as well as prophets into their own; perhaps to him the
sepia-tinted monuments of Rome and the great tomb in the Place des
Invalides were familiar spots! And the man was young himself--almost a
boy. For an instant, Ham stood there while his eyes traveled around the
room, contemptuously taking in the cheap lithographs and offensive
ornaments which he knew so well and hated so sincerely. He straightened
resolutely, and his hands clenched. There would be a time when the