feeling in his voice that the tramp surveyed him with gaping mouth and
bulging eyes, as one stares at a person suddenly become mad.

"I will talk to you though you will not understand! Once upon a time the
world was ruled by men who were ruled by omens. Man was then not so wise
in his own conceit. His own soul was nearer the soul of things. He was
not a mere gob of bumptiousness covered with the shell of cocksureness.
He was willing to be informed. He sought the omens of true nature--he
allowed Fate to guide him. He was not a pig running against the goad of
circumstances, unheeding the upflung arms of Fortune, waving him toward
the right path. He was simpler--he was truer. He felt that he was a part
of nature instead of being boss of nature. Well, I have got nearer to
true nature since I have been in the open. I am in contact with the
soul of things. I am no longer insulated. I am not reformed, I am simply
ready once again to grab Opportunity. So you think I am crazy, do you?"

"They had a gink in a padded cell in the jail where I was last winter
and he didn't take on much worse'n you," stated the tramp.

"As a brainless observer you may be quite right. I may be a lunatic. I
feel much like one just now. It is lunacy to go climbing back to a level
in society from which I have been kicked. But as I knelt there by
that little fire, before you came, yearning sprang up in me--and I had
thought all that sort of yearning was dead in me. A moment later came
habiliments of a gentleman, borne in the arms of a wretch who could
not wear them. There came Opportunity. Then the jangle of that clock
signaled Opportunity--and there was a throb in me as though my sleeping
soul had rolled and blinked at the sunlight of hope and had murmured,
'It's morning again.' Such are omens, when one is ready to heed."