Farrell greeted him familiarly and was answered civilly. Then, without further parley, he explained that we were come for something to eat. “Go up to the house and ask the boss,” said the hired man. The farmer was plainly well-to-do. His house was a large, square, white-painted, wooden structure topped with a cupola, and with well-kept grounds about it, while the farm buildings wore a prosperous air of plenitude. Just then a well-grown watch-dog of the collie type came walking toward us across the lawn, a menacing inquiry in his face. “Won’t you go?” suggested Farrell. The hired man had caught sight of the dog, and there was a twinkle in his eye as he answered, airily, “Oh, no, thank you.” “Does the dog bite?” Farrell ventured, cautiously. “Yes,” came sententiously from the hired man. “We’d better get back to the road,” Farrell said to me, and we could feel amused eyes upon us as we retraced our steps to the track. Once more Farrell tried his luck; this time at a meagre, wooden, drab cottage that faced a country lane, a hundred yards from the railway. I watched him from the line and noticed that he talked for some time with the woman who answered his knock and stood framed in the door. When he returned he had two large slices of bread in his hand and some cold meat. “I didn’t like to take it,” he remarked. “Her husband’s a carpenter and ain’t had no work for six weeks. But she says she couldn’t have me go away hungry. That’s the kind that always helps you, the kind that’s in hard luck themselves, and knows what it is.” He was for sharing the forage and, hungry as he was, he had not eaten a morsel of it when he rejoined me. That I would take none seemed to him at first a personal slight, but he understood it better when I explained that I had had food at Morris. There was a cloudless sunset that evening, the sun sinking in a crimson glow that foretold another day of great heat. The stars came slowly out over a firmament of slaty blue, and shone obscurely through the humid air. Farrell and I were silent for some time. Both of us had walked about thirty-six miles that day, and were intent on a resting-place. At last we began to catch the glitter of street-lights in Ottawa, and, at sight of them, Farrell’s spirits rose. He was like one returning home after long absence. The sound of a church-bell came faintly to us. Farrell held me by the arm. “You hear that?” he asked. “Yes.” “That’s the Methodist church bell.” I could see his face light up, as though something were rousing the best that was in him.