“That’s the worst side of it,” said the tramp.... “’Owever, it doesn’t always rain, and if it doesn’t rain, well, you can keep yourself dry.” He came back to the pleasanter aspects of the nomadic life. He was all for the outdoor style. “Ain’t we comfortable ’ere?” he asked. He sketched out the simple larcenies that had contributed and given zest to the evening’s meal. But it seemed there were also doss-houses that had the agreeable side. “Never been in one!” he said. “But where you been sleeping since Monday?” Bealby described the caravan in phrases that seemed suddenly thin and anæmic to his ears. “You hit it lucky,” said the tramp. “If a chap’s a kid he strikes all sorts of luck of that sort. Now ef _I_ come up against three ladies travellin’ in a van—think they’d arst me in? Not it!” He dwelt with manifest envy on the situation and the possibilities of the situation for some time. “You ain’t dangerous,” he said; “that’s where you get in....” He consoled himself by anecdotes of remarkable good fortunes of a kindred description. Apparently he sometimes travelled in the company of a lady named Izzy Berners—“a fair scorcher, been a regular, slap-up circus actress.” And there was also “good old Susan.” It was a little difficult for Bealby to see the point of some of these flashes by a tendency on the part of the tramp while his thoughts turned on these matters to adopt a staccato style of speech, punctuated by brief, darkly significant guffaws. There grew in the mind of Bealby a vision of the doss-house as a large crowded place, lit by a great central fire, with much cooking afoot and much jawing and disputing going on, and then “me and Izzy sailed in....” The fire sank, the darkness of the woods seemed to creep nearer. The moonlight pierced the trees only in long beams that seemed to point steadfastly at unseen things, it made patches of ashen light that looked like watching faces. Under the tramp’s direction Bealby skirmished round and got sticks and fed the fire until the darkness and thoughts of a possible gorilla were driven back for some yards and the tramp pronounced the blaze a “fair treat.” He had made a kind of bed of leaves which he now invited Bealby to extend and share, and lying feet to the fire he continued his discourse. He talked of stealing and cheating by various endearing names; he made these enterprises seem adventurous and facetious; there was it seemed a peculiar sort of happy find one came upon called a “flat,” that it was not only entertaining but obligatory to swindle. He made fraud seem so smart and bright at times that Bealby found it difficult to keep a firm grasp on the fact that it was—fraud....