The tramp used strange terms. He spoke of the ‘deputy’ and the ‘doss-house,’ of the ‘spike’ and ‘padding the hoof,’ of ‘screevers’ and ‘tarts’ and ‘copper’s narks.’ To these words Bealby attached such meanings as he could, and so the things of which the tramp talked floated unsurely into his mind and again and again he had to readjust and revise his interpretations. And through these dim and fluctuating veils a new side of life dawned upon his consciousness, a side that was strange and lawless and dirty—in every way dirty—and dreadful and—attractive. That was the queer thing about it, that attraction. It had humour. For all its squalor and repulsiveness it was lit by defiance and laughter, bitter laughter perhaps, but laughter. It had a gaiety that Mr. Mergleson for example did not possess, it had a penetration, like the penetrating quality of onions or acids or asafœtida, that made the memory of Mr. Darling insipid. The tramp assumed from the outset that Bealby had ‘done something’ and run away, and some mysterious etiquette prevented his asking directly what was the nature of his offence. But he made a number of insidious soundings. And he assumed that Bealby was taking to the life of the road and that, until good cause to the contrary appeared, they were to remain together. “It’s a tough life,” he said, “but it has its points, and you got a toughish look about you.” He talked of roads and the quality of roads and countryside. This was a good countryside; it wasn’t overdone and there was no great hostility to wanderers and sleeping out. Some roads—the London to Brighton for example, if a chap struck a match, somebody came running. But here unless you went pulling the haystacks about too much they left you alone. And they weren’t such dead nuts on their pheasants, and one had a chance of an empty cowshed. “If I’ve spotted a shed or anything with a roof to it I stay out,” said the tramp, “even if it’s raining cats and dogs. Otherwise it’s the doss-’ouse or the ‘spike.’ It’s the rain is the worst thing—getting wet. You haven’t been wet yet, not if you only started Monday. Wet—with a chilly wind to drive it. Gaw! I been blown out of a holly hedge. You _would_ think there’d be protection in a holly hedge.... “Spike’s the last thing,” said the tramp. “I’d rather go bare-gutted to a doss-’ouse anywhen. Gaw!—you’ve not ’ad your first taste of the spike yet.” But it wasn’t heaven in the doss-houses. He spoke of several of the landladies in strange but it would seem unflattering terms. “And there’s always such a blamed lot of washing going on in a doss-’ouse. Always washing they are! One chap’s washing ’is socks and another’s washing ’is shirt. Making a steam drying it. Disgustin’. Carn’t see what they want with it all. Barnd to git dirty again....” He discoursed of spikes, that is to say of work-houses, and of masters. “And then,” he said, with revolting yet alluring adjectives, “there’s the bath.”