The service man watched him with detached smile. The old man’s silly shrewdness amused him. He suspected him of a cask or two in the cellar. In the days of bicycles the old man had driven a lively trade; but with the long-reaching cars, his business dribbled away, and he had slipped back from whiskey to potatoes. He was a little disgruntled at events, and would talk socialism by the hour to anyone who would listen. But he was a harmless old soul. The service man glanced at the sun. It had dipped suddenly, and the plain grew dusky black. The distant figures hoeing against the plain were lost to sight. “Hallo!” said the service man quickly, “we must get on--” He looked again, shrewdly, toward the old man in the dusk. “You couldn’t find a drop of anything, handy--to give away--Jimmie?” he suggested. The old man tottered a slow smile at him and moved toward the house. He came back with a long-necked bottle grasped tight, and a couple of glasses that he filled in the dimness. The service man held up his glass with quick gesture--“Here’s to you, Jimmie!” he said, throwing back his head. “May you live long, and prosper!” He gulped it down. The old man’s toothless smile received the empty glasses; and when the two machines had trundled away in the dimness, it stood looking after them--the deep smile of guileless, crafty old age--that suffers and waits--and clutches its morsel at last and fastens on it--without joy, and without shame. XXVIII INSIDE THE LITTLE HOUSE The two figures amid the rows of the marked garden paused, in the enveloping dusk, and leaned on their hoes, and listened--a low, peevish whistle, like the call of a night-jar, on the plain, came to them. Presently the call repeated itself--three wavering notes--and they shouldered their hoes and moved toward the little house. The old man emerged from the gloom, coming toward them. “What was it?” asked one of the figures quickly. The old man chuckled. “Stole a racer--that’s about all _they_ knew--_you_ got off easy!” He was peering toward them. The larger of the two figures straightened itself. “I am sick of it--I tell you!--my back’s broke!” He moved himself in the dusk, stretching out his great arms and looking about him vaguely. The old man eyed him shrewdly. “You’re earning a good pile,” he said. “Yes, one-seventy-five a day!” The man laughed a little. The other man had not spoken. He slipped forward through the dusk. “Supper ready?” he asked. They followed him into the house, stopping in an entry to wash their hands and remove their heavy shoes. Through the door opening to a room beyond, a woman could be seen, moving briskly, and the smell of cooking floated out. They sniffed at it hungrily. The woman came to the door. “Hurry up, boys--everything’s done to death!”