"You're Hank Parshall's boy, ain't you?" he asked at last. Job nodded and held his imprisoned hand forth to hint, without saying, that he had had enough of the handcuff. The other paid no heed to the gesture. "What's the matter with the old man, here?" he inquired with a downward nod. "He ain't had enough to eat," said Job, bluntly. "That's what's the matter with him. He told me himself he laid down there last night to starve to death." Mr. Hazzard pointed a thumb to the greasy frying-pan, and the remains of the chicken on the table beside Job. "People don't go to work that way to starve," he commented dryly. "Mose brought him that--I guess I know pretty well where he got it, too. The old man allowed that that was what saved his life. They hadn't been a soul near him before since the snowfall--and he laid up. Oh, that reminds me!" Job finished by taking the two slices of bread from his pocket, and putting them on the table. "Bring that for the old man?" queried the deputy marshal. Job shook his head. "No, it's my own breakfast. I was goin' to give it to Mose," he replied stoutly. "Say, take this thing off, won't you?" Norm Hazzard laughed outright. "No!" he said. "Guess after that I'll have to put the other one onto you, too." His tone lapsed to seriousness as he went on: "Maybe you know somethin' about it--didn't I hear that this Mose Whipple went to the war as substitute for your man--Teachout?" "Yes, sir, he did--and Teachout didn't give him not a dollar, but jest let it go on to the mortgage, and he promised to look out for old Asa here, and he didn't--and he'd begrudge him this bread here, if he knew it." The deputy marshal nodded comprehendingly, and blew the smoke through his pipe. "Charged me and Moak thirty-five cents apiece for our breakfasts this mornin', and twenty cents for the horse," he said, in a musing tone. "Reckon he's about the tightest old skinflint on the whole turnpike--and that's sayin' a good deal. So he got drafted, did he? Should 'a' thought he was too old." "He ain't as old as he looks," explained Job. "He's a good deal meaner, though. I'm glad o' one thing, anyway. I ain't goin' back there any more, except to git my clothes and my money. I'm goin' to live in here with the old man, and kind o' look after him. I promised----" "Promised Mose, eh?" broke in the deputy marshal. "Yes--if you want to know--I did promise Mose! You can't touch me for that!" "Why, that's skinnin' alive, that is--jest for that alone," said Hazzard, with portentous gravity, "to say nothin' of scootin' over here to give warnin', and bringin' that bread there in your pocket, and so on. Why, it'll puzzle a Philadelphy lawyer to find punishments bad enough for you." Job looked him searchingly in the eye for a full minute, then held up the fettered hand again.