As Greg played the rays of light against the darkness outside, Dick suddenly sprang forth into the dark. Then he returned, bearing in his arms the pitiful little figure of old Reuben Hinman, the peddler. "Look at his head!" gasped Reade, in horror, as Prescott entered with the burden. From a gash over the peddler's left temple blood was flowing, leaving its dark trail over the peddler's light brown coat. Dick carried the stricken old man straight to his own cot, laying him there gently. "Who can have done this deed?" gasped Greg, throbbing with sympathy for the poor old man. Outside other approaching steps sounded. Dave and Tom, snatching up sticks of firewood, sprang forward. CHAPTER XVI HOME, HOSPITAL AND ALMSHOUSE Greg flashed the lantern on four hulking, bedraggled ragged men. "Hello! It's the same kids!" cried a hoarse voice out in the storm. "They'll be glad to see us." "You keep out of here!" ordered Reade, thrusting his stick at the face of the first tramp---the boss tramp---who tried to enter. "No!" countermanded Dick Prescott. "Let even the hoboes come in. Let anyone come in on a night like this." "Now, that's decent of you," admitted the boss tramp, as he sloshed heavily in, followed by three companions. Two of these tramps had been with the "boss" on another well remembered occasion. The third was a stranger to Dick & Co. "My, but you've got a real house in here a true port in a storm," observed the boss tramp, as he halted to stare about him. "Friends, this is the best thing we've seen today." "It is," agreed the other tramps solemnly. The glance of the newcomers did not rest upon the face of Reuben Hinman, for Prescott had gently spread a blanket so that it effectually concealed the little old peddler. "What have you men been doing?" asked Dick, straightening up and eyeing them coldly, steadily. "Drowning in the woods," replied the boss, "for we knew we couldn't find a house or barn within two miles, and the road is like a river you need a boat for travel to-night. When the storm came we men made a brush lean-to and kept as dry as we could under it. But it got worse and worse. But at last we caught sight of your light shining through the trees. So we headed for it. We hoped you'd have a stove with a fire in it, and you have---so we're all right, and much obliged." "Keep back there a bit," ordered Dick, so firmly that the tramps obeyed. "Dave, help me to lift this cot over within a few feet of the stove. Be as gentle as you can." Four tramps looked on in solemn curiosity as they saw Darrin and Prescott lift a cot on which lay something completely covered by a blanket. Then Dick turned down the blanket, revealing the bruised, bleeding head of Reuben Hinman. "What do you men know about this?" Prescott demanded, eyeing them compellingly. But the tramps' look was one of such astonished innocence that Prescott began to wonder whether he had wrongly suspected these knights of the highway.