"I am not, either," Mason said. "I'll tell you, though, that my choice would be to hike it by night. I've been over the road once before, and if we go now we will not be noticed by a single soul, while in the daytime we might accidentally be seen by some one on the lookout for you. It is a stiff climb to the top, but let's make it and go on to Newark. We'll get jobs. I'm absolutely sure of it, from what that fellow told me in Union Square. They happen to be very short on help. Well, it will mean three square meals a day, plenty of outdoor exercise, and a bunk to sleep in over rattling car-trucks, I'm going to take to it like a fish to water." "I shall like it, too," Charles declared, and they set out for the road leading up the Palisades to the level country above. The joyous mood of his companion communicated itself to Charles, and he felt very light-hearted. The warm sense of a new existence tingled over him. He felt all but imponderable as he strode along by his friend in the clear moonlight and the bracing air from the river. PART II CHAPTER I It was the beginning of the month of May, one year later. The two friends were still boon companions. They had joined the force of canvasmen of the circus and menagerie at Newark, gone with the organization to California, and were now in the mountains of Georgia, where the company was billed to exhibit and perform at the town of Carlin. Their long train reached the place at three o'clock in the morning, drew up on a side-track near the circus-grounds, and the canvasmen were gruffly ordered out of their bunks to go to work. Charles and Mason slept opposite each other, and now stood dressing in their rough clothes in the dim light of a dusky oil-lantern at the end of the car. "Dog's life, eh?" Mason said, recalling a remark Charles had made the night before. "That and nothing else," Charles muttered; "I've had enough, for my part." "Well, I have, too," Mason admitted, "and I'm ready to call it off. But I think I ought to stick till we get back to New York." "I'm not sure that I ought to go back there," Charles said, in a more guarded tone, as they went down the narrow aisle to the door. "Oh, I see what you mean," Mason said, "and after all, you may be dead right about it. But what would you do if you called it off right here to-day, as I know you are thinking of doing?"