"What kind of a tramp would I be if I wasn't hungry?" he growled, and those around him laughed again. So they took him to a table and fed him. He ate ravenously. They got him something to drink and it seemed to vanish down his throat without even touching his lips. "Isn't he splendid?" said Patricia Wharton, who, with Mortimer Crabb, had just come up. "But who----? I can't think of anyone, and yet----" The tramp looked up at her suddenly and dropped his fork upon the table. "_Splendid_," he cried. "That's me. _Splendid._ I sure glitter in this bunch, don't I?" There was something irresistibly comic in the gesture with which he swept the group. Patricia was still watching him--a puzzled expression in her eyes. "Who is he?" she asked; but Crabb shook his head. "I haven't an idea--but he _is_ clever. And look at those boots--they're the real thing. I wouldn't want to try to dance in them, though." The tramp drained his glass--set it down on the table and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand--rose and disappeared between the palms and hydrangeas into the darkness. For a guest in good standing the tramp then behaved strangely, for when he had reached a sheltered spot, in the bushes at the end of the English Garden, he sank at full length upon the grass and buried his head in his hands, groaning aloud. It was three years since he had seen her--three years, and yet she was just as he had seen her last. Time had touched her lightly, only caressing her playfully, rounding her features to matured beauty, while he---- A vision of camps, cities, skirmishes, orgies, came out of his mind in a disordered procession, all culminating in the incident which had brought him to ruin. Every detail of _that_ at least was clear; the sudden rage where the bonds of patience had reached the snapping point--and then the blow. The tramp laughed outright. He could see now the smirk on the face of the drunken lieutenant as he toppled over backward and struck his head on the edge of the mahogany table. After that--irons, the court martial, the transport, Alcatraz, his chance, the friendly plank, the swim for the mainland, and freedom. He had never heard whether the man lived or died. He didn't much care. He got what was coming to him.