It was a girl’s voice. Walter Burfield looked up and saw it was a pretty red-cheeked girl addressing him. My, but she looked pretty and wholesome. A sinner standing outside of heaven and looking in through the open gate and beholding an angel would feel as Walter felt on beholding that pretty country girl. “Do you like dogs,” she asked again, for the tramp sat dumb before her. His eyes dropped. He had reached that point in the life of a vagabond where the frank, honest eyes of some one in whom hope burns brightly, makes the hopeless soul recoil and seek to hide away from questioning eyes. “I just feel like hugging the old dog,” he said, “because he offered to be my friend, and I am so hungry for friendship. I would like to secure a position, and find a home and settle down in the ways of peace once more. I am without a friend in all the wide world. The touch of the dog’s tongue on my hand is the first friendly touch I have felt for two years. The woman inside allowed me to sit down and rest here, but she refused me a bite to eat. I guess the old dog knows how hungry and friendless and despondent I am, so he came up and gave me the kiss of loving friendship.” “Wait,” said the girl, “I’ll bring you something to eat, poor man.” She sat and talked to him while he ate. She had never found any one so interesting, and he had never seen any one so beautiful. He could touch her heart as never any one had touched it before. He knew so much of life and was so discouraged and hopeless with it all. His talk opened up a new world to her. Her life had been so tame and commonplace, and she had longed for news from the outside world. He did not look like a tramp, though he was ragged and dirty and unshaven. The girl went to her father and persuaded him to give the poor tramp a job. Walter Burfield stayed. He worked hard and faithfully. He resolved to give up roaming forever and try to make a man of himself, though obliged to begin down at the bottom. The old dog followed him through the fields day after day, as though he felt that it was his influence that had called Walter back to a life of usefulness. And Walter well knew that it was old Hector’s warm kiss on his hand that brought out the heart talk that morning with Adaline Blair. Two years afterward, as he sat under a shade tree while resting his team of horses, he hugged the old dog and said to him: