I have told of the big, double house my grandmother had for renting, and how she might have made a good living renting it out, if she had used a little business sense ... but now she let the whole of it to a caravan of gypsies for their winter quarters,--who, instead of paying rent, actually held her and Millie in _their_ debt by reading their palms, sometimes twice a day ... I think it was my Uncle Joe who at last ousted them.... * * * * * When I came back from Aunt Rachel's I found a voluble, fat, dirty, old, yellow-haired tramp established in the ground floor of the same house. He had, in the first place, come to our back door to beg a hand-out. And, sitting on the doorstep and eating, and drinking coffee, he had persuaded my grandmother that if she would give him a place to locate on credit he knew a way to clear a whole lot of money. His project for making money was the selling of home-made hominy to the restaurants up in town. * * * * * I found him squatted on the bare floor, with no furniture in the room. He had a couple of dingy wash-boilers which he had picked up from the big garbage-dump near the race-track. Day in, day out, I spent my time with this tramp, listening to his stories of the pleasures and adventures of tramp-life. I see him still, wiping his nose on his ragged coat-sleeve as he vociferates.... When one day he disappeared, leaving boilers, hominy and all, behind, I missed his yarns as much as my grandmother missed her unpaid rent. * * * * * It appears that at this time my grandfather had a manufacturing plant for the terra cotta invention he had stolen from his comrade-in-arms, in Virginia somewhere, and that, during all these years, he had had Landon working with him,--and now word had come to us that Landon was leaving for Mornington again. My grandmother was mad about him, her youngest ... always spoke of him as "her baby" ... informed me again and again that he was the most accomplished, the handsomest man the Gregory family had ever produced. * * * * * Landon arrived. He walked up to the front porch from the road. He came in with a long, free stride ... he gave an eager, boyish laugh ... he plumped down his big, bulged-to-bursting grip with a bang. "Hello, Ma!... hello, Millie!... well, well, so this is Duncan's kid?... how big he's grown!" Landon's fine, even, white teeth gleamed a smile at me. Granma couldn't say a word ... she just looked at him ... and looked at him ... and looked at him ... after a long while she began saying his name over and over again.... "Landon, Landon, Landon,"--holding him close. Landon began living with us regularly as one of the family. He went to work in the steel mills, and was energetic and tireless when he worked, which he did, enough to pay his way and not be a burden on others. He performed the hardest kinds of labour in the mills.