He was certainly nothing of a weight to carry, and his new owner was conscious of a certain pleasure in feeling the warm, silky little body nestling against his breast.

He was not quite alone any more,--this little creature was a companion,--a something to talk to, to caress and to protect.

He ascended the bank, and regaining the highroad resumed his vagrant way.

Noon was now at the full, and the sun's heat seemed to create a silence that was both oppressive and stifling.

He walked slowly, and began to feel that perhaps after all he had miscalculated his staying powers, and that the burden of old age would, in the end, take vengeance upon him for running risks of fatigue and exhaustion which, in his case, were wholly unnecessary.
"Yet if I were really poor," he argued with himself, "if I were in very truth a tramp, I should have to do exactly what I am doing now.