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Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head angrily to clear it. He rubbed his eyes free of the clouding delusion. It wouldn’t do for him to be getting light-headed.

* * * * *

On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a cut through which the railroad ran at a point about five miles north of where the collision had occurred, a tramp was busy, just before sundown, cooking something in an old washboiler that perched precariously on a fire of wood coals. This tramp was tall and spindle-legged, with reddish hair and a pale, beardless, freckled face with no chin to it and not much forehead, so that it ran out to a peak like the profile of some featherless, unpleasant sort of fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat dangled grotesquely about his spare shanks.

Desperate as his plight had become, Mr. Trimm felt the old sick shame at the prospect of exposing himself to this knavish-looking vagabond whose help he meant to buy with a bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp of smoke from the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp air that had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, to climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded in the shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in the washboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry out with eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of the halting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler and glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the figure of the newcomer his eyes narrowed and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin of comprehension.

“Well, well, well,” he said, leering offensively, “welcome to our city, little stranger.”

Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet, for they were almost out of the wrecks of his patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from the tramp’s face to the stuff on the fire, his nostrils wrinkling. Then slowly: “I’m in trouble,” he said, and held out his hands.

“Wot I’d call a mild way o’ puttin’ it,” said the tramp coolly. “That purticular kind o’ joolry ain’t gen’lly wore for pleasure.”

His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved past Mr. Trimm’s stooped figure down the slope of the hillock.

“Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore keeper?” he demanded, his manner changing.

“There is no one after me–no one that I know of,” explained Mr. Trimm. “I am quite alone–I am certain of it.”

“Sure there ain’t nobody lookin’ fur you?” the other persisted suspiciously.

“I tell you I am all alone,” protested Mr. Trimm. “I want your help in getting these–these things off and sending a message to a friend. You’ll be well paid, very well paid. I can pay you more money than you ever had in your life, probably, for your help. I can promise—-“

He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured by his words, had stooped again to his cooking and was stirring the bubbling contents of the washboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of the stew, rising strongly, filled Mr. Trimm with such a sharp and an aching hunger that he could not speak for a moment. He mastered himself, but the effort left him shaking and gulping.

“Go on, then, an’ tell us somethin’ about yourself,” said the freckled man. “Wot brings you roamin’ round this here railroad cut with them bracelets on?”

“I was in the wreck,” obeyed Mr. Trimm. “The man with me–the officer–was killed. I wasn’t hurt and I got away into these woods. But they think I’m dead too–my name was among the list of dead.”

The other’s peaky face lengthened in astonishment.

“Why, say,” he began, “I read all about that there wreck–seen the list myself–say, you can’t be Trimm, the New York banker? Yes, you are! Wot a streak of luck! Lemme look at you! Trimm, the swell financeer, sportin’ ’round with the darbies on him all nice an’ snug an’ reg’lar! Mister Trimm–well, if this ain’t rich!”