Again and again Lem stole from his room at night by the window route and made his way to his father's hermitage, to beg to be taken out of pawn. These visits caused Saint Harvey of Riverbank the utmost irritation.

The good Saint Harvey, Little Brother to Stray Dogs, was doing his best to live up to the task he had set himself. He was trying faithfully to mortify the flesh and to live abstemiously (on bread and water), to do without his pipe, to think high thoughts, and to be gentle and kind to all living creatures, particularly to stray dogs.

He had a double reason for trying. The news that he was in business as a saint had gone around town—for he could not keep from bragging about it—and old friends and perfect strangers dropped into the junkyard to inquire how he was progressing and to learn from his own lips how a man went about being a saint and how he liked the job.

The worst, of course, was living on bread and water alone. Every atom of his huge body seemed to cry for ham and eggs every minute, and his stomach simply yelled for ham and eggs. And that made him irritable, of course, and made it more difficult to keep from dod-basting everybody, and everything. And it made him long for his pipe, which would have been the solace that every man knows tobacco is. And then the questioners would come:

“An' say, Harvey, they say you don't eat nothin' but bread an' water. Is that so?”

“That's all. Nothin' but. It's got to be that way. Mortify the flesh, that's the idee. High thinkin' an' plain livin'. Why, there would n't be no merit in bein'' a saint if I was to go on eatin' an' drinkin' an' smokin' an' cussin' around same as everybody does an' like I used to. Bread an' water; that's the idee of it.”

“Gosh! it must be hard on a man!”

“Well, yes! Yes, right at first it is. I don't say it ain't, right at first. It irked me some right at first, but I'm gettin' used to it.”

“An' don't it no more?”

“Not a mite. Mind conquers the flesh, as you may say. Want to come back an' see the stray dogs I'm takin' care of? That's my speciality—stray dogs. It's just that I love 'em an' they love me, like I was a brother to 'em. That does the business.”

He would lead the way to where three canines were chained in the junkyard.

But at night, when he was supposed to be sound asleep, and his blinds were closed, he would begin to think of food—rich, solid ham and eggs cooked in bacon fat—and he would fight with himself, and groan and roll to and fro in his bed.

“Dod-bas—no, not dod-baste; I'll take that back, it ain't saintly,” he would mutter; “but I'm hungry. I did n't know a man could git so hungry.”

Then he would get up and walk the floor.

It was wonderful that he stood it. A new spirit of resolution seemed to have entered into him. The interest that was shown in his new life by his friends and by strangers certainly was one cause of his tenacity, but even so he might have given up—as he had given up all his previous labors—had the Riverbank Eagle not written him up. The article was intended to be satirical, but satire is a serious matter for unpracticed hands to meddle with, and the article that appeared in the Eagle—headed “Riverbank Has a Hermit”—was so very delicately satirical that it did not appear to be satirical at all. Riverbank accepted it as sincere, and so did Saint Harvey, and so did papers all over the land. In a day Saint Harvey found himself not only a recognized hermit, but a famous one. The “Brother of Stray Dogs” was a national character, but he wished he was n't. He was a national celebrity, but a hungry one. Nobody knew how hungry he was. He was the hungriest man in the United States. He was just plumb, downright, miserably hungry for ham and eggs.

It was late at night, when this hunger was greatest, that Lem would come, pushing open the door, standing on the sill, and saying: “Pop, I want you to lemme come home.”

“Say! Are you here again? Did n't I tell you to keep away? You git out o' here an' go right back to your aunt.”

“Aw, pop! Lemme stay here, won't you, please?”

“No, I won't. I can't have you around here, Lem. The place where a man is tryin' to be a saint ain't no place for a hearty, growin' boy. I got to practically do without food. I got to fast, an' live on bread an' water—”

“Aw, lemme come. I don't want much to eat. Just maybe some ham an' eggs—”

“Now, hush up! You shut your noise! Don't you come talkin' about—about nothin' to eat. You come around here talkin' about ham an'—about things to eat, an' botherin' me, an' I won't have it. How can I get my mind quieted down to bread an' water when you're comin' here all the time? It's just food, food, food, an' tempt, tempt, tempt, all the time. I'm havin' a hard enough time as it is, dod—I mean—”

“Why don't you quit it, then? I don't see what you want to be a plaguey old saint for, anyway. I don't see where you 're goin' to make any money at it.”

“There now! Money! That just shows you oughtn't to be around here, Lem. You don't understand the first principles of a saint. A saint ain't in the saint business for the money it gets him.”

“What is he one for, then, I'd like to know? What's it good for, anyway?”

“Why, dod-baste—no, I take that back, Lem. I mean anybody ought to know what a saint is for. He's—well, he's just a saint. There don't have to be no reason for a saint. He just stays around where he is, an' is. Folks come an' look at him an' wonder how he does it. He's a credit to the town, dod—I mean, he's a credit to the town. He gets wrote up in the papers. They make monuments of him when he's dead, an' put his picture in a book.”

“Well, I don't think it's sense, I'd rather not be dead an' have monuments, if I had to go an' have nothin' but bread an' water. I'd rather be alive an' have ham an' eggs—”

“Now, you stop that! You're talkin' about ham an' eggs just to pester me, an' I won't have it! You get away from here!”

Always it ended in Lem coaxing again to be taken out of pawn. He would sit in the shanty snivelling, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand after he had run out of words, but always his father sent him away again, back to Miss Susan. He ordered him out of the shanty sternly enough, but after Lem had closed the door, going out into the night reluctantly, Saint Harvey could not forget him. He worked off his irritation by whanging his pillow around the room, kicking it when it fell to the floor, until he was nearly exhausted, and then he would settle himself in his bed and, grumbling at first, read—his dime novels!

The truth was that, much as he scolded about them, he welcomed the nocturnal visits of the boy, even if they did irritate him (or because they did), and during the long, saintly days when he sat in his hickory rocker reading his “Lives of the Saints,” he became hungrily homesick for Lem. He missed him.

Now and then, too, Saint Harvey had a qualm. Now and then the thought came to him that he was being a saint because there was no heavy work connected with the job, and he had occasionally a guilty feeling that he had put Lem in pawn to be rid of him. He was not very happy. When he thought such thoughts he had second thoughts—that he was thinking such anti-saint thoughts because he was finding the saint business harder than the junk business.

He did not relish a form of martyrdom that came with his saintship, either. It took the form of small boys, who love to annoy saints, hermits, and other odd characters. They began throwing clods at him from a safe distance, chanting in chorus:

Saint Harvey was learning that saints are not canonized for nothing. They thoroughly earn their places in the estimation of their admiration.

Lem, after an unusually hard day with Miss Susan, came one night to the hermitage of Saint Harvey with his usual plea to be taken back.

“No, Lem,” his father said patiently, “I ain't going to take you. I can't, Lem. I got to stick at this saint job now. And I can't, anyhow. I ain't got the money to pay your aunt, and you've got to stay until—”

From his pocket Lem drew something thick and square, wrapped in paper. He was sitting where he always sat, and he cast a glance out of the comers of his eyes at his father as he slowly unwrapped the paper.

“Aw! please let me come back!” he begged, and dropped the paper on the floor.

Saint Harvey of Riverbank licked his lips and drew a deep, covetous breath. In his hand Lem held a thick, moist ham sandwich. He lifted one lid and straightened the ham with his finger—thick, moist ham with a strip of luscious white fat that hung tremulously over the edge of the bread.

“Aw! please, pa! Let me come back,” Lem begged, and set his teeth into the sandwich.

Saint Harvey licked his puffy lips again and heaved a second deep sigh.

The great ham sandwich barrage against the encroaching sainthood of Saint Harvey of River-bank had begun.