FATHER WILISTON was a retired clergyman, so distinguished from his son Timothy, whose house stood on the ridge north of the old village of Win-throp, and whose daily path lay between his house and the new growing settlement around the valley station. It occurred at odd times to Father Wiliston that Timothy's path was somewhat undeviating. The clergyman had walked widely since Win-throp was first left behind fifty-five years back, at a time when the town was smaller and cows cropped the Green but never a lawn mower.

After college and seminary had come the frontier, which lay this side of the Great Lakes until Clinton stretched his ribbon of waterway to the sea; then a mission in Wisconsin, intended to modify the restless profanity of lumbermen who broke legs under logs and drank disastrous whiskey. A city and twenty mills were on the spot now, though the same muddy river ran into the same blue lake. Some skidders and saw-tenders of old days were come to live in stone mansions and drive in nickel-plated carriages; some were dead; some drifting like the refuse on the lake front; some skidding and saw-tending still. Distinction of social position was an idea that Father Wiliston never was able to grasp.

In the memories of that raw city on the lake he had his place among its choicest incongruities; and when his threescore and ten years were full, the practical tenderness of his nickel-plated and mansioned parishioners packed him one day into an upholstered sleeping car, drew an astonishing check to his credit, and mailed it for safety to Timothy Wiliston of Winthrop. So Father Wiliston returned to Winthrop, where Timothy, his son, had been sent to take root thirty years before.

One advantage of single-mindedness is that life keeps on presenting us with surprises. Father Wiliston occupied his own Arcadia, and Wisconsin or Winthrop merely sent in to him a succession of persons and events of curious interest. “The parson”—Wisconsin so spoke of him, leaning sociably over its bar, or pausing among scented slabs and sawdust—“the parson resembles an egg as respects that it's innocent and some lopsided, but when you think he must be getting addled, he ain't. He says to me, 'You'll make the Lord a deal of trouble, bless my soul!' he says. I don't see how the Lord's going to arrange for you. But'—thinking he might hurt my feelings—'I guess he'll undertake it by and by.' Then he goes wabbling down-street, picks up Mike Riley, who's considerable drunk, and takes him to see his chickens. And Mike gets so interested in those chickens you'd like to die. Then parson goes off, absent-minded and forgets him, and Mike sleeps the balmy night in the barnyard, and steals a chicken in the morning, and parson says, 'Bless my soul! How singular!' Well,” concluded Wisconsin, “he's getting pretty young for his years. I hear they're going to send him East before he learns bad habits.”

The steadiness and repetition of Timothy's worldly career and semi-daily walk to and from his business therefore seemed to Father Wiliston phenomenal, a problem not to be solved by algebra, for if a equalled Timothy, b his house, c his business, a + b + c was still not a far-reaching formula, and there seemed no advantage in squaring it. Geometrically it was evident that by walking back and forth over the same straight line you never so much as obtained an angle. Now, by arithmetic, “Four times thirty, multiplied by—leaving out Sundays—Bless me! How singular! Thirty-seven thousand five hundred and sixty times!”

He wondered if it had ever occurred to Timothy to walk it backward, or, perhaps, to hop, partly on one foot, and then, of course, partly on the other. Sixty years ago there was a method of progress known as “hop-skip-and-jump,” which had variety and interest. Drawn in the train of this memory came other memories floating down the afternoon's slant sunbeams, rising from every meadow and clump of woods; from the elder swamp where the brown rabbits used to run zigzag, possibly still ran in the same interesting way; from the great sand bank beyond the Indian graves. The old Wiliston house, with roof that sloped like a well-sweep, lay yonder, a mile or two. He seemed to remember some one said it was empty, but he could not associate it with emptiness. The bough apples there, if he remembered rightly, were an efficacious balm for regret.

He sighed and took up his book. It was another cure for regret, a Scott novel, “The Pirate.” It had points of superiority over Cruden's Concordance. The surf began to beat on the Shetland Islands, and trouble was imminent between Cleveland and Mor-daunt Mertoun.

Timothy and his wife drove away visiting that afternoon, not to return till late at night, and Bettina, the Scandinavian, laid Father Wiliston's supper by the open window, where he could look out across the porch and see the chickens clucking in the road.

“You mus' eat, fater,” she commanded.

“Yes, yes, Bettina. Thank you, my dear. Quite right.”

He came with his book and sat down at the table, but Bettina was experienced and not satisfied.

“You mus' eat firs'.”

He sighed and laid down “The Pirate.” Bettina captured and carried it to the other end of the room, lit the lamp though it was still light, and departed after the mail. It was a rare opportunity for her to linger in the company of one of her Scandinavian admirers. “Fater” would not know the difference between seven and nine or ten.

He leaned in the window and watched her safely out of sight, then went across the room, recaptured “The Pirate,” and chuckled in the tickling pleasure of a forbidden thing, “asked the blessing,” drank his tea shrewdly, knowing it would deteriorate, and settled to his book. The brown soft dusk settled, shade by shade; moths fluttered around the lamp; sleepy birds twittered in the maples. But the beat of the surf on the Shetland Islands was closer than these. Cleveland and Mordaunt Mertoun were busy, and Norna—“really, Norna was a remarkable woman”—and an hour slipped past.

Some one hemmed! close by and scraped his feet. It was a large man who stood there, dusty and ragged, one boot on the porch, with a red handkerchief knotted under his thick tangled beard and jovial red face. He had solid limbs and shoulders, and a stomach of sloth and heavy feeding.

The stranger did not resemble the comely pirate, Cleveland; his linen was not “seventeen hun'red;” it seemed doubtful if there were any linen. And yet, in a way there was something not inappropriate about him, a certain chaotic ease; not piratical, perhaps, although he looked like an adventurous person. Father Wiliston took time to pass from one conception of things to another. He gazed mildly through his glasses.

“I ain't had no supper,” began the stranger in a deep moaning bass; and Father Wiliston started.

“Bless my soul! Neither have I.” He shook out his napkin. “Bettina, you see “—

“Looks like there's enough for two,” moaned and grumbled the other. He mounted the porch and approached the window, so that the lamplight glimmered against his big, red, oily face.

“Why, so there is!” cried Father Wiliston, looking about the table in surprise. “I never could eat all that. Come in.” And the stranger rolled muttering and wheezing around through the door.

“Will you not bring a chair? And you might use the bread knife. These are fried eggs. And a little cold chicken? Really, I'm very glad you dropped in, Mr.”—

“Del Toboso.” By this time the stranger's mouth was full and his enunciation confused.

“Why”—Father Wiliston helped himself to an egg—“I don't think I caught the name.”

“Del Toboso. Boozy's what they calls me in the push.”

“I'm afraid your tea is quite cold. Boozy? How singular! I hope it doesn't imply alcoholic habits.”

“No,” shaking his head gravely, so that his beard wagged to the judicial negation. “Takes so much to tank me up I can't afford it, let alone it ain't moral.”

The two ate with haste, the stranger from habit and experience, Father Wiliston for fear of Bettina's sudden return. When the last egg and slice of bread had disappeared, the stranger sat back with a wheezing sigh.

“I wonder,” began Father Wiliston mildly, “Mr. Toboso—Toboso is the last name, isn't it, and Del the first?”

“Ah,” the other wheezed mysteriously, “I don't know about that, Elder. That's always a question.”

“You don't know! You don't know!”

“Got it off'n another man,” went on Toboso sociably. “He said he wouldn't take fifty dollars for it. I didn't have no money nor him either, and he rolled off'n the top of the train that night or maybe the next I don't know. I didn't roll him. It was in Dakota, over a canyon with no special bottom. He scattered himself on the way down. But I says, if that name's worth fifty dollars, it's mine. Del Toboso. That's mine. Sounds valuable, don't it?”

Father Wiliston fell into a reverie. “To-boso? Why, yes. Dulcinea del Toboso. I remember, now.”

“What's that? Dulcinea, was it? And you knowed him?”

“A long while ago when I was younger. It was in a green cover. 'Don Quixote'—he was in a cage, 'The Knight of the Rueful Countenance.' He had his face between the bars.”

“Well,” said Toboso, “you must have knowed him. He always looked glum, and I've seen him in quad myself.”

“Yes. Sancho Panza. Dulcinea del Toboso.”

“I never knowed that part of it. Dulcinea del Toboso! Well, that's me. You know a ruck of fine names, Elder. It sounds like thirteen trumps, now, don't it?”

Father Wiliston roused himself, and discriminated. “But you look more like Sancho Panza.”

“Do? Well, I never knowed that one. Must've been a Greaser. Dulcinea's good enough.”

Father Wiliston began to feel singularly happy and alive. The regular and even paced Timothy, his fidgeting wife, and the imperious Bettina were to some extent shadows and troubles in the evening of his life. They were careful people, who were hemmed in and restricted, who somehow hemmed in and restricted him. They lived up to precedents. Toboso did not seem to depend on precedents. He had the free speech, the casual inconsequence, the primitive mystery, desired of the boy's will and the wind's will, and travelled after by the long thoughts of youth. He was wind-beaten, burned red by the sun, ragged of coat and beard, huge, fat, wallowing in the ease of his flesh. One looked at him and remembered the wide world full of crossed trails and slumbering swamps.

Father Wiliston had long, straight white hair, falling beside his pale-veined and spiritual forehead and thin cheeks. He propped his forehead on one bony hand, and looked at Toboso with eyes of speculation. If both men were what some would call eccentric, to each other they seemed only companionable, which, after all, is the main thing.

“I have thought of late,” continued Father Wiliston after a pause, “that I should like to travel, to examine human life, say, on the highway. I should think, now, your manner of living most interesting. You go from house to house, do you not?—from city to city? Like Ulysses, you see men and their labors, and you pass on. Like the apostles—who surely were wise men, besides that were especially maintained of God—like them, and the pilgrims to shrines, you go with wallet and staff or merely with Faith for your baggage.”

“There don't nothing bother you in warm weather, that's right,” said Toboso, “except your grub. And that ain't any more than's interesting. If it wasn't for looking after meals, a man on the road might get right down lazy.”

“Why, just so! How wonderful! Now, do you suppose, Mr. Toboso, do you suppose it feasible? I should very much like, if it could be equably arranged, I should very much like to have this experience.”

Toboso reflected. “There ain't many of your age on the road.” An idea struck him suddenly. “But supposing you were going sort of experimenting, like that—and there's some folks that do—supposing you could lay your hands on a little bunch of money for luck, I don't see nothing to stop.”

“Why, I think there is some in my desk.” Toboso leaned forward and pulled his beard. The table creaked under his elbow. “How much?”

“I will see. Of course you are quite right.”

“At your age, Elder.”

“It is not as if I were younger.”

Father Wiliston rose and hurried out.

Toboso sat still and blinked at the lamp. “My Gord!” he murmured and moaned confidentially, “here's a game!”

After some time Father Wiliston returned. “Do you think we could start now?” he asked eagerly.

“Why sure, Elder. What's hindering?”

“I am fortunate to find sixty dollars. Really, I didn't remember. And here's a note I have written to my son to explain. I wonder what Bettina did with my hat.”

He hurried back into the hall. Toboso took the note from the table and pocketed it. “Ain't no use taking risks.”

They went out into the warm night, under pleasant stars, and along the road together arm in arm.

“I feel pretty gay, Elder.” He broke into bellowing song, “Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me.”

“Really, I feel cheerful, too, Mr. Toboso, wonderfully cheerful.”

“Dulcinea, Elder. Dulcinea's me name. Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!”

“How singular it is! I feel very cheerful. I think—really, I think I should like to learn that song about Jinny. It seems such a cheerful song.”

“Hit her up, Elder,” wheezed Toboso jovially. “Now then”—

“Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me.”

So they went arm in arm with a roaring and a tremulous piping.

The lamp flickered by the open window as the night breeze rose. Bettina came home betimes and cleared the table. The memory of a Scandinavian caress was too recent to leave room for her to remark that there were signs of devastating appetite, that dishes had been used unaccountably, and that “Fater” had gone somewhat early to bed. Timothy and his wife returned late. All windows and doors in the house of Timothy were closed, and the last lamp was extinguished.

Father Wiliston and Toboso went down the hill, silently, with furtive, lawless steps through the cluster of houses in the hollow, called Ironville, and followed then the road up the chattering hidden brook. The road came from the shadows of this gorge at last to meadows and wide glimmering skies, and joined the highway to Redfield. Presently they came to where a grassy side road slipped into the highway from the right, out of a land of bush and swamp and small forest trees of twenty or thirty years' growth. A large chestnut stood at the corner.

“Hey, Jinny!” wheezed Toboso. “Let's look at that tree, Elder.”

“Look at it? Yes, yes. What for?” Toboso examined the bark by the dim starlight; Father Wiliston peered anxiously through his glasses to where Toboso's finger pointed.

“See those marks?”

“I'm afraid I don't. Really, I'm sorry.”

“Feel 'em, then.”

And Father Wiliston felt, with eager, excited finger.

“Them there mean there's lodging out here; empty house, likely.”

“Do they, indeed. Very singular! Most interesting!” And they turned into the grassy road. The brushwood in places had grown close to it, though it seemed to be still used as a cart path. They came to a swamp, rank with mouldering vegetation, then to rising ground where once had been meadows, pastures, and plough lands.

Father Wiliston was aware of vaguely stirring memories. Four vast and aged maple trees stood close by the road, and their leaves whispered to the night; behind them, darkly, was a house with a far sloping roof in the rear. The windows were all glassless, all dark and dead-looking, except two in a front room, in which a wavering light from somewhere within trembled and cowered. They crept up, and looking through saw tattered wall paper and cracked plaster, and two men sitting on the floor, playing cards in the ghostly light of a fire of boards in the huge fireplace.

“Hey, Jinny!” roared Toboso, and the two jumped up with startled oaths. “Why, it's Boston Alley and the Newark Kid!” cried Toboso. “Come on, Elder.”

The younger man cast forth zigzag flashes of blasphemy. “You big fat fool! Don't know no mor' 'n to jump like that on me! Holy Jims! I ain't made of copper.”

Toboso led Father Wiliston round by the open door. “Hold your face, Kid. Gents, this here's a friend of mine we'll call the Elder, and let that go. I'm backing him, and I hold that goes. The Kid,” he went on descriptively, addressing Father Wiliston, “is what you see afore you, Elder. His mouth is hot, his hands is cold, his nerves is shaky, he's always feeling the cops gripping his shirt-collar. He didn't see no clergy around. He begs your pardon. Don't he? I says, don't he?”

He laid a heavy red hand on the Newark Kid's shoulder, who wiped his pallid mouth with the back of his hand, smiled, and nodded.

Boston Alley seemed in his way an agreeable man. He was tall and slender limbed, with a long, thin black mustache, sinewy neck and hollow chest, and spoke gently with a sweet, resonant voice, saying, “Glad to see you, Elder.”

These two wore better clothes than Toboso, but he seemed to dominate them with his red health and windy voice, his stomach and feet, and solidity of standing on the earth.

Father Wiliston stood the while gazing vaguely through his spectacles. The sense of happy freedom and congenial companionship that had been with him during the starlit walk had given way gradually to a stream of confused memories, and now these memories stood ranged about, looking at him with sad, faded eyes, asking him to explain the scene. The language of the Newark Kid had gone by him like a white hot blast. The past and present seemed to have about the same proportions of vision and reality. He could not explain them to each other. He looked up to Toboso, pathetically, trusting in his help.

“It was my house.”

Toboso stared surprised. “I ain't on to you, Elder.”

“I was born here.”

Indeed Toboso was a tower of strength even against the ghosts of other days, reproachful for their long durance in oblivion.

“Oh! Well, by Jinny! I reckon you'll give us lodging, Elder,” he puffed cheerfully. He took the coincidence so pleasantly and naturally that Father Wiliston was comforted, and thought that after all it was pleasant and natural enough.

The only furniture in the room was a high-backed settle and an overturned kitchen table, with one leg gone, and the other three helplessly in the air—so it had lain possibly many years. Boston Alley drew forward the settle and threw more broken clapboards on the fire, which blazed up and filled the room with flickering cheer. Soon the three outcasts were smoking their pipes and the conversation became animated.

“When I was a boy,” said Father Wiliston—“I remember so distinctly—there were remarkable early bough apples growing in the orchard.”

“The pot's yours, Elder,” thundered To-boso. They went out groping under the old apple trees, and returned laden with plump pale green fruit. Boston Alley and the Newark Kid stretched themselves on the floor on heaps of pulled grass. Toboso and Father Wiliston sat on the settle. The juice of the bough apples ran with a sweet tang. The palate rejoiced and the soul responded. The Newark Kid did swift, cunning card tricks that filled Father Wiliston with wonder and pleasure.

“My dear young man, I don't see how you do it!”

The Kid was lately out of prison from a two years' sentence, “only for getting into a house by the window instead of the door,” as Boston Alley delicately explained, and the “flies,” meaning officers of the law, “are after him again for reasons he ain't quite sure of.” The pallor of slum birth and breeding, and the additional prison pallor, made his skin look curious where the grime had not darkened it. He had a short-jawed, smooth-shaven face, a flat mouth and light hair, and was short and stocky, but lithe and noiseless in movement, and inclined to say little. Boston Alley was a man of some slight education, who now sometimes sung in winter variety shows, such songs as he picked up here and there in summer wanderings, for in warm weather he liked footing the road better, partly because the green country sights were pleasant to him, and partly because he was irresolute and keeping engagements was a distress. He seemed agreeable and sympathetic.

“He ain't got no more real feelings 'n a fish,” said Toboso, gazing candidly at Boston, but speaking to Father Wiliston, “and yet he looks like he had 'em, and a man's glad to see him. Ain't seen you since fall, Boston, but I see the Kid last week at a hang-out in Albany. Well, gents, this ain't a bad lay.”

Toboso himself had been many years on the road. He was in a way a man of much force and decision, and probably it was another element in him, craving sloth and easy feeding, which kept him in this submerged society; although here, too, there seemed room for the exercise of his dominance. He leaned back in the settle, and had his hand on Father Wiliston's shoulder. His face gleamed redly over his bison beard.

“It's a good lay. And we're gay, Elder. Ain't we gay? Hey, Jinny!”

“Yes, yes, Toboso. But this young man—I'm sure he must have great talents, great talents, quite remarkable. Ah—yes, Jinny!”

“Hey, Jinny,” they sang together, “Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me. I'll sing to you, and play to you, a dulcet melode-e-e”—while Boston danced a shuffle and the Kid snapped the cards in time. Then, at Toboso's invitation and command, Boston sang a song, called “The Cheerful Man,” resembling a ballad, to a somewhat monotonous tune, and perhaps known in the music halls of the time—all with a sweet, resonant voice and a certain pathos of intonation:—

“I knew a man across this land

Came waving of a cheerful hand,

Who drew a gun and gave some one

A violent contus-i-on,

This cheerful man.

“They sent him up, he fled from 'quad'

By a window and the grace of God,

Picked up a wife and children six,

And wandered into politics,

This cheerful man.

“'In politics he was, I hear,

A secret, subtle financier—

So the jury says, 'But we agree

He quits this sad community,

This cheerful man.'

“His wife and six went on the town,

And he went off; without a frown

Reproaching Providence, went he

And got another wife and three,

This cheerful man.

“He runs a cross-town car to-day

From Bleecker Street to Avenue A.

He swipes the fares with skilful ease,

Keeps up his hope, and tries to please,

This cheerful man.

“Our life is mingled woe and bliss,

Man that is born of woman is

Short-lived and goes to his long home.

Take heart, and learn a lesson from

This cheerful man.”

“But,” said Father Wiliston, “don't you think really, Mr. Alley, that the moral is a little confused? I don't mean intentionally,” he added, with anxious precaution, “but don't you think he should have reflected”—

“You're right, Elder,” said Toboso, with decision. “It's like that. It ain't moral. When a thing ain't moral that settles it.” And Boston nodded and looked sympathetic with every one.

“I was sure you would agree with me,” said Father Wiliston. He felt himself growing weary now and heavy-eyed. Presently somehow he was leaning on Toboso with his head on his shoulder. Toboso's arm was around him, and Toboso began to hum in a kind of wheezing lullaby, “Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!”

“I am very grateful, my dear friends,” murmured Father Wiliston. “I have lived a long time. I fear I have not always been careful in my course, and am often forgetful. I think”—drowsily—“I think that happiness must in itself be pleasing to God. I was often happy before in this room. I remember—my dear mother sat here—who is now dead. We have been quite, really quite cheerful to-night. My mother—was very judicious—an excellent wise woman—she died long ago.” So he was asleep before any one was aware, while Toboso crooned huskily, “Hey, Jinny!” and Boston Alley and the Newark Kid sat upright and stared curiously.

“Holy Jims!” said the Kid.

Toboso motioned them to bring the pulled grass. They piled it on the settle, let Father Wiliston down softly, brought the broken table, and placed it so that he could not roll off.

“Well,” said Toboso, after a moment's silence, “I guess we'd better pick him and be off. He's got sixty in his pocket.”

“Oh,” said Boston, “that's it, is it?”

“It's my find, but seeing you's here I takes half and give you fifteen apiece.”

“Well, that's right.”

“And I guess the Kid can take it out.”

The Kid found the pocketbook with sensitive gliding fingers, and pulled it out. Toboso counted and divided the bills.

“Well,” whispered Toboso thoughtfully, “if the Elder now was forty years younger, I wouldn't want a better pardner.” They tiptoed out into the night. “But,” he continued, “looking at it that way, o' course he ain't got no great use for his wad and won't remember it till next week. Heeled all right, anyhow. Only, I says now, I says, there ain't no vice in him.”

“Mammy tuck me up, no licks to-night,” said the Kid, plodding in front. “I ain't got nothing against him.”

Boston Alley only fingered the bills in his pocket.

It grew quite dark in the room they had left as the fire sunk to a few flames, then to dull embers and an occasional darting spark. The only sound was Father Wiliston's light breathing.

When he awoke the morning was dim in the windows. He lay a moment confused in mind, then sat up and looked around.

“Dear me! Well, well, I dare say Toboso thought I was too old. I dare say”—getting on his feet—“I dare say they thought it would be unkind to tell me so.”

He wandered through the dusky old rooms and up and down the creaking stairs, picking up bits of recollection, some vivid, some more dim than the dawn, some full of laughter, some that were leaden and sad; then out into the orchard to find a bough apple in the dewy grasses; and, kneeling under the gnarled old tree to make his morning prayer, which included in petition the three overnight revellers, he went in fluent phrase and broken tones among eldest memories.

He pushed cheerfully into the grassy road now, munching his apple and humming, “Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!” He examined the tree at the highway with fresh interest. “How singular! It means an empty house. Very intelligent man, Toboso.”

Bits of grass were stuck on his back and a bramble dragged from his coat tail. He plodded along in the dust and wabbled absent-mindedly from one side of the road to the other. The dawn towered behind him in purple and crimson, lifted its robe and canopy, and flung some kind of glittering gauze far beyond him. He did not notice it till he reached the top of the hill above Ironville with Timothy's house in sight. Then he stopped, turned, and was startled a moment; then smiled companionably on the state and glory of the morning, much as on Toboso and the card tricks of the Newark Kid.

“Really,” he murmured, “I have had a very good time.”

He met Timothy in the hall.

“Been out to walk early, father? Wait—there's grass and sticks on your coat.”

It suddenly seemed difficult to explain the entire circumstances to Timothy, a settled man and girt with precedent.

“Did you enjoy it?—Letter you dropped? No, I haven't seen it. Breakfast is ready.”

Neither Bettina nor Mrs. Timothy had seen the letter.

“No matter, my dear, no matter. I—really, I've had a very good time.”

Afterward he came out on the porch with his Bible and Concordance, sat down and heard Bettina brushing his hat and ejaculating, “Fater!” Presently he began to nod drowsily and his head dropped low over the Concordance. The chickens clucked drowsily in the road.