There was animation at the Nocturnal Club at three o'clock in the morning. The city reporters who had been dropping in since midnight were now reinforced by telegraph editors, for the country editions of the big dailies were already being rushed in light wagons over the sounding stones to the railroad stations.

The cheery and urbane African—naturally called Delmonico by the habituÉs of the Nocturnal Club—found his time crowded in serving bottled beer, sandwiches, or boiled eggs to the groups around the tables.

To a large group in the back room Fetterson related how he had once missed the last car at the distant extremity of West Philadelphia, and, failing to find a cab west of Broad Street, had walked fifty blocks after midnight and had still succeeded in getting his report in the second edition and thus making a “beat on the town.”

Then spoke up a needy outsider whom Fetterson had brought in at one o'clock.

I neglected to mention Fetterson's penchant for queer company. It is quite right that reporters know policemen, are on chaffing terms with night cabmen, and have large acquaintance with pugilists and even with “crooks.” But Fetterson picks up the most remarkable and out-of-the-way—not to speak of out-at-elbows—specimens of mankind, craft in distress on the sea of humanity. The needy outsider was his latest acquisition.

It is enough to say of this destitute acquaintance of Fetterson's that he was a ragged man needing a shave. In daylight, in the country, you would have termed him a tramp. Hitherto he had sat in our group in silence. When he opened his mouth to discourse, it was natural that he should have a prompt and somewhat curious hearing.

“Speaking of walking,” he said, “I have walked a bit in my time. Mostly, though, I've rode—on freight-cars. The longest straight tramp I ever made was from Harrisburg to Philadelphia once when the trains weren't running. The cold weather made walking unpleasant. But what do you think of a woman—no tramp woman, either—starting from Pittsburg to walk to Philadelphia?”

“Oh, there is a so-called actress who recently walked from San Francisco to New York,” put in some one.

“Yes, but she took her time, and had all the necessaries of life on the way. She walked for an advertisement. The woman I speak of walked in order to get there. She walked because she hadn't the money to pay her fare. Her husband was with her, to be sure. He was a pal o' mine. You see, it was a hard winter, years ago, and work was so scarce in Pittsburg that the husband had to remain idle until the two had begun to starve. He had some education, and had been an office clerk. At that time of his life he couldn't have stood manual labour. Still he tried to get it, for he was willing to do anything to keep a lining to his skin. If you've never been in his predicament, you can't realize how it is and you won't believe it possible. But I've known more than one man to starve because he couldn't get work and wouldn't take public charity. Starvation was the prospect of this young fellow and his wife. So they decided to leave Pittsburg and come to Philadelphia, where they thought it would be easier for the husband to get work.

“'But how can we get there?' the husband asked.

“She was a plucky girl and had known hardship, although she was frail to look at.

“'Walk,' she replied.

“And two days later they started.”

The outsider paused and lighted a forbidding-looking pipe.

When he resumed his narrative he spoke in a lower tone. The recollections that he called up seemed to stir him within, although he was calm enough of exterior.

“I won't describe the experience of my pal on that trip. It was his first tramp. He knew nothing of the art of vagabondage. Of course they had to beg. That was tough, although he got used to it and to many tricks in the trade. They slept in barns and they ate when and where they could. It cut him to the heart to see his wife in such hunger and fatigue. But her spirits kept up better than his—or at least they seemed to. Often he repented of having started upon such a trip. But he kept that to himself.

“When the wife did at last give in to the cold, the hunger, and the weariness, it was to collapse all at once. It happened in the mountain country. In the evening of a cold, dull day they were trudging along on the railroad ties, keeping on the west-bound track so they could face approaching trains and get off the track in time to avoid being run down.

“'We'll stop in the town ahead,' the husband said. 'We can get warm in the station, and you shall have supper if we have to knock at every door in the town.'

“And the wife said:

“'Yes, we'll stop, for I feel, Harry, as if—as if I couldn't—go any fur—Harry, where are you?'

“She fell forward on the track. When the man picked her up she was unconscious. Clasping her in his arms, he set his teeth and fixed his eyes on the lights of the town ahead and hurried forward.

“But before he reached the town, he found it was a dead body he was carrying.

“You see she had kept up until the very last moment, in the hope of reaching the town before dark.

“What the man did, how he felt when he discovered that her heart had ceased to beat, there in the solitude upon the mountains, with the town in sight at the foot of the slope in the gathering night, I can leave to the vivid imaginations of you newspaper men. For four hours he mourned over her body by the side of the track, and those in the train that passed could not see him for the darkness.

“Then my pal took the body in his arms and started up the mountain, for the track at that point passed through what they call a cut, and the hills rise steep on each side of it. He had his prejudices against pauper burial, my pal had, and he shrunk from going to the town and begging a grave for her. He didn't need a doctor's certificate to tell him that life had gone for ever from her fragile body. He knew that she had died of cold and exhaustion.

“As he turned the base of the hill to begin to descend it, he saw in the clouded moonlight a deserted railroad tool-house by the track. In front of it lay a broken, rusty spade. He shouldered this and proceeded up the mountain. It was a long walk, and he had to stop more than once to rest, but he got to the top at last. There was a little clearing in the woods here, where some one had camped. The ruins of a shanty still remained.

“My pal laid down the body of her who had been his wife, with the dead face turned toward the sky, which was beginning to be cleared of its clouds. Then he started to dig.

“It was a longer job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tired and numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of the mountain.

“He lifted up the body of that brave girl, he kissed the cold lips, and he took off his coat and wrapped it carefully about the head, so that the face would be protected from the earth. He stooped and laid the body in the shallow grave, and he knelt down there and prayed.

“He filled the grave up with earth with the broken spade that he had used in digging it. All these things required a long time. He didn't observe how the night was passing, nor that the sky became clear and the stars shone and the moon crossed the zenith and began to descend in the west. He didn't notice that the stars began to pale. But he worked on until he had finished, and then he stopped and prayed again.

“When he arose, his face was toward the east, and over the distant hilltops he saw the purple of the dawn.”

The outsider ceased to speak.

“What then?”

“That's all. My pal walked down the mountain, jumped upon the first freight-train that passed, and has been a wanderer on the face of the earth ever since.”

There were various opinions expressed of this narrative. I quietly asked the needy outsider as we left the club at sunrise:

“Will you tell me who your pal was—the man who buried his wife on the mountain-top?”

There was contemptuous pity in the outsider's look as it dwelt a moment upon me before he replied: “The man was myself.”

And then he condescended to borrow a quarter from me.