She ran, white-faced, gasping cries.  Other women ran.  The spirit of helpfulness and curiosity to know what had happened set wings on the heels of the little community.  The messenger telephoned and followed them.

The fat tramp set down his plate and glanced to right and left and all about.  Then he shuffled into the deserted house and after a brief stay hastened out with his pockets crammed and bearing garments in his arms; he scuttled away with sagging trot across the fields.

Farr saw him go and did not pursue.

“Yonder goes the spirit of the age,” he told himself, with sardonic twisting of his lips.  “When Opportunity knocks, knock Opportunity down.  Embrace Opportunity, but be sure it’s with the strangle hold.  The directors of a robbed railroad make a more dignified getaway than that porcine pedestrian is making—­but it’s the same as far as the stockholders are concerned.”

He went on slowly toward the hollow under the hill.

The procession met him—­a limp man, moaning, borne in the arms of his sweating mates, women trotting alongside and crossing the road, to and fro, like frightened hens—­clucking sympathy.

Farr found a half-finished stone bridge under the hill.  A paunchy boss with underset jaw and overhanging upper lip was profanely urging his helpers back to their jobs.

“Fifteen minutes before knock-off time—­fifteen minutes!  You can’t help that man by standing around and doing his grunting for him.  Get busy!”

The men lifted their tools slowly and sullenly.

“It’s hell what can happen when you’re fifteen days behind on a contract, with county commissioners waiting and anxious to grab off a penalty,” declared the boss, to nobody in particular.  “One man bunged, and four to lug him home, and the rest of the crew taking a sympathetic vacation!”

Farr, sauntering, swung off the highway down the lane leading to the temporary bridge.

“Here, you long-horned steer, want a job?” called the contractor from his rostrum on the granite block.

“No, my Sussex shote, I do not!”

“Damnation!  You dare to call me names, you hobo?”

“Yes,” returned Farr, quite simply.

“Well, quit it.  I need men here.  You’re husky.  Two dollars a day, even if you’re not a regular mason.”

“No.”

He drawled both the affirmative and the negative and there was something subtly insolent in his tone—­something that aroused more ire than a cruder retort would have accomplished.  He turned his back on the cursing man and went on down to the bridge.  He waited there for a time and watched the drift of foam on the fretted waters.  The steady burbling of the stream made him oblivious to other sounds and he did not hear the two men approach.  They leaped on him and seized him.  One of his captors was the paunchy man, and his hands were heavy and his fingers gripped viciously.