Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/236

 laughed unexpectedly. "I've been going around town like a thief."

The path dipped into an arched tunnel that supported the driveway overhead. Their foot-falls rang hollowly on the echo there. When they came out on the silence of a grove, Don said: "It would be better If you come to see him, I'll not let him know that I've met you before. He doesn't know that I've been boosting, anyway."

"Didn't you tell him?"

"No. I was ashamed to, too."

Tower" smiled. "It isn't much of a job, is it? I've been doing a good deal of it myself."

With that confession as a bond of sympathy between them, the rest of their conversation was easy; and Don, seated beside him, on a bench that faced the driveway, learned more of "Tower" than he had ever expected to know.

He was one of those wanderers who leave their homes to try their fortunes in large cities and who go from place to place with no certain means of earning a living, but with a resourceful knowledge of how to support themselves from day to day. He had begun life as a hotel clerk, and had left his desk to sell tickets in the box office of a theatre. Then he had gone as the "press agent" of a theatrical company "on the road"; and when the failure of the company had left him "stranded" in a Western town, he had done some newspaper work, managed a news-stand in Chicago, been conductor on a street-car in St. Louis, worked in a cigar shop in Pittsburg, travelled in the cabooses of freight