we met yesterday, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Faith had flushed like a rose. "I was just thinking of you, too," she said, with courage born of her delight.

He looked at her. "Have you had your tea?" he asked in his abrupt manner.

"No, I'm just going home."

"Then we'll have some tea first; there's a shop just along the road."

Faith followed obediently. He looked younger to-day, she thought, and better-looking! She wished with all her heart that Peg or some of the other girls could see her. They faced one another across a marble-topped table, and the man ordered tea and cakes.

"Are you hungry?" he asked. Faith shook her head; she was too pleased to be hungry.

She kept telling herself that, of course, it must be a dream. Under cover of the table she gave herself a hard pinch to make sure that she was really awake...."You're not eating anything," the man said, and she awoke with a start to realities.

"How old are you?" he asked, and she told him with fluttering haste, "I'm nineteen."

"Nineteen!" He raised his brows. "I should have said sixteen," he smiled. "How old do you think I am?"

She considered for a moment. "Forty?" she hazarded.

He laughed. "Not quite so bad; I'm six-and-thirty."

"Oh!" She looked at him gravely. "It's not very old," she said kindly. "Nearly twenty years older than you," he reminded her.

"Yes."

He went on: "I've lived abroad most of my life, and that ages a man, you know. I've slept under the sky for months at a time and never spoken to a living soul for weeks. I've starved and begged." He laughed. "Once I even robbed a man. But I paid him back when I got the money. Are you shocked?" he asked.

"Oh, no!" She thought him the most wonderful person she had ever met.

"Tell me something about yourself," said the Beggar Man abruptly.

She told him the little she knew--how that her father had 

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