looked as if at some period it had stopped a hand-grenade. The
nose was so variously malformed in its healed brokenness that there
was no bridge, while one nostril, the size of a pea, opened
downward, and the other, the size of a robin's egg, tilted upward
to the sky. One eye, of normal size, dim-brown and misty, bulged
to the verge of popping out, and as if from senility wept copiously
and continuously. The other eye, scarcely larger than a squirrel's
and as uncannily bright, twisted up obliquely into the hairy scar
of a bone-crushed eyebrow. And he had but one arm.

Yet was he cheerful. On his face, in mild degree, was depicted
sensuous pleasure as he lethargically scratched his ribs with his
one hand. He pawed over his food-scraps, debated, then drew a
twelve-ounce druggist bottle from his inside coat-pocket. The
bottle was full of a colourless liquid, the contemplation of which
made his little eye burn brighter and quickened his movements.
Picking up the tomato can, he arose, went down the short path to
the river, and returned with the can filled with not-nice river
water. In the condensed milk can he mixed one part of water with
two parts of fluid from the bottle. This colourless fluid was
druggist's alcohol, and as such is known in tramp-land as "alki."

Slow footsteps, coming down the side of the railroad embankment,
alarmed him ere he could drink. Placing the can carefully upon the
ground between his legs, he covered it with his hat and waited
anxiously whatever impended.

Out of the darkness emerged a man as filthy ragged as he. The new-
comer, who might have been fifty, and might have been sixty, was
grotesquely fat. He bulged everywhere. He was composed of bulges.