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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Seven Miles to Arden, by Ruth Sawyer
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Seven Miles to Arden
+
+
+Author: Ruth Sawyer
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 7, 2009  [eBook #28271]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Janet Keller, D. Alexander, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 28271-h.htm or 28271-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271/28271-h/28271-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271/28271-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN
+
+by
+
+RUTH SAWYER
+
+Author of
+_The Primrose Ring_
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York & London
+
+SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN
+
+Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Curtis Publishing Company
+Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
+Printed in the United States of America
+Published April, 1916
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BOOKS BY
+RUTH SAWYER
+
+   SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN. Illustrated. Post 8vo
+   THE PRIMROSE RING. Illustrated. Post 8vo
+
+   HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: (See page 220)
+ "Where twin oaks rustle in the wind
+ There waits a lad for Rosalind"]
+
+
+
+
+ _TO
+ HIMSELF_
+
+ _It leads away, at the ring o' day,
+   On to the beckoning hills;
+ And the throstles sing by the holy spring
+   Which the Blessed Virgin fills.
+
+ White is the road and light is the load,
+   For the burden we bear together.
+ Our feet beat time on the upward climb
+   That ends in the purpling heather.
+
+ There is spring in the air and everywhere
+   The throb of a life new-born,
+ In mating thrush and blossoming brush,
+   In the hush o' the glowing morn.
+
+ Our hearts bound free as the open sea;
+   Where now is our dole o' sorrow?
+ The winds have swept the tears we've wept--
+   And promise a braver morrow.
+
+ But this I pray as we go our way:
+   To find the Hills o' Heather,
+ And, at hush o' night, in peace to light
+   Our roadside fire together._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   CHAP.                                             PAGE
+
+    I.    THE WAY OF IT                                1
+
+    II.   A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE          12
+
+    III.  PATSY PLAYS A PART                          25
+
+    IV.   THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT            39
+
+    V.    A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD                    48
+
+    VI.   AT DAY'S END                                64
+
+    VII.  THE TINKER PLAYS A PART                     85
+
+    VIII. WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY                  106
+
+    IX.   PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION            121
+
+    X.    JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY           139
+
+    XI.   AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF
+          COMEDY                                     153
+
+    XII.  A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY                    165
+
+    XIII. A MESSAGE AND A MAP                        191
+
+    XIV.  ENTER KING MIDAS                           202
+
+    XV.   ARDEN                                      216
+
+    XVI. THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN              231
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE WAY OF IT
+
+
+Patsy O'Connell sat on the edge of her cot in the women's free ward
+of the City Hospital. She was pulling on a vagabond pair of gloves
+while she mentally gathered up a somewhat doubtful, ragged lot of
+prospects and stood them in a row before her for contemplation,
+comparison, and a final choice. They strongly resembled the contents
+of her steamer trunk, held at a respectable boarding-house in
+University Square by a certain Miss Gibb for unpaid board, for these
+were made up of a jumble of priceless and worthless belongings,
+unmarketable because of their extremes.
+
+She had time a-plenty for contemplation; the staff wished to see her
+before she left, and the staff at that moment was consulting at the
+other end of the hospital.
+
+Properly speaking, Patsy was Patricia O'Connell, but no one had ever
+been known to refer to her in that cold-blooded manner, save on the
+programs of the Irish National Plays--and in the City Hospital's
+register. What the City Hospital knew of Patsy was precisely what the
+American public and press knew, what the National Players knew, what
+the world at large knew--precisely what Patricia O'Connell had chosen
+to tell--nothing more, nothing less. They had accepted her on her own
+scanty terms and believed in her implicitly. There was one thing
+undeniably true about her--her reality. Having established this fact
+beyond a doubt, it was a simple matter to like her and trust her.
+
+No one had ever thought it necessary to question Patsy about her
+nationality; it was too obvious. Concerning her past and her family
+she answered every one alike: "Sure, I was born without either. I was
+found by accident, just, one morning hanging on to the thorn of a
+Killarney rose-bush that happened to be growing by the Brittany
+coast. They say I was found by the Physician to the King, who was
+traveling past, and that's how it comes I can speak French and King's
+English equally pure; although I'm not denying I prefer them both
+with a bit of brogue." She always thought in Irish--straight, Donegal
+Irish--with a dropping of final g's, a bur to the r's, and a "ye"
+for a "you." Invariably this was her manner of speech with those she
+loved, or toward whom she felt the kinship of sympathetic
+understanding.
+
+To those who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the
+breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she
+wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken
+back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern
+you're asking for--there's that rascal, Dan O'Connell. He's too long
+dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be
+saying. Only--if ye should find by chance, any time, that I'd rather
+fight with my wits than my fists, ye can lay that to Dan's door;
+along with the stubbornness of a tinker's ass."
+
+People had been known to pry into her religion; and on these Patsy
+smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children.
+"Sure, I believe in every one--and as for a church, there's not a
+place that goes by the name--synagogue, meeting-house, or
+cathedral--that I can't be finding a wee bit of God waiting inside
+for me. But I'll own to it, honestly, that when I'm out seeking Him,
+I find Him easiest on some hilltop, with the wind blowing hard from
+the sea and never a human soul in sight."
+
+This was approximately all the world and the press knew of Patsy
+O'Connell, barring the fact that she was neighboring in the twenties,
+was fresh, unspoiled, and charming, and that she had played the
+ingénue parts with the National Players, revealing an art that
+promised a good future, should luck bring the chance. Unfortunately
+this chance was not numbered among the prospects Patsy reviewed from
+the edge of her hospital cot that day.
+
+The interest of the press and the public approval of the National
+Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that
+iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into
+bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final
+curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on
+a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the
+company's home passage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for
+the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that
+night she filled the only vacant bed in the women's free ward of the
+City Hospital.
+
+It was pneumonia. Patsy had tossed about and moaned with the racking
+pain of it, raving deliriously through her score or more of rôles.
+She had gone dancing off with the Faery Child to the Land of Heart's
+Desire; she had sat beside the bier in "The Riders to the Sea"; she
+had laughed through "The Full o' Moon," and played the Fool while the
+Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed
+wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new
+world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden
+she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the "Gray
+Brother."
+
+This was all weeks past. It was early June now; the theatrical season
+was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies
+until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six
+cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid
+board bill.
+
+Patsy felt sorry for Miss Gibb, but she felt no shame. Boarding-house
+keepers, dressmakers, bootmakers, and the like must take the risk
+along with the players themselves in the matter of getting paid for
+their services. If the public--who paid two dollars a seat for a
+performance--failed to appear, and box-office receipts failed to
+margin their salaries, it was their misfortune, not their fault; and
+others had to suffer along with them. But these debts of circumstance
+never troubled Patsy. She paid them when she could, and when she
+could not--there was always her trunk.
+
+The City Hospital happened to know the extent of Patsy's property; it
+is their business to find out these little private matters
+concerning their free patients. They had also drawn certain
+conclusions from the facts that no one had come to see Patsy and that
+no communications had reached her from anywhere. It looked to them as
+if Patsy were down and out, to state it baldly. Now the Patsys that
+come to free wards of city hospitals are very rare; and the
+superintendent and staff and nurses were interested beyond the usual
+limits set by their time and work and the professional hardening of
+their cardiac region.
+
+"She's not to leave here until we find out just who she's got to look
+after her until she gets on her feet again, understand"--and the old
+doctor tapped the palm of his left hand with his right forefinger, a
+sign of important emphasis.
+
+Therefore the day nurse had gone to summon the staff while Patsy
+still sat obediently on the edge of her cot, pulling on her vagabond
+gloves, reviewing her prospects, and waiting.
+
+"My! but we'll miss you!" came the voice from the woman in the next
+bed, who had been watching her regretfully for some time.
+
+"It's my noise ye'll be missing." And Patsy smiled back at her a
+winning, comrade sort of smile.
+
+"You kind o' got us all acquainted with one another and thinkin'
+about somethin' else but pains and troubles. It'll seem awful
+lonesome with you gone," and the woman beyond heaved a prodigious
+sigh.
+
+"Don't ye believe it," said Patsy, with conviction. "They'll be
+fetching in some one a good bit better to fill my place--ye see,
+just."
+
+"No, they won't; 'twill be another dago, likely--"
+
+"Whist!" Patsy raised a silencing finger and looked fearsomely over
+her shoulder to the bed back of her.
+
+Its inmate lay covered to the cheek, but one could catch a glimpse of
+tangled black hair and a swarthy skin. Patsy rose and went softly
+over to the bed; her movement disturbed the woman, who opened dumb,
+reproachful eyes.
+
+"I'll be gone in a minute, dear; I want just to tell you how sorry I
+am. But--sure--Mother Mary has it safe--and she's keeping it for ye."
+She stooped and brushed the forehead with her lips, as the staff and
+two of the nurses appeared.
+
+"Faith! is it a delegation or a constabulary?" And Patsy laughed the
+laugh that had made her famous from Dublin to Duluth, where the
+bankruptcy had occurred.
+
+"It's a self-appointed committee to find out just where you're going
+after you leave here," said the young doctor.
+
+Patsy eyed him quizzically. "That's not manners to ask personal
+questions. But I don't mind telling ye all, confidentially, that I
+haven't my mind made yet between--a reception at the Vincent
+Wanderlusts'--or a musicale at the Ritz-Carlton."
+
+"Look here, lassie"--the old doctor ruffled his beard and threw out
+his chest like a mammoth pouter pigeon--"you'll have to give us a
+sensible answer before we let you go one step. You know you can't
+expect to get very far with that--in this city," and he tapped the
+bag on her wrist significantly.
+
+Patsy flushed crimson. For the first time in her life, to her
+knowledge, the world had discovered more about her than she had
+intended. Those humiliating eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and the
+crooked sixpence seemed to be scorching their way through the leather
+that held them. But she met the eyes looking into hers with a flinty
+resistance.
+
+"Sure, 'twould carry me a long way, I'm thinking, if I spent it by
+the ha'penny bit." Then she laughed in spite of herself. "If ye don't
+look for all the world like a parcel of old mother hens that have
+just hatched out a brood o' wild turkeys!" She suddenly checked her
+Irish--it was apt to lead her into compromising situations with
+Anglo-Saxon folk, if she did not leash her tongue--and slid into
+English. "You see, I really know quite a number of people
+here--rather well--too."
+
+"Why haven't they come to see you, then?" asked the day nurse,
+bluntly.
+
+Patsy eyed her with admiration. "You'd never make a press agent--or a
+doctor, I'm afraid; you're too truthful."
+
+"You see," explained the old doctor, "these friends of yours are what
+we professional people term hypothetical cases. We'd like to be sure
+of something real."
+
+One of Patsy's vagabond gloves closed over the doctor's hand. "Bless
+you all for your goodness! but the people are more real than you
+think. Everybody believes I went back with the company and I never
+bothered them with the truth, you see. I've more than one good friend
+among the theatrical crowd right here; but--well, you know how it is;
+if you are a bit down on your luck you keep away from your own world,
+if you can. There is a girl--just about my own age--in society here.
+We did a lot for her in the way of giving her a good time when she
+was in Dublin, and I've seen her quite a bit over here. I'm going to
+her to get something to do before the season begins. She may need a
+secretary or a governess--or a--cook. Holy Saint Martin! but I can
+cook!" And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her
+culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful.
+
+"I'll tell you what," said the old doctor, gruffly, "we will let you
+go if you will promise to come back if--if no one's at home. It's
+against rules, but I'll see the superintendent keeps your bed for you
+to-night."
+
+"Thank you," said Patsy. She waved a farewell to the staff and the
+ward as she went through the door. "I don't know where I'm going or
+what I shall be finding, but if it's anything worth sharing I'll send
+some back to you all."
+
+The staff watched her down the corridor to the elevator.
+
+"Gee!" exclaimed the youngest doctor, his admiration working out to
+the surface. "When she's made her name I'm going to marry her."
+
+"Oh, are you?" The voice of the old doctor took on its habitual
+tartness. "Acute touch of philanthropy, what--eh?"
+
+Patricia O'Connell swung the hospital door behind her and stepped out
+into a blaze of June sunshine. "Holy Saint Patrick! but it feels
+good. Now if I could be an alley cat for two months I could get along
+fine."
+
+She cast a backward look toward the granite front of the City
+Hospital and her eyes grew as blue and soft as the waters of
+Killarney. "Sure, cat or human, the world's a grand place to be alive
+in."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE
+
+
+Marjorie Schuyler sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby
+spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white,
+shimmering crêpes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her
+mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled
+between an ultimate choice between October and June of the following
+year.
+
+The world knew all there was to know about Marjorie Schuyler. It
+could tell to a nicety who her paternal and maternal grandparents
+were, back to old Peter Schuyler's time and the settling of the
+Virginian Berkeleys. It could figure her income down to a paltry
+hundred of the actual amount. It knew her age to the month and day.
+In fact, it had kept her calendar faithfully, from her coming-out
+party, through the periods of mourning for her parents and her
+subsequent returns to society, through the rumors of her engagements
+to half a dozen young leaders at home and abroad, down to her latest
+conquest.
+
+The last date on her calendar was the authorized announcement of her
+engagement to young Burgeman. Hence the shimmering samples and the
+relative values of October and June for a wedding journey.
+
+And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie
+Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and
+distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and
+chaperonage to her position; but she managed her own affairs, social
+and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a
+modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the
+leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named
+Marjorie Schuyler.
+
+As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man's Son. That
+was the best and worst it could say of him.
+
+"I think, Toto," said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, "it
+will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October--a
+church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so
+many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last,
+untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we'll not have to
+think about these yet awhile." Whereupon she dropped the shimmering
+samples into the waste-basket.
+
+A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the
+great Schuyler library. "There's a young person giving the name of
+O'Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?"
+
+"O'Connell?" Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory
+eyebrows. "Why--it can't be. The entire company went back weeks ago.
+What is she like--small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very
+blue eyes?"
+
+The maid nodded ambiguously.
+
+"Bring her up. I know it can't be, but--"
+
+But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip
+of Patsy's shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at
+the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.
+
+"Patsy O'Connell! Why didn't you go home with the others--and what
+have you done to your cheeks?"
+
+Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. "Sure, they're after
+needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that's all. How's
+yourself?"
+
+Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she
+herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of
+anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the
+comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious
+ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the
+comparison--oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush
+neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a
+shabby affair--positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown
+beaver--lacking feather or flower--was pulled down rakishly over her
+mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish
+to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied
+comparison even with Marjorie Schuyler; moreover--a thrush sings.
+
+"Now tell me," said Marjorie Schuyler, "where have you been all these
+weeks?"
+
+Patsy considered. "Well--I've been taking up hospital training."
+
+"Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?"
+
+Patsy shook her head. "You see, they only kept me until they had
+demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders--and fresh-air
+treatment, and then they dismissed me. I'm fearsome they were after
+finding out I hadn't the making of a nurse."
+
+"That's too bad! What are you going to do now?"
+
+An amused little smile twitched at the corners of Patsy's mouth; it
+acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. "Sure, I
+haven't my mind made--quite. And yourself?"
+
+"Oh--I?" Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. "Did you know I
+was engaged?"
+
+"Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!" And the vagabond gloves
+clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a
+hard little squeeze. "Who's himself?"
+
+"It's Billy Burgeman, son of _the_ Burgeman."
+
+"Old King Midas?"
+
+"That's a new name for him."
+
+"It has fitted him years enough." Patsy's face sobered. "Oh, why does
+money always have to mate with money? Why couldn't you have married a
+poor great man--a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer--some one who
+ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for
+bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs
+and sent him soaring--given the world another 'Prometheus Unbound.'
+As for Billy Burgeman--he could have married--me," and Patsy spread
+her hands in mock petition.
+
+Marjorie Schuyler laughed. "You! That is too beautifully delicious!
+Why, Patsy O'Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young
+gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a
+semi-comatose condition in an afternoon--and, pray, what would you
+do with him?"
+
+"Sure, I'd make a man of him, that's what. His father's son might
+need it, I'm thinking."
+
+Marjorie Schuyler's face became perfectly blank for a second, then
+she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted
+her head, and mused aloud: "I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does
+lack? Sometimes I've wondered if it was not having a mother, or
+growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his
+father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not
+a lack of manhood--I'm sure of that; and it's not lack of caring, for
+he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a
+great deal to know."
+
+"If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth
+in them, it might be his father's meanness that's ailing him."
+
+Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. "No; Billy's almost a prodigal. His
+father says he hasn't the slightest idea of the value of money; it's
+just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him;
+something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why,
+when he was a boy--in fact, until he was almost grown--his father
+couldn't trust Billy with a cent."
+
+"Who said that--Billy or the king?"
+
+"His father, of course. That's why he has never taken Billy into
+business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs--on his own
+merits; and he's not going to let him into the firm until he's worth
+at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman
+has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to
+a great deal."
+
+"Meaning money or character?" inquired Patsy.
+
+Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. "Are you laughing?"
+
+"Faith, I'm closer to weeping; 'twould be a lonesome, hard rearing
+that would come to a son of King Midas, I'm thinking. I'd far rather
+be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing."
+
+She leaned forward impulsively and gathered up the hands of the girl
+opposite in the warm, friendly compass of those vagabond gloves. "Do
+ye really love him, _cailin a'sthore_?" And this time it was her look
+that was sharp.
+
+"Why, of course I love him! What a foolish question! Why should I be
+marrying him if I didn't love him? Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because--the son of King Midas with no mother, with no one at all
+but the king, growing up all alone in a gloomy old castle, with no
+one trusting him, would need a great deal of love--a great, great
+deal--"
+
+"That's all right, Ellen. I'll find her for myself." It was a man's
+voice, pitched overhigh; it came from somewhere beyond and below the
+inclosing curtains and cut off the last of Patsy's speech.
+
+"That's funny," said Marjorie Schuyler, rising. "There's Billy now.
+I'll bring him in and let you see for yourself that he's not at all
+an object of sympathy--or pity."
+
+She disappeared into the library, leaving Patsy speculating
+recklessly. They must have met just the other side of the closed
+hangings, for to Patsy their voices sounded very near and close
+together.
+
+"Hello, Billy!"
+
+"Listen, Marjorie; if a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to
+trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out
+and make good again--that's true, isn't it?"
+
+"Billy Burgeman! What do you mean?"
+
+"Just answer my question. If a girl loves a man she'll trust him,
+won't she?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"You know she would, dear. What would the man do if she didn't?"
+
+The voice sounded strained and unnatural in its intensity and appeal.
+Patsy rose, troubled in mind, and tiptoed to the only other door in
+the den.
+
+"'Tis a grand situation for a play," she remarked, dryly, "but 'tis
+a mortial poor one in real life, and I'm best out of it." She turned
+the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened
+on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy's expression would
+have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no
+audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to
+ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced
+to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to
+improvise in the way of lines.
+
+"... I told you, _forged_--"
+
+Patsy was tempted to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice and what he was saying, but she knew even then she
+would go on hearing; his voice was too vibrant, too insistent, to be
+shut out.
+
+"... my father's name for ten thousand. I took the check to the bank
+myself, and cashed it; father's vice-president.... Of course the
+cashier knew me.... I tell you I can't explain--not now. I've got to
+get away and stay away until I've squared the thing and paid father
+back."
+
+"Billy Burgeman, did you forge that check yourself?"
+
+"What does that matter--whether I forged it or had it forged or saw
+it forged? I tell you I cashed it, knowing it was forged. Don't you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes; but if you didn't forge it, you could easily prove it; people
+wouldn't have to know the rest--they are hushing up things of that
+kind every day."
+
+A silence dropped on the three like a choking, blinding fog. The two
+outside the hangings must have been staring at each other, too
+bewildered or shocked to speak. The one inside clutched her throat,
+muttering, "If my heart keeps up this thumping, faith, he'll think
+it's the police and run."
+
+At last the voice of the man came, hushed but strained almost to
+breaking. To Patsy it sounded as if he were staking his very soul in
+the words, uncertain of the balance. "Marjorie, you don't understand!
+I cashed that check because--because I want to take the
+responsibility of it and whatever penalty comes along with it. I
+don't believe father will ever tell. He's too proud; it would strike
+back at him too hard. But you would have to know; he'd tell you; and
+I wanted to tell you first myself. I want to go away knowing you
+believe and trust me, no matter what father says about me, no matter
+what every one thinks about me. I want to hear you say it--that you
+will be waiting--just like this--for me to come back to when I've
+squared it all off and can explain.... Why, Marjorie--Marjorie!"
+
+Patsy waited in an agony of dread, hope, prayer--waited for the
+answer she, the girl he loved, would make. It came at last, slowly,
+deliberately, as if spoken, impersonally, by the foreman of a jury:
+
+"I don't believe in you, Billy. I'm sorry, but I don't believe I
+could ever trust you again. Your father has always said you couldn't
+take care of money; this simply means you have got yourself into some
+wretched hole, and forging your father's name was the only way out of
+it. I suppose you think the circumstances, whatever they may be, have
+warranted the act; but that act puts a stigma on your name which
+makes it unfit for any woman to bear; and if you have any spark of
+manhood left, you'll unwish the wish--you will unthink the
+thought--that I would wait--or even want you--ever--to come back."
+
+A cry--a startled, frightened cry--rang through the rooms. It did not
+come from either Marjorie or her leading man. Patsy stood with a
+vagabond glove pressed hard over her mouth--quite unconscious that
+the cry had escaped and that there was no longer need of
+muzzling--then plunged headlong through the hangings into the
+library. Marjorie Schuyler was standing alone.
+
+"Where is he--your man?"
+
+"He's gone--and please don't call him--that!"
+
+"Go after him--hurry--don't let him go! Don't ye understand? He
+mustn't go away with no one believing in him. Tell him it's a
+mistake; tell him anything--only go!"
+
+While Patsy's tongue burred out its Irish brogue she pushed at the
+tall figure in front of her--pushed with all her might. "Are ye
+nailed to the floor? What's happened to your feet? For Heaven's sake,
+lift them and let them take ye after him. Don't ye hear? There's the
+front door slamming behind him. He'll be gone past your calling in
+another minute. Dear heart alive, ye can't be meaning to let him
+go--this way!"
+
+But Marjorie Schuyler stood immovable and deaf to her pleading.
+Incredulity, bewilderment, pity, and despair swept over Patsy's face
+like clouds scudding over the surface of a clear lake. Then scorn
+settled in her eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry for ye, sorry for any woman that fails the man who loves
+her. I don't know this son of old King Midas; I never saw him in my
+life, and all I know about him is what ye told me this day and scraps
+of what he had to say for himself; but I believe in him. I know he
+never forged that check--or used the money for any mean use of his
+own. I'd wager he's shielding some one, some one weaker than he, too
+afeared to step up and say so. Why, I'd trust him across the world
+and back again; and, holy Saint Patrick! I'm going after him to tell
+him so."
+
+For the second time within a few seconds Marjorie Schuyler listened
+and heard the front door slam; then the goddess came to life. She
+walked slowly, regally, across the library and passed between the
+hangings which curtained her den. Her eyes, probably by pure chance,
+glanced over the shimmering contents of the waste-basket. A little
+cold smile crept to the corners of her mouth, while her chin
+stiffened.
+
+"I think, Toto," she said, addressing the toy ruby spaniel, "that it
+will not be even a June wedding," and she laughed a crisp, dry little
+laugh.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PATSY PLAYS A PART
+
+
+Patsy ran down the steps of the Schuyler house, jumping the last
+four. As her feet struck the pavement she looked up and down the
+street for what she sought. There it was--the back of a
+fast-retreating man in a Balmacaan coat of Scotch tweed and a round,
+plush hat, turning the corner to Madison Avenue. Patsy groaned
+inwardly when she saw the outlines of the figure; they were so
+conventional, so disappointing; they lacked simplicity and
+directness--two salient life principles with Patsy.
+
+"Pshaw! What's in a back?" muttered Patsy. "He may be a man, for all
+his clothes;" and she took to her heels after him.
+
+As she reached the corner he jumped on a passing car going south.
+"Tracking for the railroad station," was her mental comment, and she
+looked north for the next car following; there was none. As far as
+eye could see there was an unbroken stretch of track--fate seemed
+strangely averse to aiding and abetting her deed.
+
+"When in doubt, take a taxi," suggested Patsy's inner consciousness,
+and she accepted the advice without argument.
+
+She raced down two blocks and found one. "Grand Central--and
+drive--like the devil!"
+
+As the door clicked behind her her eye caught the jumping indicator,
+and she smiled a grim smile. "Faith, in two-shilling jumps like that
+I'll be bankrupt afore I've my hand on the tails of that coat." And
+with a tired little sigh she leaned back in the corner, closed her
+eyes, and relaxed her grip on mind and will and body.
+
+A series of jerks and a final stop shook her into a thinking, acting
+consciousness again; she was out of the taxi in a twinkling--with the
+man paid and her eyes on the back of a Balmacaan coat and plush hat
+disappearing through a doorway. She could not follow it as fast as
+she had reckoned. She balanced corners with a stout, indeterminate
+old gentleman who blocked her way and insisted on wavering in her
+direction each time she tried to dodge him. In her haste to make up
+for those precious lost seconds she upset a pair of twins belonging
+to an already overburdened mother. These she righted and went dashing
+on her way. Groups waylaid her; people with time to kill sauntered
+in front of her; wandering, indecisive people tried to stop her for
+information; and she reached the gate just as it was closing. Through
+it she could see--down a discouraging length of platform--a
+Balmacaaned figure disappearing into a car.
+
+"Too late, lady; train's leaving."
+
+It was well for Patsy that she was ignorant of the law governing
+closing gates and departing trains, for the foolish and the ignorant
+can sometimes achieve the impossible. She confronted the guard with a
+look of unconquerable determination. "No, 'tisn't; the train guard is
+still on the platform. You've got to let me through."
+
+She emphasized the importance of it with two tight fists placed not
+overgently in the center of the guard's rotundity, and accompanied by
+a shove. In some miraculous fashion this accomplished it. The gate
+clanged at Patsy's back instead of in her face, as she had expected.
+A bell rang, a whistle tooted, and Patsy's feet clattered like mad
+down the platform.
+
+A good-natured brakeman picked her up and lifted her to the rear
+platform of the last car as it drew out. That saved the day for
+Patsy, for her strength and breath had gone past summoning.
+
+"Thank you," she said, feebly, with a vagabond glove held out in
+proffered fellowship. "That's the kindest thing any one has done for
+me since I came over."
+
+"Are ye--"
+
+"Irish--same as yourself."
+
+"How did ye know?"
+
+"Sure, who but an Irishman would have had his wits and his heart
+working at the same time?" And with a laugh Patsy left him and went
+inside.
+
+Her eye ran systematically down the rows of seats. Billy Burgeman was
+not there. She passed through to the next car, and a second, and a
+third. Still there was no back she could identify as belonging to the
+man she was pursuing.
+
+She was crossing a fourth platform when she ran into the conductor,
+who barred her way. "Smoking-car ahead, lady; this is the last of the
+passenger-coaches."
+
+Patsy had it on the end of her tongue to say she preferred
+smoking-cars, intending to duck simultaneously under the conductor's
+arm and enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the
+tongue's edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and
+taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was
+responsible. It had spun the day's events before her like a roulette
+wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler's
+concerning William Burgeman: "He's the most conventional young
+gentleman I ever saw in my life. Why, you would shock--"
+
+A strange young woman doling out consolation to him in a smoking-car
+would be anything but a dramatic success; Patsy felt this all too
+keenly. He was decidedly not of her world or the men and women she
+knew, who gave help when the need came regardless of time, place,
+acquaintanceship, or sex.
+
+"Faith, he's the kind that will expect an introduction first, and a
+month or two of tangoing, tea-drinking, and tennis-playing; after
+which, if I ask his permission, he might consider it proper--" Patsy
+groaned. "Oh, I hate the man already!"
+
+"Ticket!"
+
+"Ticket? What for?"
+
+"What for? Do you think this is a joy ride?" The conductor radiated
+sarcasm.
+
+Patsy crimsoned. "I haven't mine. I--I was to--meet my--aunt--who had
+the ticket--and--she must have missed the train."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"I--I--Why, I was telling--My aunt had the tickets. How would I know
+where I was going without the tickets?"
+
+The conductor snorted.
+
+Patsy looked hard at him and knew the time had come for wits--good,
+sharp O'Connell wits. She smiled coaxingly. "It sounds so stupid,
+but, you see, I haven't an idea where I am going. I was to meet my
+aunt and go down with her to her summer place. I--I can't remember
+the name." Her mouth drooped for the fraction of a second, then she
+brightened all over. "I know what I can do--very probably she missed
+the train because she expects to be at the station to meet me--I can
+look out each time the train stops, and when I see her I can get off.
+That makes it all right, doesn't it?" And she smiled in open
+confidence as a sacrificial maiden might have propitiated the dragon.
+
+But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. "And who pays
+for the ticket?"
+
+"Oh!" Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a
+contagious laugh. "I do--of course. I'll take a ticket to--just name
+over the stations, please?"
+
+The conductor growled them forth: "Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville,
+Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars--"
+
+"What's that last--Greyfriars? I'll take a ticket to Greyfriars." She
+said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a
+mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill.
+
+When he had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled,
+Patsy allowed herself what she called a "temporary attack of private
+prostration."
+
+"Idiot!" she groaned in self-address. "Ye are the biggest fool in two
+continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he
+were topside o' green earth to hear." Whereupon she gripped one
+vagabond glove with the other--in fellow misery; and for the second
+time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway
+and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it
+started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another
+furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had
+long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an
+individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such
+failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her
+determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come
+for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete
+oblivion.
+
+She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for
+spice--and artistic finish--"After that--the devil take him!" when
+the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied
+herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly
+something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of
+the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in
+the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim
+outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable.
+
+"A million curses on the house of Burgeman!" quoth Patsy. "Well,
+there's naught for it but to get off at the next station and go
+back."
+
+The conductor watched her get off with a distinct feeling of relief.
+He had very much feared she was not a responsible person and in no
+mental position to be traveling alone. Her departure cleared him of
+all uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business
+with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing
+train and then at her empty hands, with the nearest she had ever come
+in her life to utter, abject despair. She had left her bag in the
+car!
+
+When articulate thinking was possible she remarked, acridly, "Ye need
+a baby nurse to mind ye, Patricia O'Connell; and I'm not sure but ye
+need a perambulator as well." She gave a tired little stretch to her
+body and rubbed her eyes. "I feel as if this was all a silly play and
+I was cast for the part of an Irish simpleton; a low-comedy
+burlesque--that ye'd swear never happened in real life outside of
+the county asylums."
+
+A headlight raced down the track toward her and the city, and she
+gathered up what was left of her scattered wits. As the train slowed
+up she stepped into the shadows, and her eye fell on the open
+baggage-car. She smiled grimly. "Faith! I have a notion I like
+brakemen and baggagemen better than conductors."
+
+And so it came to pass as the train started that the baggageman, who
+happened to be standing in the doorway, was somewhat startled to see
+a small figure come racing toward it out of the dusk and land
+sprawling on the floor beside him.
+
+"A girl tramp!" he ejaculated in amazement and disgust, and then, as
+he helped her to her feet, "Don't you know you're breaking the law?"
+
+She laughed. "From the feelings, I thought it was something else."
+She sobered and turned on him fiercely. "I want ye to understand I've
+paid my fare on the train out, which entitled me to one continuous
+passage--_with my trunk_. Well, I'm returning--_as my trunk_, I'll
+take up no more room and I'll ask no more privileges."
+
+"That may sound sensible, but it's not law," and the man grinned
+broadly. "I'm sorry, miss, but off you go at the next station."
+
+"All right," agreed Patsy; "only please don't argue. Sure, I'm sick
+entirely of arguing."
+
+She dropped down on a trunk and buried her face in her hands. The
+baggageman watched her, hypnotized with curiosity and wonder. At the
+next station he helped her to drop through the opening she had
+entered, and called a shamefaced "good-by" after her in the dusk.
+
+She hunted up the station-agent and received scanty encouragement:
+Very likely he had seen such a man; there were many of that
+description getting off every day. They generally went to the
+Inn--Brambleside Inn. The season was just open and society people
+were beginning to come. No, there was no conveyance. The Inn's 'buses
+did not meet any train after the six-thirty from town, unless ordered
+especially by guests. Was she expected?
+
+Patsy was about to shake her head when a roadster swung around the
+corner of the station and came to a dead stop in front of where she
+and the station-master were standing.
+
+The driver peered at her through his goggles in a questioning,
+hesitating manner. "Is this--are you Miss St. Regis?" he finally
+asked.
+
+"Miriam St. Regis?" Patsy intended it for a question, realizing even
+as she spoke the absurdity of inquiring the name of an English
+actress at such a place.
+
+But the driver took it for a statement of identity. "Yes, of course,
+Miss Miriam St. Regis. Mr. Blake made a mistake and thought because
+your box came from town you'd be coming that way. It wasn't until
+your manager, Mr. Travis, telephoned half an hour ago that he
+realized you'd be on that southbound train. Awfully sorry to have
+kept you waiting. Step right in, please."
+
+Whereupon the driver removed himself from the roadster, assisted her
+to a seat, covered her with a rug--for early June evenings can be
+rather sharp--and the next moment Patsy found herself tearing down a
+stretch of country road with the purr of a motor as music to her
+ears.
+
+"Sure, I don't know who wrote the play and starred me in it," she
+mused, dreamily, "but he certainly knows how to handle situations."
+
+For the space of a few breaths she gave herself over completely to
+the luxury of bodily comfort and mental inertia. It seemed as if she
+would have been content to keep on whirling into an eternity of
+darkness--with a destination so remote, and a mission so obscure, as
+not to be of the slightest disturbance to her immediate
+consciousness. All she asked of fate that moment was the blessedness
+of nothing; and for answer--her mind was jerked back ruthlessly to
+the curse of more complexities.
+
+The lights of a large building in the distance reminded her there was
+more work for her wits before her and no time to lose. "I must
+think--think--think, and it grows harder every minute. If Miriam St.
+Regis is coming here, it means, like as not, she's filling in between
+seasons, entertaining. Well, until she comes, they're all hearty
+welcome to the mistake they've made. And afterward--troth! there'll
+be a corner in her room for me the night, or Saint Michael's a
+sinner; either way, 'tis all right."
+
+The driver unbundled her and helped her out as courteously as he had
+helped her in. He led the way across a broad veranda to the main
+entrance, and there she fell behind him as he pushed open the great
+swinging door.
+
+"Oh, that you, Masters? Did Miss St. Regis come?"
+
+"Sure thing, sir; she's right here."
+
+The next moment Patsy stood in a blaze of lights between a personally
+conducting chauffeur and a pompous hotel manager, who looked down
+upon her with distrustful scrutiny. She was wholly aware of every
+inch of her appearance--the shabbiness of her brown Norfolk suit,
+the rakishness of her boyish brown beaver hat, and the vagabond
+gloves. But of what value is the precedent of having been found
+hanging on the thorn of a Killarney rose-bush by the Physician to
+the King, of what value is the knowledge of past kinship with a
+certain Dan O'Connell, if one allows a little matter of clothes to
+spoil one's entrance and murder one's lines?
+
+The blood came flushing back into Patsy's cheeks, turning them the
+color of thorn bloom, and her eyes deepened to the blue of Killarney,
+sparkling as when the sun goes a-dancing. She smiled--a fresh,
+radiant, witching smile upon that clay lump of commercialism--until
+she saw his appraisement of her treble its original figure.
+
+Then she said, sweetly: "I have had rather a hard time getting here,
+Mr. Blake; making connections in your country is not always as simple
+as one might expect. My room, please." And with an air of a grand
+duchess Patsy O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players, Dublin,
+and later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, led the way
+across one of the most brilliant summer hotel foyers in America.
+
+As she entered the elevator a young man stepped out--a young man with
+a small, blond, persevering mustache, a rather thin, esthetic,
+melancholy face, and a myopic squint. He wore a Balmacaan of Scotch
+tweed and carried a round, plush hat.
+
+Patsy turned to the bell-boy. "Did that man arrive to-night?"
+
+"Yes, miss; I took him up."
+
+"What is his name--do you know?"
+
+"Can't say, miss. I'll find out, if you like."
+
+"There is no need. I rather think I know it myself." And under her
+breath she ejaculated, "Saint Peter deliver us!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT
+
+
+Safe in her room, with the door closed and locked, Patsy stood
+transfixed before a trunk--likewise closed and locked.
+
+"Thank Heaven for many blessings!" she said, fervently. "Thank Heaven
+Miriam St. Regis has worn wigs of every conceivable color and style
+on the stage, so there is small chance of any one here knowing the
+real color of her hair. Thank Heaven she's given to missing her
+engagements and not wiring about it until the next day. Thank Heaven
+I've played with her long enough to imitate her mannerisms, and know
+her well enough to explain away the night, if the need ever comes.
+Thank Heaven that George Travis is an old friend and can help out, if
+I fail. Thank Heaven for all of these! But, holy Saint Patrick! how
+will I ever be getting inside that box?"
+
+On the heels of her fervor came an inspiration. Off came her gloves
+and hat, off came coat and skirt, blouse and shoes, and into the
+closet they all went. For, whereas Patsy could carry off her
+shabbiness before masculine eyes, she had neither the desire nor the
+fortitude to brave the keener, more critical gaze of her own sex. It
+was always for the women that Patsy dressed, and above all else did
+she stand in awe of the opinion of the hotel chambermaid, going down
+in tottering submission before it. Unlocking her door, she rang the
+bell; then crept in between the covers of her bed, drawing them up
+about her.
+
+The chambermaid came and Patsy ordered the housekeeper. The
+housekeeper came and Patsy explained to her the loss of her bag--the
+loss of the keys was only implied; it was a part of Patsy's creed of
+life never to lie unless cornered. She further implied that she was
+entertaining no worry, as a well-appointed hotel always carried a
+bunch of skeleton trunk keys for the convenience of their guests.
+
+Patsy's inspiration worked to perfection. In a few minutes the Inn
+had proved itself a well-appointed hostelry, and the trunk stood open
+before her. Alone again, she slipped out of bed--to lock the door and
+investigate. A wistaria lounging-robe was on in a twinkling, with
+quilted slippers to match. Then Patsy's eager fingers drew forth a
+dark emerald velvet, with bodice and panniers of gold lace, and she
+clasped it ecstatically in her arms.
+
+"Miriam always had divine taste, but the faeries must have guided her
+hand for the choosing of this. Sure, I'd be feeling like a king's
+daughter if I wasn't so weak and heartsick. I feel more like a young
+gosling that some one has coaxed out of its shell a day too soon. Is
+it the effect of Billy Burgeman, I wonder, or the left-overs from the
+City Hospital, or an overdose of foolishness--or hunger, just?"
+
+"Miss St. Regis" dined in her own room, and she dined like a king's
+daughter, with an appetite whetted by weeks of convalescing, charity
+fare. Even the possible appearance at any minute of her original self
+offered no terrors for her in the presence of such a soul-satisfying,
+hunger-appeasing feast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At nine-thirty that evening, when the manager sent the hall-boy to
+call her, she looked every inch the king's daughter she had dined.
+The hall-boy, accustomed to "creations," gave her a frank stare of
+admiration, which Patsy noted out of the tail of her eye.
+
+She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint
+of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head,
+ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of
+her ears; little gold shoes twinkled in and out of the clinging green
+as she walked.
+
+"Faith! I feel like a whiff of Old Ireland herself," was Patsy
+O'Connell's subconscious comment as "Miss St. Regis" crossed the
+stage; and something of the feeling must have been wafted across the
+footlights to the audience, for it drew in its breath with a little
+gasp of genuine appreciation.
+
+She heard it and was grateful for the few seconds it gave her to look
+at the program the manager had handed her as she was entering. It had
+never occurred to her that Miss St. Regis might arrange her program
+beforehand, that the audience might be expecting something definite
+and desired in the form of entertainment. It took all the control of
+a well-ordered Irish head to keep her from bolting for the little
+stage door after one glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the
+impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the
+reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes
+from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously,
+absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O'Connell geared up her
+wits, as any true kinswoman of Dan's should.
+
+In a flash there came back to her what the company had done once
+when they were playing one-night stands and the wrong scenery had
+come for the play advertised. It was worth trying here.
+
+"Dear people," said Patsy O'Connell-St. Regis, smiling at the
+audience as one friend to another, "I have had so many requests from
+among you--since I made out my program--to give instead an evening of
+old Irish tales, that I have--capitulated; you shall have your wish."
+
+The almost unbelievable applause that greeted her tempted her to
+further wickedness. "Very few people seem ever to remember that I had
+an Irish grandfather, Denis St. Regis, and that I like once in a
+while to be getting back to the sod."
+
+There was something so hypnotic in her intimacy--this taking of every
+one into her confidence--that one budding youth forgot himself
+entirely and naïvely remarked, "It's a long way to Tipperary."
+
+That clinched her success. She might have chanted "Old King Cole" and
+reaped a houseful of applause. As it was, she turned faery child and
+led them all forth to the Land of Faery--a world that neighbored so
+close to the real with her that long ago she had acquired the habit
+of carrying a good bit of it about with her wherever she went. It was
+small wonder, therefore, that, at the end of the evening, when she
+fixed upon a certain young man in the audience--a man with a
+persevering mustache, an esthetic face, and a melancholy, myopic
+squint--and told the last tale to him direct, that he felt called
+upon to go to her as she came down the steps into the ball-room and
+express his abject, worshipful admiration.
+
+"That's all right," Patsy cut him short, "but--but--it would sound so
+much nicer outside, somewhere in the moonlight--away from everybody.
+Wouldn't it, now?"
+
+This sudden amending of matter-of-factness with arch coquetry would
+have sounded highly amusing to ears less self-atuned than the
+erstwhile wearer of the Balmacaan. But he heard in it only the
+flattering tribute to a man chosen of men; and the hand that reached
+for Patsy's was almost masterful.
+
+"Oh, would you really?" he asked, and he almost broke his melancholy
+with a smile.
+
+"It must be my clothes," was her mental comment as he led her away;
+"they've gone to my own head; it's not altogether strange they've
+touched his a bit. But for a man who's forged his father's name and
+lost the girl he loved and then plunged into mortal despair, he's
+convalescing terribly fast."
+
+They had reached a quiet corner of the veranda. Patsy dropped into a
+chair, while her companion leaned against a near-by railing and
+looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression.
+
+"I might have known all along," Patsy was thinking, "that a back like
+that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn't get a real man
+to dress in knee-length petticoats." And then, to settle all doubts,
+she faced him with grim determination. "I let you bring me here
+because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come
+down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?"
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the
+corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?"
+
+"Why, how did you know?" The melancholy was giving place to rather
+pleased curiosity.
+
+"How do I know!" Patsy glared at him. "I know because I've followed
+you every inch of the way--followed you to tell you I believed in
+you--you--you!" and her voice broke with a groan.
+
+"Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you." This time the smile had
+right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was!
+"You know everybody takes me rather as a joke."
+
+"Joke!" Patsy's eyes blazed. "Well, you're the most serious,
+impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would
+have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you."
+
+"I don't think I understand." He felt about in his waistcoat pocket
+and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. "Would you
+mind saying that again?"
+
+Patsy's hands dropped helplessly to her lap. "I couldn't--only, after
+a woman has trailed a man she doesn't know across a country she
+doesn't know to a place she doesn't know--and without a wardrobe
+trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes
+in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever
+happened to her in all her life."
+
+"Oh, I say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never
+thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that."
+
+"Poetry! Do you--do that, too?"
+
+"That's all I do. I am devoting my life to it; that's why my family
+take me a little--flippantly."
+
+A faint streak of hope shot through Patsy's mind. "Would you mind
+telling me your name?"
+
+"Why, I thought you knew. I thought you said that was why you
+wanted to--to--Hang it all! my name's Peterson-Jones--Wilfred
+Peterson-Jones."
+
+Patsy was on her feet, clasping her hands in a shameless burst of
+emotion while she dropped into her own tongue. "Oh, that's a
+beautiful name--a grand name! Don't ye ever be changing it! And don't
+ye ever give up writing poetry; it's a beautiful pastime for any man
+by that name. But what--what, in the name of Saint Columkill, ever
+happened to Billy Burgeman!"
+
+"Billy Burgeman? Why, he came down on the train with me and went back
+to Arden."
+
+Patsy threw back her head and laughed--laughed until she almost
+feared she could not stop laughing. And then she suddenly became
+conscious of the pompous manager standing beside her, a yellow sheet
+of paper in his hand.
+
+"Will you kindly explain what this means?" and he slapped the paper
+viciously.
+
+"I'll try to," said Patsy; "but will you tell me just one thing
+first? How far is it to Arden?"
+
+"Arden? It's seven miles to Arden. But what's that got to do with
+this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will
+be unable to fill her engagement here to-night! Now, who are you?"
+
+"I? Why, I'm her understudy, of course--and--I'm--so happy--"
+Whereupon Patricia O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players and
+later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, crumpled up on
+the veranda floor in a dead faint.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD
+
+
+The Brambleside Inn lost one of its guests at an inconceivably early
+hour the morning after Patsy O'Connell unexpectedly filled Miss St.
+Regis's engagement there. The guest departed by way of the
+second-floor piazza and a fire-escape, and not even the night
+watchman saw her go. But it was not until she had put a mile or more
+of open country between herself and the Inn that Patsy indulged in
+the freedom of a long breath.
+
+"After this I'll keep away from inns and such like; 'tis too
+wit-racking to make it anyways comfortable. I feel now as if I'd been
+caught lifting the crown jewels, instead of giving a hundred-guinea
+performance for the price of a night's bed and board and coming away
+as poor as a tinker's ass."
+
+A smile caught at the corners of her mouth--a twitching, memory
+smile. She was thinking of the note she had left folded in with the
+green-and-gold gown in Miriam St. Regis's trunk. In it she had
+stated her payment of one Irish grandfather by the name of Denis--in
+return for the loan of the dress--and had hoped that Miriam would
+find him handy on future public occasions. Patsy could not forbear
+chuckling outright--the picture of anything so unmitigatedly British
+as Miriam St. Regis with an Irish ancestor trailing after her for the
+rest of her career was too entrancing.
+
+An early morning wind was blowing fresh from the clover-fields,
+rose-gardens, and new-leafed black birch and sassafras. Such a
+well-kept, clean world of open country it looked to Patsy as her eye
+followed the road before her, on to the greening meadows and wooded
+slopes, that her heart joined the chorus of song-sparrow and
+meadow-lark, who sang from the sheer gladness of being a live part of
+it all.
+
+She sighed, not knowing it. "Faith! I'm wishing 'twas more nor seven
+miles to Arden. I'd like to be following the road for days and days,
+and keeping the length of it between Billy Burgeman and myself."
+
+Starting before the country was astir, she had met no one of whom she
+could inquire the way. A less adventuresome soul than Patsy might
+have sat herself down and waited for direction; but that would have
+meant wasting minutes--precious minutes before the dawn should break
+and she should be no longer sole possessor of the road and the world
+that bounded it. So Patsy chose the way for herself--content that it
+would lead her to her destination in the end. The joy of true
+vagabondage was rampant within her: there was the road, urging her
+like an impatient comrade to be gone; there was her errand of
+good-will giving purpose to her journey; and the facts that she was
+homeless, penniless, breakfastless, a stranger in a strange country,
+mattered not a whit. So thoroughly had she always believed in good
+fortune that somehow she always managed to find it; and out of this
+she had evolved her philosophy of life.
+
+"Ye see, 'tis this way," she would say; "the world is much like a
+great cat--with claws to hide or use, as the notion takes it. If ye
+kick and slap at it, 'twill hump its back and scratch at ye--sure as
+fate; but if ye are wise and a bit patient ye can have it coaxed and
+smoothed down till it's purring to make room for ye at any
+hearthside. And there's another thing it's well to remember--that
+folks are folks the world over, whether they are wearing your dress
+and speaking your tongue or another's."
+
+And as Patsy was blessed in the matter of philosophy--so was she
+blessed in the matter of possessions. She did not have to own things
+to possess them.
+
+There was no doubt but that Patsy had a larger share of the world
+than many who could reckon their estates in acreage or who owned so
+many miles of fenced-off property. She held a mortgage on every inch
+of free roadway, rugged hilltop, or virgin forest her feet crossed.
+She claimed squatters' rights on every bit of shaded pasture, or
+sunlit glade, or singing brook her heart rejoiced in. In other words,
+everything outside of walls and fences belonged to her by virtue of
+her vagabondage; and she had often found herself pitying the narrow
+folk who possessed only what their deeds or titles allotted to them.
+
+And yet never in Patsy's life had she felt quite so sure about it as
+she did this morning, probably because she had never before set forth
+on a self-appointed adventure so heedless of means and consequences.
+
+"Sure, there are enough wise people in the world," she mused as she
+tramped along; "it needs a few foolish ones to keep things happening.
+And could a foolish adventuring body be bound for a better place than
+Arden!"
+
+She rounded a bend in the road and came upon a stretch of old stump
+fencing. From one of the stumps appeared to be hanging a grotesque
+figure of some remarkable cut; it looked both ancient and romantic,
+sharply silhouetted against the iridescence of the dawn.
+
+Patsy eyed it curiously. "It comes natural for me to be partial to
+anything hanging to a thorn, or a stump; but--barring that--it still
+looks interesting."
+
+As she came abreast it she saw it was not hanging, however. It was
+perched on a lower prong of a root and it was a man, clothed in the
+most absolute garment of rags Patsy had ever seen off the legitimate
+stage.
+
+"From an artistic standpoint they are perfect," was Patsy's mental
+tribute. "Wouldn't Willie Fay give his Sunday dinner if he could
+gather him in as he is, just--to play the tinker! Faith! those rags
+are so real I wager he keeps them together only by the grace of God."
+
+As she stopped in front of the figure he turned his head slowly and
+gazed at her with an expression as far away and bewildered as a lost
+baby's.
+
+In the half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural--a strange
+spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth.
+This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic
+blood tingling and her eyes a-sparkling.
+
+"He looks as half-witted as those back in the Old Country who have
+the second sight and see the faeries. Aye, and he's as young and
+handsome as a king's son. Poor lad!" And then she called aloud, "'Tis
+a brave day, this."
+
+"Hmm!" was the response, rendered impartially.
+
+Patsy's alert eyes spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at
+the man's feet and they set a-dancing. "Then ye _are_ a tinker?"
+
+"Hmm!" was again the answer. It conveyed an impression of hesitant
+doubt, as if the speaker would have avoided, if he could, the
+responsibility of being anything at all, even a tinker.
+
+"That's grand," encouraged Patsy. "I like tinkers, and, what's more,
+I'm a bit of a vagabond myself. I'll grant ye that of late years the
+tinkers are treated none too hearty about Ireland; but there was a
+time--" Patsy's mind trailed off into the far past, into a maze of
+legend and folk-tale wherein tinkers were figures of romance and
+mystery. It was good luck then to fall in with such company; and
+Patsy, being more a product of past romance than present
+civilization, was pleased to read into this meeting the promise of a
+fair road and success to her quest.
+
+Moreover, there was another appeal--the apparent helpless
+bewilderment of the man himself and his unreality. He was certainly
+not in possession of all his senses, from whatever world he might
+have dropped; and helplessness in man or beast was a blood bond with
+Patsy, making instant claim on her own abundant sympathies and wits.
+
+She held the tinker with a smile of open comradeship while her voice
+took on an alluring hint of suggestion. "Ye can't be thinking of
+hanging onto that stump all day--now what road might ye be
+taking--the one to Arden?"
+
+For some minutes the tinker considered her and her question with an
+exaggerated gravity; then he nodded his head in a final agreement.
+
+"Grand! I'm bound that way myself; maybe ye know Arden?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"And how far might it be?"
+
+"Seven miles."
+
+Patsy wrinkled her forehead. "That's strange; 'twas seven miles last
+night, and I've tramped half the distance already, I'm thinking.
+Never mind! What's behind won't trouble me, and the rest of the way
+will soon pass in good company. Come on," and she beckoned her head
+in indisputable command.
+
+Once again he considered her slowly. Then, as if satisfied, he swung
+himself down from his perch on the stump fence, gathered up his kit,
+and in another minute had fallen into step with her; and the two
+were contentedly tramping along the road.
+
+"The man who's writing this play," mused Patsy, "is trying to match
+wits with Willie Shakespeare. If any one finds him out they'll have
+him up for plagiarizing."
+
+She chuckled aloud, which caused the tinker to cast an uneasy glance
+in her direction.
+
+"Poor lad! The half-wits are always suspicious of others' wits. He
+thinks I'm fey." And then aloud: "Maybe ye are not knowing it, but
+anything at all is likely to happen to ye to-day--on the road to
+Arden. According to Willie Shakespeare--whom ye are not likely to be
+acquainted with--it's a place where philosophers and banished dukes
+and peasants and love-sick youths and lions and serpents all live
+happily together under the 'Greenwood Tree.' Now, I'm the banished
+duke's own daughter--only no one knows it; and ye--sure, ye can take
+your choice between playing the younger brother--or the fool."
+
+"The fool," said the tinker, solemnly; and then of a sudden he threw
+back his head and laughed.
+
+Patsy stopped still on the road and considered him narrowly.
+"Couldn't ye laugh again?" she suggested when the laugh was ended.
+"It improves ye wonderfully." An afterthought flashed in her mind.
+"After all's said and done, the fool is the best part in the whole
+play."
+
+After this they tramped along in silence. The tinker kept a little in
+advance, his head erect, his hands swinging loosely at his sides, his
+eyes on nothing at all. He seemed oblivious of what lay back of him
+or before him--and only half conscious of the companion at his side.
+But Patsy's fancy was busy with a hundred things, while her eyes went
+afield for every scrap of prettiness the country held. There were
+meadows of brilliant daisies, broken by clumps of silver poplars,
+white birches, and a solitary sentinel pine; and there was the
+roadside tangle with its constant surprises of meadowsweet and
+columbine, white violets--in the swampy places--and once in a while
+an early wild rose.
+
+"In Ireland," she mused, "the gorse would be out, fringing the
+pastures, and on the roadside would be heartsease and faery thimbles,
+and perhaps a few late primroses; and the meadow would be green with
+corn." A faint wisp of a sigh escaped her at the thought, and the
+tinker looked across at her questioningly. "Sure, it's my heart
+hungering a bit for the bogland and a whiff of the turf smoke. This
+exile idea is a grand one for a play, but it gets lonesome at times
+in real life. Maybe ye are Irish yourself?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+It was Patsy's turn to glance across at the tinker, but all she saw
+was the far-away, wondering look that she had seen first in his face.
+"Poor lad! Like as not he finds it hard remembering where he's from;
+they all do. I'll not pester him again."
+
+He looked up and caught her eyes upon him and smiled foolishly.
+
+Patsy smiled back. "Do ye know, lad, I've not had a morsel of
+breakfast this day. Have ye any money with ye, by chance?"
+
+The tinker stopped, put down his kit, and hunted about in his rags
+where the pocket places might be; but all he drew forth were his two
+empty hands. He looked down the stretch of road they had come with an
+odd twist to his mouth, then he burst forth into another laugh.
+
+"Have ye been playing the pigeon, and some one plucked ye?" she
+asked, and went on without waiting for his answer. "Never mind! We'll
+sharpen up our wits afresh and earn a breakfast. Are ye handy at
+tinkering, now?"
+
+"You bet I am!" said the tinker. It was the longest speech he had
+made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the next farm Patsy turned in, with a warning to the tinker to do
+as he was told and to hold his tongue. It was a thoroughly
+well-kept-looking farm, and she picked out what she decided must be
+the side door, and knocked. A kindly-faced, middle-aged woman opened
+it, and Patsy smiled with the good promise of her looks.
+
+"We are two--down on our luck, and strangers hereabouts. Have ye got
+any tinkering jobs for my man there? He's a bit odd and says little;
+but he can solder a broken pot or mend a machine with the best. And
+we'll take out our pay in a good, hearty meal."
+
+"There be a pile of dishes in the pantry I've put by till we was
+goin' to town--handles off and holes in the bottom. He can mend them
+out on the stoop, if he likes. I've got to help with berry-pickin';
+we're short-handed this season."
+
+"Are ye, just? Then I'm thinking I'll come in handy." Patsy smiled
+her smile of winning comradeship as she stooped and picked up a tray
+of empty berry-boxes that stood by the door; while the woman's smile
+deepened with honest appreciation.
+
+"My! but you are willing folks; they're sometimes scarce 'round
+here."
+
+"Faith, we're hungry folks--so ye best set us quickly to work."
+
+They left the tinker on the stoop, surrounded by a heterogeneous
+collection of household goods. Patsy cast an anxious backward glance
+at him, but saw that he was rolling up the rags that served for
+sleeves, thereby baring a pair of brawny, capable-looking arms, while
+he spread his tools before him after the manner of a man who knows
+his business.
+
+"Fine!" commented Patsy, with an inner satisfaction. "He may be
+foolish, but I bet he can tinker."
+
+They picked berries for an hour or more, and then Patsy turned too
+and helped the woman get dinner. They bustled about in silence to the
+accompanying pounding and scraping of the tinker, who worked
+unceasingly. When they sat down to dinner at last there was a
+tableful--the woman and her husband, Patsy, the tinker, and the
+"hands," and before them was spread the very best the farm could
+give. It was as if the woman wished to pay their free-will gift of
+service with her unstinted bounty.
+
+"We always ask a blessin'," said the farmer, simply, folding his
+hands on the table, about to begin. Then he looked at Patsy, and,
+with that natural courtesy that is common to the true man of the
+soil, he added, "We'd be pleased if you'd ask it."
+
+Patsy bowed her head. A little whimsical smile crept to her lips, but
+her voice rang deep with feeling: "For food and fellowship, good
+Lord, we thank Thee. Amen!" And she added under her breath, "And
+take a good grip of the Rich Man's son till we get him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The late afternoon found them back on the road once more. They parted
+from the farmer and his wife as friend parts with friend. The woman
+slipped a bundle of food--bread, cheese, and meat left from the
+dinner, with a box of berries--into Patsy's hand, while the man gave
+the tinker a half-dollar and wished him luck.
+
+Patsy thanked them for both; but it was not until they were well out
+of earshot that she spoke to the tinker: "They are good folk, but
+they'd never understand in a thousand years how we came to be
+traveling along together. What folks don't know can't hurt them, and
+'tis often easier holding your tongue than trying to explain what
+will never get through another's brain. Now put that lunch into your
+kit; it may come in handy--who knows? And God's blessing on all kind
+hearts!"
+
+Whereupon the tinker nodded solemnly.
+
+They had tramped for a mile or more when they came to a cross-roads
+marked by a little white church. From the moment they sighted it
+Patsy's feet began to lag; and by the time they reached the crossing
+of the ways she had stopped altogether and was gazing up at the
+little gold cross with an odd expression of whimsical earnestness.
+
+"Do ye know," she said, slowly, clasping the hands long shorn of the
+vagabond gloves--"do ye know I've told so many lies these last two
+days I think I'll bide yonder for a bit, and see can Saint Anthony
+lift the sins from me. 'Twould make the rest o' the road less
+burdensome--don't ye think?"
+
+The tinker looked uncomfortably confused, as though this sudden
+question of ethics or religion was too much for his scattered wits.
+He dug the toe of his boot in the gravel of the church path and
+removed his cap to aid the labor of his thinking. "Maybe--" he agreed
+at last. "An' will I be waitin' for you--or keepin' on?"
+
+"Ye'll wait, of course," commanded Patsy.
+
+She had barely disappeared through the little white door, and the
+tinker thrown himself down with his back to the sign-post which
+marked the roads, when a sorrel mare and a runabout came racing down
+the road over which they had just come. There were two men in the
+runabout, both of them tense and alert, their heads craned far in
+advance of the rest of them, their eyes scanning the diverging roads.
+
+"I cal'ate she's gone that way." The driver swung the whip,
+indicating the road that ran south.
+
+"Wall--I cal'ate so, too," agreed the other. "But then again--she
+mightn't."
+
+They reined in and discovered the tinker. "Some one passed this way
+sence you been settin' there?" they inquired almost in unison.
+
+"I don't know"--the tinker's fingers passed hurriedly across his eyes
+and forehead, by way of seeking misplaced wits--"some one might be
+almost any one," he smiled, cheerfully.
+
+"Look here, young feller, if you're tryin' to be smart--" the driver
+began, angrily; but his companion silenced him with a nudge and a
+finger tapped significantly on the crown of his hat. He moderated his
+tone:
+
+"We're after a girl in a brown suit and hat--undersized girl. She was
+asking the way to Arden. Seen any one of that description?"
+
+"What do you want with her?"
+
+"Never mind," growled the first man.
+
+But the second volunteered meager information, "She's a suspect.
+Stayed last night in the Inn and this morning a couple of thousand
+dollars' worth of diamonds is missin'; that's what we want her for."
+
+The tinker brightened perceptibly. "Guess she went by in a wagon half
+an hour ago--that way. I think I saw her," and as the men turned
+southward down the road marked Arden he called after them, "Better
+hurry, if you want to catch her; the wagon was going at a right smart
+pace."
+
+He waited for their backs to be turned and for the crack of the whip
+that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she
+plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he
+wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight
+behind a neighboring stone wall.
+
+The dust from departing wheels still filled the air when Patsy
+stepped out of the cross-roads church, peacefully radiant, and found
+the tinker sitting quietly with his back against the post.
+
+"So ye are still here. I thought ye might have grown tired of my
+company, after all, and gone on." Patsy laughed happily. "Now do ye
+know which road goes to Arden?"
+
+"Sure," and the tinker joined in her laugh, while he pointed to the
+straight road ahead, the road that ran west, at right angles to the
+one the runabout had taken.
+
+"Come on, then," said Patsy; "we ought to be there by sundown." She
+stopped and looked him over for the space of a second. "Ye are
+improving wonderfully. Mind! ye mustn't be getting too keen-witted or
+we'll have to be parting company."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's the why!" And with this satisfactory explanation she led the
+way down the road the tinker had pointed.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+AT DAY'S END
+
+
+Their road went the way of the setting sun, and Patsy and the tinker
+traveled it leisurely--after the fashion of those born to the road,
+who find their joy in the wandering, not in the making of a distance
+or the reaching of a destination. Since they had left the cross-roads
+church behind Patsy had marked the tinker casting furtive glances
+along the way they had come; and each time she marked, as well, the
+flash of a smile that lightened his face for an instant when he saw
+that the road still remained empty of aught but themselves.
+
+"It's odd," she mused; "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear
+a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet--and yet his wits have
+him pestered about something that lies back of him."
+
+Once it was otherwise. There was a rising of dust showing on one of
+the hills they had climbed a good half-hour before. When the tinker
+saw it he reached of a sudden for Patsy's hand while he pointed
+excitedly beyond pasture bars ahead to a brownish field that lay some
+distance from the road.
+
+"See, lass, that's sorrel. If you'll break the road along with me
+I'll show you where wild strawberries grow, lots of 'em!"
+
+Her answer was to take the pasture bars at a run as easily as any
+country-bred urchin. The tinker swung himself after her, an odd wisp
+of a smile twisting the corners of his mouth, just such a smile as
+the fool might wear on the road to Arden. The two raced for the
+sorrel-tops--the tinker winning.
+
+When Patsy caught up he was on his knees, his head bare, his eyes
+sparkling riotously, running his fingers exultantly through the green
+leaves that carpeted the ground. "See," he chuckled, "the tinker
+knows somethin' more 'n solder and pots."
+
+Patsy's eyes danced. There they were--millions of the tiny red
+berries, as thick and luscious as if they had been planted in Elysian
+fields for Arcadian folk to gather. "The wee, bonnie things!" she
+laughed. "Now, how were ye afther knowing they were here?"
+
+The tinker cocked his head wisely. "I know more 'n that; I know where
+to find yellow lady's-slippers 'n' the yewberries 'n' hummin'-bird
+nests."
+
+She looked at him joyfully; he was turning out more and more to her
+liking. "Could ye be showing them to me, lad?" she asked.
+
+The tinker eyed her bashfully. "Would you--care, then?"
+
+"Sure, and I would;" and with that she was flat on the ground beside
+him, her fingers flying in search of strawberries.
+
+So close they lay to the earth, so hidden by the waving sorrel and
+neighboring timothy, that had a whole county full of constables been
+abroad they could have passed within earshot and never seen them
+there.
+
+With silence between them they ate until their lips were red and the
+cloud of dust on the hill back of them had whirled past, attendant on
+a sorrel mare and runabout. They ate until the road was quite empty
+once more; and then the tinker pulled Patsy to her feet by way of
+reminding her that Arden still lay beyond them.
+
+"Do ye know," said Patsy, after another silence and they were once
+more afoot, "I'm a bit doubtful if the banished duke's daughter ever
+tasted anything half as sweet as those berries on her road to Arden;
+or, for that matter, if she found her fool half as wise. I'm mortial
+glad ye didn't fall off that stump this morning afore I came by to
+fetch ye off."
+
+The tinker doffed his battered cap unexpectedly and swept her an
+astounding bow.
+
+"Holy Saint Christopher!" ejaculated Patsy. "Ye'll be telling me ye
+know Willie Shakespeare next."
+
+But the tinker answered with a blank stare, while the far-away,
+bewildered look of fear came back to his eyes. "Who's he? Does he
+live 'round here?" he asked, dully.
+
+Patsy wrinkled a perplexed forehead. "Lad, lad, ye have me bursting
+with wonderment! Ye are a rare combination, even for an Irish tinker;
+but if ye are a fair sample of what they are over here, sure the
+States have the Old Country beaten entirely."
+
+And the tinker laughed as he had laughed once before that day--the
+free, untrammeled laugh of youth, while he saucily mimicked her Irish
+brogue. "Sure, 'tis the road to Arden, ye were sayin', and anythin'
+at all can happen on the way."
+
+The girl laughed with him. "And ye'll be telling me next that this is
+three hundred years ago, and romance and Willie Shakespeare are still
+alive." Her mind went racing back to the "once-upon-a-time days," the
+days when chivalry walked abroad--before it took up its permanent
+residence between the covers of story-books--when poets and saints,
+kings' sons and--tinkers journeyed afar to prove their manhood in
+deeds instead of inheritances; when it was no shame to live by one's
+wits or ask hospitality at any strange door. Ah--those were the days!
+And yet--and yet--could not those days be given back to the world
+again? And would not the world be made a merrier, sweeter place
+because of them? If Patsy could have had her way she would have gone
+forth at the ring of each new day like the angel in the folk tale,
+and with her shears cut the nets that bound humanity down to petty
+differences in creed or birth or tongue.
+
+"Faith, it makes one sick," she thought. "We tell our children the
+tales of the Red Branch Knights--of King Arthur and the Knights of
+the Grail--and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we
+stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints--simple
+men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the
+Holy Book--the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about,
+looking for some good deed to do, some helpfulness to give, some word
+of good cheer to speak; and we pray, 'Father, make us good--even as
+Thou wert.' And what does it all mean? We hurry through the streets
+afeared to stop on the corner and succor a stranger, or ashamed to
+speak a friendly word to a troubled soul in a tram-car; and we go
+home at night and lock our doors so that the beggar who asked for a
+bit of bread at noon can't come round after dark and steal the
+silver." Patsy sighed regretfully--if only this were olden times she
+would not be dreading to find Arden now and the man she was seeking
+there.
+
+The tinker caught the sigh and looked over at her with a puzzled
+frown. "Tired?" he asked, laconically.
+
+"Aye, a bit heart-tired," she agreed, "and I'm wishing Arden was
+still a good seven miles away."
+
+Whereupon the tinker turned his head and grinned sheepishly toward
+the south.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The far-away hills had gathered in the last of the sun unto
+themselves when the two turned down the main street of a village. It
+was unquestionably a self-respecting village. The well-tarred
+sidewalks, the freshly painted meeting-house neighboring the
+engine-house "No. 1," the homes with their well-mowed lawns in front
+and the tidily kept yards behind--all spoke of a decency and
+lawfulness that might easily have set the hearts of the most
+righteous of vagabonds a-quaking.
+
+Patsy looked it carefully over. "Sure, Arden's no name for it at all.
+They'd better have called it Gospel Center--or New Canaan. 'Twould be
+a grand place, though, to shut in all the Wilfred Peterson-Joneses,
+to keep them off the county's nerves--and the rich men's sons, to
+keep them off the public sympathy. But 'tis no place for us, lad."
+
+The tinker shifted his kit from one shoulder to the other and held
+his tongue.
+
+Their entrance was what Patsy might have termed "fit." The dogs of
+the village were on hand; that self-appointed escort of all doubtful
+characters barked them down the street with a lusty chorus of growls
+and snarls and sharp, staccato yaps. There were the children, too, of
+course; the older ones followed hot-foot after the dogs; the smaller
+ones came, a stumbling vanguard, sucking speculative thumbs or
+forefingers, as the choice might be. The hurly-burly brought the
+grown-ups to windows and doors.
+
+"'Hark! hark! the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town,'"
+quoted Patsy, with a grim little smile, and glanced across at the
+tinker. He was blushing fiercely. "Never mind, lad. 'Tis better being
+barked into a town than bitten out of it."
+
+For answer the tinker stopped and folded his arms sullenly. "I'm not
+such a fool I can't feel somethin'. Don't you reckon I know the shame
+it is to be keepin' a decent woman company with these rags--and no
+wits?"
+
+"If I've not misplaced my memory, 'twas myself that chose the
+company, and 'twas largely on account of those very things, I'm
+thinking. Do ye guess for a minute that if ye had been a rich man's
+son in grand clothes--and manners to match--I'd ever have tramped a
+millimeter with ye?" She smiled coaxingly. "Faith! there's naught the
+matter with those rags; a king's son might be proud o' them. As for
+foolishness, I've known worse faults in a man."
+
+The tinker winced imperceptibly, and all unconsciously Patsy went on:
+"'Tis the heart of a man that measures him, after all, and not the
+wits that crowd his brain or the gold that lines his pockets. Oh,
+what do the folks who sit snug by their warm hearthsides, knitting
+their lives into comfortables to wrap around their real feelings and
+human impulses, ever know about their neighbors who come in to drink
+tea with them? And what do the neighbors in turn know about them? If
+I had my way, I'd tumble the whole sit-by-the-fire-and-gossip world
+out of doors and set them tramping the road to somewhere; 'tis the
+surest way of getting them acquainted with themselves and the
+neighbors. For that matter, all of us need it--just once in so often.
+And so--to the road, say I, with a fair greeting to all alike, be
+they king's son or beggar, for the road may prove the one's the other
+afore the journey's done."
+
+"Amen!" said the tinker, devoutly, and Patsy laughed.
+
+They had stopped in the middle of the street, midway between the
+church and the engine-house, Patsy so absorbed in her theories, the
+tinker so absorbed in Patsy, that neither was aware of the changed
+disposition of their circling escort until a cold, inquisitive nose
+and a warm, friendly tongue brought them to themselves. Greetings
+were returned in kind; heads were patted, backs stroked, ears
+scratched--only the children stood aloof and unconvinced. That is
+ever the way of it; it is the dogs who can better tell glorious
+vagabondage from inglorious rascality.
+
+"Sure, ye can't fool dogs; I'd be taking the word of a dog before a
+man's anywhere when it comes to judging human beings." Patsy looked
+over her shoulder at the children. "Ye have the creatures won over
+entirely; 'tis myself might try what I could do with the wee ones. If
+we had the dogs and the childther to say a good word for us--faith!
+the grown-ups might forget how terribly respectable they were and
+make us welcome for one night." A sudden thought caught her memory.
+"I was almost forgetting why I had come. Hunt up a shop for me, lad,
+will ye? There must be one down the street a bit; and if ye'll loan
+me some of that half-crown the good man paid for your tinkering, I'd
+like to be having a New York News--if they have one--along with the
+fixings for a letter I have to be writing. While ye are gone I'll
+bewitch the childther."
+
+And she did.
+
+When the tinker returned she was sitting on the church steps, the
+children huddled so close about her that she was barely
+distinguishable in the encircling mass of shingled heads, bobby
+curls, pigtails and hair-ribbons. Deaf little ears were being turned
+to parental calls for supper--a state of affairs unprecedented and
+unbelievable; while Patsy was bringing to an end the tale of Jack,
+the Irish hero of a thousand and one adventures.
+
+"And he married the king's daughter--and they lived happier than ye
+can tell me--and twice as happy as I can tell ye--in a castle that
+had a window for every day in the year."
+
+"That would make a fine endin' for any lad's story," said the tinker,
+soberly. "'A window for every day in the year' would mean a whole lot
+of cheerfulness and sunshine, wouldn't it?"
+
+Patsy nodded. "But don't those who take to the road fetch that castle
+along with them? Sure, there it is"--and her hand swept toward the
+skyline an encompassing circle about them--"with the sun flooding it
+from dawn to day's end." She turned to the eager faces about her,
+waiting for more. "Are ye still there? Faith! what have I been
+hearing this half-hour but hungry childther being called for tea.
+'Twas 'Joseph' from the house across the way, and 'Rebecca' from off
+yonder, and 'Susie May' from somewhere else. Away with yez all to
+your mothers!" And Patsy scattered them as if they had been a flock
+of young sheep, scampering helter-skelter in all directions.
+
+But one there was who lagged behind, a little boy with an old, old
+face, who watched the others go and then crept closer, held by the
+spell of the tale. He pulled at Patsy's sleeve to gain attention.
+"I'm--I'm Joseph. Was it true--most of it?"
+
+She nodded a reply as solemn as his question, "Aye, as true as youth
+and the world itself."
+
+"And would it come true for another boy--any boy--who went a-tramping
+off like that? Would he find--whatever he was wishin' for?" And even
+as he spoke his eyes left hers and went searching for the far-away
+hills--and what might lie beyond.
+
+"Come here, little lad." Patsy drew him to her and put two steadying
+hands on his shoulders. She knew that he, too, had heard the call of
+the road and the longing to be gone--to be one with it, journeying to
+meet the mysterious unknown--was upon him. "Hearken to me: 'Tis only
+safe for a little lad to be going when he has three things to fetch
+with him--the wish to find something worth the bringing home, the
+knowledge of what makes good company along the way, and trust in
+himself. When ye are sure of these, go; but ye'll no longer be a
+little lad, I'm thinking. And remember first to get the mother's
+blessing and 'God-speed,' same as Jack; a lad's journey ends nowhere
+that begins without that."
+
+He went without a word, but content; and his eyes brimmed with
+visions.
+
+Patsy watched him tenderly. "Who knows--he may find greatness on his
+road. Who knows?"
+
+The tinker dropped the bundle he had brought back from the store into
+her lap, but she scarcely heeded him. Her eyes were looking out into
+the gathering dusk while her voice sank almost to a whisper.
+
+"_Ochone!_ but I've always envied that piper fellow from Hamelin
+town. Think of being able to gather up all the childther hereabouts,
+eager, hungry-hearted childther with mothers too busy or deaf to heed
+them, and leading them away to find their fortunes! Wouldn't that be
+wonderful, just?"
+
+"What kind of fortunes?" asked the tinker.
+
+"What but the best kind!" Patsy thought for a moment, and smiled
+whimsically while her eyes grew strangely starry in that early
+twilight. "Wouldn't I like to be choosing those fortunes, and
+wouldn't they be an odd lot, entirely! There'd be singing hearts that
+had learned to sing above trouble; there'd be true fellowship--the
+kind that finds brotherhood in beggars as well as--as prime
+ministers; there'd be peace of soul--not the kind that naps by the
+fire, content that the wind doesn't be blowing down his chimney, but
+the kind that fights above fighting and keeps neighbor from harrying
+neighbor. Troth, the world is in mortial need of fortunes like the
+last."
+
+"And wouldn't you be choosin' gold for a fortune?" asked the tinker.
+
+Patsy shook her head vehemently.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's the why!" Suddenly Patsy clenched her hands and shook two
+menacing fists against the gathering dark. "I hate gold, along with
+the meanness and the lying and the thieving and the false judgment it
+brings into the world."
+
+"But the world can't get along without it," reminded the tinker,
+shrewdly.
+
+"Aye, but it can. It can get along without the hoarded gold, the
+inherited gold, the cheating, bribing, starving gold--that's the kind
+I mean, the kind that gets into a man's heart and veins until his
+fingers itch to gild everything he touches, like the rich man in the
+city yonder."
+
+"What rich man? I thought the--I thought the city was full o' rich
+men."
+
+"Maybe; but there's just one I'm thinking of now; and God pity
+him--and his son."
+
+The tinker eyed her stupidly. "How d'you know he has a son?"
+
+Patsy laughed. "I guessed--maybe." Then she looked down in her lap.
+"And here's the news--with no light left to read it by; and I'm as
+hungry as an alley cat--and as tired as two. Ye'd never dream, to
+hear me talking, that I'd never had much more than a crooked sixpence
+to my name since I was born; and here I am, with that gone and not a
+slither to buy me bed or board for the night."
+
+The tinker looked down at her with an altogether strange expression,
+very different from anything Patsy had seen on his face all day. Had
+she chanced to catch it before it flickered out, it might have
+puzzled even her O'Connell wits to fathom the meaning of it. For it
+was as if the two had unexpectedly changed places, and the tender
+pity and protectiveness that had belonged to her had suddenly become
+his.
+
+"Never mind, lass; there's board in the kit for to-night--what the
+farm wife put up; and there's this left, and I'll--I'll--" He did not
+finish; instead he dropped a few coins in her hand, the change from
+the half-dollar. Then he set about sweeping the dust from the step
+with his battered cap and spreading their meager meal before her.
+
+They ate in silence, so deep in the business of dulling their
+appetites that they never noticed a small figure crossing the street
+with two goblets and a pitcher hugged tight in his arms. They never
+looked up until the things were set down beside them and a voice
+announced at their elbow, "Mother said I could bring it; it's better
+'n eatin' dry."
+
+It was Joseph; and the pitcher held milk, still foamy from a late
+milking. He looked at Patsy a moment longingly, as if there was more
+he wanted to ask; but, overcome with a sudden bashful confusion, he
+took to his heels and disappeared around the corner of the
+meeting-house before they had time even to give thanks.
+
+The tinker poured the goblets full, handed Patsy's to her with
+another grave bow, and, touching his to hers, said, soberly, "Here's
+to a friendly lass--the first I ever knew, I reckon."
+
+For an instant she watched him, puzzled and amused; then she raised
+her glass slowly in reply. "And here's to tinkers--the world over!"
+
+When everything but the crumbs were eaten she left him to scatter
+these and return Joseph's pitcher while she went to get "the loan of
+a light from the shopkeeper, and hunt up the news."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The store was store, post-office, and general news center combined.
+The news was at that very moment in process of circulation among the
+"boys"--a shirt-sleeved quorum from the patriarchs of the town
+circling the molasses-keg--the storekeeper himself topped it. They
+looked up as Patsy entered and acknowledged her "Good evening" with
+that perfect indifference, the provincial cloak in habitual use for
+concealing the most absolute curiosity. The storekeeper graciously
+laid the hospitality of his stool and counter and kerosene-lamp at
+her feet; in other words, he "cal'ated she was welcome to make
+herself t' home." All of which Patsy accepted. She spread out the
+newspaper on the counter in front of her; she unwrapped a series of
+small bundles--ink, pen, stamped envelope, letter-pad, and
+pen-holder, and eyed them with approval.
+
+"The tinker's a wonder entirely," she said to herself; "but I would
+like to be knowing, did he or did the shopkeeper do the choosing?"
+Then she remembered the thing above all others that she needed to
+know, and swung about on the stool to address the quorum. "I say--can
+you tell me where I'd be likely to find a--person by the name of
+Bil--William Burgeman?"
+
+"That rich feller's boy?"
+
+Patsy nodded. "Have you seen him?"
+
+The quorum thumbed the armholes of their vests and shook an emphatic
+negative. "Nope," volunteered the storekeeper; "too early for him or
+his sort to be diggin' out o' winter quarters."
+
+"Are you sure? Do you know him?"
+
+"Wall, can't say exactly ef I know him; but I'd know ef he'd been
+hangin' round, sartin. Hain't been nothin' like him loose in these
+parts. Has there, boys?"
+
+The quorum confirmed the statement.
+
+Patsy wrinkled up a perplexed forehead. "That's odd. You see, he
+should have been here last night, to-day at the latest. I had it from
+somebody who knew, that he was coming to Arden."
+
+"Mebby he was," drawled the storekeeper, while the quorum cackled in
+appreciation; "but this here is a good seven miles from Arden."
+
+Patsy's arms fell limp across the counter, her head followed, and she
+sat there a crumpled-up, dejected little heap.
+
+"By Jack-a-diamonds!" swore the storekeeper. "She 'ain't swoomed, has
+she, boys?"
+
+The quorum were on the verge of investigating when she denied the
+fact--in person. "Where am I? In the name of Saint Peter, what place
+is this?"
+
+"This? Why, this is Lebanon."
+
+She smiled weakly. "Lebanon! Sounds more like it, anyhow. Thank you."
+
+She turned about and settled down to the paper while the "boys"
+reverted to their original topic of discussion. There were two items
+of news that interested her: Burgeman, senior, was critically ill; he
+had been ill for some time, but there had been no cause for
+apprehension until the last twenty-four hours; and Marjorie Schuyler
+had left for San Francisco--on the way to China. She was to be gone
+indefinitely.
+
+"The heathen idols and the laundrymen are welcome to her," growled
+Patsy, maliciously. "If they'd only fix her with the evil eye, or
+wish such a homesickness and lovesickness on her that 'twould last
+for a year and a day, I'd forgive her for what she's made me wish on
+myself."
+
+Having relieved her mind somewhat, she was able to attend to the
+business of the letter with less inward discomfort. The letter was
+written to George Travis, already known as the manager of Miss St.
+Regis. He was the head of a well-known theatrical managerial firm in
+New York, and an old friend and well-wisher of Patsy's. In it she
+explained, partly, her continued sojourn in America, and frankly
+confessed to her financial needs. If he had anything anywhere that
+she could do until the fall bookings with her own company, she would
+be most humbly grateful. He might address her at Arden; she had great
+hopes of reaching there--some day. There was a postscript added in
+good, pure Donegal:
+
+     And don't ye be afeared of hurting my pride by offering
+     anything too small. Just at present I'm like old Granny
+     Donoghue's lean pig--hungry for scrapings.
+
+As she sealed the envelope a shadow fell athwart the counter. Patsy
+looked up to find the tinker peering at her sharply.
+
+"You look clean tuckered out," he announced, baldly; then he laid a
+coaxing hand on her arm. "I want you to come along with me. Will you,
+lass? I've found a place for you--a nice place. I've been talkin' to
+Joseph's mother, an' she's goin' to look after you for the night."
+
+Patsy's face crinkled up all over; the tinker could not have
+told--even if he had been in possession of all his senses--whether
+she was going to laugh or cry. As it turned out, she did neither; she
+just sighed, a tired, contented little sigh, slipping off the stool
+and dropping the letter into the post-box.
+
+When she faced the tinker again her eyes were misty, and for all her
+courage she could not keep the quivering from her lips. She reached
+up impulsive, trusting hands to his shoulders: "Lad--lad--how were ye
+ever guessing that I'd reached the end o' my wits and was needing
+some one to think for me? Holy Saint Michael! but won't I be mortial
+glad to be feeling a respectable, Lebanon feather-bed under me!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the tinker led her out of the store the quorum eyed her silently
+for a moment. For a brief space there was a scraping of chairs and
+clearing of throats, indicative of some important comment.
+
+"What sort of a lookin' gal did that Green County sheriff say he was
+after?" inquired the storekeeper at last.
+
+"Small, warn't it?" suggested one of the quorum.
+
+"Yep, guess it was. And what sort o' clothes did he say she wore?"
+
+"Brown!" chorused the quorum.
+
+"Wall, boys"--the storekeeper wagged an accusing thumb in the
+direction of the recently vacated stool--"she was small, warn't she?
+An' she's got brown clothes, hain't she? An' she acts queer, doan't
+she?"
+
+The quorum nodded in solemn agreement.
+
+"But she doan't look like no thief," interceded the youngest of the
+"boys." He couldn't have been a day over seventy, and it was more
+than likely that he was still susceptible to youth and beauty!
+
+The rest glowered at him with plain disapproval, while the
+storekeeper shifted the course of his thumb and wagged it at him
+instead. "Si Perkins, that's not for you to say--nor me, neither.
+That's up to Green County; an' I cal'ate I'll 'phone over to
+the sheriff, come mornin', an' tell him our suspicions. By
+Jack-a-diamonds! I've got to square my conscience."
+
+The quorum invested their thumbs again and cleared their throats.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE TINKER PLAYS A PART
+
+
+There is little of the day's happenings that escapes the ears of a
+country boy. Every small item of local interest is so much grist for
+his mill; and there is no more reliable method for a stranger to
+collect news than a sociable game of "peg" interspersed with a few
+casual but diplomatic questions. The tinker played "peg" the night
+after he and Patsy reached Lebanon--on the barn floor by the light of
+a bleary-eyed lantern with Joseph and his brethren, and thereby
+learned of the visit of the sheriff.
+
+Afterward he sawed and split the apportioned wood which was to pay
+for Patsy's lodging, and went to sleep on the hay in a state of
+complete exhaustion. But, for all that, Patsy was wakened an hour
+before sun-up by a shower of pebbles on the tin roof of the porch,
+just under her window. Looking out, she spied him below, a silencing
+finger against his lips, while he waved a beckoning arm toward the
+road. Patsy dressed and slipped out without a sound.
+
+"What has happened ye?" she whispered, anxiously, looking him well
+over for some symptoms of sickness or trouble.
+
+His only reply was a mysterious shake of the head as he led the way
+down the village street, his rags flapping grotesquely in the dawn
+wind.
+
+There was nothing for Patsy to do except to follow as fast as she
+could after his long, swinging strides. Lebanon still slept,
+close-wrapped in its peaceful respectability; even the dogs failed to
+give them a speeding bark. They stole away as silently as shadows,
+and as shadows went forth upon the open road to meet the coming day.
+
+A mile beyond the township stone the tinker stopped to let Patsy
+catch up with him; it was a very breathless, disgruntled Patsy.
+
+"Now, by Saint Brendan, what ails ye, lad, to be waking a body up at
+this time of day? Do ye think it's good morals or good manners to be
+trailing us off on a bare stomach like this--as if a county full of
+constables was at our heels? What's the meaning of it? And what will
+the good folk who cared for us the night think to find us gone with
+never a word of thanks or explanation?"
+
+The tinker scratched his chin meditatively; it was marked by a day's
+more growth than on the previous morning, which did not enhance his
+comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something
+about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an
+uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied
+him yesterday--but to-day--Patsy's gaze was critical and not
+over-flattering.
+
+He saw her look and met it, eye for eye, only he still fumbled his
+chin ineffectually. "Have you forgot?" he asked, a bit sheepishly.
+"There were the lady's-slippers; you said as how you cared about
+findin' 'em; and they're not near so pretty an' bright if they're
+left standin' too long after the dew dries."
+
+Patsy pulled a wry little smile. "Is that so? And ye've been after
+making me trade a feather-bed and a good breakfast for--for the best
+color of lady's-slippers. Well, if I was Dan instead of myself,
+standing here, I'd be likely to tell ye to go to the devil--aye, an'
+help ye there with my two fists." Her cheeks were flushed and all the
+comradeship faded quickly from her eyes.
+
+The tinker said never a word, only his lips parted in a coaxing smile
+which seemed to say, "Please go on believing in me," and his eyes
+still held hers unwaveringly.
+
+And the tinker's smile won. Bit by bit Patsy's rigid attitude of
+condemnation relaxed; the comradeship crept back in her eyes, the
+smile to her lips. "Heigho! 'Tis a bad bargain ye can't make the best
+of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! Ye'll find the right road
+to Arden this time or ye and the duke's daughter will part
+company--for all Willie Shakespeare wrote it otherwise."
+
+He nodded. "We can ask the way 's we go. But first we'll be gettin'
+the lady's-slippers and some breakfast. You'll see--I'll find them
+both for you, lass"; and he set off with his swinging stride straight
+across country, wagging his head wisely. Patsy fell in behind him,
+and the road was soon out of sight and earshot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was just about this time that the storekeeper at Lebanon got the
+Green County sheriff on the 'phone, and squared his conscience. "I
+cal'ate she's the guilty party," were his closing remarks. "She'd
+never ha' lighted out o' this 'ere town afore Christian folks were
+out o' bed ef she hadn't had somethin' takin' her. And what's more,
+she's keepin' bad company."
+
+And so it came about that all the time the sorrel mare was being
+harnessed into the runabout the tinker was leading Patsy farther
+afield. And so it came to pass that when the mare's heels were
+raising the dust on the road between Lebanon and Arden, they were
+following a forest brook, deeper and deeper, into the woods.
+
+They found it the most cheery, neighborly, and comfortable kind of a
+brook, the quiet and well-contained sort that one could step at will
+from bank to bank, and see with half an eye what a prime favorite it
+was among its neighbors. Patsy and the tinker marked how close things
+huddled to it, even creeping on to cover stones and gravel stretches;
+there were moss and ferns and little, clinging things, like
+baby's-breath and linnea. The major part of the bird population was
+bathing in the sunnier pools, soberly or with wild hilarity,
+according to disposition.
+
+The tinker knew them all, calling to them in friendly fashion, at
+which they always answered back. Patsy listened silently, wrapped in
+the delight and beauty of it. On went the brook--dancing here in a
+broken patch of sunshine--quieting there between the banks of
+rock-fern and columbine, to better paint their prettiness; and all
+the while singing one farther and farther into the woods. She was
+just wondering if there could be anything lovelier than this when the
+tinker stopped, still and tense as a pointer. She craned her head and
+looked beyond him--looked to where the woods broke, leaving for a few
+feet a thinly shaded growth of beech and maple. The sunlight sifted
+through in great, unbroken patches of gold, falling on the beds
+of fern and moss and--yes, there they were, the promised
+lady's-slippers.
+
+A little, indrawn sigh of ecstasy from Patsy caused the tinker to
+turn about. "Then you're not hatin' gold when you find it growin'
+green that-a-way?" he chuckled.
+
+Patsy shook her head with vehemence. "Never! And wouldn't it be grand
+if nature could be gathering it all up from everywhere and spinning
+it over again into the likes of those! In the name o' Saint Francis,
+do ye suppose if the English poets had laid their two eyes to
+anything so beautiful as what's yonder they'd ever have gone so daffy
+over daffodils?"
+
+"They never would," agreed the tinker.
+
+Patsy studied him with a sharp little look. "And what do ye know
+about English poets, pray?"
+
+His lower jaw dropped in a dull, foolish fashion. "Nothin'; but I
+know daff'dils," he explained at last.
+
+And at that moment the call of a thrush came to them from just across
+the glade. Patsy listened spellbound while he sang his bubbling song
+of gladness through half a score of times.
+
+"Is it the flowers singing?" she asked at last, her eyes dancing
+mischievously.
+
+"It might be the souls o' the dead ones." The tinker considered
+thoughtfully a moment. "Maybe the souls o' flowers become birds, same
+as ours becomes angels--wouldn't be such a deal o' difference--both
+takin' to wings and singin'." He chuckled again. "Anyhow, that's the
+bellbird; and I sent him word yesterday by one o' them tattlin'
+finches to be on hand just about this time."
+
+"Ye didn't order a breakfast the same way, did ye?"
+
+The tinker threw back his head and laughed. "I did, then," and,
+before Patsy could strip her tongue of its next teasing remark, he
+had vanished as quickly and completely as if magic had had a hand in
+it.
+
+A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going,
+however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor
+fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady's-slippers. She
+unpinned the rakish beaver and tossed it from her; off came the
+Norfolk jacket, and followed the beaver. She eyed the rest of her
+costume askance; she would have sorely liked to part with that, too,
+had she but the Lord's assurance that He would do as well by her as
+he had by the lilies of the field or the lady's-slippers.
+
+"'Tis surprising how wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the
+back of a human being--yet a flower can wear them for a thousand
+years or more and ye never go tired of them. I'm not knowing why,
+but--somehow--I'd like to be looking gladsome--to-day."
+
+She stretched her arms wide for a minute, in a gesture of intense
+longing; then the glory of the woods claimed her again and she gave
+herself over completely to the wonder and enjoyment of them. Her eyes
+roamed about her unceasingly for every bit of prettiness, her ears
+caught the symphony of bird and brook and soughing wind. So still did
+she sit that the tinker, returning, thought for a moment that she had
+gone, and stood, knee-deep in the brakes, laden to the chin and
+covered with the misery of poignant disappointment. For him all the
+music of the place had turned to laughing discord--until he spied
+her.
+
+"I thought"--his tongue stumbled--"I was thinkin' you had
+gone--sudden-like--same as you came--down the road yesterday." He
+paused a moment. "You wouldn't go off by yourself and leave a lad
+without you said somethin' about it first, would you?"
+
+"I'll not leave ye till we get to Arden."
+
+"An'--an' what then?"
+
+"The road must end for me there, lad. What I came to do will be done,
+and there'll be no excuse for lingering. But I'll not forget to wish
+ye 'God-speed' along your way before I go."
+
+A sly look came into the tinker's eyes. Patsy never saw it, for he
+was bending close over the huge basket he had brought; she only
+caught a tinge of exultation in his voice as he said, "Then that's
+a'right, if you'll promise your comp'ny till we fetch up in Arden."
+
+With that he went busily about preparations for breakfast, Patsy
+watching him, plainly astonished. He gathered bark and brush and
+kindled a fire on a large flat rock which he had moved against a
+near-by boulder. About it he fastened a tripod of green saplings,
+from which he hung a coffee-pot, filled from the brook.
+
+"I'm praying there's more nor water in it," murmured Patsy. And a
+moment later, as the tinker shook out a small white table-cloth from
+the basket and spread it at her feet, she clasped her hands and
+repeated with perfect faith, "'Little goat bleat, table get set'; I
+smell the coffee."
+
+Out of the basket came little green dishes, a pat of butter, a jug of
+cream, a bowl of berries, a plate of biscuits. "Riz," was the
+tinker's comment as he put down the last named; and then followed
+what appeared to Patsy to be round, brown, sugared buns with holes in
+them. These he passed twice under her nose with a triumphant
+flourish.
+
+"And what might they be?" Her curiosity was reaching the
+breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll
+believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the
+faeries' trencher of plenty."
+
+For reply the tinker dived once more beneath the cover and brought
+out a frying-pan full of bacon, and four white eggs. "Think whatever
+you're mind to, I'm going to fry these." But after he had raked over
+the embers to his complete satisfaction and placed the pan on them,
+he came back and, picking up one of the "brown buns," slipped it over
+Patsy's forefinger. "This is a wishin'-ring," he announced, soberly,
+"though most folks calls 'em somethin' different. Now if you wish a
+wish--and eat it--all but the hole, you'll have what you've been
+wishin' for all your life."
+
+"How soon will ye be having it?"
+
+"In as many days as there are bites."
+
+So Patsy bit while the tinker checked them off on his fingers. "One,
+two, three, four, five, six. You'll get your wish by the seventh day,
+sure, or I'm no tinker."
+
+[Illustration: "If you wish a wish and eat it--all but the hole,
+you'll have what you've been wishin' for all your life."]
+
+"But are ye?" Patsy shook the de-ringed finger at him accusingly.
+"I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether ye're a tinker at all.
+Ye are foolish one minute, and ye've more wits than I have the
+next; I've caught ye looking too lonesome and helpless to be allowed
+beyond reach of our mother's kerchief-end, and yet last night and the
+day ye've taken care of me as if ye'd been hired out to tend babies
+since ye were one yourself. As for your language, ye never speak
+twice the same."
+
+The tinker grinned. "That bacon's burnin'; I--cal'ate I'd better turn
+it, hadn't I?"
+
+"I--cal'ate you had," and Patsy grinned back at him derisively.
+
+The tinker was master of ceremonies, and he served her as any
+courtier might have served his liege lady. He shook out the
+diminutive serviette he had brought for her and spread it across her
+lap; he poured her coffee and sweetened it according to direction; he
+even buttered her "riz" biscuits and poured the cream on her berries.
+
+"Are ye laboring under the delusion that the duke's daughter was
+helpless, entirely?" she asked, at length.
+
+The tinker shook an emphatic negative. "I was just thinkin' she might
+like things a mite decent--onct in a while."
+
+"Lad--lad--who in the wide world are ye!" Patsy checked her outburst
+with a warning hand: "No--don't ye be telling me. Ye couldn't turn
+out anything better nor a tinker--and I'd rather keep ye as I found
+ye. So if ye have a secret--mind it well; and don't ye be letting it
+loose to scare the two of us into over-wise, conventional folk. We'll
+play Willie Shakespeare comedy to the end of the road--please God!"
+
+"Amen!" agreed the tinker, devoutly, as he threw her portion of fried
+eggs neatly out of the pan into her plate.
+
+It was not until she was served that he looked after his own wants;
+then they ate in silence, both too hungry and too full of their own
+thoughts to loosen their tongues.
+
+Once the tinker broke the silence. "Your wish--what was it?" he
+asked.
+
+"That's telling," said Patsy. "But if ye'll confess to where ye came
+by this heavenly meal, I might confess to the wish."
+
+He rubbed his chin solemnly for an instant; then he beamed. "I'll
+tell ye. I picked it off o' the fern-tops and brambles as I came
+along."
+
+"Of course ye did," agreed Patsy, with fine sarcasm, "and for my
+wish--I was after thinking I'd marry the king's son."
+
+They looked at each other with the teasing, saucy stare of two
+children; then they laughed as care-free and as merrily.
+
+"Maybe you'll get your wish," he suggested, soberly.
+
+"Maybe I will," agreed Patsy, with mock solemnity.
+
+A look of shrewdness sprang into the tinker's face. "But you said you
+hated gold. You couldn't marry a king's son 'thout havin' gold--lots
+of it."
+
+"Aye--but I could! Couldn't I be making him throw it away before ever
+I'd marry him?" And Patsy clapped her hands triumphantly.
+
+"An' you'd marry him--poor?" The tinker's eyes kindled suddenly, as
+he asked it--for all the world as if her answer might have a meaning
+for him.
+
+Patsy never noticed. She was looking past him--into the
+indistinguishable wood-tangle beyond. "Sure, we wouldn't be poor.
+We'd be blessed with nothing--that's all!"
+
+For those golden moments of romancing Patsy's quest was forgotten;
+they might have reached Arden and despatched her errand, for all the
+worriment their loitering caused her. As for the tinker, if he had
+either a mission or a destination he gave no sign for her to reckon
+by.
+
+They dallied over the breakfast; they dallied over the aftermath of
+picking up and putting away and stamping out the charred twigs and
+embers; and then they dallied over the memory of it all. Patsy spun a
+hundred threads of fancy into tales about the forest, while the
+tinker called the thickets about them full of birds, and whistled
+their songs antiphonally with them.
+
+"Do ye know," said Patsy, with a deep sigh, "I'm happier than ye can
+tell me, and twice as happy as I can tell ye."
+
+"An' this, hereabouts, wouldn't make a bad castle," suggested the
+tinker, irrelevantly.
+
+What Patsy might have answered is not recorded, for they both
+happened to look up for the first time in a long space and saw that
+the sky above their heads had grown a dull, leaden color. They were
+no longer sitting in the midst of sunlight; the lady's-slippers had
+lost their golden radiance; the brook sounded plaintive and
+melancholy, and from the woods fringing the open came the call of the
+bob-white.
+
+"He's singin' for rain. Won't hurt a mite if we make toward some
+shelter." The tinker pulled Patsy to her feet and gathered up the
+basket and left-overs.
+
+"Hurry," said Patsy, with a strange, little, twisted smile on her
+lips. "Of course I was knowing, like all faery tales, it had to have
+an ending; but I want to remember it, just as we found it
+first--sprinkled with sunshine and not turning dull and gray like
+this."
+
+She started plunging through the woods, and the tinker was obliged to
+turn her about and set her going right, with the final instruction
+to follow her nose and he would catch up with her before she had
+caught up with it. She had reached the road, however, and thunder was
+grumbling uncomfortably near when the tinker joined her.
+
+"It's goin' to be a soaker," he announced, cheerfully.
+
+"Then we'd better tramp fast as we can and ask the first person we
+pass, are we on the right road to Arden."
+
+They tramped, but they passed no one. The road was surprisingly
+barren of shelters, and, strangely enough, of the two houses they saw
+one was temporarily deserted and the other unoccupied. The wind came
+with the breaking of the storm--that cold, piercing wind that often
+comes in June as a reminder that winter has not passed by so very
+long before. It whipped the rain across their faces and cut down
+their headway until it seemed to Patsy as if they barely crawled.
+They came to a tumble-down barn, but she was too cold and wet to stop
+where there was no fire.
+
+"Any place that's warm," she shouted across to the tinker; and he
+shouted back, as they rounded the bend of the road.
+
+"See, there it is at last!"
+
+The sight of a house ahead, whose active chimney gave good evidence
+of a fire within, spurred Patsy's lagging steps. But in response to
+their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the
+narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even
+before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter.
+
+"Faith, 'tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred
+years ago," Patsy murmured between tightening lips. "How long in, do
+ye think, the fashion has been--to shut doors on poor wanderers?"
+
+At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The
+woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier
+was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they
+turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had
+crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks
+ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them.
+
+"Curse them!" muttered the tinker, fiercely. "If I only had a coat to
+put around you--anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry
+inside there!" and he shook his fist at the forbidden door.
+
+Patsy tried to smile, but failed. "Faith! I haven't the breath to
+curse them; but God pity them, that's all."
+
+Before she had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang
+it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll
+have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood."
+
+He hurried her along--somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression
+closed her eyes; and she let him lead her--whither she neither
+wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she
+stumbled along, conscious of but two things--a fear that she would be
+ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for
+heat--heat!
+
+When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing
+under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer
+cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet.
+In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of
+the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small,
+leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a
+matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted
+over the sill into the kitchen beyond.
+
+"Ye'd best stand me in the sink and wring me out, or I'll flood the
+house," Patsy managed to gasp. "I'd do it myself, but I know, if I
+once let go of my hands, I'll shake to death."
+
+The tinker followed her advice, working the water out of her dripping
+garments in much the same fashion that he would have employed had she
+been a half-drowned cat. In spite of her numbness Patsy saw the grim
+humor of it all and came perilously near to a hysterical laugh. The
+tinker unconsciously forestalled it by shouldering her, as if she had
+been a whole bag of water-soaked cats, and carrying her up the
+stairs. After looking into three rooms he deposited her on the
+threshold of a fourth.
+
+"It has the look of women folks; you're sure to find some left-behind
+clothes o' theirs hanging up somewhere. Come down when you're dry an'
+I'll have that fire waiting for you."
+
+What followed was all a dream to Patsy's benumbed senses: the search
+in drawers and closets for things to put on, and the finding of them;
+the insistent aching of fingers and arms in trying to adjust them,
+and the persistent refusal of brain to direct them with any degree of
+intelligence. She came down the stairs a few minutes later, dragging
+a bundle of wet clothes after her, and found the tinker kneeling by
+the hearth, still in his dripping rags, and heaping more logs on the
+already blazing fire.
+
+He rose as she came toward him, took the clothes from her and dropped
+them on the hearth. He seemed decidedly hazy and remote as he
+brought a steamer rug from somewhere and wrapped it about her; his
+voice, as he coaxed her over to the couch, apparently came from miles
+away. As Patsy sank down, too weary to speak, the figure above her
+took upon itself once more that suggestion of unearthliness that it
+had worn when she had discovered it at dawn--hanging to the stump
+fencing. For an instant the glow of the fire threw the profile into
+the same shadowy outlines that the rising sun had first marked for
+her; and the image lingered even after her eyes had closed.
+
+"Sure, he's fading away like Oisiu, Gearoidh Iarla, and all of them
+in the old tales," she thought, drowsily. "Like as not, when I open
+my eyes again he'll be clear gone." This was where the dream ended
+and complete oblivion began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How long it lasted she could not have told; she only knew she was
+awake at last and acutely conscious of everything about her; and that
+she was warm--warm--warm! The room was dark except for the firelight;
+but whether it was evening or night or midnight, she could not have
+guessed. She found herself speculating in a hazy fashion where she
+was, whose house they had broken into, and what the tinker had done
+with himself. She had a vague, far-away feeling that she ought to be
+disturbed over something--her complete isolation with a strange
+companion on a night like this; but the physical contentment, the
+reaction from bodily torture, drugged her sensibilities. She closed
+her eyes lazily again and listened to the wind howling outside with
+the never-ceasing accompaniment of beating rain. She was content to
+revel in that feeling of luxury that only the snugly housed can know.
+
+A sound in the room roused her. She opened her eyes as lazily as she
+had closed them, expecting to find the tinker there replenishing the
+fire; instead--She sat up with a jerk, speechless, rubbing her eyes
+with two excited fists, intent on proving the unreality of what she
+had seen; but when she looked again there it was--the clean-cut
+figure of a man immaculate in white summer flannels.
+
+The blood rushed to Patsy's face; mortification, dread, sank into her
+very soul; the drug of physical contentment had lost its power. For
+the first time in her life she was dominated by the dictates of
+convention. She cursed her irresponsible love of vagabondage along
+with her freedom of speech and manner and her lack of conservative
+judgment. These had played her false and shamed her womanhood.
+
+The Patsys of this world are not given to trading on their charm or
+powers of attraction to win men to them--it is against their creed of
+true womanhood. Moreover, a man counts no more than a woman in their
+sum total of daily pleasure, and when they choose a comrade it is for
+human qualities, not sexualities. And because of this, this
+particular Patsy felt the more intensely the humiliation and
+challenge of the moment. She hated herself; she hated the man,
+whoever he might be; she hated the tinker for his share in it all.
+
+Anger loosened her tongue at last. "Who, in the name of Saint
+Bridget, are ye?" she demanded.
+
+And the man in white flannels threw back his head and laughed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY
+
+
+The laughter would have proved contagious to any except one in
+Patsy's humor; and, as laughing alone is sorry business, the man soon
+sobered and looked over at Patsy with the merriment lingering only in
+his eyes.
+
+"By Willie Shakespeare, it's the duke's daughter in truth!"
+
+The words made little impression on her; it was the laugh and voice
+that puzzled her; they were unmistakably the tinker's. But there was
+nothing familiar about face, figure, or expression, although Patsy
+studied them hard to find some trace of the man she had been
+journeying with.
+
+With a final bewildered shake of the head her eyes met his coldly,
+mockingly. "My name is Patricia O'Connell"--her voice was crisp and
+tart; "it's the Irish for a short temper and a hot one. Now maybe you
+will have the grace to favor me with yours."
+
+"Just the tinker," he complied, amiably, "and very much at your
+service." This was accompanied by a sweeping bow.
+
+Patsy had marked that bow on two previous occasions, and it testified
+undeniably to the man's identity. Yet Patsy's mind balked at
+accepting it; it was too galling to her pride, too slanderous of her
+past judgment and perceptibilities. A sudden rush of anger brought
+her to her feet, and, coming over to the opposite side of the hearth,
+she faced him, flushed, determined, and very dignified. It is to be
+doubted if Patsy could have sustained the latter with any degree of
+conviction if she could have seen herself. Straying strands of still
+damp hair curled bewitchingly about her face, bringing out the
+roundness of cheek and chin and the curious, guileless expression of
+her eyes. Moreover, the coquettish gown she wore was entrancing; it
+was a light blue, tunic affair with wide baby collar and cuffs, and a
+Roman girdle; and she had found stockings to match, with white
+buckskin pumps. It had been blind chance on her part--this making of
+a toilet, but the effect was none the less adorable--and condemning
+to dignity.
+
+This was evidently appreciated by the tinker, for his face was an odd
+mixture of grotesque solemnity and keen enjoyment. Patsy was
+altogether too flustered to diagnose his expression, but it added
+considerably to the temperature of the O'Connell temper. In view of
+the civilized surroundings and her state of dignity Patsy had taken
+to King's English with barely a hint of her native brogue.
+
+"If you are the tinker--and I presume you are--I should very much
+appreciate an explanation. Would you mind telling me how you happened
+to be hanging onto that stump, in rags, and looking half-witted when
+I--when I came by?"
+
+"Why--just because I was a tinker," he laughed.
+
+"Then what are you now?"
+
+"Once a tinker, always a tinker. I'm just a good-for-nothing; good to
+mend other people's broken pots, and little else; knowing more about
+birds than human beings, and poor company for any one saving the very
+generous-hearted."
+
+Patsy stamped her foot. "Why can't you play fair? Isn't it only
+decent to tell who you are and what you were doing on the road when I
+found you?"
+
+"You know as well as I what I was doing--hanging onto the stump and
+trying to gather my wits. And don't you think it would be nicer if
+you talked Irish? It doesn't make a lad feel half as comfortable or
+as much at home when he is addressed in such perfect English."
+
+Patsy snorted. "In a minute I'll not be addressing you at all. Do you
+think, if I had known you were what you are, I would ever have been
+so--so brazen as to ask for your company and tramp along with you
+for--_two_ days--or be here, now? Oh!" she finished, with a groan and
+a fierce clenching of her fists.
+
+"No, I don't think so. That's why I didn't hurry about gathering up
+the wits; it seemed more sociable without them. I wouldn't have
+bothered with them now, only I couldn't stay in those rags any
+longer; it wouldn't have been kind to the furniture or the people who
+own it. These togs were the only things that came anywhere near to
+fitting me; and, somehow, a three-days' beard didn't match them.
+Lucky for me, Heaven blessed the house with a good razor, and,
+presto! when the beard and the rags were gone the wits came back. I'm
+awfully sorry if you don't like them--the wits, I mean."
+
+"Sure, ye must be!" Unconsciously Patsy had stepped back onto her
+native sod and her tongue fairly dripped with irony. "So ye thought
+ye'd have a morsel o' fun at the expense of a strange lass, while ye
+laughed up your sleeve at how clever ye were."
+
+"See here! don't be too hard, please! That foolishness was real
+enough; I had just been knocked over the head by the kind gentleman
+from whom I borrowed the rags. I paid him a tidy sum for the use of
+them, and evidently he thought it was a shame to leave me burdened
+with the balance of my money. Arguing wouldn't have done any good, so
+he took the simplest way--just sandbagged me and--"
+
+"Was it much money?"
+
+"Mercy, no! Just a few dollars, hardly worth the anæsthesia."
+
+"And ye were--half-witted, then?"
+
+"Half? A bare sixteenth! It wasn't until afternoon--until we reached
+the church at the cross-roads--that I really came into full
+possession--" The sentence trailed off into an inexplicable grin.
+
+"And after that, 'twas I played the fool." Patsy's eyes kindled.
+
+The tinker grew serious; he dug his hands deep into his capacious
+white flannels as if he were very much in earnest. "Can't you
+understand? If I hadn't played foolish you would never have let me
+wander with you--you just said so. I knew that, and I was selfish,
+lonely--and I didn't want to give you up. You can't blame me. When a
+man meets with genuine comradeship for the first time in his
+life--the kind he has always wanted, but has grown to believe doesn't
+exist--he's bound to win a crumb of it for himself, it costs no
+more than a trick of foolishness. Surely you understand?"
+
+"Oh, I understand! I'm understanding more and more every minute--'tis
+the gift of your tongue, I'm thinking--and I'm wondering which of us
+will be finding it the pleasantest." She flashed a look of
+unutterable scorn upon him. "If ye were not half-witted, would ye
+mind telling me how we came to be taking the wrong road at the
+church?"
+
+The tinker choked.
+
+"Aye, I thought so. Ye lied to me."
+
+"No, not exactly; you see--" he floundered helplessly.
+
+"Faith! don't send a lie to mend a lie; 'tis poor business, I can
+promise ye."
+
+"Well,"--the tinker's tone grew dogged--"was it such a heinous sin,
+after all, to want to keep you with me a little longer?"
+
+The fire in Patsy's eyes leaped forth at last. "Sin, did ye
+say? Faith! 'tis the wrong name ye've given it entirely. 'Twas
+amusement, ye meant; the fun of trading on a girl's ignorance
+and simple-heartedness; the trick of getting the good makings of
+a tale to tell afterward to other fine gentlemen like yourself."
+
+"So you think--"
+
+"Aye, I think 'twas a joke with ye--from first to last. Maybe ye
+made a wager with some one--or ye were dared to take to the road in
+rags--or ye did it for copy; ye're not the first man who has done the
+like for the sake of a new idea for a story. 'Twas a pity, though, ye
+couldn't have got what ye wanted without making a girl pay with her
+self-respect."
+
+The tinker winced, reaching out a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong;
+no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and
+fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere--in any
+company--without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one
+atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked
+your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been--what you
+are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the
+same wish to keep it."
+
+But Patsy's comprehension was strangely deaf.
+
+"'Tis easy enough trimming up poor actions with grand words. There'd
+have been no need of risking anything if ye had set me on the right
+road this morning; I would have been in Arden now, where I belong.
+But that wasn't your way. 'Twas a grand scheme ye had--whatever it
+might be; and ye fetch me away afore the town is up and I can ask the
+road of any one; and ye coax me across pastures and woods, a far cry
+from passing folk and reliable information; and ye hold me,
+loitering the day through, till ye have me forgetting entirely why I
+came, along with the promise laid on me, and the other poor
+lad--Heaven help him!"
+
+"Oho!" The tinker whistled unconsciously.
+
+"Oho!" mimicked Patsy; "and is there anything so wonderfully strange
+in a lass looking after a lad? Sure, I'm hating myself for not
+minding his need better; and, Holy Saint Michael, how I'm hating ye!"
+She ran out of the room and up the stairway.
+
+The tinker was after her in a twinkling. He reached the foot of the
+stairs before she was at the top. "Please--please wait a minute," he
+pleaded. "If there's another--lad, a lad you--love, that I have kept
+you from--then I hate myself as much as you do. All I can say is that
+I didn't think--didn't guess; and I'm no end sorry."
+
+Patsy leaned over the banisters and looked down at him through eyes
+unmistakably wet. "What does it matter to ye if he's the lad I love
+or not? And can't a body do a kindness for a lad without loving him?"
+
+"Thank Heaven! she can. You have taught me that miracle--and I don't
+believe the other lad will grudge me these few hours, even if you do.
+Who knows? My need may have been as great as his."
+
+Patsy frowned. "All ye needed was something soft to dull your wits
+on; what he's needing is a father--and mother--and sweetheart--and
+some good 1915 bonds of human trust."
+
+The tinker folded his arms over the newel-post and smiled. "And do
+you expect to be able to supply them all?"
+
+"God forbid!" Patsy laughed in spite of herself.
+
+And the tinker, scoring a point, took courage and went on: "Don't you
+suppose I realize that you have given me the finest gift a stranger
+can have--the gift of honest, unconditional friendship, asking no
+questions, demanding no returns? It is a rare gift for any man--and I
+want to keep it as rare and beautiful as when it was given. So please
+don't mar it for me--now. Please--!" His hands went out in earnest
+appeal.
+
+The anger was leaving Patsy's face; already the look of comradeship
+was coming back in her eyes; her lips were beginning to curve in the
+old, whimsical smile. And the tinker, seeing, doubled his courage.
+"Now, won't you please forgive me and come down and get some supper?"
+
+She hesitated and, seeing that her decision was hanging in the
+balance, he recklessly tried his hand at tipping the scales in his
+favor. "I'm no end of a good forager, and I've rooted out lots of
+things in tins and jars. You must be awfully hungry; remember, it's
+hours since our magical breakfast with the lady's-slippers."
+
+Patsy's fist banged the railing with a startling thud. "I'll never
+break fast with ye again--never--never--never! Ye've blighted the
+greenest memory I ever had!" And with that she was gone, slamming the
+door after her by way of dramatic emphasis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a forlorn and dejected tinker that returned alone to the empty
+hearthside. The bright cheer of the fire had gone; the room had
+become a place of shadows and haunting memories. For a long time he
+stood, brutally kicking one of the fire-dogs and snapping his fingers
+at his feelings; and then, being a man and requiring food, he went
+out into the pantry where he had been busily preparing to set forth
+the hospitality of the house when Patsy had wakened.
+
+But before he ate he found a tray and covered it with the best the
+pantry afforded. He mounted the stairs with it in rather a lagging
+fashion, being wholly at sea concerning the temperature of his
+reception. His conscience finally compromised with his courage, and
+he put the tray down outside Patsy's door.
+
+It was not until he was half-way down the stairs again that he called
+out, bravely, "Oh--I say--Miss--O'Connell; you'd better change your
+mind and eat something."
+
+He waited a good many minutes for an answer, but it came at last; the
+voice sounded broken and wistful as a crying child's. "Thank--you!"
+and then, "Could ye be after telling me how far it is from here to
+Arden?"
+
+"Let me see--about--seven miles;" and the tinker laughed; he could
+not help it.
+
+The next instant Patsy's door opened with a jerk and the tray was
+precipitated down the stairs upon him. It was the conclusive evidence
+of the O'Connell temper.
+
+But the tinker never knew that Patsy wept herself remorsefully to
+sleep; and Patsy never knew that the last thing the tinker did that
+night was to cut a bedraggled brown coat and skirt and hat into
+strips and burn them, bit by bit. It was not altogether a pleasant
+ceremony--the smell of burning wool is not incense to one's nostrils;
+and the tinker heaved a deep sigh of relief as the last flare died
+down into a heap of black, smudgy embers.
+
+"That Green County sheriff will have a long way to go now if he's
+still looking for a girl in a brown suit," he chuckled.
+
+Sleep laid the O'Connell temper. When Patsy awoke her eyes were as
+serene as the patches of June sky framed by her windows, and she felt
+at peace with the world and all the tinkers in it.
+
+"'Twould be flattering the lad too much entirely to make up with him
+before breakfast; but I'll be letting him tramp the road to Arden
+with me, and we'll part there good friends. Troth, maybe he was a bit
+lonesome," she added by way of concession.
+
+She sprang out of bed with a glad little laugh; the day had a grand
+beginning, spilling sunshine and bird-song into every corner of her
+room, and to Patsy's optimistic soul a good beginning insured a
+better ending. As she dressed she planned that ending to her own
+liking and according to the most approved rules of dramatic
+construction: The tinker should turn out a wandering genius, for in
+her heart she could not believe the accusations she had hurled
+against him the night past; when they reached Arden they would come
+upon the younger Burgeman, contemplating immediate suicide; this
+would give her her cue, and she would administer trust and a general
+bracer with one hand as she removed the revolver with the other; in
+gratitude he would divulge the truth about the forgery--he did it to
+save the honor of some lady--after which the tinker would sponsor
+him, tramping him off on the road to take the taste of gold out of
+his mouth and teach him the real meaning of life.
+
+Patsy had no difficulty with her construction until she came to the
+final curtain; here she hesitated. She might trail off to find King
+Midas and square Billy with him, or--the curtain might drop leaving
+her right center, wishing both lads "God-speed." Neither ending was
+entirely satisfactory, however; the mental effect of the tinker going
+off with some one else--albeit it was another lad--was anything but
+satisfying.
+
+The house was strangely quiet. Patsy stopped frequently in her
+playmaking to listen for some sounds of human occupancy other than
+her own, but there was none.
+
+"Poor lad! Maybe I killed him last night when I kicked the tea-things
+down the stairs after him; or, most likely, the O'Connell temper has
+him stiffened out with fear so he daren't move hand or foot."
+
+A moment later she came down the stairs humming, "Blow, blow, thou
+winter wind," her eyes dancing riotously.
+
+Now, by all rights, dramatic or otherwise, the tinker should have
+been on hand, waiting her entrance. But tinker there was none;
+nothing but emptiness--and a breakfast-tray, spread and ready for
+her in the pantry.
+
+Curiosity, uneasiness mastered her pride and she
+called--once--twice--several times. But there came no answering sound
+save the quickening of her own heart-beats under the pressure of her
+held breath.
+
+She was alone in the house.
+
+A feeling of unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back
+to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post--for
+all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of
+the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel
+more deserted--more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an
+easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind,
+impersonal disaster. When it was a matter of deliberate, intentional
+human motives--it became well-nigh unbearable. Had the tinker gone to
+be rid of her company and her temper? Had he decided that the road
+was a better place without her? Maybe he had taken the matter of the
+other lad too seriously--and, thinking them sweethearts, had counted
+himself an undesired third, and betaken himself out of their ways.
+Or--maybe--he was fearsome of constables--and had hurried away to
+cover his trail and leave her safe.
+
+"Maybe a hundred things," moaned Patsy, disconsolately; "maybe 'tis
+all a dream and there's no road and no quest and no Rich Man's son
+and no tinker, and no anything. Maybe--I'll be waking up in another
+minute and finding myself back in the hospital with the delirium
+still on me."
+
+She closed her eyes, rubbed them hard with two mandatory fists, then
+opened them to test the truth of her last remark; and it happened
+that the first object they fell on was a photograph in a carved
+wooden frame on the mantel-shelf in the room across the hall. It was
+plainly visible from where Patsy stood by the stairs--it was also
+plainly familiar. With a run Patsy was over there in an instant, the
+photograph in her hands.
+
+"Holy Saint Patrick, 'tis witchcraft!" she cried under her breath.
+"How in the name of devils--or saints--did he ever get this taken,
+developed, printed, and framed--between the middle of last night and
+the beginning of this morning!"
+
+For Patsy was looking down at a picture of the tinker, in white
+flannels, with head thrown back and laughing.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION
+
+
+With the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house
+suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a
+quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left
+spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in
+the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation,
+three meals--a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she
+was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch
+when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at
+her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room
+after room she searched, closet after closet.
+
+In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she
+passed them slowly--so slowly that her hands brushed them with a
+friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she
+returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had
+left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and
+consequently told no tales.
+
+"'Tis plain enough what's happened," she said, soberly, to the
+sparrows who were skirmishing for crumbs. "Just as I said, he was
+fearsome of those constables, after all, and he's escaped in my
+clothes!"
+
+The picture of the tinker's bulk trying to disguise itself behind
+anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible
+for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter
+which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like
+fog before a clearing wind.
+
+"Anyhow, if he hasn't worn them he's fetched them away as a wee
+souvenir of an O'Connell; and if I'm to reach Arden in any degree of
+decency 'twill have to be in stolen clothes."
+
+But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her
+promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected
+state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So
+she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white "middy" suit and a
+dark-blue "Norfolk." The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a
+sigh, for a woman's a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has
+not a marked preference for the more becoming frock?
+
+Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and
+put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced
+over the broken window by the runaway tinker, she turned the knob of
+the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold.
+It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no
+lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf.
+With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed
+the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen
+Norfolk.
+
+"Sure, he promised his company to Arden," she said, by way of
+stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and
+this time she closed the door behind her.
+
+The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate
+where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was
+no way of Patsy's telling from what direction she had come or where
+Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun
+wrathfully. "I'll be bound you're in league with the tinker; 'tis all
+a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me
+just seven miles from it. That's a grand number--seven."
+
+A glint of white on the grass caught her eye; she stooped and found
+it to be a diminutive quill feather dropped by some passing pigeon.
+It lay across her palm for a second, and then--the whim taking
+her--she shot it exultantly into the air. Where it fell she marked
+the way it pointed, and that was the road she took.
+
+It was beginning to seem years ago since she had sat in Marjorie
+Schuyler's den listening to Billy Burgeman's confession of a crime
+for which he had not sounded in the least responsible. That was on
+Tuesday. It was now Friday--three days--seventy-two hours later. She
+preferred to think of it in terms of hours--it measured the time
+proportionally nearer to the actual feeling of it. Strangely enough,
+it seemed half a lifetime instead of half a week, and Patsy could not
+fathom the why of it. But what puzzled her more was the present
+condition of Billy Burgeman, himself. As far as she was concerned he
+had suddenly ceased to exist, and she was pursuing a Balmacaan coat
+and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or--at most--they were
+supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder
+she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more
+persistently did it elude her--slipping through her mental grasp like
+so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing
+something, feeling something--the simplest human emotion--and the
+result was an absolute blank.
+
+And all the while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the
+road--a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A
+dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet
+beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that
+pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like
+the left-behind cottage, the road became unexpectedly lonely and
+discouraging.
+
+"The devil take them both!" she sputtered at last. "When one man
+refuses to be real at all, and the other pesters ye with being too
+real--'tis time to quit their company and let them fetch up where and
+how they like."
+
+But an O'Connell is never a quitter; and deep down in Patsy's heart
+was the determination to see the end of the road for all three of
+them--if fate only granted the chance.
+
+She came to a cross-roads at length. She had spied it from afar and
+hailed it as the end of her troubles; now she would learn the right
+way to Arden. But Patsy reckoned without chance--or some one else.
+The sign-boards had all been ripped from their respective places on a
+central post and lay propped up against its base. There was little
+information in them for Patsy as she read: "Petersham, five miles;
+Lebanon, twelve miles; Arden, seven miles--"
+
+The last sign went spinning across the road, and Patsy dropped on a
+near-by stone with the anguish of a great tragedian. "Seven
+miles--seven miles! I'm as near to it and I know as much about it as
+when I started three days ago. Sure, I feel like a mule, just, on a
+treadmill, with Billy Burgeman in the hopper."
+
+A feeling of utter helplessness took possession of her; it was as if
+her experiences, her actions, her very words and emotions, were
+controlled by an unseen power. Impulse might have precipitated her
+into the adventure, but since her feet had trod the first stretch of
+the road to Arden chance had sat somewhere, chuckling at his own
+comedy--making, while he pulled her hither and yon, like a marionette
+on a wire. Verily chance was still chuckling at the incongruity of
+his stage setting: A girl pursuing a strange man, and a strange
+sheriff pursuing the girl, and neither having an inkling of the
+pursuit or the reason for it.
+
+On one thing her mind clinched fast, however: she would at least sit
+where she was until some one came by who could put her right, once
+and for all; rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief--she would stop
+whoever came first.
+
+The arpeggio of an automobile horn brought her to her feet; the next
+moment the machine careened into sight and Patsy flagged it from the
+middle of the road, the lines of her face set in grim determination.
+
+"Would you kindly tell me--" she was beginning when a girl in the
+tonneau cut her short:
+
+"Why, it's Patsy O'Connell! How in the name of your blessed Saint
+Patrick did you ever get so far from home?"
+
+The car was full of young people, but the girl who had spoken was the
+only one who looked at all familiar. Patsy's mind groped out of the
+present into the past; it was all a blind alley, however, and led
+nowhere.
+
+The girl, seeing her bewilderment, helped her out. "Don't you
+remember, I was with Marjorie Schuyler in Dublin when you were all so
+jolly kind to us? I'm Janet Payne--those awful 'Spitsburger
+Paynes'"--and the girl's laugh rang out contagiously.
+
+The laugh swept Patsy's mind out into the open. She reached out and
+gripped the girl's hand. "Sure, I remember. But it's a long way from
+Dublin, and my memory is slower at hearkening back than my heart. A
+brave day to all of you." And her smile greeted the carful
+indiscriminately.
+
+"Oh!"--the girl was apologetic--"how beastly rude I am! I'm
+forgetting that you don't know everybody as well as everybody knows
+you. Jean Lewis, Mrs. Dempsy Carter, Dempsy Carter, Gregory Jessup,
+and Jay Clinton--Miss Patricia O'Connell, of the Irish National
+Players. We are all very much at your service--including the car,
+which is not mine, but the Dempsy Carters'."
+
+"Shall we kidnap Miss O'Connell?" suggested the owner. "She appears
+an easy victim."
+
+Janet Payne clapped her hands, but Patsy shook a decided negative.
+"That's the genius of the Irish," she laughed; "they look easy till
+you hold them up. I'm bound for Arden, and must make it by the
+quickest road if you'll point it out to me."
+
+"Why, of course--Arden; that accounts for you perfectly. Stupid that
+I didn't think of it at once. What part are you playing?" Janet Payne
+accompanied the question with unmistakable eagerness.
+
+Patsy shot a shrewd glance at the girl. Was she indulging in
+good-natured banter, or had she learned through Marjorie Schuyler of
+Patsy's self-imposed quest, and was seeking information in figurative
+speech? Patsy decided in favor of the former and answered it in kind:
+"Faith! I'm not sure whether I've been cast for the duke's
+daughter--or the fool. I can tell ye better after I reach Arden." And
+she turned abruptly as if she would be gone.
+
+But the girl held her back. "No, you don't. We are not going to lose
+you like that. We'll kidnap you, as Dempsy suggested, till after
+lunch; then we'll motor you back to Arden. You'll get there just
+about as soon."
+
+Patsy had not the slightest intention of yielding; her mind and her
+feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now;
+but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that
+scattered her resolutions like so much chaff.
+
+"You've simply got to come, Miss O'Connell." And he leaned over the
+side of the car in boyish enthusiasm. "Last summer Billy Burgeman
+used to read to me the parts of Marjorie's letters that told about
+you, and they were great! We were making up our minds to go to
+Ireland and see if you were real when your company came to America.
+After that Marjorie would never introduce us after the plays, just to
+be contrary. You wouldn't have the heart to grudge us a little
+acquaintanceship now, would you?"
+
+"Billy Burgeman," repeated Patsy. "Do you know him?"
+
+Dempsy Carter interposed. "They're chums, Miss O'Connell. I'll wager
+there isn't a soul on earth that knows Billy as well as Greg does."
+
+"That's hard on Marjorie, isn't it?" asked Janet Payne.
+
+"Oh, hang Marjorie!" The sincerity of Gregory Jessup's emotion
+somewhat excused his outburst.
+
+"Why, I thought they were betrothed!" Patsy looked innocent.
+
+"They were. What they are now--Heaven only knows! Marjorie Schuyler
+has gone to China, and Billy has dropped off the face of the earth."
+
+A sudden silence fell on the cross-roads. It was Patsy who broke it
+at last. "Well?" A composite, interrogative stare came from the
+carful. Patsy laughed bewitchingly. "For a crowd of rascally
+kidnappers, you are the slowest I ever saw. Troth, in Ireland they'd
+have it done in half the time."
+
+The next instant Patsy was lifted bodily inside, and, amid a general
+burst of merriment, the car swung down the road.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a picnic lunch--an elaborate affair put up in a hamper, a
+fireless cooker, and a thermos basket; and it was spread on a tiny,
+fir-covered peninsula jutting out into a diminutive lake. It was an
+enchanting spot and a delicious lunch, with good company to boot;
+but, to her annoyance, Patsy found herself continually comparing it
+unfavorably with a certain vagabond breakfast garnished with yellow
+lady's-slippers, musicianed by throstles, and served by a tinker.
+
+"Something is on your mind, or do you find our American manners and
+food too hard to digest comfortably?" Gregory Jessup had curled up
+unceremoniously at her feet, balancing a caviar sandwich, a Camembert
+cheese, and a bottle of ale with extraordinary dexterity.
+
+"I was thinking about--Billy Burgeman."
+
+He cast a furtive look toward the others beyond them. They seemed
+engrossed for the moment in some hectic discussion over fashions, and
+he dropped his voice to a confidential pitch: "I can't talk Billy
+with the others; I'm too much cut up over the whole thing to stand
+hearing them hold an autopsy over Billy's character and motives." He
+stopped abruptly and scanned Patsy's face. "I believe a chap could
+turn his mind inside out with you, though, and you'd keep the
+contents as faithfully as a safe-deposit vault."
+
+Patsy smiled appreciatively. "Faith! you make me feel like Saint
+Martin's chest that Satan himself couldn't be opening."
+
+"What did he have in it?"
+
+"Some good Christian souls."
+
+"Contents don't tally--mine are some very un-Christian thoughts." He
+abandoned the sandwich and cheese, and settled himself to the more
+serious business of balancing his remarks. "Billy and I work for the
+same engineering firm; he walked out for lunch Tuesday and no one has
+seen him since--unless it's Marjorie Schuyler. Couldn't get anything
+out of the old man when I first went to see him, and now he's too ill
+to see any one. Marjorie said she really didn't know where he was,
+and quit town the next day. Now maybe they don't either of them know
+what's happened any more than I do; but I think it's infernally queer
+for a man to disappear and say nothing to his father, the girl he's
+engaged to, or his best friend. Don't you?"
+
+Patsy's past training stood stanchly by her. She played the part of
+the politely interested listener--nothing more--and merely nodded her
+head.
+
+"You see," the man went on, "Billy has a confoundedly queer sense of
+honor; he can stretch it at times to cover nearly everybody's
+calamities and the fool shortcomings of all his acquaintances. Why,
+it wasn't a month ago a crowd of us from the works were lunching
+together, and the talk came around to speculating. Billy's hard
+against it on principle, but he happened to say that if he was going
+in for it at all he'd take cotton. What was in Billy's mind was not
+the money in it, but the chance to give the South a boost. Well, one
+of the fellows took it as a straight tip to get rich from the old
+man's son and put in all he had saved up to be married on; lost it
+and squealed. And Billy--the big chump--claimed he was responsible
+for it--that, being the son of his father, he ought to know enough to
+hold his tongue on some subjects. He made it good to the fellow. I
+happen to know, for it took every cent of his own money and his next
+month's salary into the bargain--and that he borrowed from me."
+
+"Wouldn't his father have helped him out?"
+
+Gregory Jessup gave a bitter little laugh. "You don't know the old
+man or you wouldn't ask. He is just about as soft-hearted and human
+as a Labrador winter. I've known Billy since we were both little
+shavers--and, talk about the curse of poverty! It's a saintly
+benediction compared to a fortune like that and life with the man who
+made it."
+
+"And--himself, Billy--what does he think of money?"
+
+"I'll tell you what he said once. He had dropped in late after a big
+dinner where he had been introduced to some one as the fellow who was
+going to inherit sixty millions some day. Phew! but he was sore! He
+walked miles--in ten-foot laps--about my den, while he cursed his
+father's money from Baffin Bay to Cape Horn. 'I tell you, Greg,' he
+finished up with, 'I want enough to keep the cramps out of life,
+that's all; enough to help the next fellow who's down on his luck;
+enough to give the woman I marry a home and not a residence to live
+in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for
+them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough
+myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions,
+I'd like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.'"
+
+For a moment Patsy's eyes danced; but the next, something tumbled out
+of her memory and quieted them. "Then why in the name of Saint
+Anthony did he choose to marry Marjorie Schuyler?"
+
+"That does seem funny, I know, but that's a totally different side of
+Billy. You see, all his life he's been falling in with people who
+made up to him just for his money, and his father had a confounded
+way of reminding him that he was bound to be plucked unless he kept
+his wits sharp and distrusted every one. It made Billy sick, and yet
+it had its effect. He's always been mighty shy with girls--reckon his
+father brought him up on tales of rich chaps and modern Circes.
+Anyway, when he met Marjorie Schuyler it was different--she had too
+much money of her own to make his any particular attraction, and he
+finally gave in that she liked him just for himself. That was a proud
+day for him, poor old Bill!"
+
+"And did she--could she really love him?" Patsy asked the question of
+herself rather than the man beside her.
+
+But he answered it promptly: "I don't believe Marjorie Schuyler has
+anything to love with; it was overlooked when she was made. That's
+what's worrying me. If he's got into a scrape he'd tell Marjorie the
+first thing; and she's not the understanding, forgiving kind. He
+hasn't any money; he wouldn't go to his father; and because he's
+borrowed from me once, he's that idiotic he wouldn't do it again. If
+Marjorie has given him his papers he's in a jolly blue funk and
+perfectly capable of going off where he'll never be heard of again.
+Hang it all! I don't see why he couldn't have come to me?"
+
+Patsy said nothing while he replenished her plate and helped himself
+to another sandwich. At last she asked, casually, "Did the two of you
+ever have a disagreement over Marjorie Schuyler?"
+
+"He asked me once just what I thought of her, and I told him. We
+never discussed her again."
+
+"No?" Inwardly Patsy was tabulating why Billy Burgeman had not gone
+to his friend when Marjorie Schuyler failed him. He would hardly have
+cared to criticize the shortcomings of the girl he loved with the man
+who had already discovered them.
+
+"What are you two jabbering about?" Janet Payne had left her group
+and the hectic argument over fashions.
+
+"Sure, we're threshing out whether it's the Irish or the suffragettes
+will rule England when the war is over."
+
+"Well, which is it?"
+
+"Faith! the answer's so simple I'm ashamed to give it. The women will
+rule England--that's an easy matter; but the Irish will rule the
+women."
+
+"Then you are one of the old-fashioned kind who approves of a lord
+and master?" Gregory Jessup looked up at her quizzically.
+
+"'Tis the new fashion you're meaning; having gone out so long since,
+'tis barely coming in yet. I'd not give a farthing for the man who
+couldn't lead me; only, God help him! if he ever leaves his hands off
+the halter."
+
+The laugh that followed gave Patsy time to think. There was one more
+question she must be asking before the others joined them and the
+conversation became general. She turned to Janet Payne with a little
+air of anxious inquiry.
+
+"Maybe you'd ask the rascally villain who kidnapped me, when he has
+it in his mind to keep his promise and fetch me to Arden?"
+
+As the girl left them Patsy turned toward Gregory Jessup again and
+asked, softly: "Supposing Billy Burgeman has fallen among strangers?
+If they saw he was in need of friendliness, would it be so hard to do
+him a kindness?"
+
+The man shook his head. "The hardest thing in the world. Billy
+Burgeman has been proud and lonely all his life, and it's an infernal
+combination. You may know he's out and out aching for a bit of
+sympathy, but you never offer it; you don't dare. We could never get
+him to own up as a little shaver how neglected and lonely he was and
+how he hated to stay in that horrible, gloomy Fifth Avenue house. It
+wasn't until he had grown up that he told me he used to come and play
+as often as they would let him--just because mother used to kiss him
+good-by as she did her own boys."
+
+Gregory Jessup looked beyond the firs to the little lake, and there
+was that in his face which showed that he was wrestling with a
+treasured memory. When he spoke again his voice sounded as if he had
+had to grip it hard against a sign of possible emotion.
+
+"You know Billy's father never gave him an allowance; he didn't
+believe in it--wouldn't trust Billy with a cent. Poor little
+shaver--never had anything to treat with at school, the way the rest
+of the boys did; and never even had car-fare--always walked, rain or
+shine, unless his father took him along with him in the machine.
+Billy used to say even in those days he liked walking better. Mother
+died in the winter--snowy time--when Billy was about twelve; and he
+borrowed a shovel from a corner grocer and cleared stoops all
+afternoon until he'd made enough to buy two white roses. Father
+hadn't broken down all day--wouldn't let us children show a tear; but
+when Billy came in with those roses--well, it was the children who
+finally had to cheer father up."
+
+Patsy sprang to her feet with a little cry. "I must be going." She
+turned to the others, a ring of appeal in her voice. "Can't we hurry
+a bit? There's a deal of work at Arden to be done, and no one but
+myself to be doing it."
+
+"Rehearsals?" asked Janet Payne.
+
+And Patsy, unheeding, nodded her head.
+
+There was a babel of nonsense in the returning car. Patsy contributed
+her share the while her mind was busy building over again into a
+Balmacaan coat and plush hat the semblance of a man.
+
+"Sure, I'm not saying I can make out his looks or the color of his
+eyes and hair, but he's real, for all that. Holy Saint Patrick, but
+he's a real man at last, and I'm liking him!" She smiled with deep
+contentment.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY
+
+
+Having established the permanent reality of Billy Burgeman to her own
+satisfaction, Patsy's mind went racing off to conjure up all the
+possible things Billy and the tinker might think of each other as
+soon as chance should bring them together. Whereas it was perfectly
+consistent that Billy should shun the consolation and companionship
+of his own world, he might follow after vagabond company as a thirsty
+dog trails water; and who could slake that thirst better than the
+tinker? For a second time that day she pictured the two swinging down
+the open road together; and for the second time she pulled a wry
+little smile.
+
+The car was nearing the cross-roads from which Patsy had been
+originally kidnapped. She looked up to identify it, and saw a second
+car speeding toward them from the opposite direction, while between
+the two plodded a solitary little figure, coming toward them,
+supported by a mammoth pilgrim staff. It was a boy, apparently
+conscious of but the one car--theirs; and he swerved to their
+left--straight into the path of the car behind--to let them pass.
+They sounded their horns, waved their hands, and shouted warnings. It
+seemed wholly unbelievable that he should not understand or that the
+other car would not stop. But the unbelievable happened; it does
+sometimes.
+
+Before Gregory Jessup could jump from their machine the other car had
+struck and the boy was tossed like a bundle of empty clothing to the
+roadside beyond. The nightmarish suddenness of it all held them
+speechless while they gaped at the car's driver, who gave one
+backward glance and redoubled his speed. Patsy was the first out of
+the tonneau, and she reached the boy almost as soon as Gregory
+Jessup.
+
+"Damn them! That's the second time in my life I've seen a machine run
+some one down and sneak--"
+
+He broke off at Patsy's sharp cry: "Holy Mary keep him! 'Tis the wee
+lad from Lebanon!"
+
+By this time the rest of the carful had gathered about them; and
+Dempsy Carter--being a good Catholic--bared his head and crossed
+himself.
+
+"'Tis wee Joseph of Lebanon," Patsy repeated, dully; and then to
+Dempsy Carter, "Aye, make a prayer for him; but ye'd best do it
+driving like the devil for the doctor."
+
+They left at once with her instructions to get the nearest doctor
+first, and then to go after the boy's parents. Gregory Jessup stayed
+behind with her, and together they tried to lift the still, little
+figure onto some rugs and pillows. Then Patsy crept closer and wound
+her arms about him, chafing his cheeks and hands and watching for
+some sign of returning life.
+
+The man stood silently beside them, holding the pilgrim staff, while
+his eyes wandered from Patsy to the child and back to Patsy again,
+her face full of harboring tenderness and a great suffering as she
+gathered the little boy into her arms and pressed her warm cheek
+against the cold one.
+
+Only once during their long wait was the silence broken. "'Tis almost
+as if he'd slipped over the border," Patsy whispered. "Maybe he's
+there in the gray dusk--a wee shadow soul waiting for death to loosen
+its wings and send it lilting into the blue of the Far Country."
+
+"How did you happen to know him?"
+
+"Chance, just. I stopped to tell him a tale of a wandering hero and
+he--" She broke off with a little moan. "_Ochone!_ poor wee Joseph!
+did I send ye forth on a brave adventure only to bring ye to this?"
+Her fingers brushed the damp curls from his forehead. "Laddy, laddy,
+why didn't ye mind the promise I laid on ye?"
+
+The doctor was kindly and efficient, but professionally
+non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at
+once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so
+as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as
+carefully as he could down the road leading to the nearest
+farm-house.
+
+There they were met with a generous warmth of sympathy and
+hospitality; the spare chamber was opened, and the farm wife bustled
+about, turning down the bed and bringing what comforts the house
+possessed. The doctor stayed as long as he could; but the stork was
+flying at the other end of the township, and he was forced to leave
+Patsy in charge, with abundant instructions.
+
+Soon after his leaving the Dempsy Carters returned without Joseph's
+parents; they had gone to town and were not expected home until
+"chore time."
+
+"All right," Patsy sighed. "Now ye had best all go your ways and I'll
+bide till morning."
+
+"But can you?" Janet Payne asked it, wonderingly. "I thought you said
+you had to be in Arden to-day?"
+
+A smile, whimsical and baffling, crept to the corners of Patsy's
+mouth. "Sure, life is crammed with things ye think have to be done
+to-day till they're matched against a sudden greater need. Chance and
+I started the wee lad on his journey, and 'twas meant I should see
+him safe to the end, I'm thinking. Good-by."
+
+Gregory Jessup lingered a moment behind the others; his eyes were
+suspiciously red, and the hands that gripped Patsy's shook the least
+bit. "I wanted to say something: If--if you should ever happen to run
+up against Billy Burgeman--anywhere--don't be afraid to do him a
+kindness. He--he wouldn't mind it from you."
+
+Patsy leaned against the door and watched him go. "There's another
+good lad. I'd like to be finding him again, too, some day." She
+pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she
+would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings.
+"Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has
+seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of
+it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably
+true to the finish. But to-night--to-night--'tis all a tangle of
+lanes and byways. There's no sign-post ahead--and God alone knows
+where it's leading."
+
+She went back to the spare chamber and took up her watching by the
+bedside; and for the rest of that waning day she sat as motionless
+as everything else in the room. The farm wife came and went softly,
+in between her preparations for supper. When it was ready she tried
+her best to urge Patsy down-stairs for a mouthful.
+
+But the girl refused to stir. "I couldn't. The wee lad might come
+back while I was gone and find no one to reach him a hand or smile
+him a welcome."
+
+A little later, as the dark gathered, she begged two candles and
+stood them on the stand beside the bed. Something in her movements or
+the flickering light must have pierced his stupor, for Joseph moaned
+slightly and in a moment opened his eyes.
+
+Patsy leaned over him tenderly; could she only keep him content until
+the mother came and guard the mysterious borderland against all fear
+or pain, "Laddy, laddy," she coaxed, "do ye mind me--now?"
+
+The veriest wisp of a smile answered her.
+
+"And were ye for playing Jack yourself, tramping off to find the
+castle with a window in it for every day in the year?" Her voice was
+full of gentle, teasing laughter, the voice of a mother playing with
+a very little child. "I'm hoping ye didn't forget the promise--ye
+didn't forget to ask for the blessing before ye went, now?"
+
+No sound came; but the boy's lips framed a silent "No." In another
+moment his eyes were drooping sleepily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night had come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and
+katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the
+kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away
+murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or
+team upon the road; but there was none.
+
+Again the lids fluttered and opened; this time Joseph smiled
+triumphantly. "I thought--p'r'aps--I hadn't found you--after
+all--there was--so many ways--you might ha' went." He moistened his
+lips. "At the cross-roads--I wasn't quite--sure which to be takin',
+but I took--the right one, I did--didn't I?"
+
+There was a ring of pride in the words, and Patsy moistened her lips.
+Something clutched at her throat that seemed to force the words back.
+"Aye," she managed to say at last.
+
+"An' I've--found you now--you'll have to--promise me not to go
+back--not where they can get you. Si Perkins said--as how they'd soon
+forget--if you just stayed away long enough." The boy looked at her
+happily. "Let's--let's keep on--an' see what lies over the next
+hill."
+
+To Patsy this was all an unintelligible wandering of mind; she must
+humor it. "All right, laddy, let's keep on. Maybe we'll be finding a
+wood full of wild creatures, or an ocean full of ships."
+
+"P'r'aps. But I'd rather--have it a big--big city. I never--saw a
+city."
+
+"Aye, 'tis a city then"--Patsy's tone carried conviction--"the
+grandest city ever built; and the towers will be touching the clouds,
+and the streets will be white as sea-foam; and there will be a great
+stretch of green meadow for fairs--"
+
+"An' circuses?"
+
+"What else but circuses! And at the entrance there will be a gate
+with tall white columns--"
+
+The sound Patsy had been listening for came at last through the open
+windows: the pad-pad-pad of horses' hoofs coming fast.
+
+Joseph looked past Patsy and saw for the first time the candles by
+his bed. His eyes sparkled. "They _are_--woppin' big columns--an' at
+night--they have lighted lamps on top--all shinin'. Don't they?"
+
+"Aye, to point the way in the dark."
+
+"It's dark--now." The boy's voice lagged in a tired fashion.
+
+"Maybe we'd best hurry--then."
+
+A door slammed below, and there was a rustle of tongues.
+
+"Who'll be 'tendin' the city gates?" asked Joseph.
+
+"Who but the gatekeeper?"
+
+Muffled feet crept up the stairs.
+
+"Will he let us in?"
+
+"He'll let ye in, laddy; I might be too much of a stranger."
+
+"But I could speak for you. I--I wouldn't like--goin' in alone in the
+dark."
+
+"Bless ye! ye'd not be alone." Patsy's voice rang vibrant with
+gladness. "Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to
+the gate? Look yonder!"
+
+Joseph's eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they
+were, with beacon lamps capping each. "Who?"
+
+Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was
+only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.
+
+"Why--'course it's mother--sure's shootin'!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the
+spare chamber for Joseph's mother to come out.
+
+"I've been praying ye'd not hate me for the tale I told the little
+lad that day, the tale that brought him--yonder. And if it isn't
+overlate, I'd like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night."
+
+The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. "I cal'ate
+there's no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and
+split nigh a cord o' wood that night--must ha' taken him 'most till
+mornin'." She paused an instant. "Didn't--he"--she nodded her head
+toward the closed door behind her--"never tell you what brought him?"
+
+"Naught but that he wanted to find me."
+
+"He believed in you," the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless
+voice: "I cal'ate I couldn't hate you. I never saw any one make death
+so--sweet like--as you done for--him."
+
+Patsy spread her hands deprecatingly. "Why shouldn't it be sweet
+like? Faith! is it anything but a bit of the very road we've been
+traveling since we were born, the bit that lies over the hill and out
+of sight?" She took the woman's work-worn hands in hers. "'Tis
+terrible, losing a little lad; but 'tis more terrible never having
+one. God and Mary be with ye!"
+
+When Patsy left the house a few minutes later Joseph's pilgrim staff
+was in her hands, and she stopped on the threshold an instant to ask
+the way of Joseph's father.
+
+The good man was dazed with his grief and he directed Patsy in terms
+of his own home-going: "Keep on, and take the first turn to your
+right."
+
+So Patsy kept on instead of returning to the cross-roads; and chance
+scored another point in his comedy and continued chuckling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Joseph's father went back to the spare chamber.
+
+"'S she gone?" inquired Joseph's mother.
+
+"Yep."
+
+"You know, the boy believed in her."
+
+"Yep, I know."
+
+"Well, I cal'ate we've got to, too."
+
+"Sure thing!"
+
+"Ye'll never say a word, then--about seein' her; nuthin' to give the
+sheriff a hint where she might be?"
+
+"Why, mother!" The man laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at
+her with accusing eyes. "Hain't you known me long enough to know I
+couldn't tell on any one who'd been good to--" He broke off with a
+cough. "And what's more, do you think any one who could take our
+little boy's hand and lead him, as you might say, straight to
+heaven--would be a thief? No, siree!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim
+staff gripped tightly in her hand. She clung to it as the one
+tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of
+her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth
+had swallowed him, leaving behind no reason for his going, no hope of
+his coming again; Billy Burgeman was still but a flimsy promise; and
+Joseph had outstripped them both, passing beyond her farthest vision.
+Small wonder, then, that the road was lonely and haunted for Patsy,
+and that she plodded along shorn of all buoyancy.
+
+Her imagination began playing tricks with her. Twice it seemed as if
+she could feel a little lad's hand, warm and eager, curled under hers
+about the staff; another time she found herself gazing through
+half-shut eyes at a strange lad--a lad of twelve--who walked ahead
+for a space, carrying two great white roses; and once she glanced up
+quickly and saw the tinker coming toward her, head thrown back and
+laughing. Her wits had barely time to check her answering laugh and
+hands outstretching, when he faded into empty winding road.
+
+The morning was uneventful. Patsy stopped but once--to trundle a
+perambulator laden with washing and twins for its small conductor, a
+mite of a girl who looked almost too frail to breast the weight of a
+doll's carriage.
+
+Even Patsy puffed under the strain of the burden. "How do you do it?"
+she gasped.
+
+"Well, I started when them babies was tiny and the washin' was small;
+an' they both growed so gradual I didn't notice--much. An' ma don't
+make me hurry none."
+
+"How many children are there?"
+
+"Nine. Last's just come. Pa says he didn't look on him as no
+blessin', but ma says the Lord must provide--an' if it's babies, then
+it's babies." She stopped and clasped her hands after the fashion of
+an ancient grandmother tottering in the nineties: "Land o' goodness,
+I do think an empty cradle's an awful dismal thing to have round.
+Don't you?"
+
+Patsy agreed, and a moment later unloaded the twins and the washing
+for the child at her doorstep.
+
+Soon after this she caught her first glimpse of the town she was
+making. "If luck will only turn stage-manager," she thought, "and put
+Billy Burgeman in the center of the scene--handy, why, I'll promise
+not to murder my lines or play under."
+
+It was not luck, however, but chance, still pulling the wires; and
+accordingly he managed Patsy's entrance as he wished.
+
+The town had one main street, like Lebanon, and in front of the
+post-office in a two-seated car sat a familiar figure. There was the
+Balmacaan coat and the round plush hat; and to Patsy, impulsive and
+heart-strong, it sufficed. She ran nearly the length of the street in
+her eagerness to reach him.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF COMEDY
+
+
+"A brave day to ye!" A little bit of everything that made Patsy was
+wrapped in the smile she gave the man in the Balmacaan coat standing
+by the wheel-guard of the car before the town post-office, a hand on
+the front seat. "Maybe ye're not knowing it, but it's a rare good day
+for us both. If you'll only take me for a spin in your car I'll tell
+you what brings me--and who I am--if you haven't that guessed
+already."
+
+Plainly the occupant of the coat and the car was too much taken by
+surprise to guess. He simply stared; and by that stare conveyed a
+heart-sinking impression to Patsy. She looked at the puffed eyes and
+the grim, unyielding line of the mouth, and she wanted to run. It
+took all the O'Connell stubbornness, coupled with the things Gregory
+Jessup had told her about his friend, to keep her feet firm to the
+sidewalk and her resolution.
+
+"Maybe," she thought, "he's just taken on the look of a rascal
+because he thinks the world has written him down one. That's often
+the way with a man; and often it takes but a bit of kindness to
+change it. If I could make him smile--now--"
+
+Her next remark accomplished this, but it did not mend matters a
+whit. Patsy's heart turned over disconsolately; and she was
+safety-locking her wits to keep them from scattering when she made
+her final plea.
+
+"I'm not staying long, and I want to know you; there's something I
+have to be saying before I go on my way. 'Twould be easiest if you'd
+take me for a ride in your car; we could talk quieter there."
+
+She tried to finish with a reasonably cheerful look, but it was a
+tragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-office
+beyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenly
+rose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant's
+intensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank away
+perceptibly.
+
+In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger and
+more--pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman had
+lost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen in
+with foul company.
+
+There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust
+and failure--natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion
+and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.
+She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank God!--there were
+only a few.
+
+She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just
+what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him
+understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite
+of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested
+kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was
+a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who
+could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead
+friend was too fine to be lost out of life's credit-sheet.
+
+She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she
+climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim
+staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for
+his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter,
+and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the
+doorway:
+
+"Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with--a lady." There
+was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.
+
+"Please take a quiet road--where there will not be much passing,"
+commanded Patsy.
+
+She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were
+well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands
+still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the
+king's English--she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy
+of her own tongue.
+
+"I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you
+this way. But when a man's family and betrothed fail him--why, some
+one must--make it up--"
+
+He turned fiercely. "How did you know that?"
+
+"I--she--Never mind; I know, that's all. And I came, thinking maybe
+you'd be glad--"
+
+"Of another?" he laughed coarsely, looking her over with an
+appraising scrutiny. "Well, a fellow might have a worse--substitute."
+
+Patsy crimsoned. It seemed incredible that the man she had listened
+to that day in Marjorie Schuyler's den, who had then gripped her
+sympathies and thereby pulled her after him in spite of past illness
+and all common sense, should be the man speaking now. And yet--what
+was it Gregory Jessup had said about him? Had he not implied that old
+King Midas had long ago warped his son's trust in women until he had
+come to look upon them all as modern Circes? And gradually shame for
+herself changed into pity for him. What a shabby performance life
+must seem to such as he!
+
+She had an irresistible desire to take him with her behind the scenes
+and show him what it really was; to point out how with a change of
+line here, a new cue there, and a different drop behind; with a
+choice of fellow-players, and better lights, and the right spirit
+back of it all--what a good thing he could make of his particular
+part. But would he see--could she make him understand? It was worth
+trying.
+
+"You are every bit wrong," she said, evenly. "Look at me. Do I look
+like an adventuress? And haven't you ever had anybody kind to you
+simply because they had a preference for kindness?"
+
+The two looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled at
+minimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched under
+the blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop a
+hundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing.
+
+"Well," she heard herself saying at last, "don't you think you can
+believe in me?"
+
+The man laughed again, coarsely. "Believe in you? That's precisely
+what I'm doing this minute--believing in your cleverness and a deuced
+pretty way with you. Now don't get mad, my dear. You are all
+daughters of Eve, and your intentions are very innocent--of course."
+
+Pity and sympathy left Patsy like starved pensioners. The eyes
+looking into his blazed with righteous anger and a hating distrust;
+they carried to him a stronger, more direct message than words could
+have done. His answer was to double the speed of the car.
+
+"Stop the car!" she demanded.
+
+"Oh, ho! we're getting scared, are we? Repenting of our haste?" The
+grim line of his mouth became more sinister. "No man relishes a
+woman's contempt, and he generally makes her pay when he can. Now I
+came for pleasure, and I'm going to get it." An arm shot around Patsy
+and held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where he
+wished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. "Remember,
+I can prove you asked me to take you--and it was your choice--this
+nice, quiet spin!"
+
+She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously he
+relaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint and
+muscle.
+
+"Why didn't you scream?" he sneered at length.
+
+"I'm keeping my breath--till there's need of it."
+
+Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road;
+the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signs
+of human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see a
+suspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed for
+repairs--something, anything to bring to an end this hideous,
+nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all.
+She--Patricia O'Connell--who would have starved rather than play
+cheap, sordid melodrama--had been tricked by chance into becoming an
+actual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt no
+fear--she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the man
+beside her--and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger had
+crowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps--back of
+everything--she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency and
+good in him.
+
+Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. "Well, what's in
+your mind?" he snapped.
+
+"Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your father
+throw so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everything
+about you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came to
+have a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses."
+
+"What in thunder are you talking--"
+
+But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he had
+given up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his hold
+and was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantically to a
+figure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was a
+grotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of its
+head.
+
+"Good God!" muttered the man in the car, stiffening.
+
+Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed;
+the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge,
+and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinker
+was upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.
+
+Patsy sank back on the seat, white and trembling, as she watched the
+instant's grappling of the two, followed by a lurching tumble over
+the side of the car to the planking. The fall knocked them apart, and
+for the space of a few quick breaths they half rose and faced each
+other--the one almost crazed with fury, the other steady, calm, but
+terrifyingly determined.
+
+Before Patsy could move they were upon each other again--rolling
+about in the dust, clutching at each other's throat--now half under
+the car, now almost through the girders of the bridge, with Patsy's
+voice crying a warning. Again they were on their feet, grappling and
+hitting blindly; then down in the dust, rolling and clutching.
+
+It was plain melodrama of the most banal form; and the most
+convincing part of it all was the evident personal enmity that
+directed each blow. Somehow it was borne in upon Patsy that her share
+in the quarrel was an infinitesimal part; it was the old, old scene
+in the fourth act: the hero paying up the villain for all past
+scores.
+
+Like the scene in the fourth act, it came to an end at last. The time
+came when no answering blow met the tinker's, when the hand that
+gripped his throat relaxed and the body back of it went down under
+him--breathless and inert. Patsy climbed out of the car to make room
+for the stowing away of its owner. He was conscious, but past
+articulate speech and thoroughly beaten; and the tinker kindly turned
+the car about for him and started him slowly off, so as to rid the
+road of him, as Patsy said. It looked possible, with a careful
+harboring of strength and persistence, for him to reach eventually
+the starting-point and his friend of the post-office. As his trail of
+dust lengthened between them Patsy gave a sigh of relieved content
+and turned to the tinker.
+
+"Faith, ye are a sight for a sore heart." Her hand slid into his
+outstretched one. "I'll make a bargain with ye: if ye'll forgive and
+forget the unfair things I said to ye that night I'll not stay hurt
+over your leaving without notice the next morning."
+
+"It's a bargain," but he winced as he said it. "It seems as if our
+meetings were dependent on a certain amount of--of physical
+disablement." He smiled reassuringly. "I don't really mind in the
+least. I'd stand for knockout blows down miles of road, if they would
+bring you back--every time."
+
+"Don't joke!" Patsy covered her face. "If--if ye only knew--what it
+means to have ye standing there this minute!" She drew in her breath
+quickly; it sounded dangerously like a sob. "If ye only knew what ye
+have saved me from--and what I am owing ye--" Her hands fell, and she
+looked at him with a sudden shy concern. "Poor lad! Here ye are--a
+fit subject for a hospital, and I'm wasting time talking instead of
+trying to mend ye up. Do ye think there might be water hereabouts
+where we could wash off some of that--grease paint?"
+
+But the tinker was contemplating his right foot; he was standing on
+the other. "Don't bother about those scratches; they go rather well
+with the clothes, don't you think? It's this ankle that's bothering
+me; I must have turned it when I jumped."
+
+"Can't ye walk on it? Ye can lean on this"--she passed him the
+pilgrim staff--"and we can go slowly. Bad luck to the man! If I had
+known ye were hurt I'd have made ye leave him in the road and we'd
+have driven his machine back to Arden for him." She looked longingly
+after the trail of dust.
+
+"Your ethics are questionable, but your geography is worse. Arden
+isn't back there."
+
+"What do ye mean? Why, I saw Arden, back yonder, with my own
+eyes--not an hour ago."
+
+"No, you didn't. You saw Dansville; Arden is over there," and the
+tinker's hand pointed over his shoulder at right angles to the road.
+
+"Holy Saint Branden!" gasped Patsy. "Maybe ye'll have the boldness,
+then, to tell me I'm still seven miles from it?"
+
+"You are." But this time he did not laugh--a smile was the utmost he
+could manage with the pain in his ankle.
+
+Patsy looked as if she might have laughed or cried with equal ease.
+"Seven miles--seven miles! Tramp the road for four days and be just
+as near the end as I was at the start--" An expression of
+enlightenment shot into her face. "Faith, I must have been going in a
+circle, then."
+
+The tinker nodded an affirmative.
+
+"And who in the name of reason was the man in the car?"
+
+"That's what I'd like to know; the unmitigated nerve of him!" he
+finished to himself. His chin set itself squarely; his face had grown
+as white as Patsy's had been and his eyes became doggedly determined.
+"If it isn't a piece of impertinence, I'd like to ask how you
+happened to be with him, that way?"
+
+Patsy flushed. "I'm thinking ye've earned the right to an answer. I
+took him for the lad I was looking for. I thought the place was
+Arden, and--and the clothes were the same."
+
+"The clothes!" the tinker repeated it in the same bewildered way that
+had been his when Patsy first found him; then he turned and grasped
+Patsy's shoulders with a sudden, inexplicable intensity. "What's the
+name of the lad--the lad you're after?"
+
+"I'll tell you," said Patsy, slowly, "if you'll tell me what you did
+with my brown clothes that morning before you left."
+
+And the answer to both questions was a blank, baffling stare.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY
+
+
+The railroad ran under the suspension-bridge. Patsy could see the
+station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it
+as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured.
+The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten
+minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the
+telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished--after a fashion,
+and with persistent rebelling on the tinker's part and scolding on
+Patsy's. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to
+physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering hands,
+threw it over the bridge, and started down the road at his old,
+swinging stride.
+
+"Is it after more lady's-slippers ye're dandering?" called Patsy.
+
+"More likely it's after a pair of those wingèd shoes of Perseus; I'll
+need them." But his stride soon broke to a walk and then to a
+lagging limp. "It's no use," he said at last; "I might keep on for
+another half-mile, a mile at the most; but that's about all I'd be
+good for. You'll have to go on to Arden alone, and you can't miss it
+this time."
+
+Patsy stopped abruptly. "Why don't ye curse me for the trouble I have
+brought?" She considered both hands carefully for a minute, as if she
+expected to find in them the solution to the difficulty, then she
+looked up and away toward the rising woodland that marked Arden.
+
+"Do ye know," she said, wistfully, "I took the road, thinking I could
+mend trouble for that other lad; and instead it's trouble I've been
+making for every one--ye, Joseph, and I don't know how many more. And
+instead of doling kindness--why, I'm begging it. Now what's the
+meaning of it all? What keeps me failing?"
+
+"'There's a divinity that shapes'--" began the tinker.
+
+But Patsy cut him short. "Ye do know Willie Shakespeare!"
+
+He smiled, guiltily. "I'm afraid I do--known him a good many years."
+
+"He's grand company; best I know, barring tinkers." She turned
+impulsively and, standing on tiptoe, her fingers reached to the top
+of his shoulders. "See here, lad, ye can just give over thinking
+I'll go on alone. If I'm cast for melodrama, sure I'll play it
+according to the best rules; the villain has fled, the hero is hurt,
+and if I went now I'd be hissed by the gallery. I've got ye into
+trouble and I'll not leave ye till I see ye out of it--someway. Oh,
+there's lots of ways; I'm thinking them fast. Like as not a passing
+team or car would carry ye to Arden; or we might beg the loan of a
+horse for a bit from some kind-hearted farmer, and I could drive ye
+over and bring the horse back; or we'll ask a corner for ye at a
+farm-house till ye are fit to walk--"
+
+"We are in the wrong part of the country for any of those things to
+happen. Look about! Don't you see what a very different road it is
+from the one we took in the beginning?"
+
+Patsy looked and saw. So engrossed had she been in the incidents of
+the last hour or more that she had not observed the changing country.
+Here were no longer pastures, tilled fields, houses with neighboring
+barn-yards, and unclaimed woodland; no longer was the road fringed
+with stone walls or stump fencing. Well-rolled golf-links stretched
+away on either hand as far as they could see; and, beyond, through
+the trees, showed roofs of red tile and stained shingle; and trimmed
+hedges skirted everything.
+
+"'Tis the rich man's country," commented Patsy.
+
+"It is, and I'd crawl into a hole and starve before I'd take charity
+from one of them."
+
+"Sure and ye would. When a body's poor 'tis only the poor like
+himself he'd be asking help of. Don't I know! What's yonder house?"
+She broke off with a jerk and pointed ahead to a small building,
+sitting well back from the road, partly hidden in the surrounding
+clumps of trees.
+
+"It's a stable; house burned down last year and it hasn't been used
+by any one since."
+
+"And I'll wager it's as snug as a pocket inside--with fresh hay or
+straw, plenty to make a lad comfortable. Isn't that grand good luck
+for ye?"
+
+The tinker found it hard to echo Patsy's enthusiasm, but he did his
+best. "Of course; and it's just the place to leave a lad behind in
+when a lass has seven miles to tramp before she gets to the end of
+her journey."
+
+"Is that so?" Patsy's tone sounded suspiciously sarcastic. "Well,
+talking's not walking; supposing ye take the staff in one hand and
+lean your other on me, and we'll see can we make it before this time
+to-morrow."
+
+They made it in another hour, unobserved by the few straggling
+players on the links.
+
+The stable proved all Patsy had anticipated. She watched the tinker
+sink, exhausted, on the bedded hay, while she pulled down a forgotten
+horse-blanket from a near-by peg to throw over him; then she turned
+in a business-like manner back to the door.
+
+"Are you going to Arden?" came the faint voice of the tinker after
+her.
+
+"I might--and then again--I mightn't. Was there any word ye might
+want me to fetch ahead for ye?"
+
+"No; only--perhaps--would you think a chap too everlastingly
+impertinent to ask you to wait there for him--until he caught up with
+you?"
+
+"I might--and then again--I mightn't." At the door she stopped, and
+for the second time considered her hands speculatively. "It wouldn't
+inconvenience your feelings any to take charity from me, would it,
+seeing I'm as poor as yourself and have dragged ye into this common,
+tuppenny brawl by my own foolishness?"
+
+"You didn't drag me in; I had one foot in already."
+
+"I thought so," Patsy nodded, approvingly; her conviction had been
+correct, then. "And the charity?"
+
+"Yes, I'd take it from you." The tinker rolled over with a little
+moan composed of physical pain and mental discomfort. But in another
+moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as
+she disappeared through the door. "Remember--no help from the
+quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming
+around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of
+assistance to a--beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you
+bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down about me.
+Remember!"
+
+"Aye," she called back; "I'll be remembering."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She reached the road again; and for the manyeth time since she left
+the women's free ward of the City Hospital she marshaled all the
+O'Connell wits. But even the best of wits require opportunity, and to
+Patsy the immediate outlook seemed barren of such.
+
+"There's naught to do but keep going till something turns up," she
+said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter.
+She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned
+house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of
+thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a
+cross-road. She looked to the right--it was empty. She looked to the
+left--and behold there was "Opportunity," large, florid, and
+agitated, coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed
+houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight of herself and
+her bag.
+
+"Ze depôt--how long ees eet?" she demanded, when she caught sight of
+Patsy.
+
+The accent was unmistakably French, and Patsy obligingly answered her
+in her mother-tongue. "I cannot say exactly; about three--four
+kilometers."
+
+"Opportunity" dropped her bag and embraced her. "Oh!" she burst out,
+volubly. "Think of Zoë Marat finding a countrywoman in this wild
+land. _Moi_--I can no longer stand it; and when madame's temper goes
+_pouffe_--I say, it is enough; let madame fast or cook for her
+guests, as she prefer. I go!"
+
+"_Eh, bien!_" agreed the outer Patsy, while her subjective
+consciousness addressed her objective self in plain Donegal: "Faith!
+this is the maddest luck--the maddest, merriest luck! If yonder
+Quality House has lost one cook, 'twill be needing another; and 'tis
+a poor cook entirely that doesn't hold the keys of her own pantry.
+Food from Quality House needn't be choking the maddest tinker, if
+it's paid for in honest work."
+
+Having been embraced by "Opportunity," Patsy saw no reason for
+wasting time in futile sympathy that might better be spent in prompt
+execution. She despatched the woman to the station with the briefest
+of directions and herself made straight for Quality House.
+
+She was smiling over her appearance and the incongruities of the
+situation as she rang the bell at the front door and asked for
+"Madame" in her best parisien.
+
+The maid, properly impressed, carried the message at once; and
+curiosity brought madame in surprising haste to the hall, where she
+looked Patsy over with frank amazement.
+
+"Madame speak French? Ah, I thought so. Madame desires a
+cook--_voilà!_"
+
+The abruptness of this announcement turned madame giddy. "How did you
+know? Mine did not leave half an hour ago; there isn't another French
+cook within five miles; it is unbelievable."
+
+"It is Providence." Patsy cast her eyes devoutly heavenward.
+
+"You have references--"
+
+"References!" Patsy shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "What
+would madame do with references? She cannot eat them; she cannot feed
+them to her guests. I can cook. Is that not sufficient?"
+
+"But--you do not think--It is impossible that I ever employ a servant
+without references. And you--you look like anything in the world but
+a French cook."
+
+"Madame is not so foolish as to find fault with the ways of
+Providence, or judge one by one's clothes? Who knows--at this moment
+it may be _à la mode_ in Paris for cooks to wear sailor blouses.
+Besides, madame is mistaken; I am not a servant. I am an artist--a
+culinary artist."
+
+"You can cook, truly?"
+
+"But yes, madame!"
+
+"Excellent sauces?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_--Béchamel--Hollandaise--chaud-froid--maître
+d'hôtel--Espagnole--Béarnaise--" Patsy completed the list with an
+ecstatic kiss blown into the air.
+
+Madame sighed and spoke in English: "It is unbelievable--absurd. I
+shouldn't trust my own eyes or palate if I sat down to-night to the
+most remarkable dinner in the world; but one must feed one's guests."
+She looked Patsy over again. "Your trunk?"
+
+"Trunk? Is it toilettes or sauces madame wishes me to make for her
+guests? _Ma foi!_ Trunks--references--one is as unimportant as the
+other. Is it not enough for the present if I cook for madame?
+Afterward--" She ended with the all-expressive shrug.
+
+Evidently madame conceded the point, for without further comment she
+led the way to the kitchen and presented the bill of fare for dinner.
+
+"'For twelve,'" read Patsy. "And to-morrow is Sunday. Ah, Providence
+is good to madame, _mais-oui?_"
+
+But madame's thoughts were on more practical matters. "Your wages?"
+
+"One hundred francs a week, and the kitchen to myself. I, too, have a
+temper, madame." Patsy gave a quick toss to her head, while her eyes
+snapped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night the week-end guests at Quality House sat over their
+coffee, volubly commenting on the rare excellence of their dinner and
+the good fortune of their hostess in her possession of such a cook.
+Madame kept her own counsel and blessed Providence; but she did not
+allow that good fortune to escape with her better judgment--or
+anything else. She ordered the butler, before retiring, to count the
+silver and lock it in her dressing-room; this was to be done every
+night--as long as the new cook remained.
+
+And the new cook? Her work despatched, and her kitchen to herself,
+she was free to get dinner for one more of madame's guests.
+
+"Faith! he'd die of a black fit if he ever knew he was a guest of
+Quality House--and she'd die of another if she found out whom she
+was entertaining. But, glory be to Peter! what neither of them knows
+won't hurt them." And Patsy, unobserved, opened the back door and
+retraced the road to the deserted stable with a full basket and a
+glad heart.
+
+She found the tinker under some trees at the back, smoking a
+disreputable cuddy pipe with a worse accompaniment of tobacco. When
+he saw her he removed it apologetically.
+
+"It smells horrible, I know. I found it, forgotten, on a ledge of the
+stable, but it keeps a chap from remembering that he is hungry."
+
+"Poor lad!" Patsy knelt on the ground beside him and opened her
+basket. "Put your nose into that, just. 'Tis a nine-course dinner and
+every bit of the best. Faith! 'tis lucky I was found on a Brittany
+rose-bush instead of one in Heidelberg, Birmingham, or Philadelphia;
+and if ye can't be born with gold in your mouth the next best thing
+is a mixing-spoon."
+
+"Meaning?" queried the tinker.
+
+"Meaning--that there's many a poor soul who goes hungry through life
+because she is wanting the knowledge of how to mix what's already
+under her nose."
+
+The tinker looked suspiciously from the contents of the basket to
+Patsy, kneeling beside it, and he dropped into a shameless mimicry of
+her brogue. "Aye, but how did she come by--what's under her nose?
+Here's a dinner for a king's son."
+
+"Well, I'll be letting ye play the king's son instead of the fool
+to-night, just, if ye'll give over asking any more questions and
+eat."
+
+"But"--he sniffed the plate she had handed him with added
+suspicion--"roast duck and sherry sauce! Honest, now--have ye been
+begging?"
+
+"No--nor stealing--nor, by the same token, have I murdered any one to
+get the dinner from him." There was fine sarcasm in her voice as she
+returned the tinker's searching look.
+
+"Then where did it come from? I'll not eat a mouthful until I get an
+honest answer." The tinker put the plate down beside him and folded
+his arms.
+
+Patsy snorted with exasperation. "Was I ever saying ye could play the
+king's son? Faith! ye'll never play anything but the fool--first and
+last." Her voice suddenly took on a more coaxing tone; she was
+thinking of that good dinner growing cold--spoiled by the man's
+ridiculous curiosity. "I'll tell ye what--if ye'll agree to begin
+eating, I'll agree to begin telling ye about it--and we'll both agree
+not to stop till we get to the end. But Holy Saint Martin! who ever
+heard of a man before letting his conscience in ahead of his hunger!"
+
+The bargain was made; and while the tinker devoured one plateful
+after another with a ravenous haste that almost discredited his
+previous restraint, Patsy spun a fanciful tale of having found a
+cluricaun under a quicken-tree. With great elaboration and seeming
+regard for the truth, she explained his magical qualities, and
+how--if you were clever enough to possess yourself of his cap--you
+could get almost anything from him.
+
+"I held his cap firmly with the one hand and him by the scruff of the
+neck with the other; and says I to him, 'Little man, ye'll not be
+getting this back till ye've fetched me a dinner fit for a tinker.'
+'Well, and good,' says he, 'but ye can't find that this side of the
+King's Hotel, Dublin; and that will take time.' 'Take the time,' says
+I, 'but get the dinner.' And from that minute till the present I've
+been waiting under that quicken-tree for him to make the trip there
+and back."
+
+Patsy finished, and the two of them smiled at each other with rare
+good humor out under the June stars. Only the tinker's smile was
+skeptical.
+
+"So--ye are not believing me--" Patsy shammed a solemn, grieved look.
+"Well--I'll forgive ye this time if ye'll agree that the dinner was
+good, for I'd hate like the devil to be giving the wee man back his
+cap for anything but the best."
+
+With laggard grace the tinker stretched his hands over the now empty
+basket and gripped Patsy's. "Lass, lass--what are you thinking of me?
+Faith! my manners are more ragged than my clothes--and I'm not fit to
+be a--tinker. The dinner was the best I ever ate, and--bless ye and
+the cluricaun!"
+
+Patsy cooked for three days at Quality House, that the tinker might
+feast night and morning to his heart's content while his ankle slowly
+mended. But he still persisted questioning concerning his food--where
+and how Patsy had come by it; she still maintained as persistent a
+silence.
+
+"I've come by it honestly, and 'tis no charity fare," was the most
+she would say, adding by way of flavor: "For a sorry tinker ye are
+the proudest I ever saw. Did ye ever know another, now, who wanted a
+written certificate of moral character along with every morsel he
+ate?"
+
+According to wage agreement she had the kitchen to herself; no one
+entered except on matters of necessity; no one lingered after her
+work was despatched. Madame came twice daily to confer with Patsy on
+intricacies of gestation, while she beamed upon her as a probationed
+soul might look upon the keeper of the keys of Paradise. But the days
+held more for Patsy than sauces and entrées and pastries; they held
+gossip as well. Soupçons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in
+through open window and swinging door--straight from the dining-room
+and my lady's chamber. Most of it passed her ears, unheeded; it was
+but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and
+baking--until news came at last that concerned herself--gossip of the
+Burgemans, father and son.
+
+The butler and the parlor maid were cleaning the silver in the
+pantry--and the slide was raised. As transmitters of gossip they were
+more than usually concerned, for had not the butler at one time
+served in the house of Burgeman, and the maid dusted next door?
+Therefore every item of news was well ripened before it dropped from
+either tongue, and Patsy gathered them in with eager ears.
+
+The master of Quality House happened to be a director of that bank on
+which the Burgeman check of ten thousand had been drawn. It had been
+the largest check drawn to cash presented at the bank; and the teller
+had confessed to the directors that he would never have paid over the
+money to any one except the old man's son. In fact, he had been so
+much concerned over it afterward that he had called up the Burgeman
+office, and had been much relieved to have the assurance of the
+secretary that the check was certified and perfectly correct. Not a
+second thought would have been given to the matter had not the
+secretary's resignation been made public the next day--the day Billy
+Burgeman disappeared.
+
+Patsy's ears fairly bristled with interest. "That's news, if it is
+gossip. Where is the secretary now? And which of them has the ten
+thousand?"
+
+The director had touched on the subject of the check the next day
+when business had demanded his presence at the Burgeman home. The
+result had been distinctly baffling. Not that the director could put
+his finger on any one suspicious point in the behavior of Burgeman,
+senior; but it left him with the distinct impression that the father
+was shielding the son.
+
+"Aye, that's what Billy said his father would do--shield him out of
+pride." Patsy dusted the flour from her arms and stood motionless,
+thinking.
+
+Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given
+cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of
+the hands: "He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in
+shoe-laces and collar-buttons, I dare say. That's the way rich men's
+sons keep their fathers' incomes from getting too cumbersome."
+
+Burgeman, senior, had been ill then--confined to his room; but the
+next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his
+home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two
+statements were not merely gossip, but facts.
+
+Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of
+Billy's guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were
+passing through the kitchen on their way to the servants' hall.
+
+"Of course he took it"--the maid's tone was positive--"those rich
+men's sons always are a bad lot."
+
+"'E didn't take it, then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on
+'im--that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as
+lief work for the devil!" And the butler pounded his fist for
+emphasis.
+
+It took all Patsy's self-control to refrain from launching into the
+argument herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself,
+however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and
+hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the
+most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine
+horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that
+Patsy could recall with rapidity.
+
+When the kitchen was empty once more Patsy systematically gathered
+together all that she knew and all that she had heard of Billy
+Burgeman, and weighed it against the bare possible chance she might
+have of helping him should she continue her quest. And in the end she
+made her decision unwaveringly.
+
+"Troth! a conscience is a poor bit of property entirely," she sighed,
+as she stood the pâté-shells on the ledge of the range to dry. "It
+drives ye after a man ye don't care a ha'penny about, and it drives
+ye from the one that ye do. Bad luck to it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Patsy sat under the trees with the tinker while he ate his
+supper. A half-grown moon lighted the feast for them, for Patsy took
+an occasional mouthful at the tinker's insistence that dining alone
+was a miserably unsociable affair.
+
+"To watch ye eat that pâté de fois gras a body would think ye had
+been reared on them. Honest, now, have ye ever tasted one before in
+your life?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Then--ye have sat at rich men's tables?"
+
+"Or perhaps I have begged at rich men's doors. Maybe that is how I
+came to have a distaste for their--charity."
+
+"Who are ye? Ye know I'd give the full of my empty pockets to know
+who ye are, and what started ye tramping the road--in rags."
+
+The tinker considered a moment. "Perhaps I took the road because I
+believed it led to the only place I cared to find. Perhaps I lost the
+way to it, as you lost yours to Arden, and in the losing I
+found--something else. Perhaps--perhaps--oh, perhaps a hundred
+things; but I'll make another bargain with you. I'll tell you all
+about it when we reach Arden, if you'll tell me the name of the lad
+you came to find."
+
+"I'll do more than that--I'll bring ye together and let ye help mend
+him," and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain.
+
+They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted
+down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten
+his hunger.
+
+"Well?" queried Patsy at last. "A ha'penny for them."
+
+"I'm thinking the same old thoughts I've thought a hundred times
+already--since that first day: What makes you so different from
+everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your
+gospel of kindness--on your lips and in your hands?"
+
+"Would ye really like to know?" Patsy's fingers stole through the
+grass about them. "Faith! the world's not so soft and green as this
+under every one's feet. Ye see 'twas by a thorn I was found hanging
+to that Killarney rose-bush in Brittany, and I've always remembered
+the feeling of it."
+
+"I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging
+memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and
+letting the rest of the world hug theirs."
+
+"I don't believe it!" Patsy shook her head fiercely. "What's the use
+of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if
+it can't put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first
+tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn't it
+the best thing in the world?"
+
+"Is it? Can it cure--gold?"
+
+"And why not? If every man had more kindness than he had gold, would
+neighbor ever have to fear neighbor or childther go hungry for love?"
+The tinker did not answer, and Patsy went on with a deepening
+intensity: "I'll tell ye a tale--a foolish tale that keeps repeating
+itself over and over in my memory like the tick-tick-tick of a clock.
+Ye know that the Jesuit Fathers say--give them the care of a child
+till he's ten and nothing afterward matters. Well, it's true; a child
+can feel all the sweetness or bitterness, hunger or plenty, that life
+holds before he is that age even."
+
+Patsy stopped. A veery was singing in the woods close by, and she
+listened for a moment. "Hearken to that bird, now. A good-for-naught
+lad may have stolen his nest, or a cat filched his young, or his sons
+and daughters flown away and left him; but he'll sing, for all that.
+'Tis a pity the rest of us can't do as well."
+
+"Yes," agreed the tinker, "but the story--"
+
+"Aye, the story. It begins with a wee white cottage in Brittany,
+fronted by roses and backed by great cliffs and the open sea." Patsy
+clasped her hands about her knees, while her eyes left the shadow of
+the trees and traveled to the open where the moonlight spread silvery
+clear and unbroken. And the tinker, watching, knew that her eyes were
+seeing the things of which she was telling. "A wee white cottage--the
+roses and the cliffs," repeated Patsy, "and a great, grim, silent
+figure of a man sitting there idle all day, watching a little lass at
+her play. Just the man and the child. And the trouble in his mind
+that had kept the man silent and idle was an old, old trouble--old as
+the peopled world itself.
+
+"Long before, he had married a woman who cared for two things--love
+and gold; and he had but the one to give her. She had been a great
+actress, a favorite at the Comédie Française; but she left her work
+and all the applause and adulation for him, an expatriated Irishman
+with naught but a great love, because she thought she cared for love
+more. They had been wonderfully happy at first; he wrote beautiful
+verses about her--and his beloved motherland, and she said them for
+him in that wonderful singing voice of hers that had made her the
+idol of half of France. And she had made a game of their poverty in
+the wee white cottage with the roses--until her child was born and
+poverty could no longer be played at. Then work became drudgery, and
+love naught. The woman went back to her theater--and another man, a
+man who had gold a-plenty. And the child grew up playing alone beside
+the silent, grim Irishman.
+
+"Then one day the child played with no one by to watch her; the man
+had walked over the cliff and forgot ever to come back. Aye, and the
+child played on till dark came and she fell asleep--there on the
+door-sill, under the roses. 'Twas a neighbor, passing, that found
+her, and carried her home to put to bed with her own children. After
+that the child was taken away to a convent, and the rich children
+called her '_la pauvre petite_,' shared their saints'-days' gifts
+with her, and bought her candles that she might make a _novena_ to
+bring her father back again. But 'twas her mother it brought
+instead."
+
+Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; he was not singing alone
+now, and she smiled wistfully. "See! he's found a friend, a comrade
+to sing with him. That's grand!" Then she went back to the story:
+
+"The child was taken from the convent in the night and by somber-clad
+servants who seemed in a great hurry. She was brought a long way to a
+château, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the south of France;
+and a small, shrivel-faced man in royal clothes met her at the door
+and carried her up great marble stairs to a chamber lighted by two
+tall candles, just. They stopped on the threshold for a breath, and
+the child saw that a woman was lying in the canopied bed--a very,
+very beautiful woman. To the child she seemed some goddess--or saint.
+
+"'Here is the child,' said the man; and the woman answered: 'Alone,
+Réné. Remember you promised--alone.'
+
+"After that the man left them together--the dying woman and her
+child. Ah!--how can I be telling you the way she fondled and caressed
+her! How starved were the lips that touched the child's hair, cheeks,
+and eyelids! And when her strength failed she drew the child into her
+tired arms and whispered fragments of prayers, haunting memories,
+pitiful regrets. Of all the things she said the child remembered but
+one: 'Gold buys plenty for the body, but nothing for the
+heart--nothing--nothing!'
+
+"And that kept repeating itself over and over in the child's mind.
+She remembered it all through the night after they had taken her away
+from those lifeless arms and she lay awake alone in a terrifying,
+dark room; she remembered it all through the long day when she sat
+beside the gorgeous catafalque that held her mother, and watched the
+tall candles in the dim chapel burn lower and lower and lower. And
+that was why she refused to stay afterward--and be taken care of by
+the shrivel-faced man in that oldest and most beautiful château.
+Instead she slipped out early one morning, before any one was awake
+to see and mark the way she went. It is unbelievable, sometimes, how
+children who have the will to do it can lose themselves. And so this
+child--alone--went out into the world, empty-handed, seeking life."
+
+"But did she go empty-handed?" asked the tinker.
+
+"Aye, but not empty-hearted, thank God!"
+
+"And wherever the child went, she carried with her that hatred of
+gold," mused the tinker.
+
+"Aye; why not? She had learned how pitifully little it was worth,
+when all's said and done. 'Twas her father's name she heard last on
+her mother's lips, and it was their child she prayed for with her
+dying breath." Patsy sprang to her feet. "Do ye see--the moon will be
+beating me to bed, and 'twas a poor tale, after all. How is your
+foot?"
+
+"Better--much better."
+
+"Would ye be able to travel on it to-morrow?"
+
+The tinker shook his head. "The day after, perhaps."
+
+"Well, keep on coaxing it. Good night." And she had picked up her
+basket and was gone before the tinker could stumble to his feet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the tinker woke the next morning the basket stood just inside
+the stable door, linked through the pilgrim's staff. On investigation
+it proved to contain his breakfast and an envelope, and the envelope
+contained a ten-dollar bill and a letter, which read:
+
+     DEAR LAD,--I'll be well on the road when you get this; and
+     with a tongue in my head and luck at my heels, please God,
+     I'll reach Arden this time. You need not be afraid to use
+     the money--or too proud, either. It was honestly earned and
+     the charity of no one; you can take it as a loan or a
+     gift--whichever you choose. Anyhow, it will bring you after
+     me faster--which was your own promise.
+
+                    Yours in advance,
+
+                         P. O'CONNELL
+
+Surprise, disappointment, indignation, amusement, all battled for the
+upper hand; but it was a very different emotion from any of these
+which finally mastered the tinker. He smoothed the bill very tenderly
+between his hands before he returned it to the envelope; but he did
+something more than smooth the envelope.
+
+And meanwhile Patsy tramped the road to Arden.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A MESSAGE AND A MAP
+
+
+This time there was no mistaking the right road; it ran straight past
+Quality House to Arden--unbroken but for graveled driveways leading
+into private estates. Patsy traveled it at a snail's pace. Now that
+Arden had become a definitely unavoidable goal, she was more loath to
+reach it than she had been on any of the seven days since the
+beginning of her quest. However the quest ended--whether she found
+Billy Burgeman or not, or whether there was any need now of finding
+him--this much she knew: for her the road ended at Arden. What lay
+beyond she neither tried nor cared to prophesy. Was it not enough
+that her days of vagabondage would be over--along with the company of
+tinkers and such like? There might be an answer awaiting her to the
+letter sent from Lebanon to George Travis; in that case she could in
+all probability count on some dependable income for the rest of the
+summer. Otherwise--there were her wits. The very thought of them
+wrung a pitiful little groan from Patsy.
+
+"Faith! I've been overworking Dan's legacy long enough, I'm thinking.
+Poor wee things! They're needing rest and nourishment for a while,"
+and she patted her forehead sympathetically.
+
+Of one thing she was certain--if her wits must still serve her, they
+should do so within the confines of some respectable community; in
+other words, she would settle down and work at something that would
+provide her with bed and board until the fall bookings began. And,
+the road and the tinker would become as a dream, fading with the
+summer into a sweet, illusive memory--and a photograph. Patsy felt in
+the pocket of her Norfolk for the latter with a sudden eagerness. It
+had been forgotten since she had found the tinker himself; but, now
+that the road was lengthening between them again, it brought her a
+surprising amount of comfort.
+
+"There are three things I shall have to be asking him--if he ever
+fetches up in Arden, himself," mused Patsy as she loitered along.
+"And, what's more, this time I'll be getting an answer to every one
+of them or I'm no relation of Dan's. First, I'll know the fate of the
+brown dress; he hadn't a rag of it about him--that's certain. Next,
+there's that breakfast with the lady's-slippers. How did he come by
+it? And, last of all, how ever did this picture come on the
+mantel-shelf of a closed cottage where he knew the way of breaking in
+and what clothes would be hanging in the chamber closets? 'Tis all
+too great a mystery--"
+
+"Why, Miss O'Connell--what luck!"
+
+Patsy had been so deep in her musing that a horse and rider had come
+upon her unnoticed. She turned quickly to see the rider dismounting
+just back of her; it was Gregory Jessup.
+
+"The top o' the morning to ye!" She broke into a glad laugh, blessing
+that luck, herself, which had broken into her disquieting thoughts
+and provided at least fair company and some news--perhaps. She held
+out her hand in hearty welcome. "Are ye 'up so early or down so
+late'?"
+
+"I might ask that, myself. Is it the habit of celebrated Irish
+actresses to tramp miles between sun-up and breakfast?"
+
+"'Tis a habit more likely to fasten itself on French cooks, I'm
+thinking," and Patsy smiled.
+
+"Then how is a man to account for you?"
+
+"He'd best not try; I'm a mortial poor person to account for. Maybe
+I'm up early--getting my lines for the next act."
+
+"Of course. What a stupid duffer I am! You must find us plain,
+plodding Americans horribly short-witted sometimes. Don't you?"
+
+Patsy shook a contradiction. "It's your turn, now. What fetched ye
+abroad at this hour?"
+
+Gregory Jessup slipped his arm through the horse's bridle and fell
+into step with her. "Principally because I like the early morning
+better than any other part of the day; it's fresh and sweet and
+unspoiled--like some Irish actresses. There--please don't mind my
+crude attempt at poetic--simile," for Patsy's eyes had snapped
+dangerously. "If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever
+came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn't want to
+discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was another
+reason for my being up--a downright foolish reason."
+
+Gregory Jessup accompanied the remark with a downright foolish smile,
+and then lapsed into silence. In this fashion they walked to the bend
+of the road where another graveled driveway branched forth; and here
+the horse stopped of his own accord and whinnied.
+
+"This is the Dempsy Carters' place--where I'm stopping," Gregory
+explained.
+
+"Aye, but the other reason?" Patsy reminded him, her eyes friendly
+once more.
+
+"Oh--the other reason; I told you it was a foolish one." He stood
+rubbing his horse's nose and looking over the road they had come for
+some seconds before he finally confessed to it. "It's Billy, you see.
+Somehow it occurred to me that if he should be in trouble and at the
+same time knowing his father was sick--dying--he might be hanging
+around somewhere near here--uncertain just what to do--and not
+wanting any one to see him. In that case, the best time to run across
+him would be early morning before the rest of the people were awake
+and up. Don't you think so?"
+
+"It sounds more sensible than foolish; but I don't think ye'll ever
+find him that way. If he was clever enough to let the earth swallow
+him up, he's clever enough to keep swallowed. There's but one way to
+reach him--and it's been in my mind since yester-eve."
+
+A look of surprise came into Gregory Jessup's face. "Why, Miss
+O'Connell! I had no idea what I said that day would fasten Billy on
+your mind like this. It's awfully good of you; and he's a perfect
+stranger--"
+
+Patsy broke in with a whimsical chuckle. "Aye, I've grown overpartial
+to strangers of late; but ye hearken to me. Ye'll have to leave a
+sign by the roadside for him--if ye want to reach him. Otherwise
+he'll see ye first and be gone before ever ye know he's about."
+
+"What kind of a sign?"
+
+"Faith! I'm not sure of that yet--myself. It must be something that
+will put trust back in a lad and tell him to come home."
+
+"And where would you put it?"
+
+"Where? On the roadside, just, anywhere along the road he's used to
+tramping."
+
+Gregory Jessup's face lost its puzzled frown and became suddenly
+illumined with an inspiration. "I know! By Hec! I've got it! There's
+that path that runs down from the Burgeman estate to our old cottage.
+It was a short cut for us kids, and we were almost the only ones to
+use it. Billy would be far more likely to take that than the
+highroad--and it leads to the Burgeman farm, too, run by an old
+couple that simply adore Billy. He might go there when he wouldn't go
+anywhere else. That's the place for a message. But what message?"
+
+"I know!" Patsy clapped her hands. "Have ye a scrap of paper
+anywheres about ye--and a pencil?"
+
+Hunting through the pockets of his riding-clothes, Gregory Jessup
+discovered a business letter, the back of which provided ample
+writing space, and the stub of a red-ink pencil. "We use 'em in the
+drafting-room," he explained. "If these will do--here's a desk," and
+he raised the end of his saddle, supporting it with a large expanse
+of palm.
+
+Patsy accepted them all with a gracious little nod, and, spreading
+the paper on the improvised desk, she wrote quickly:
+
+     "If it do come to pass
+     That any man turn ass,"
+     Thinking the world is blind
+     And trust forsworn mankind,
+       "Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame":
+     Here shall he find
+     Both trust and peace of mind,
+     An he but leave all foolishness behind.
+
+"With apologies to Willie Shakespeare," Patsy chuckled again as she
+returned paper and pencil to their owner. "Ye put it somewhere he'd
+be likely to look--furninst something that would naturally take his
+notice."
+
+"I know just the spot--and they're in blossom now, too. I'll fasten
+it to a rock, there, wedge it in the cracks. Billy won't miss it if
+he comes within yards of the place." He grasped Patsy's hand with
+growing fervor that gave promise of developing suddenly into almost
+anything. "You're a brick, Miss O'Connell--a solid gold brick of a
+girl, and I wish--"
+
+"Take care!" warned Patsy. "Ye're not improving as fast in your
+compliments as ye might--and there's no poetry in gold--for me."
+
+Gregory Jessup looked puzzled, but his fervor did not abate one whit.
+"I want you to promise me if you ever need a friend--if there is
+anything I can ever do--"
+
+"Ye can," interrupted Patsy, "and ye can do it now. Take that
+riding-crop of yours and draw me a map in the dust there of the
+country hereabouts--ye can make a cross for Arden.... That's grand.
+Now where would ye put Brambleside Inn? And is it seven miles from
+there to Arden?"
+
+Gregory nodded an affirmative while he considered Patsy with grave
+perplexity. Patsy saw it, and smiled reassuringly. "'Tis all right.
+I've always had a great interest entirely to know the geography of
+every new country--and I haven't the wits to discover it for myself.
+Now where would ye put the cross-roads and the Catholic church? And
+where would Lebanon be? Aye--Did ye ever see an old tabby chasing her
+tail? Faith! 'tis a very intelligent spectacle, I'm thinking. Now
+where might ye put the cross-roads where ye picked me up with the
+Dempsy Carters?... And Dansville?... and the railroad bridge? ... and
+the golf links, back yonder?"
+
+She stood for many minutes, studying the rough chart in the dust at
+her feet. The connecting lines of roads between the places named made
+fully a hundred and twenty degrees of a circle about the cross
+marking Arden. And as chance would have it, every one of the
+encircling towns measured approximately seven miles from the central
+cross. Patsy smiled, and the smile grew to a chuckle--and the chuckle
+to a long, rippling laugh. Patsy was forced to hold her sides with
+the ache of it.
+
+"I know ye think I'm crazy--but 'tis the rarest bit of humor this
+side of Ireland. Willie Shakespeare himself would steal it if he
+could to put in one of his comedies. There is just one thing I'd like
+to be knowing--how much of it was chance, and how much was the tricks
+of a tinker?"
+
+"I don't think I understand," mumbled Gregory Jessup.
+
+"Of course ye don't," agreed Patsy. "I don't, myself. But there's one
+thing more I'll be telling ye--if ye'll swear never to let it pass
+your lips?"
+
+Patsy paused for dramatic effect while Gregory Jessup bound himself
+twice over to secrecy. "Well," she said, at length, "'tis this: If I
+had the road to travel again I'd pray to Saint Brendan to keep my
+feet fast to the wrong turn. That's what!"
+
+Patsy left him, still looking after her in a puzzled fashion; and
+with quickening steps she passed out of sight.
+
+But once again did she stop; and again it was by a graveled driveway.
+She was deep in green memories when a figure in nurse's uniform
+coming down the drive caught her attention. She was immediately
+reminded of two facts: that the Burgeman estate was in Arden, and
+that Burgeman senior was dying. Impulsively she turned toward the
+nurse.
+
+"Is Mr. Burgeman any better this morning?"
+
+"We hardly expect that." The nurse's tone was cordial but
+professionally cautious.
+
+"I know"--Patsy nodded wisely, as if she had been following the case
+professionally herself--"but there is often a last rallying of
+strength. Isn't there?"
+
+"Sometimes. I hardly think there will be anything very lasting in Mr.
+Burgeman's case. There are moments, now, when his strength and will
+are remarkably vigorous--any other man would be in his bed."
+
+"Oh! Then he is--up?"
+
+"He's taken about on a wheeled chair or cot. He is too restless to
+stay in any place very long. He seems more contented outdoors, where
+he can watch--" She broke off abruptly. "Lovely morning--isn't it?
+Good-by."
+
+She turned about and went up the drive again. Patsy watched her go, a
+strange, brooding look in her eyes. "So--he likes to be out of doors
+best--where he can be watching. And if a body chanced to trespass
+that way--she might come upon him, sudden like, and stay long enough
+to set him a-thinking. Would it be too late, now, I wonder?"
+
+She resumed her way--and her memories. She passed a half-dozen more
+driveways and she climbed a hill; and when she came to the top she
+found herself looking down on a thickly wooded hamlet. Spires and
+gabled roofs broke the foliage here and there, and on the rising
+slope beyond towered a veritable forest. Patsy stood on the brink of
+the hill and gazed down long and thoughtfully; at last she flung out
+her arms in an impetuous gesture of confirmation, while the old,
+whimsical smile crept into her lips.
+
+"'Aye, now am I in Arden, the more fool I; when I was at home, I was
+in a better place--but travelers must be content.'" And taking a firm
+grip of her memories, her wits, and her courage, she went down the
+hill.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+ENTER KING MIDAS
+
+
+When Patsy at last reached Arden she went direct to the post-office
+and was there confronted by a huge poster occupying an entire wall:
+
+               THE SYLVAN PLAYERS
+
+     Under the Management of Geo. Travis
+
+     Presenting Wm. Shakespeare's Comedy
+
+               "AS YOU LIKE IT"
+
+ In the Forest of Arden, on the Estate of Peterson-Jones, Esq.
+
+The date given was Wednesday, the day following; and the cast
+registered her name opposite Rosalind.
+
+"So that's the answer to the letter I wrote, and a grand answer it
+is. And that's the meaning of Janet Payne's remarks, and I never
+guessed it." She heaved the faintest wisp of a sigh--it might have
+been pleasure; it might have been a twinge of pain. "And I'm to be
+playing the Duke's daughter, after all, at the end of the road."
+
+She went to the general delivery and asked for mail. The clerk
+responded with three letters; Patsy almost whistled under her breath.
+Retiring to a corner, she looked them over and opened first the one
+from George Travis:
+
+     DEAR IRISH PATSY,--You are a lucky beggar, and so am I. Here
+     comes the news of Miriam St. Regis's illness and the
+     canceling of all of her summer engagements in the same mail
+     as your letter.
+
+     Just think of it! Here you are actually in Arden all ready
+     for me to pick up and put in Miriam's place without having
+     to budge from my desk. The Sylvan Players open with "As You
+     Like It." If the critics like it--and you--as well as I
+     think they will, I'll book you straight through the summer.
+     Felton's managing for me, so please report to him on Monday
+     when he gets there. I may run down myself for a glimpse of
+     your work.
+
+                    Yours,
+                         G. TRAVIS.
+
+     P. S. More good luck. We are just in time to get your name
+     on the posters; and unless my memory greatly deceives me,
+     you will be able to walk right into all of Miriam's
+     costumes.
+
+"Aye, they'll fit," agreed Patsy, with a chuckle. The second letter
+was from Felton--dated Monday. He was worried over her continued
+absence. He had not found her registered at either of the two
+hotels, and the postal clerk reported her mail uncalled for. Would
+she come to the Hillcrest Hotel at once. The third was from Janet
+Payne, expressing her grief over Joseph's death, and their
+disappointment at finding her gone the next morning when they motored
+over to take her to Arden. They were all looking forward to seeing
+her play on Wednesday.
+
+Patsy returned the letters to their envelopes and marveled that her
+new-found prosperity should affect her so drearily. Why was she not
+elated, transported with the surprise and the sudden promise of
+success? She was free to go now to a good hotel and sign for a room
+and three regular meals a day. She could wire at once to Miss Gibbs,
+of the select boarding-house, and have her trunk down in twenty-four
+hours. In very truth, her days of vagabondage were over, yet the fact
+brought her no happiness.
+
+She hunted Felton up at the hotel and explained her absence: "Just a
+week-end at one of the fashionable places. No, not exactly
+professional. No, not social either. You might call it--providential,
+like this."
+
+The morning was spent meeting her fellow-players--going over the
+text, trying on the St. Regis costumes, adjourning at last to the
+estate of Peterson-Jones.
+
+Until the middle of the afternoon they were busy with rehearsals: the
+mental tabulating of new stage business, the adapting of strange
+stage property, the accustoming of one's feet to tread gracefully
+over roots and tangling vines and slippery patches of pine needles
+instead of a good stage flooring. And through all this maze Patsy's
+mind played truant. A score of times it raced off back to the road
+again, to wait between a stretch of woodland and a grove of giant
+pines for the coming of a grotesque, vagabond figure in rags.
+
+"Come, come, Miss O'Connell; what's the matter?" Felton's usual
+patience snapped under the strain of her persistent wit-wandering.
+"I've had to tell you to change that entrance three times."
+
+"Aye--and what is the matter?" Patsy repeated the question
+remorsefully. "Maybe I've acquired the habit of taking the wrong
+entrance. What can you expect from any one taking seven days to go
+seven miles. I'm dreadfully sorry. If you'll only let me off this
+time I promise to remember to-morrow; I promise!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day had been growing steadily hotter and more sultry. By five
+o'clock every one who was doing anything, and could stop doing it,
+went slothfully about looking for cool spots and cooler drinks.
+Burgeman senior, alone with his servants on the largest estate in
+Arden, ordered one of the nurses to wheel him to the border of his
+own private lake--a place where breezes blew if there were any
+about--and leave him there alone until Fitzpatrick, his lawyer, came
+from town. And there he was sitting, his eyes on nothing at all, when
+Patsy scrambled up the bank of the lake and dropped breathless under
+a tree--not three feet from him.
+
+"Merciful Saint Patrick! I never saw you! Maybe I'm trespassing,
+now?"
+
+"You are," agreed Burgeman senior in a colorless voice. "But I hardly
+think any one will put you off the grounds--at least until you have
+caught your breath."
+
+"Thank you. Maybe the grounds are yours, now?" she questioned again.
+
+The sick man signified they were by a slight nod.
+
+"Well, 'tis the prettiest place hereabouts." Patsy offered the
+information as if she had made the discovery herself and was
+generously sharing it with him. "I'm a stranger; and when I saw yon
+bit of cool, gray water, and the pines clustering round, and the wee
+green faery isle in the midst--with the bridge holding onto it to
+keep it from disappearing entirely--and the sand so white, and the
+lawns so green--why, it looked like a Japanese garden set in a great
+sedge bowl. Do you wonder I had to come closer and see it better?"
+
+Burgeman said nothing; but the ghost of a feeling showed, the greed
+of possession.
+
+"And it all belongs to you. You bought it all--the lake and the woods
+and the lawns." It was not a question, but a statement.
+
+"I own three miles in every direction."
+
+"Except that one." Patsy smiled as she pointed a finger upward. "Did
+you ever think how generous the blessed Lord is to lend a bit of His
+sky to put over the land men buy and fence in and call 'private
+property'? It's odd how a body can think he owns something because he
+has paid money for it; and yet the things that make it worth the
+owning he hasn't paid for at all."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Would you think much of this place if you couldn't be looking yonder
+and watching the clouds scud by, all turning to pink and flame color
+and purple as the sun gathers them in? What would you do if no wild
+flowers grew for you, or the birds forgot you in the spring and built
+their nests and sang for your neighbor instead? And can you hire the
+sun to shine by the day, or order the rain by the hogshead?"
+
+Burgeman senior was contemplating her with genuine amazement. "I do
+not believe I have ever heard any one put forth such extraordinary
+theories before. May I ask if you are a socialist?"
+
+"Bless you, no! I am a very ordinary human being, just; principally
+human."
+
+"Do you know who I am?"
+
+For an instant Patsy looked at him without speaking; then she
+answered, slowly: "You have told me, haven't you? You are the master
+of the place, and you look a mortal lonely one."
+
+"I--am." The words seemed to slip from his lips without his being at
+all conscious of having spoken.
+
+"And the money couldn't keep it from you." There was no mockery in
+her tone. "'Tis pitifully few comforts you can buy in life, when
+all's said and done."
+
+"Comforts!" The sick man's eyes grew sharp, attacking, with a force
+that had not been his for days. "You are talking now like a fool.
+Money is the only thing that can buy comforts. What comforts have the
+poor?"
+
+"Are you meaning butlers and limousines, electric vibrators and
+mud-baths? Those are only cures for the bodily necessities and ills
+that money brings on a man: the over-feeding and the over-drinking
+and the--under-living. But what comforts would they bring to a
+troubled mind and a pinched heart? Tell me that!"
+
+"So! You would prefer to be poor--more pastorally poetic?" Burgeman
+sneered.
+
+"More comfortable," corrected Patsy. "Mind you, I'm not meaning
+starved, ground-under-the-heel poverty, the kind that breeds
+anarchists and criminals. God pity them, too! I mean the man who is
+still too poor to reckon his worth to a community in mere money, who,
+instead, doles kindness and service to his neighbors. Did you ever
+see a man richer than the one who comes home at day's end, after
+eight hours of good, clean work, and finds the wife and children
+watching for him, happy-eyed and laughing?"
+
+The sick man stirred uneasily. "Well--can't a rich man find the same
+happiness?"
+
+"Aye, he can; but does he? Does he even want it? Count up the rich
+men you know, and how many are there--like that?" No answer being
+given, Patsy continued: "Take the richest man--the very richest man
+in all this country--do you suppose in all his life he ever saw his
+own lad watching for him to come home?"
+
+"What do you know about the richest man--and his son?" The sick man
+had for a moment become again a fiercely bitter, fighting force, a
+power given to sweeping what it willed before it. He sat with hands
+clenched, his eyes burning into the girl's on the ground beside him.
+"I know what the world says."
+
+"The world lies; it has always lied."
+
+"You are wrong. It is a tongue here and a tongue there that bears
+false witness; but the world passes on the truth; it has to."
+
+"You forget"--Burgeman senior spoke with difficulty--"it is the rich
+who bear the burdens of the world's cares and troubles, and what do
+they get for it? The hatred of every one else, even their sons! Every
+one hates and envies the man richer and more powerful than himself;
+the more he has the more he is feared. He lives friendless; he
+dies--lonely."
+
+Patsy rose to her knees and knelt there, shaking her fist--a
+composite picture of supplicating Justice and accusing Truth. She had
+forgotten that the man before her was sick--dying; that he must have
+suffered terribly in spirit as well as body; and that her words were
+so many barbed shafts striking at his soul. She remembered nothing
+save the thing against which she was fighting: the hard, merciless
+possession of money and the arrogant boast of it.
+
+"And you forget that the burden of trouble which the brave rich bear
+so nobly are troubles they've put into the world themselves. They
+hoard their money to buy power; and then they use that power to get
+more money. And so the chain grows--money and power, money and power!
+I heard of a rich man once who turned a terrible fever loose all over
+the land because he bribed the health inspectors not to close down
+his factories. And after death had swept his books clean he gave
+large sums of money to stamp out the epidemic in the near-by towns.
+Faith! that was grand--the bearing of that trouble! And why are the
+rich hated? Why do they live friendless and die lonely? Not because
+they hold money, not because they give it away or help others with
+it. No! But because they use it to crush others, to rob those who
+have less than they have, to turn their power into a curse. That's
+the why!"
+
+Patsy, the fanatic, turned suddenly into Patsy, the human, again. The
+fist that had been beating the air under his nose dropped and spread
+itself tenderly on the sick man's knee. "But I'm sorry you're lonely.
+If there was anything you wanted--that you couldn't buy and I could
+earn for you--I would get it gladly."
+
+"I believe you would," and the confession surprised the man himself
+more than it did Patsy. "Who are you?" he asked at last.
+
+"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside--a lass with no home,
+no kin, and that for a fortune," and she flung out her two empty
+hands, palm uppermost, and laughed.
+
+"And you are audacious enough to think you are richer than I." This
+time there was no sneer in his voice, only an amused toleration.
+
+"I am," said Patsy, simply.
+
+"You have youth and health," he conceded, grudgingly.
+
+"Aye, and trust in other folks; that's a fearfully rich possession."
+
+"It is. I might exchange with you--all this," and his hand swept
+encompassingly over his great estate, "for that last--trust in other
+folks--in one's own folks!"
+
+"Maybe I'd give it to you for nothing--a little of it at any rate.
+See, you trust me; and here's--trust in your son." Patsy's voice
+dropped to a whisper; she leaned forward and opened one of the sick
+man's hands, then folded the fingers tightly over something that
+appeared to be invisible--and precious. "Now, you believe in him, no
+matter what he's done; you believe he wouldn't wrong you or himself
+by doing anything base; you believe that he is coming back to you--to
+break the loneliness, and that he'll find a poor, plain man for a
+father, waiting him. Don't you remember the prodigal lad--how his
+father saw him a long way off and went to meet him? Well, you can
+meet him with a long-distance trust--understanding. And there's one
+thing more; don't you be so blind or so foolish as to crush him with
+the weight of 'all this.' Mind, he has the right to the making of his
+own life--for a bit at least; and it's your privilege to give him
+that right--somehow. You've still a chance to keep him from wanting
+to pitch your money for quoits off the Battery."
+
+Patsy sprang to her feet; but Burgeman senior had reached forward
+quickly and caught her skirt, holding it in a marvelously firm grip.
+"Then you do know who I am; you've known it all along."
+
+"I know you're the master of all this, and your lad is the Rich Man's
+Son; that's all."
+
+"And you think--you think I have no right to leave my son the
+inheritance I have worked and saved for him."
+
+"I think you have no right to leave him your--greed. 'Tis a mortal
+poor inheritance for any lad."
+
+"Your vocabulary is rather blunt." Burgeman smiled faintly. "But it
+is very refreshing. It is a long time since naked truth and I met
+face to face."
+
+"But will it do you any good--or is it too late?" Patsy eyed him
+contemplatively.
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"Too late for the inheritance--too late to give it away somewhere
+else--or loan it for a few years till the lad had a chance to find
+out if he could make some decent use of it himself. There's many ways
+of doing it; I have thought of a few this last half-hour. You might
+loan it to the President to buy up some of the railroads for the
+government--or to purchase the coal or oil supply; or you might offer
+it as a prize to the country that will stop fighting first; or it
+might buy clean politics into some of the cities--or endow a
+university." She laughed. "It's odd, isn't it, how a body without a
+cent to her name can dispose of a few score millions--in less
+minutes?"
+
+"If you please, sir." A motionless, impersonal figure in livery stood
+at a respectful distance behind the wheel-chair. Neither of them had
+been conscious of his presence.
+
+"Well, Parsons?"
+
+"Mr. Billy, sir, has come back, sir. He and Mr. Fitzpatrick came
+together. Shall I bring them out here or wheel you inside, sir?"
+
+"Inside!" Burgeman senior almost shouted it. Then he turned to Patsy
+and there was more than mere curiosity in his voice: "Who are you?"
+
+"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside," she repeated,
+wistfully. And then she added in her own Donegal: "But don't ye let
+the lagging count for naught. Promise me that!"
+
+The sick man turned his head for a last look at her. "Such a simple
+promise--to throw away the fruits of a lifetime!" Bitterness was in
+his voice again, but Patsy caught the muttering under his breath. "I
+might think about the boy, though, if the Lord granted me time."
+
+"Amen!" whispered Patsy.
+
+She scrambled down the bank the way she had come. For a moment she
+stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its
+mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and
+spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind
+no mark where they had been.
+
+"Yonder's the way with the going and coming of most of us, a little
+ripple and naught else--unless it is one more stone at the bottom."
+She heaved a sigh. "Well, the quest is over, and I've never laid eyes
+on the lad once. But it's ended well, I'm thinking; aye, it's ended
+right for him."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+ARDEN
+
+
+Summer must have made one day in June purposely as a setting
+for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave,
+and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people
+look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene;
+a Forest of Arden, built by the greatest scenic artist since the
+world began. Birds flew about the trees and sang--whenever the
+orchestra permitted; a rabbit or two scuttled out from under
+rhododendron-bushes and skipped in shy ingénue fashion across the
+stage; while overhead a blue, windless sky spread radiance about
+players and audience alike.
+
+Shorn of so much of the theatricalism of ordinary stage performances,
+there was reality and charm about this that warmed the spectators
+into frequent bursts of spontaneous enthusiasm which were as draughts
+of elixir to the players. Those who were playing creditably played
+well; those who were playing well excelled themselves, and Patsy
+outplayed them all.
+
+She lived every minute of the three hours that spanned the throwing
+of Charles, the wrestler, and her promise "to make all this matter
+even." There was no touch of coarseness in her rollicking laughter,
+no hoydenish swagger in her masquerading; it was all subtly,
+irresistibly feminine. And George Travis, watching from the obscurity
+of a back seat, pounded his knee with triumph and swore he would make
+her the greatest Shakespearean actress of the day.
+
+As Hymen sang her parting song, Patsy scanned the sea of faces beyond
+the bank of juniper which served instead of footlights. Already she
+had picked out Travis, Janet Payne and her party, the people from
+Quality House, who still gaped at her, unbelieving, and young
+Peterson-Jones, looking more melancholy, myopic, and poetical than
+before. But the one face she hoped to find was missing, even among
+the stragglers at the back; and it took all her self-control to keep
+disappointment and an odd, hurt feeling out of her voice as she gave
+the epilogue.
+
+On the way to her tent--a half-score of them were used as
+dressing-rooms behind the stage--George Travis overtook her. "It's
+all right, girl. You've made a bigger hit than even I expected. I'm
+going to try you out in--"
+
+Patsy cut him short. "You sat at the back. Did you see a vagabond lad
+hanging around anywhere--with a limp to him?"
+
+The manager looked at her with amused toleration. "Does a mere man
+happen to be of more consequence this minute than your success? Oh, I
+say, that's not like you, Irish Patsy!"
+
+She crimsoned, and the manager teased no more. "We play Greyfriars
+to-morrow and back to Brambleside the day after; and I've made up my
+mind to try you out there in Juliet. If you can handle tragedy as you
+can comedy, I'll star you next winter on Broadway. Oh, your future's
+very nearly made, you lucky girl!"
+
+But Patsy, slipping into her tent, hardly heard the last. If they
+played Greyfriars the next day, that meant they would leave Arden on
+the first train after they were packed; and that meant she was
+passing once and for all beyond tramping reach of the tinker. There
+was a dull ache at her heart which she attempted neither to explain
+nor to analyze; it was there--that was enough. With impatient fingers
+she tore off Rosalind's wedding finery and attacked her make-up. Then
+she lingered over her dressing, hoping to avoid the rest of the
+company and any congratulatory friends who might happen to be
+browsing around. She wanted to be alone with her memories--to have
+and to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and
+far away.
+
+A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne's voice
+broke into her reverie: "Can't we see you, please, for just a moment?
+We'll solemnly promise not to stay long."
+
+Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into
+her greeting.
+
+"It was simply ripping!" chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a
+hand.
+
+Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. "It was the best,
+the very best I've ever seen you or any one else play it. For the
+first time Rosalind seemed a real girl."
+
+But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others:
+"Have you heard, Miss O'Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy
+was with him. He's come home."
+
+"Faith! then there's some virtue in signs, after all."
+
+A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. "I'm glad
+for you--I'm glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see
+him?"
+
+"For a few minutes. There wasn't time to say much; but he looked like
+a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a good
+talk together for the first time in their lives--said it had given
+him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I
+wanted to tell you, so you wouldn't have him on your mind any
+longer."
+
+She smiled retrospectively. "Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly
+twenty-four hours ago."
+
+Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her
+chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers,
+still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she
+went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.
+
+The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the
+tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of
+the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of
+Orlando's poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since
+forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it--once, twice,
+three times:
+
+     Where twin oaks rustle in the wind,
+     There waits a lad for Rosalind.
+     If still she be so wond'rous kind,
+     Perchance she'll ease the fretted mind
+     That naught can cure--but Rosalind.
+
+With a glad little cry she crumpled the paper in her hand and fled,
+straight as a throstle to its mate, to the giant twin oaks which
+were landmarks in the forest. Her eyes were a-search for a vagabond
+figure in rags; it was small wonder, therefore, that they refused to
+acknowledge the man in his well-cut suit of gray who was leaning
+partly against the hole of a tree and partly on a pilgrim staff. She
+stood and stared and gave no sign of greeting.
+
+"Well, so the Duke's daughter found her rhyme?"
+
+"I'm not knowing whether I'll own ye or not. Sure, ye've no longer
+the look of an honest tinker; and maybe we'd best part company
+now--before we meet at all."
+
+But the tinker had her firmly by both hands. "That's too late now. I
+would have come in rags if there'd been anything left of them, but
+they are the only things I intend to part company with. And do you
+know"--he gripped her hands tighter--"I met an acquaintance as I came
+this way who told me, with eyes nearly popping out of his head, that
+the wonderful little person who had played herself straight into
+hundreds of hearts had actually been his cook for three days. Oh,
+lass! lass! how could you do it!"
+
+"Troth! God made me a better cook than actress. Ye wouldn't want me
+to be slighting His handiwork entirely, would ye?"
+
+The tinker shook his head at her. "Do you know what I wanted to say
+to every one of those people who had been watching you? I wanted to
+say: 'You think she is a wonderful actress; she is more than that.
+She is a rare, sweet, true woman, better and finer than any play she
+may act in or any part she may play in it. I, the tinker, have
+discovered this; and I know her better than does any one else in the
+whole world.'"
+
+"Is that so?" A teasing touch of irony crept into Patsy's voice.
+"'Tis a pity, now, the manager couldn't be hearing ye; he might give
+ye a chance to understudy Orlando."
+
+"And you think I'd be content to understudy any one! Why, I'm going
+to pitch Orlando straight out of the Forest of Arden; I'm going to
+pull Willie Shakespeare out of his grave and make him rewrite the
+whole play--putting a tinker in the leading role."
+
+"And is it a tragedy ye would have him make it?"
+
+"Would it be a tragedy to take a tinker 'for better--for worse'?"
+
+"Faith! that would depend on the tinker."
+
+"Oh-ho, so it's up to the tinker, is it? Well, the tinker will prove
+it otherwise; he will guarantee to keep the play running pure comedy
+to the end. So that settles it, Miss Patricia O'Connell--alias
+Rosalind, alias the cook--alias Patsy--the best little comrade a
+lonely man ever found. I am going to marry you the day after
+to-morrow, right here in Arden."
+
+Patsy looked at him long and thoughtfully from under the beguiling
+shadow of the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet. "'Tis a shame,
+just, to discourage anything so brave as a self-made--tinker. But
+I'll not be here the day after to-morrow. And what's more, a man is a
+fool to marry any woman because he's lonely and she can cook."
+
+The tinker's eyes twinkled. "I don't know. A man might marry for
+worse reasons." Then he grew suddenly sober and his eyes looked deep
+into hers. "But you know and I know that that is not my reason for
+wanting you, or yours for taking me."
+
+"I didn't say I would take ye." This time it was Patsy's eyes that
+twinkled. "Do ye think it would be so easy to give up my career--the
+big success I've hoped and worked and waited for--just--just for a
+tinker? I'd be a fool to think of it." She was smiling inwardly at
+her own power of speech, which made what she held as naught sound of
+such immeasurable consequence.
+
+But the tinker smiled outwardly. "Where did you say you were going to
+be the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"That's another thing I did not say. If ye are going to marry me 'tis
+your business to find me." She freed her hands and started off
+without a backward glance at him.
+
+"Patsy, Patsy!" he called after her, "wouldn't you like to know the
+name of the man you're going to marry?"
+
+She turned and faced him. Framed in the soft, green fringe of the
+trees, she seemed to him the very embodiment of young summer--the
+free, untrammeled spirit of Arden. Ever since the first he had been
+growing more and more conscious of what she was: a nature vital,
+beautiful, tender, untouched by the searing things of life--trusting
+and worthy of trust; but it was not until this moment that he
+realized the future promise of her. And the realization swept all his
+smoldering love aflame into his eyes and lips. His arms went out to
+her in a sudden, passionate appeal.
+
+"Patsy--Patsy! Would the name make any difference?"
+
+"Why should it?" she cried, with saucy coquetry. "I'm marrying the
+man and not his name. If I can stand the one, I can put up with the
+other, I'm thinking. Anyhow, 'twill be on the marriage license the
+day after to-morrow, and that's time enough."
+
+"Do you really mean you would marry a man, not knowing his name or
+anything about his family--or his income--or--"
+
+"That's the civilized way, isn't it?--to find out about those things
+first; and afterward it's time enough when you're married to get
+acquainted with your man. But that's not the way that leads off the
+road to Arden--and it's not my way. I know my man now--God bless
+him." And away she ran through the trees and out of sight.
+
+The tinker watched the trees and underbrush swing into place,
+covering her exit. So tense and motionless he stood, one might have
+suspected him of trying to conjure her back again by the simple magic
+of heart and will. It turned out a disappointing piece of conjuring,
+however; the green parted again, but not to redisclose Patsy. A man,
+instead, walked into the open, toward the giant oaks, and one glimpse
+of him swept the tinker's memory back to a certain afternoon and a
+cross-roads. He could see himself sitting propped up by the
+sign-post, watching the door of a little white church, while down the
+road clattered a sorrel mare and a runabout. And the man that
+drove--the man who was trailing Patsy--was the man that came toward
+him now, looking for--some one.
+
+"You haven't seen--" he began, but the tinker interrupted him:
+
+"Guess not. I've been watching the company break up. Rather
+interesting to any one not used to that sort of thing--don't you
+think?"
+
+The man eyed him narrowly; then cautiously he dropped into an
+attitude of exaggerated indifference. "It sure is--young feller. Now
+you hain't been watchin' that there leadin' lady more particularly,
+have you? I sort o' cal'ate she might have a takin' way with the
+fellers," and he prodded the tinker with a jocular thumb.
+
+The tinker responded promptly with a foolish grin. "Maybe I
+have; but the luck was dead against me. Guess she had a lot of
+friends with her. I saw them carry her off in triumph in a big
+touring-car--probably they'll dine her at the country club."
+
+The man did not wait for further exchange of pleasantries. He took
+the direction the tinker indicated, and the tinker watched him go
+with a suppressed chuckle.
+
+"History positively stutters sometimes. Now if that property-man knew
+what he was talking about the company will be safe out of Arden
+before a runabout could make the country club and back." But the
+tinker's mirth was of short duration. With a shout of derision, he
+slapped the pocket of his trousers viciously.
+
+"What a confounded fool I am! Why in the name of reason didn't I
+give them to him and stop this sleuth business before it really gets
+her into trouble? Of all the idiotic--senseless--" and, leaning on
+the pilgrim staff, he slowly hobbled in the same direction he had
+given the man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One last piece of news concerning Billy Burgeman came to Patsy before
+she left Arden that afternoon. Gregory Jessup was at the station to
+see her off, and he took her aside for the few minutes before the
+train arrived.
+
+"I tried to get Billy to join me--knew it would do him good to meet
+you; but he wouldn't budge. I rather think he's still a trifle sore
+on girls. Nothing personal, you understand?"
+
+Patsy certainly did--far better than his friend knew. In her heart
+she was trying her best to be interested and grateful to the Rich
+Man's Son for his unconscious part in her happiness. Had it not been
+for him there would have been no quest, no road; and without the road
+there would have been no tinker; and without the tinker, no
+happiness. It was none the less hard to be interested, however, now
+that her mind had given over the lonely occupation of contemplating
+memories for that most magical of all mental crafts--future-building.
+She jerked up her attention sharply as Gregory Jessup began speaking
+again.
+
+"Billy told me just before I came down why he had gone away; and I
+wanted to tell you. I don't know how much you know about the old
+man's reputation, but he was credited with being the hardest master
+with his men that you could find either side of the water. In the
+beginning he made his money by screwing down the wages and unscrewing
+the labor--and no sentiment. That was his slogan. Whether he kept it
+up from habit or pure cussedness I can't tell, but that's the real
+reason Billy would never go into his father's business--he couldn't
+stand his meanness. The old man's secretary forged a check for ten
+thousand; Billy caught him and cashed it himself--to save the man. He
+shouldered the guilt so his father wouldn't suspect the man and hound
+him."
+
+"I know," said Patsy, forgetting that she was supposed to know
+nothing. "But why in the name of all the saints did the secretary
+want to forge a check?"
+
+"Why does any one forge? He needs money. When Billy caught him the
+old fellow went all to pieces and told a pretty tough story. You see,
+he'd been Burgeman's secretary for almost twenty years, given him the
+best years of his life--slaved for him--lied for him--made money for
+him. Billy said his father regarded him as an excellent piece of
+office machinery, and treated him as if he were nothing more. The
+poor chap had always had hard luck; a delicate wife, three or four
+children who were eternally having or needing something, and poor
+relations demanding help he couldn't refuse. Between doctors' bills
+and clothing--and the relatives--he had no chance to save. At last he
+broke down, and the doctor told him it was an outdoor life, with
+absolute freedom from the strain of serving a man like Burgeman--or
+the undertaker for him. So he went to Burgeman, asked him to loan him
+the money to invest in a fruit-farm, and let him pay it off as fast
+as he could."
+
+"Well?" Patsy was interested at last.
+
+"Well, the old man turned him down--shouted his 'no sentiment' slogan
+at him, and shrugged his shoulders at what the doctor said. He told
+him, flat, that a man who hadn't saved a cent in twenty years
+couldn't in twenty years more; and he only put money into investments
+that paid. The poor chap went away, frantic, worked himself into
+thinking he was entitled to that last chance; and when Billy heard
+the story he thought so, too. In the end, Billy cashed the check,
+gave the secretary the money, and they both cleared out. He knew, if
+his father ever suspected the truth, he would have the poor chap
+followed and dragged back to pay the full penalty of the law--he and
+all his family with him."
+
+Patsy smiled whimsically. "It sounds so simple and believable when
+you have it explained; but it would have been rather nice, now, if
+Billy Burgeman could have known that one person believed in him from
+the beginning without an explanation."
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"Faith! how should I know? I was supposing, just."
+
+But as Patsy climbed onto the train she muttered under her breath:
+"We come out even, I'm thinking. If he's missed knowing that, I've
+missed knowing a fine lad."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN
+
+
+On the second day following Patsy played Juliet at Brambleside, and
+more than satisfied George Travis. While his mind was racing ahead,
+planning her particular stardom on Broadway, and her mind was
+pestering her with its fears and uncertainties into a state of
+"private prostration," the manager of the Brambleside Inn was
+telephoning the Green County sheriff to come at once--he had found
+the girl.
+
+So it came about at the final dropping of the curtain, as Patsy was
+climbing down from her bier, that four eagerly determined men
+confronted her, each plainly wishful to be the first to gain her
+attention.
+
+"Well," said the tinker, pointedly, "are you ready?"
+
+"It's all settled." Travis was jubilant. "You'll play Broadway for
+six months next winter--or I'm no manager."
+
+It was the manager of the Brambleside Inn and the Green County
+sheriff, however, who gave the greatest dramatic effect. They placed
+themselves adroitly on either side of Patsy and announced together:
+"You're under arrest!"
+
+"Holy Saint Patrick!" Patsy hardly knew whether to be amused or
+angry. With the actual coming of the tinker, and the laying of her
+fears, her mind seemed strangely limp and inadequate. Her lips
+quivered even as they smiled. "Maybe I had best go back to my bier;
+you couldn't arrest a dead Capulet."
+
+But George Travis swept her aside; he saw nothing amusing in the
+situation. "What do you mean by insulting Miss O'Connell and myself
+by such a performance? Why should she be under arrest--for being one
+of the best Shakespearean actresses we've had in this country for
+many a long, barren year?"
+
+"No! For stealing two thousand dollars' worth of diamonds from a
+guest in this hotel the night she palmed herself off as Miss St.
+Regis!" The manager of the Inn bit off his words as if he thoroughly
+enjoyed their flavor.
+
+"But she never was here," shouted Travis.
+
+"Yes, I was," contradicted Patsy.
+
+"And she sneaked off in the morning with the jewels," growled the
+manager.
+
+"And I trailed over the country for four days, trying to find the
+girl in a brown suit that he'd described--said she was on her way to
+Arden. I'd give a doggoned big cigar to know where you was all that
+time." And there was something akin to admiration in the sheriff's
+expression.
+
+But Patsy did not see. She was looking hard at the tinker, with an
+odd little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
+
+The tinker smiled back, while he reached deep into his trousers
+pocket and brought out a small package which he presented to the
+sheriff. "Are those what you are looking for?"
+
+They were five unset diamonds.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged! Did she give them to you?" The manager of the
+Inn looked suspiciously from the tinker to Patsy.
+
+"No; she didn't know I had them--didn't even know they existed and
+that she was being trailed as a suspected thief. Why, what's the
+matter?" For Patsy had suddenly grown white and her lips were
+trembling past control.
+
+"Naught--naught they could understand. But I'm finding out there was
+more than one quest on the road to Arden, more than one soul who
+fared forth to help another in trouble. And my heart is breaking,
+just, with the memory of it." And Patsy sank back on the bier and
+covered her face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" whispered a distressed tinker.
+
+"Don't ask--now--here. Sometime I'll be telling ye."
+
+"Well"--the sheriff thumbed the armholes of his vest in a
+business-like manner--"I cal'ate we've waited about long enough,
+young man; supposin' you explain how you come to have those stones in
+your possession; and why you lied to me about her and sent me hiking
+off to that country club--when you knew durned well where she was."
+
+The tinker laughed in spite of himself. "Certainly; it's very simple.
+I found these, in a suit of rags which I saw on a tramp the morning
+you lost the diamonds--and Miss O'Connell. I liked the rags so well
+that I paid the tramp to change clothes with me; he took mine and
+gave me his, along with a knockout blow for good measure."
+
+The manager of the Inn interrupted with an exclamation of surprise:
+"So! You were the young fellow they picked up senseless by the
+stables that morning. When the grooms saw the other man running, they
+made out it was you who had struck him first."
+
+"Wish I had. But I squared it off with him a few days later," the
+tinker chuckled. "At the time I couldn't make out why he struck me
+except to get the rest of the money I had; but of course he wanted
+to get the stones he'd sewed up in these rags and forgotten. I began
+to suspect something when I found you trailing Miss O'Connell."
+
+"See here, young man, and wasn't you the feller that put me on the
+wrong road twice?" The sheriff laid a hand of the law suggestively
+against his chest.
+
+The tinker chuckled again. "I certainly was. It would have been
+pretty discouraging for Miss O'Connell if you'd found her before we
+had the defense ready; and it would have been awkward for you--to
+have to take a lady in custody."
+
+"I cal'ate that's about right." And the sheriff relaxed into a grin.
+Suddenly he turned to the manager of the Inn and pounded his palm
+with his fist. "By Jupiter! I betcher that there tramp is the feller
+that's been cleanin' up these parts for the past two years. Hangs
+round as a tramp at back doors and stables, and picks up what
+information he needs to break into the house easy. Never hitched him
+up in my mind to the thefts afore--but I cal'ate it's the one
+man--and he's it."
+
+"Guess you're right," the tinker agreed. "Last Saturday, when I came
+upon him again--in an automobile--still in my clothes, we had a final
+fight for the possession of the rags, which I still wore, and the--"
+But he never finished.
+
+Patsy had sprung to her feet and was looking at him, bewilderment,
+accusation, almost fright, showing through her tears. "Your
+clothes--your clothes! You wore a--Then you are--"
+
+"Hush!" said the tinker. He turned to the others. "I think that is
+all, gentlemen. I searched the rags after I had finished my score
+with the thief and found the stones. I brought them over this
+afternoon to return to their rightful owner. I might have returned
+them that day after the play--but I forgot until the sheriff had
+gone. You are entirely welcome. Good afternoon!" He dismissed them
+promptly, but courteously, as if the stage had been his own
+drawing-room and the two had suddenly expressed a desire to take
+their leave.
+
+At the wings he left them and came back direct to George Travis.
+"There is more thieving to be done this afternoon, and I am going to
+do it. I am going to steal your future star, right from under your
+nose; and I shall never return her."
+
+"What do you mean?" Travis stared at him blankly.
+
+"Just what I say; Miss O'Connell and I are to be married this
+afternoon in Arden."
+
+"That's simply out of the--"
+
+Patsy, who had found her tongue at last, laid a coaxing hand on
+Travis's arm. "No, it isn't. I wired Miriam yesterday--to see if she
+was really as sick as you thought. She was sick; but she's ever so
+much better and her nerves are not going to be nearly as troublesome
+as she feared. She's quite willing to come back and take her old
+place, and she'll be well enough next week." Patsy's voice had become
+vibrant with feeling. "Now don't ye be hard-hearted and think I'm
+ungrateful. We've all been playing in a bigger comedy than Willie
+Shakespeare ever wrote; and, sure, we've got to be playing it out to
+the end as it was meant to be."
+
+"And you mean to give up your career, your big chance of success?"
+Travis still looked incredulous. "Don't you realize you'll be
+famous--famous and rich!" he emphasized the last word unduly.
+
+It set Patsy's eyes to blazing. "Aye, I'd no longer be like Granny
+Donoghue's lean pig, hungry for scrapings. Well, I'd rather be hungry
+for scrapings than starving for love. I knew one woman who threw away
+love to be famous and rich, and I watched her die. Thank God she's
+kept my feet from that road! Sure, I wouldn't be rich--" She choked
+suddenly and looked helplessly at the tinker.
+
+"Neither would I." And he spoke with a solemn conviction.
+
+In the end Travis gave in. He took his disappointment and his loss
+like the true gentleman he was, and sent them away with his blessing,
+mixed with an honest twinge of self-pity. It was not, however, until
+Patsy turned to wave him a last farewell and smile a last grateful
+smile from under the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet that he
+remembered that convention had been slighted.
+
+"Wait a minute," he said, running after them. "If I am not mistaken I
+have not had the pleasure of meeting your--future husband; perhaps
+you'll introduce us--"
+
+For once in her life Patsy looked fairly aghast, and Travis repeated,
+patiently, "His name, Irish Patsy--I want to know his name."
+
+The tinker might have helped her out, but he chose otherwise. He kept
+silent, his eyes on Patsy's as if he would read her answer there
+before she spoke it to Travis.
+
+"Well," she said at last, slowly, "maybe I'm not sure of it
+myself--except--I'm knowing it must be a good tinker name." And then
+laughter danced all over her face. "I'll tell ye; ye can be reading
+it to-morrow--in the papers." Whereupon she slipped her arm through
+the tinker's, and he led her away.
+
+And so it came to pass that once more Patsy and the tinker found
+themselves tramping the road to Arden; only this time it was down the
+straight road marked, "Seven Miles," and it was early evening instead
+of morning.
+
+"Do ye think we'll reach it now?" inquired Patsy.
+
+"We have reached it already; we're just going back."
+
+"And what happened to the brown dress?"
+
+"I burned it that night in the cottage--to fool the sheriff."
+
+"And I thought that night it was me ye had tricked--just for the whim
+of it. Did ye know who I was--by chance?"
+
+"Of course I knew. I had seen you with the Irish Players many, many
+times, and I knew you the very moment your voice came over the road
+to me--wishing me 'a brave day.'" The tinker's eyes deepened with
+tenderness. "Do you think for a moment if I hadn't known something
+about you--and wasn't hungering to know more--that I would have
+schemed and cheated to keep your comradeship?"
+
+"Ye might tell me, then, how ye came to know about the cottage--and
+how your picture ever climbed to the mantel-shelf?"
+
+"You know--I meant to burn that along with the dress--and I forgot.
+What did you think when you discovered it?"
+
+"Faith! I thought it was the picture of the truest gentleman God had
+ever made--and I fetched it along with me--for company."
+
+The tinker threw back his head and laughed as of old. "What will poor
+old Greg say when he finds it gone? Oh, I know how you almost stole
+his faithful old heart by being so pitying of his friend--and how you
+made the sign for him to follow--"
+
+"Aye," agreed Patsy, "but what of the cottage?"
+
+"That belongs to Greg's father; he and the girls are West this
+summer, so the cottage was closed."
+
+"And the breakfast with the throstles and the lady's-slippers?"
+
+The tinker laid his finger over her lips. "Please, sweetheart--don't
+try to steal away all the magic and the poetry from our road. You
+will leave it very barren if you do--'I'm thinking.'"
+
+Silence held their tongues until curiosity again loosened Patsy's.
+"And what started ye on the road in rags? Ye have never really
+answered that."
+
+"I have never honestly wanted to; it is not a pleasant answer." He
+drew Patsy closer, and his hands closed over hers. "Promise you will
+never think of it again, that you and I will forget that part of the
+road--after to-day?"
+
+Patsy nodded.
+
+"I borrowed the rags so that it would take a pretty smart coroner to
+identify the person in it after the train had passed under the
+suspension-bridge from which he fell--by accident. Don't shudder,
+dear. Was it so terrible--that wish to get away from a world that
+held nothing, not even some one to grieve? Remember, when I started
+there wasn't a soul who believed in me, who would care much one way
+or another--unless, perhaps, poor old Greg."
+
+"Would ye mind letting me look at the marriage license? I'd like to
+be seeing it written down."
+
+The tinker produced it, and she read "William Burgeman." Then she
+added, with a stubborn shake of the head, "Mind, though, I'll not be
+rich."
+
+"You will not have to be. Father has left me absolutely nothing for
+ten years; after that I can inherit his money or not, as we choose.
+It's a glorious arrangement. The money is all disposed of to good
+civic purpose, if we refuse. I am very glad it's settled that way;
+for I'm afraid I would never have had the heart to come to you, dear,
+dragging all those millions after me."
+
+"Then it is a free, open road for the both of us; and, please Heaven!
+we'll never misuse it." She laughed joyously; some day she would tell
+him of her meeting with his father; life was too full now for that.
+
+The tinker fell into his old swinging stride that Patsy had found so
+hard to keep pace with; and silence again held their tongues.
+
+"Do you think we shall find the castle with a window for every day in
+the year?" the tinker asked at last.
+
+"Aye. Why not? And we'll be as happy as I can tell ye, and twice as
+happy as ye can tell me. Doesn't every lad and lass find it anew for
+themselves when they take to the long road with naught but love and
+trust in their hearts--and their hands together? They may find it
+when they're young--they may not find it till they're old--but it
+will be there, ever beckoning them on--with the purple hills rising
+toward it. And there's a miracle in the castle that I've never told
+ye: no matter how old and how worn and how stooped the lad and his
+lass may have grown, there he sees her only fresh and fair and she
+sees him only brave and straight and strong."
+
+She stopped and faced him, her hands slipping out of his and creeping
+up to his shoulders and about his neck. "Dear lad--promise me one
+thing!--promise me we shall never forget the road! No matter how
+snugly we may be housed, or how close comfort and happiness sit at
+our hearthside--we'll be faring forth just once in so often--to touch
+earth again. And we'll help to keep faith in human nature--aye, and
+simple-hearted kindness alive in the world; and we'll make our
+friends by reason of that and not because of the gold we may or may
+not be having."
+
+"And do you still think kindness is the greatest thing in the world?"
+
+"No. There is one thing better; but kindness tramps mortal close at
+its heels." Patsy's hands slipped from his shoulders; she clasped
+them together in sudden intensity. "Haven't ye any curiosity at all
+to know what fetched me after ye?"
+
+"Yes. But there is to-morrow--and all the days after--to tell me."
+
+"No, there is just to-day. The telling of it is the only wedding-gift
+I have for ye, dear lad. I was with Marjorie Schuyler in the den that
+day you came to her and told her."
+
+"You heard everything?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"And you came, believing in me, after all?"
+
+"I came to show you there was one person in the world who trusted
+you, who would trust you across the world and back again. That's all
+the wedding-gift I have for ye, dear, barring love."
+
+And then and there--in the open road, still a good three miles from
+the Arden church--the tinker gathered her close in the embrace he had
+kept for her so long.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
+intent.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Seven Miles to Arden, by Ruth Sawyer</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Seven Miles to Arden, by Ruth Sawyer</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Seven Miles to Arden</p>
+<p>Author: Ruth Sawyer</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 7, 2009  [eBook #28271]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Janet Keller, D. Alexander,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 319px;">
+<img src="images/icover.jpg" class="ispace" width="319" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<h1> SEVEN MILES<br />
+ TO ARDEN</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>RUTH SAWYER</h2>
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Primrose Ring</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"> ILLUSTRATED</p>
+
+<p class="ispace">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 124px;">
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="124" height="150" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="gap">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3> HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br />
+NEW YORK &amp; LONDON</h3>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<p class="center">SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN</p>
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Curtis Publishing Company<br />
+Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper &amp; Brothers<br />
+Printed in the United States of America<br />
+Published April, 1916</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="centerbox2 bbox">
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Books by</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">RUTH SAWYER</p>
+
+<p>SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN. Illustrated. Post 8vo<br />
+THE PRIMROSE RING. Illustrated. Post 8vo</p>
+
+<hr class="tiny" />
+
+<p class="center">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, NEW YORK</p></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 347px;">
+<img src="images/illustration001.jpg" class="ispace" width="347" height="500" alt="illustration1" title="" />
+<span class="caption"><span style="padding-left: 10em;">(See <a href="#Page_220">page 220</a>)</span><br />
+&#8220;Where twin oaks rustle in the wind<br />
+There waits a lad for Rosalind&#8221;</span></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+
+<div class="centerbox bbox">
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap"><i>to</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>HIMSELF</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>It leads away, at the ring o&#8217; day,</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>On to the beckoning hills;</i></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And the throstles sing by the holy spring</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Which the Blessed Virgin fills.</i></span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>White is the road and light is the load,</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>For the burden we bear together.</i></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Our feet beat time on the upward climb</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>That ends in the purpling heather.</i></span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>There is spring in the air and everywhere</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>The throb of a life new-born,</i></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In mating thrush and blossoming brush,</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>In the hush o&#8217; the glowing morn.</i></span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Our hearts bound free as the open sea;</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Where now is our dole o&#8217; sorrow?</i></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The winds have swept the tears we&#8217;ve wept&mdash;</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>And promise a braver morrow.</i></span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>But this I pray as we go our way:</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>To find the Hills o&#8217; Heather,</i></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And, at hush o&#8217; night, in peace to light</i></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Our roadside fire together.</i></span></div></div></div>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" width="66%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">CHAP.</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">I.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Way of It</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SEVEN_MILES_TO_ARDEN">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">II.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Sign-post Points to an Adventure</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#II">12</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">III.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Patsy Plays a Part</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#III">25</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">IV.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Occupant of a Balmacaan Coat</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IV">39</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">V.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Tinker Points the Road</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#V">48</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">VI.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">At Day&#8217;s End</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VI">64</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">VII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Tinker Plays a Part</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VII">85</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">VIII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">When Two Were Not Company</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VIII">106</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">IX.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Patsy Acquires Some Information</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IX">121</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">X.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Joseph Journeys To a Far Country</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#X">139</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">XI.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">And Chance Stages Melodrama Instead of<br />
+Comedy</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XI">153</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">XII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Change of Nationality</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XII">165</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">XIII.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Message and a Map</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIII">191</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">XIV.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Enter King Midas</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIV">202</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">XV.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Arden</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XV">216</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td align="left">XVI.</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Road Begins All Over Again</span></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVI">231</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="SEVEN_MILES_TO_ARDEN" id="SEVEN_MILES_TO_ARDEN"></a>SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<h2>THE WAY OF IT</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">P</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">atsy</span> O&#8217;Connell sat on the edge of her cot in the women&#8217;s free ward
+of the City Hospital. She was pulling on a vagabond pair of gloves
+while she mentally gathered up a somewhat doubtful, ragged lot of
+prospects and stood them in a row before her for contemplation,
+comparison, and a final choice. They strongly resembled the contents
+of her steamer trunk, held at a respectable boarding-house in
+University Square by a certain Miss Gibb for unpaid board, for these
+were made up of a jumble of priceless and worthless belongings,
+unmarketable because of their extremes.</p>
+
+<p>She had time a-plenty for contemplation; the staff wished to see her
+before she left, and the staff at that moment was consulting at the
+other end of the hospital.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p><p>Properly speaking, Patsy was Patricia O&#8217;Connell, but no one had ever
+been known to refer to her in that cold-blooded manner, save on the
+programs of the Irish National Plays&mdash;and in the City Hospital&#8217;s
+register. What the City Hospital knew of Patsy was precisely what the
+American public and press knew, what the National Players knew, what
+the world at large knew&mdash;precisely what Patricia O&#8217;Connell had chosen
+to tell&mdash;nothing more, nothing less. They had accepted her on her own
+scanty terms and believed in her implicitly. There was one thing
+undeniably true about her&mdash;her reality. Having established this fact
+beyond a doubt, it was a simple matter to like her and trust her.</p>
+
+<p>No one had ever thought it necessary to question Patsy about her
+nationality; it was too obvious. Concerning her past and her family
+she answered every one alike: &#8220;Sure, I was born without either. I was
+found by accident, just, one morning hanging on to the thorn of a
+Killarney rose-bush that happened to be growing by the Brittany
+coast. They say I was found by the Physician to the King, who was
+traveling past, and that&#8217;s how it comes I can speak French and King&#8217;s
+English equally pure; although I&#8217;m not denying I prefer them both
+with a bit of brogue.&#8221; She always thought in Irish&mdash;straight, Donegal
+Irish&mdash;with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>a dropping of final g&#8217;s, a bur to the r&#8217;s, and a &#8220;ye&#8221;
+for a &#8220;you.&#8221; Invariably this was her manner of speech with those she
+loved, or toward whom she felt the kinship of sympathetic
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>To those who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the
+breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she
+wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: &#8220;Faith! I can hearken
+back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it&#8217;s some one more modern
+you&#8217;re asking for&mdash;there&#8217;s that rascal, Dan O&#8217;Connell. He&#8217;s too long
+dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be
+saying. Only&mdash;if ye should find by chance, any time, that I&#8217;d rather
+fight with my wits than my fists, ye can lay that to Dan&#8217;s door;
+along with the stubbornness of a tinker&#8217;s ass.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>People had been known to pry into her religion; and on these Patsy
+smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children.
+&#8220;Sure, I believe in every one&mdash;and as for a church, there&#8217;s not a
+place that goes by the name&mdash;synagogue, meeting-house, or
+cathedral&mdash;that I can&#8217;t be finding a wee bit of God waiting inside
+for me. But I&#8217;ll own to it, honestly, that when I&#8217;m out seeking Him,
+I find Him easiest on some hilltop, with the wind blowing hard from
+the sea and never a human soul in sight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>This was approximately all the world and the press knew of Patsy
+O&#8217;Connell, barring the fact that she was neighboring in the twenties,
+was fresh, unspoiled, and charming, and that she had played the
+ing&eacute;nue parts with the National Players, revealing an art that
+promised a good future, should luck bring the chance. Unfortunately
+this chance was not numbered among the prospects Patsy reviewed from
+the edge of her hospital cot that day.</p>
+
+<p>The interest of the press and the public approval of the National
+Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that
+iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into
+bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final
+curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on
+a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the
+company&#8217;s home passage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for
+the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that
+night she filled the only vacant bed in the women&#8217;s free ward of the
+City Hospital.</p>
+
+<p>It was pneumonia. Patsy had tossed about and moaned with the racking
+pain of it, raving deliriously through her score or more of r&ocirc;les.
+She had gone dancing off with the Faery Child to the Land of Heart&#8217;s
+Desire; she had sat beside the bier in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>&#8220;The Riders to the Sea&#8221;; she
+had laughed through &#8220;The Full o&#8217; Moon,&#8221; and played the Fool while the
+Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed
+wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new
+world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden
+she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the &#8220;Gray
+Brother.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was all weeks past. It was early June now; the theatrical season
+was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies
+until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six
+cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid
+board bill.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy felt sorry for Miss Gibb, but she felt no shame. Boarding-house
+keepers, dressmakers, bootmakers, and the like must take the risk
+along with the players themselves in the matter of getting paid for
+their services. If the public&mdash;who paid two dollars a seat for a
+performance&mdash;failed to appear, and box-office receipts failed to
+margin their salaries, it was their misfortune, not their fault; and
+others had to suffer along with them. But these debts of circumstance
+never troubled Patsy. She paid them when she could, and when she
+could not&mdash;there was always her trunk.</p>
+
+<p>The City Hospital happened to know the extent of Patsy&#8217;s property; it
+is their business to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>find out these little private matters
+concerning their free patients. They had also drawn certain
+conclusions from the facts that no one had come to see Patsy and that
+no communications had reached her from anywhere. It looked to them as
+if Patsy were down and out, to state it baldly. Now the Patsys that
+come to free wards of city hospitals are very rare; and the
+superintendent and staff and nurses were interested beyond the usual
+limits set by their time and work and the professional hardening of
+their cardiac region.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s not to leave here until we find out just who she&#8217;s got to look
+after her until she gets on her feet again, understand&#8221;&mdash;and the old
+doctor tapped the palm of his left hand with his right forefinger, a
+sign of important emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore the day nurse had gone to summon the staff while Patsy
+still sat obediently on the edge of her cot, pulling on her vagabond
+gloves, reviewing her prospects, and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My! but we&#8217;ll miss you!&#8221; came the voice from the woman in the next
+bed, who had been watching her regretfully for some time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s my noise ye&#8217;ll be missing.&#8221; And Patsy smiled back at her a
+winning, comrade sort of smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You kind o&#8217; got us all acquainted with one another and thinkin&#8217;
+about somethin&#8217; else but <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>pains and troubles. It&#8217;ll seem awful
+lonesome with you gone,&#8221; and the woman beyond heaved a prodigious
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t ye believe it,&#8221; said Patsy, with conviction. &#8220;They&#8217;ll be
+fetching in some one a good bit better to fill my place&mdash;ye see,
+just.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, they won&#8217;t; &#8217;twill be another dago, likely&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whist!&#8221; Patsy raised a silencing finger and looked fearsomely over
+her shoulder to the bed back of her.</p>
+
+<p>Its inmate lay covered to the cheek, but one could catch a glimpse of
+tangled black hair and a swarthy skin. Patsy rose and went softly
+over to the bed; her movement disturbed the woman, who opened dumb,
+reproachful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be gone in a minute, dear; I want just to tell you how sorry I
+am. But&mdash;sure&mdash;Mother Mary has it safe&mdash;and she&#8217;s keeping it for ye.&#8221;
+She stooped and brushed the forehead with her lips, as the staff and
+two of the nurses appeared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! is it a delegation or a constabulary?&#8221; And Patsy laughed the
+laugh that had made her famous from Dublin to Duluth, where the
+bankruptcy had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a self-appointed committee to find out just where you&#8217;re going
+after you leave here,&#8221; said the young doctor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>Patsy eyed him quizzically. &#8220;That&#8217;s not manners to ask personal
+questions. But I don&#8217;t mind telling ye all, confidentially, that I
+haven&#8217;t my mind made yet between&mdash;a reception at the Vincent
+Wanderlusts&#8217;&mdash;or a musicale at the Ritz-Carlton.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Look here, lassie&#8221;&mdash;the old doctor ruffled his beard and threw out
+his chest like a mammoth pouter pigeon&mdash;&#8220;you&#8217;ll have to give us a
+sensible answer before we let you go one step. You know you can&#8217;t
+expect to get very far with that&mdash;in this city,&#8221; and he tapped the
+bag on her wrist significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy flushed crimson. For the first time in her life, to her
+knowledge, the world had discovered more about her than she had
+intended. Those humiliating eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and the
+crooked sixpence seemed to be scorching their way through the leather
+that held them. But she met the eyes looking into hers with a flinty
+resistance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, &#8217;twould carry me a long way, I&#8217;m thinking, if I spent it by
+the ha&#8217;penny bit.&#8221; Then she laughed in spite of herself. &#8220;If ye don&#8217;t
+look for all the world like a parcel of old mother hens that have
+just hatched out a brood o&#8217; wild turkeys!&#8221; She suddenly checked her
+Irish&mdash;it was apt to lead her into compromising situations with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>Anglo-Saxon folk, if she did not leash her tongue&mdash;and slid into
+English. &#8220;You see, I really know quite a number of people
+here&mdash;rather well&mdash;too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why haven&#8217;t they come to see you, then?&#8221; asked the day nurse,
+bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy eyed her with admiration. &#8220;You&#8217;d never make a press agent&mdash;or a
+doctor, I&#8217;m afraid; you&#8217;re too truthful.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You see,&#8221; explained the old doctor, &#8220;these friends of yours are what
+we professional people term hypothetical cases. We&#8217;d like to be sure
+of something real.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One of Patsy&#8217;s vagabond gloves closed over the doctor&#8217;s hand. &#8220;Bless
+you all for your goodness! but the people are more real than you
+think. Everybody believes I went back with the company and I never
+bothered them with the truth, you see. I&#8217;ve more than one good friend
+among the theatrical crowd right here; but&mdash;well, you know how it is;
+if you are a bit down on your luck you keep away from your own world,
+if you can. There is a girl&mdash;just about my own age&mdash;in society here.
+We did a lot for her in the way of giving her a good time when she
+was in Dublin, and I&#8217;ve seen her quite a bit over here. I&#8217;m going to
+her to get something to do before the season begins. She may need a
+secretary or a governess&mdash;or a&mdash;cook. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>Holy Saint Martin! but I can
+cook!&#8221; And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her
+culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what,&#8221; said the old doctor, gruffly, &#8220;we will let you
+go if you will promise to come back if&mdash;if no one&#8217;s at home. It&#8217;s
+against rules, but I&#8217;ll see the superintendent keeps your bed for you
+to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you,&#8221; said Patsy. She waved a farewell to the staff and the
+ward as she went through the door. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know where I&#8217;m going or
+what I shall be finding, but if it&#8217;s anything worth sharing I&#8217;ll send
+some back to you all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The staff watched her down the corridor to the elevator.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Gee!&#8221; exclaimed the youngest doctor, his admiration working out to
+the surface. &#8220;When she&#8217;s made her name I&#8217;m going to marry her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, are you?&#8221; The voice of the old doctor took on its habitual
+tartness. &#8220;Acute touch of philanthropy, what&mdash;eh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patricia O&#8217;Connell swung the hospital door behind her and stepped out
+into a blaze of June sunshine. &#8220;Holy Saint Patrick! but it feels
+good. Now if I could be an alley cat for two months I could get along
+fine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>She cast a backward look toward the granite front of the City
+Hospital and her eyes grew as blue and soft as the waters of
+Killarney. &#8220;Sure, cat or human, the world&#8217;s a grand place to be alive
+in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<h2>A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">M</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">arjorie</span> Schuyler sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby
+spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white,
+shimmering cr&ecirc;pes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her
+mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled
+between an ultimate choice between October and June of the following
+year.</p>
+
+<p>The world knew all there was to know about Marjorie Schuyler. It
+could tell to a nicety who her paternal and maternal grandparents
+were, back to old Peter Schuyler&#8217;s time and the settling of the
+Virginian Berkeleys. It could figure her income down to a paltry
+hundred of the actual amount. It knew her age to the month and day.
+In fact, it had kept her calendar faithfully, from her coming-out
+party, through the periods of mourning for her parents and her
+subsequent returns to society, through the rumors of her engagements
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>to half a dozen young leaders at home and abroad, down to her latest
+conquest.</p>
+
+<p>The last date on her calendar was the authorized announcement of her
+engagement to young Burgeman. Hence the shimmering samples and the
+relative values of October and June for a wedding journey.</p>
+
+<p>And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie
+Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and
+distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and
+chaperonage to her position; but she managed her own affairs, social
+and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a
+modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the
+leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named
+Marjorie Schuyler.</p>
+
+<p>As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man&#8217;s Son. That
+was the best and worst it could say of him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think, Toto,&#8221; said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, &#8220;it
+will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October&mdash;a
+church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so
+many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last,
+untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we&#8217;ll not have to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>think about these yet awhile.&#8221; Whereupon she dropped the shimmering
+samples into the waste-basket.</p>
+
+<p>A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the
+great Schuyler library. &#8220;There&#8217;s a young person giving the name of
+O&#8217;Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;O&#8217;Connell?&#8221; Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory
+eyebrows. &#8220;Why&mdash;it can&#8217;t be. The entire company went back weeks ago.
+What is she like&mdash;small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very
+blue eyes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The maid nodded ambiguously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bring her up. I know it can&#8217;t be, but&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip
+of Patsy&#8217;s shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at
+the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Patsy O&#8217;Connell! Why didn&#8217;t you go home with the others&mdash;and what
+have you done to your cheeks?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. &#8220;Sure, they&#8217;re after
+needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that&#8217;s all. How&#8217;s
+yourself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she
+herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of
+anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious
+ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the
+comparison&mdash;oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush
+neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a
+shabby affair&mdash;positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown
+beaver&mdash;lacking feather or flower&mdash;was pulled down rakishly over her
+mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish
+to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied
+comparison even with Marjorie Schuyler; moreover&mdash;a thrush sings.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now tell me,&#8221; said Marjorie Schuyler, &#8220;where have you been all these
+weeks?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy considered. &#8220;Well&mdash;I&#8217;ve been taking up hospital training.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy shook her head. &#8220;You see, they only kept me until they had
+demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders&mdash;and fresh-air
+treatment, and then they dismissed me. I&#8217;m fearsome they were after
+finding out I hadn&#8217;t the making of a nurse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s too bad! What are you going to do now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An amused little smile twitched at the corners <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>of Patsy&#8217;s mouth; it
+acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. &#8220;Sure, I
+haven&#8217;t my mind made&mdash;quite. And yourself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;I?&#8221; Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. &#8220;Did you know I
+was engaged?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!&#8221; And the vagabond gloves
+clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a
+hard little squeeze. &#8220;Who&#8217;s himself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Billy Burgeman, son of <i>the</i> Burgeman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Old King Midas?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a new name for him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It has fitted him years enough.&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s face sobered. &#8220;Oh, why does
+money always have to mate with money? Why couldn&#8217;t you have married a
+poor great man&mdash;a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer&mdash;some one who
+ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for
+bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs
+and sent him soaring&mdash;given the world another &#8216;Prometheus Unbound.&#8217;
+As for Billy Burgeman&mdash;he could have married&mdash;me,&#8221; and Patsy spread
+her hands in mock petition.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie Schuyler laughed. &#8220;You! That is too beautifully delicious!
+Why, Patsy O&#8217;Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young
+gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a
+semi-comatose condition in an <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>afternoon&mdash;and, pray, what would you
+do with him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, I&#8217;d make a man of him, that&#8217;s what. His father&#8217;s son might
+need it, I&#8217;m thinking.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie Schuyler&#8217;s face became perfectly blank for a second, then
+she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted
+her head, and mused aloud: &#8220;I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does
+lack? Sometimes I&#8217;ve wondered if it was not having a mother, or
+growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his
+father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not
+a lack of manhood&mdash;I&#8217;m sure of that; and it&#8217;s not lack of caring, for
+he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a
+great deal to know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth
+in them, it might be his father&#8217;s meanness that&#8217;s ailing him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. &#8220;No; Billy&#8217;s almost a prodigal. His
+father says he hasn&#8217;t the slightest idea of the value of money; it&#8217;s
+just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him;
+something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why,
+when he was a boy&mdash;in fact, until he was almost grown&mdash;his father
+couldn&#8217;t trust Billy with a cent.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who said that&mdash;Billy or the king?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;His father, of course. That&#8217;s why he has never taken Billy into
+business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs&mdash;on his own
+merits; and he&#8217;s not going to let him into the firm until he&#8217;s worth
+at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman
+has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to
+a great deal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Meaning money or character?&#8221; inquired Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. &#8220;Are you laughing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith, I&#8217;m closer to weeping; &#8217;twould be a lonesome, hard rearing
+that would come to a son of King Midas, I&#8217;m thinking. I&#8217;d far rather
+be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She leaned forward impulsively and gathered up the hands of the girl
+opposite in the warm, friendly compass of those vagabond gloves. &#8220;Do
+ye really love him, <i>cailin a&#8217;sthore</i>?&#8221; And this time it was her look
+that was sharp.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, of course I love him! What a foolish question! Why should I be
+marrying him if I didn&#8217;t love him? Why do you ask?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because&mdash;the son of King Midas with no mother, with no one at all
+but the king, growing up all alone in a gloomy old castle, with no
+one trusting him, would need a great deal of love&mdash;a great, great
+deal&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all right, Ellen. I&#8217;ll find her for myself.&#8221; It was a man&#8217;s
+voice, pitched overhigh; it came from somewhere beyond and below the
+inclosing curtains and cut off the last of Patsy&#8217;s speech.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s funny,&#8221; said Marjorie Schuyler, rising. &#8220;There&#8217;s Billy now.
+I&#8217;ll bring him in and let you see for yourself that he&#8217;s not at all
+an object of sympathy&mdash;or pity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She disappeared into the library, leaving Patsy speculating
+recklessly. They must have met just the other side of the closed
+hangings, for to Patsy their voices sounded very near and close
+together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Billy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Listen, Marjorie; if a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to
+trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out
+and make good again&mdash;that&#8217;s true, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Billy Burgeman! What do you mean?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just answer my question. If a girl loves a man she&#8217;ll trust him,
+won&#8217;t she?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know she would, dear. What would the man do if she didn&#8217;t?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The voice sounded strained and unnatural in its intensity and appeal.
+Patsy rose, troubled in mind, and tiptoed to the only other door in
+the den.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis a grand situation for a play,&#8221; she remarked, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>dryly, &#8220;but &#8217;tis
+a mortial poor one in real life, and I&#8217;m best out of it.&#8221; She turned
+the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened
+on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy&#8217;s expression would
+have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no
+audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to
+ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced
+to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to
+improvise in the way of lines.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;... I told you, <i>forged</i>&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy was tempted to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice and what he was saying, but she knew even then she
+would go on hearing; his voice was too vibrant, too insistent, to be
+shut out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;... my father&#8217;s name for ten thousand. I took the check to the bank
+myself, and cashed it; father&#8217;s vice-president.... Of course the
+cashier knew me.... I tell you I can&#8217;t explain&mdash;not now. I&#8217;ve got to
+get away and stay away until I&#8217;ve squared the thing and paid father
+back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Billy Burgeman, did you forge that check yourself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does that matter&mdash;whether I forged it or had it forged or saw
+it forged? I tell you I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>cashed it, knowing it was forged. Don&#8217;t you
+understand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; but if you didn&#8217;t forge it, you could easily prove it; people
+wouldn&#8217;t have to know the rest&mdash;they are hushing up things of that
+kind every day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A silence dropped on the three like a choking, blinding fog. The two
+outside the hangings must have been staring at each other, too
+bewildered or shocked to speak. The one inside clutched her throat,
+muttering, &#8220;If my heart keeps up this thumping, faith, he&#8217;ll think
+it&#8217;s the police and run.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At last the voice of the man came, hushed but strained almost to
+breaking. To Patsy it sounded as if he were staking his very soul in
+the words, uncertain of the balance. &#8220;Marjorie, you don&#8217;t understand!
+I cashed that check because&mdash;because I want to take the
+responsibility of it and whatever penalty comes along with it. I
+don&#8217;t believe father will ever tell. He&#8217;s too proud; it would strike
+back at him too hard. But you would have to know; he&#8217;d tell you; and
+I wanted to tell you first myself. I want to go away knowing you
+believe and trust me, no matter what father says about me, no matter
+what every one thinks about me. I want to hear you say it&mdash;that you
+will be waiting&mdash;just like this&mdash;for me <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>to come back to when I&#8217;ve
+squared it all off and can explain.... Why, Marjorie&mdash;Marjorie!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy waited in an agony of dread, hope, prayer&mdash;waited for the
+answer she, the girl he loved, would make. It came at last, slowly,
+deliberately, as if spoken, impersonally, by the foreman of a jury:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in you, Billy. I&#8217;m sorry, but I don&#8217;t believe I
+could ever trust you again. Your father has always said you couldn&#8217;t
+take care of money; this simply means you have got yourself into some
+wretched hole, and forging your father&#8217;s name was the only way out of
+it. I suppose you think the circumstances, whatever they may be, have
+warranted the act; but that act puts a stigma on your name which
+makes it unfit for any woman to bear; and if you have any spark of
+manhood left, you&#8217;ll unwish the wish&mdash;you will unthink the
+thought&mdash;that I would wait&mdash;or even want you&mdash;ever&mdash;to come back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A cry&mdash;a startled, frightened cry&mdash;rang through the rooms. It did not
+come from either Marjorie or her leading man. Patsy stood with a
+vagabond glove pressed hard over her mouth&mdash;quite unconscious that
+the cry had escaped and that there was no longer need of
+muzzling&mdash;then plunged headlong through the hangings into the
+library. Marjorie Schuyler was standing alone.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Where is he&mdash;your man?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s gone&mdash;and please don&#8217;t call him&mdash;that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go after him&mdash;hurry&mdash;don&#8217;t let him go! Don&#8217;t ye understand? He
+mustn&#8217;t go away with no one believing in him. Tell him it&#8217;s a
+mistake; tell him anything&mdash;only go!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>While Patsy&#8217;s tongue burred out its Irish brogue she pushed at the
+tall figure in front of her&mdash;pushed with all her might. &#8220;Are ye
+nailed to the floor? What&#8217;s happened to your feet? For Heaven&#8217;s sake,
+lift them and let them take ye after him. Don&#8217;t ye hear? There&#8217;s the
+front door slamming behind him. He&#8217;ll be gone past your calling in
+another minute. Dear heart alive, ye can&#8217;t be meaning to let him
+go&mdash;this way!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Marjorie Schuyler stood immovable and deaf to her pleading.
+Incredulity, bewilderment, pity, and despair swept over Patsy&#8217;s face
+like clouds scudding over the surface of a clear lake. Then scorn
+settled in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry for ye, sorry for any woman that fails the man who loves
+her. I don&#8217;t know this son of old King Midas; I never saw him in my
+life, and all I know about him is what ye told me this day and scraps
+of what he had to say for himself; but I believe in him. I know he
+never forged that check&mdash;or used the money for any mean use of his
+own. I&#8217;d wager he&#8217;s shielding <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>some one, some one weaker than he, too
+afeared to step up and say so. Why, I&#8217;d trust him across the world
+and back again; and, holy Saint Patrick! I&#8217;m going after him to tell
+him so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For the second time within a few seconds Marjorie Schuyler listened
+and heard the front door slam; then the goddess came to life. She
+walked slowly, regally, across the library and passed between the
+hangings which curtained her den. Her eyes, probably by pure chance,
+glanced over the shimmering contents of the waste-basket. A little
+cold smile crept to the corners of her mouth, while her chin
+stiffened.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think, Toto,&#8221; she said, addressing the toy ruby spaniel, &#8220;that it
+will not be even a June wedding,&#8221; and she laughed a crisp, dry little
+laugh.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h2>PATSY PLAYS A PART</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">P</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">atsy</span> ran down the steps of the Schuyler house, jumping the last
+four. As her feet struck the pavement she looked up and down the
+street for what she sought. There it was&mdash;the back of a
+fast-retreating man in a Balmacaan coat of Scotch tweed and a round,
+plush hat, turning the corner to Madison Avenue. Patsy groaned
+inwardly when she saw the outlines of the figure; they were so
+conventional, so disappointing; they lacked simplicity and
+directness&mdash;two salient life principles with Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pshaw! What&#8217;s in a back?&#8221; muttered Patsy. &#8220;He may be a man, for all
+his clothes;&#8221; and she took to her heels after him.</p>
+
+<p>As she reached the corner he jumped on a passing car going south.
+&#8220;Tracking for the railroad station,&#8221; was her mental comment, and she
+looked north for the next car following; there was none. As far as
+eye could see there was an unbroken <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>stretch of track&mdash;fate seemed
+strangely averse to aiding and abetting her deed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When in doubt, take a taxi,&#8221; suggested Patsy&#8217;s inner consciousness,
+and she accepted the advice without argument.</p>
+
+<p>She raced down two blocks and found one. &#8220;Grand Central&mdash;and
+drive&mdash;like the devil!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As the door clicked behind her her eye caught the jumping indicator,
+and she smiled a grim smile. &#8220;Faith, in two-shilling jumps like that
+I&#8217;ll be bankrupt afore I&#8217;ve my hand on the tails of that coat.&#8221; And
+with a tired little sigh she leaned back in the corner, closed her
+eyes, and relaxed her grip on mind and will and body.</p>
+
+<p>A series of jerks and a final stop shook her into a thinking, acting
+consciousness again; she was out of the taxi in a twinkling&mdash;with the
+man paid and her eyes on the back of a Balmacaan coat and plush hat
+disappearing through a doorway. She could not follow it as fast as
+she had reckoned. She balanced corners with a stout, indeterminate
+old gentleman who blocked her way and insisted on wavering in her
+direction each time she tried to dodge him. In her haste to make up
+for those precious lost seconds she upset a pair of twins belonging
+to an already overburdened mother. These she righted and went dashing
+on her way. Groups waylaid her; people with time to kill <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>sauntered
+in front of her; wandering, indecisive people tried to stop her for
+information; and she reached the gate just as it was closing. Through
+it she could see&mdash;down a discouraging length of platform&mdash;a
+Balmacaaned figure disappearing into a car.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Too late, lady; train&#8217;s leaving.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was well for Patsy that she was ignorant of the law governing
+closing gates and departing trains, for the foolish and the ignorant
+can sometimes achieve the impossible. She confronted the guard with a
+look of unconquerable determination. &#8220;No, &#8217;tisn&#8217;t; the train guard is
+still on the platform. You&#8217;ve got to let me through.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She emphasized the importance of it with two tight fists placed not
+overgently in the center of the guard&#8217;s rotundity, and accompanied by
+a shove. In some miraculous fashion this accomplished it. The gate
+clanged at Patsy&#8217;s back instead of in her face, as she had expected.
+A bell rang, a whistle tooted, and Patsy&#8217;s feet clattered like mad
+down the platform.</p>
+
+<p>A good-natured brakeman picked her up and lifted her to the rear
+platform of the last car as it drew out. That saved the day for
+Patsy, for her strength and breath had gone past summoning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you,&#8221; she said, feebly, with a vagabond glove held out in
+proffered fellowship. &#8220;That&#8217;s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>the kindest thing any one has done for
+me since I came over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are ye&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Irish&mdash;same as yourself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How did ye know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, who but an Irishman would have had his wits and his heart
+working at the same time?&#8221; And with a laugh Patsy left him and went
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>Her eye ran systematically down the rows of seats. Billy Burgeman was
+not there. She passed through to the next car, and a second, and a
+third. Still there was no back she could identify as belonging to the
+man she was pursuing.</p>
+
+<p>She was crossing a fourth platform when she ran into the conductor,
+who barred her way. &#8220;Smoking-car ahead, lady; this is the last of the
+passenger-coaches.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy had it on the end of her tongue to say she preferred
+smoking-cars, intending to duck simultaneously under the conductor&#8217;s
+arm and enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the
+tongue&#8217;s edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and
+taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was
+responsible. It had spun the day&#8217;s events before her like a roulette
+wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler&#8217;s
+concerning William Burgeman: &#8220;He&#8217;s the most conventional young
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>gentleman I ever saw in my life. Why, you would shock&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A strange young woman doling out consolation to him in a smoking-car
+would be anything but a dramatic success; Patsy felt this all too
+keenly. He was decidedly not of her world or the men and women she
+knew, who gave help when the need came regardless of time, place,
+acquaintanceship, or sex.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith, he&#8217;s the kind that will expect an introduction first, and a
+month or two of tangoing, tea-drinking, and tennis-playing; after
+which, if I ask his permission, he might consider it proper&mdash;&#8221; Patsy
+groaned. &#8220;Oh, I hate the man already!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ticket!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ticket? What for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What for? Do you think this is a joy ride?&#8221; The conductor radiated
+sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy crimsoned. &#8220;I haven&#8217;t mine. I&mdash;I was to&mdash;meet my&mdash;aunt&mdash;who had
+the ticket&mdash;and&mdash;she must have missed the train.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where are you going?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I&mdash;Why, I was telling&mdash;My aunt had the tickets. How would I know
+where I was going without the tickets?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The conductor snorted.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy looked hard at him and knew the time had come for wits&mdash;good,
+sharp O&#8217;Connell wits. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>She smiled coaxingly. &#8220;It sounds so stupid,
+but, you see, I haven&#8217;t an idea where I am going. I was to meet my
+aunt and go down with her to her summer place. I&mdash;I can&#8217;t remember
+the name.&#8221; Her mouth drooped for the fraction of a second, then she
+brightened all over. &#8220;I know what I can do&mdash;very probably she missed
+the train because she expects to be at the station to meet me&mdash;I can
+look out each time the train stops, and when I see her I can get off.
+That makes it all right, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221; And she smiled in open
+confidence as a sacrificial maiden might have propitiated the dragon.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. &#8220;And who pays
+for the ticket?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a
+contagious laugh. &#8220;I do&mdash;of course. I&#8217;ll take a ticket to&mdash;just name
+over the stations, please?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The conductor growled them forth: &#8220;Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville,
+Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that last&mdash;Greyfriars? I&#8217;ll take a ticket to Greyfriars.&#8221; She
+said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a
+mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill.</p>
+
+<p>When he had given her the change and passed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>on, still disgruntled,
+Patsy allowed herself what she called a &#8220;temporary attack of private
+prostration.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Idiot!&#8221; she groaned in self-address. &#8220;Ye are the biggest fool in two
+continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he
+were topside o&#8217; green earth to hear.&#8221; Whereupon she gripped one
+vagabond glove with the other&mdash;in fellow misery; and for the second
+time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway
+and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it
+started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another
+furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had
+long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an
+individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such
+failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her
+determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come
+for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete
+oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for
+spice&mdash;and artistic finish&mdash;&#8220;After that&mdash;the devil take him!&#8221; when
+the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly
+something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of
+the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in
+the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim
+outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A million curses on the house of Burgeman!&#8221; quoth Patsy. &#8220;Well,
+there&#8217;s naught for it but to get off at the next station and go
+back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The conductor watched her get off with a distinct feeling of relief.
+He had very much feared she was not a responsible person and in no
+mental position to be traveling alone. Her departure cleared him of
+all uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business
+with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing
+train and then at her empty hands, with the nearest she had ever come
+in her life to utter, abject despair. She had left her bag in the
+car!</p>
+
+<p>When articulate thinking was possible she remarked, acridly, &#8220;Ye need
+a baby nurse to mind ye, Patricia O&#8217;Connell; and I&#8217;m not sure but ye
+need a perambulator as well.&#8221; She gave a tired little stretch to her
+body and rubbed her eyes. &#8220;I feel as if this was all a silly play and
+I was cast for the part of an Irish simpleton; a low-comedy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>burlesque&mdash;that ye&#8217;d swear never happened in real life outside of
+the county asylums.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A headlight raced down the track toward her and the city, and she
+gathered up what was left of her scattered wits. As the train slowed
+up she stepped into the shadows, and her eye fell on the open
+baggage-car. She smiled grimly. &#8220;Faith! I have a notion I like
+brakemen and baggagemen better than conductors.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so it came to pass as the train started that the baggageman, who
+happened to be standing in the doorway, was somewhat startled to see
+a small figure come racing toward it out of the dusk and land
+sprawling on the floor beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A girl tramp!&#8221; he ejaculated in amazement and disgust, and then, as
+he helped her to her feet, &#8220;Don&#8217;t you know you&#8217;re breaking the law?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. &#8220;From the feelings, I thought it was something else.&#8221;
+She sobered and turned on him fiercely. &#8220;I want ye to understand I&#8217;ve
+paid my fare on the train out, which entitled me to one continuous
+passage&mdash;<i>with my trunk</i>. Well, I&#8217;m returning&mdash;<i>as my trunk</i>, I&#8217;ll
+take up no more room and I&#8217;ll ask no more privileges.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That may sound sensible, but it&#8217;s not law,&#8221; and the man grinned
+broadly. &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, miss, but off you go at the next station.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; agreed Patsy; &#8220;only please don&#8217;t argue. Sure, I&#8217;m sick
+entirely of arguing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She dropped down on a trunk and buried her face in her hands. The
+baggageman watched her, hypnotized with curiosity and wonder. At the
+next station he helped her to drop through the opening she had
+entered, and called a shamefaced &#8220;good-by&#8221; after her in the dusk.</p>
+
+<p>She hunted up the station-agent and received scanty encouragement:
+Very likely he had seen such a man; there were many of that
+description getting off every day. They generally went to the
+Inn&mdash;Brambleside Inn. The season was just open and society people
+were beginning to come. No, there was no conveyance. The Inn&#8217;s &#8217;buses
+did not meet any train after the six-thirty from town, unless ordered
+especially by guests. Was she expected?</p>
+
+<p>Patsy was about to shake her head when a roadster swung around the
+corner of the station and came to a dead stop in front of where she
+and the station-master were standing.</p>
+
+<p>The driver peered at her through his goggles in a questioning,
+hesitating manner. &#8220;Is this&mdash;are you Miss St. Regis?&#8221; he finally
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miriam St. Regis?&#8221; Patsy intended it for a question, realizing even
+as she spoke the absurdity of inquiring the name of an English
+actress at such a place.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>But the driver took it for a statement of identity. &#8220;Yes, of course,
+Miss Miriam St. Regis. Mr. Blake made a mistake and thought because
+your box came from town you&#8217;d be coming that way. It wasn&#8217;t until
+your manager, Mr. Travis, telephoned half an hour ago that he
+realized you&#8217;d be on that southbound train. Awfully sorry to have
+kept you waiting. Step right in, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the driver removed himself from the roadster, assisted her
+to a seat, covered her with a rug&mdash;for early June evenings can be
+rather sharp&mdash;and the next moment Patsy found herself tearing down a
+stretch of country road with the purr of a motor as music to her
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, I don&#8217;t know who wrote the play and starred me in it,&#8221; she
+mused, dreamily, &#8220;but he certainly knows how to handle situations.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For the space of a few breaths she gave herself over completely to
+the luxury of bodily comfort and mental inertia. It seemed as if she
+would have been content to keep on whirling into an eternity of
+darkness&mdash;with a destination so remote, and a mission so obscure, as
+not to be of the slightest disturbance to her immediate
+consciousness. All she asked of fate that moment was the blessedness
+of nothing; and for answer&mdash;her mind was jerked back ruthlessly to
+the curse of more complexities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p><p>The lights of a large building in the distance reminded her there was
+more work for her wits before her and no time to lose. &#8220;I must
+think&mdash;think&mdash;think, and it grows harder every minute. If Miriam St.
+Regis is coming here, it means, like as not, she&#8217;s filling in between
+seasons, entertaining. Well, until she comes, they&#8217;re all hearty
+welcome to the mistake they&#8217;ve made. And afterward&mdash;troth! there&#8217;ll
+be a corner in her room for me the night, or Saint Michael&#8217;s a
+sinner; either way, &#8217;tis all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The driver unbundled her and helped her out as courteously as he had
+helped her in. He led the way across a broad veranda to the main
+entrance, and there she fell behind him as he pushed open the great
+swinging door.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that you, Masters? Did Miss St. Regis come?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure thing, sir; she&#8217;s right here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Patsy stood in a blaze of lights between a personally
+conducting chauffeur and a pompous hotel manager, who looked down
+upon her with distrustful scrutiny. She was wholly aware of every
+inch of her appearance&mdash;the shabbiness of her brown Norfolk suit,
+the rakishness of her boyish brown beaver hat, and the vagabond
+gloves. But of what value is the precedent of having been found
+hanging on the thorn <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>of a Killarney rose-bush by the Physician to
+the King, of what value is the knowledge of past kinship with a
+certain Dan O&#8217;Connell, if one allows a little matter of clothes to
+spoil one&#8217;s entrance and murder one&#8217;s lines?</p>
+
+<p>The blood came flushing back into Patsy&#8217;s cheeks, turning them the
+color of thorn bloom, and her eyes deepened to the blue of Killarney,
+sparkling as when the sun goes a-dancing. She smiled&mdash;a fresh,
+radiant, witching smile upon that clay lump of commercialism&mdash;until
+she saw his appraisement of her treble its original figure.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said, sweetly: &#8220;I have had rather a hard time getting here,
+Mr. Blake; making connections in your country is not always as simple
+as one might expect. My room, please.&#8221; And with an air of a grand
+duchess Patsy O&#8217;Connell, late of the Irish National Players, Dublin,
+and later of the women&#8217;s free ward of the City Hospital, led the way
+across one of the most brilliant summer hotel foyers in America.</p>
+
+<p>As she entered the elevator a young man stepped out&mdash;a young man with
+a small, blond, persevering mustache, a rather thin, esthetic,
+melancholy face, and a myopic squint. He wore a Balmacaan of Scotch
+tweed and carried a round, plush hat.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy turned to the bell-boy. &#8220;Did that man arrive to-night?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>&#8220;Yes, miss; I took him up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is his name&mdash;do you know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t say, miss. I&#8217;ll find out, if you like.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is no need. I rather think I know it myself.&#8221; And under her
+breath she ejaculated, &#8220;Saint Peter deliver us!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><h2>THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">afe</span> in her room, with the door closed and locked, Patsy stood
+transfixed before a trunk&mdash;likewise closed and locked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank Heaven for many blessings!&#8221; she said, fervently. &#8220;Thank Heaven
+Miriam St. Regis has worn wigs of every conceivable color and style
+on the stage, so there is small chance of any one here knowing the
+real color of her hair. Thank Heaven she&#8217;s given to missing her
+engagements and not wiring about it until the next day. Thank Heaven
+I&#8217;ve played with her long enough to imitate her mannerisms, and know
+her well enough to explain away the night, if the need ever comes.
+Thank Heaven that George Travis is an old friend and can help out, if
+I fail. Thank Heaven for all of these! But, holy Saint Patrick! how
+will I ever be getting inside that box?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On the heels of her fervor came an inspiration. Off came her gloves
+and hat, off came coat and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> skirt, blouse and shoes, and into the closet they all went. For,
+whereas Patsy could carry off her shabbiness before masculine eyes,
+she had neither the desire nor the fortitude to brave the keener,
+more critical gaze of her own sex. It was always for the women that
+Patsy dressed, and above all else did she stand in awe of the opinion
+of the hotel chambermaid, going down in tottering submission before
+it. Unlocking her door, she rang the bell; then crept in between the
+covers of her bed, drawing them up about her.</p>
+
+<p>The chambermaid came and Patsy ordered the housekeeper. The
+housekeeper came and Patsy explained to her the loss of her bag&mdash;the
+loss of the keys was only implied; it was a part of Patsy&#8217;s creed of
+life never to lie unless cornered. She further implied that she was
+entertaining no worry, as a well-appointed hotel always carried a
+bunch of skeleton trunk keys for the convenience of their guests.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s inspiration worked to perfection. In a few minutes the Inn
+had proved itself a well-appointed hostelry, and the trunk stood open
+before her. Alone again, she slipped out of bed&mdash;to lock the door and
+investigate. A wistaria lounging-robe was on in a twinkling, with
+quilted slippers to match. Then Patsy&#8217;s eager fingers drew forth a
+dark emerald velvet, with bodice and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>panniers of gold lace, and she
+clasped it ecstatically in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miriam always had divine taste, but the faeries must have guided her
+hand for the choosing of this. Sure, I&#8217;d be feeling like a king&#8217;s
+daughter if I wasn&#8217;t so weak and heartsick. I feel more like a young
+gosling that some one has coaxed out of its shell a day too soon. Is
+it the effect of Billy Burgeman, I wonder, or the left-overs from the
+City Hospital, or an overdose of foolishness&mdash;or hunger, just?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Miss St. Regis&#8221; dined in her own room, and she dined like a king&#8217;s
+daughter, with an appetite whetted by weeks of convalescing, charity
+fare. Even the possible appearance at any minute of her original self
+offered no terrors for her in the presence of such a soul-satisfying,
+hunger-appeasing feast.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>At nine-thirty that evening, when the manager sent the hall-boy to
+call her, she looked every inch the king&#8217;s daughter she had dined.
+The hall-boy, accustomed to &#8220;creations,&#8221; gave her a frank stare of
+admiration, which Patsy noted out of the tail of her eye.</p>
+
+<p>She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint
+of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head,
+ending <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of
+her ears; little gold shoes twinkled in and out of the clinging green
+as she walked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! I feel like a whiff of Old Ireland herself,&#8221; was Patsy
+O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s subconscious comment as &#8220;Miss St. Regis&#8221; crossed the
+stage; and something of the feeling must have been wafted across the
+footlights to the audience, for it drew in its breath with a little
+gasp of genuine appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>She heard it and was grateful for the few seconds it gave her to look
+at the program the manager had handed her as she was entering. It had
+never occurred to her that Miss St. Regis might arrange her program
+beforehand, that the audience might be expecting something definite
+and desired in the form of entertainment. It took all the control of
+a well-ordered Irish head to keep her from bolting for the little
+stage door after one glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the
+impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the
+reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes
+from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously,
+absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O&#8217;Connell geared up her
+wits, as any true kinswoman of Dan&#8217;s should.</p>
+
+<p>In a flash there came back to her what the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>company had done once
+when they were playing one-night stands and the wrong scenery had
+come for the play advertised. It was worth trying here.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear people,&#8221; said Patsy O&#8217;Connell-St. Regis, smiling at the
+audience as one friend to another, &#8220;I have had so many requests from
+among you&mdash;since I made out my program&mdash;to give instead an evening of
+old Irish tales, that I have&mdash;capitulated; you shall have your wish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The almost unbelievable applause that greeted her tempted her to
+further wickedness. &#8220;Very few people seem ever to remember that I had
+an Irish grandfather, Denis St. Regis, and that I like once in a
+while to be getting back to the sod.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was something so hypnotic in her intimacy&mdash;this taking of every
+one into her confidence&mdash;that one budding youth forgot himself
+entirely and na&iuml;vely remarked, &#8220;It&#8217;s a long way to Tipperary.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That clinched her success. She might have chanted &#8220;Old King Cole&#8221; and
+reaped a houseful of applause. As it was, she turned faery child and
+led them all forth to the Land of Faery&mdash;a world that neighbored so
+close to the real with her that long ago she had acquired the habit
+of carrying a good bit of it about with her wherever she went. It was
+small wonder, therefore, that, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>at the end of the evening, when she
+fixed upon a certain young man in the audience&mdash;a man with a
+persevering mustache, an esthetic face, and a melancholy, myopic
+squint&mdash;and told the last tale to him direct, that he felt called
+upon to go to her as she came down the steps into the ball-room and
+express his abject, worshipful admiration.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all right,&#8221; Patsy cut him short, &#8220;but&mdash;but&mdash;it would sound so
+much nicer outside, somewhere in the moonlight&mdash;away from everybody.
+Wouldn&#8217;t it, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This sudden amending of matter-of-factness with arch coquetry would
+have sounded highly amusing to ears less self-atuned than the
+erstwhile wearer of the Balmacaan. But he heard in it only the
+flattering tribute to a man chosen of men; and the hand that reached
+for Patsy&#8217;s was almost masterful.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, would you really?&#8221; he asked, and he almost broke his melancholy
+with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It must be my clothes,&#8221; was her mental comment as he led her away;
+&#8220;they&#8217;ve gone to my own head; it&#8217;s not altogether strange they&#8217;ve
+touched his a bit. But for a man who&#8217;s forged his father&#8217;s name and
+lost the girl he loved and then plunged into mortal despair, he&#8217;s
+convalescing terribly fast.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p><p>They had reached a quiet corner of the veranda. Patsy dropped into a
+chair, while her companion leaned against a near-by railing and
+looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might have known all along,&#8221; Patsy was thinking, &#8220;that a back like
+that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn&#8217;t get a real man
+to dress in knee-length petticoats.&#8221; And then, to settle all doubts,
+she faced him with grim determination. &#8220;I let you bring me here
+because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come
+down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the
+corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, how did you know?&#8221; The melancholy was giving place to rather
+pleased curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do I know!&#8221; Patsy glared at him. &#8220;I know because I&#8217;ve followed
+you every inch of the way&mdash;followed you to tell you I believed in
+you&mdash;you&mdash;you!&#8221; and her voice broke with a groan.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you.&#8221; This time the smile had
+right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was!
+&#8220;You know everybody takes me rather as a joke.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Joke!&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s eyes blazed. &#8220;Well, you&#8217;re <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>the most serious,
+impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would
+have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think I understand.&#8221; He felt about in his waistcoat pocket
+and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. &#8220;Would you
+mind saying that again?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s hands dropped helplessly to her lap. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t&mdash;only, after
+a woman has trailed a man she doesn&#8217;t know across a country she
+doesn&#8217;t know to a place she doesn&#8217;t know&mdash;and without a wardrobe
+trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes
+in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever
+happened to her in all her life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never
+thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poetry! Do you&mdash;do that, too?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all I do. I am devoting my life to it; that&#8217;s why my family
+take me a little&mdash;flippantly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A faint streak of hope shot through Patsy&#8217;s mind. &#8220;Would you mind
+telling me your name?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, I thought you knew. I thought you said that was why you
+wanted to&mdash;to&mdash;Hang it all! my name&#8217;s Peterson-Jones&mdash;Wilfred
+Peterson-Jones.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy was on her feet, clasping her hands in a shameless burst of
+emotion while she dropped <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>into her own tongue. &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s a
+beautiful name&mdash;a grand name! Don&#8217;t ye ever be changing it! And don&#8217;t
+ye ever give up writing poetry; it&#8217;s a beautiful pastime for any man
+by that name. But what&mdash;what, in the name of Saint Columkill, ever
+happened to Billy Burgeman!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Billy Burgeman? Why, he came down on the train with me and went back
+to Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy threw back her head and laughed&mdash;laughed until she almost
+feared she could not stop laughing. And then she suddenly became
+conscious of the pompous manager standing beside her, a yellow sheet
+of paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you kindly explain what this means?&#8221; and he slapped the paper
+viciously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll try to,&#8221; said Patsy; &#8220;but will you tell me just one thing
+first? How far is it to Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Arden? It&#8217;s seven miles to Arden. But what&#8217;s that got to do with
+this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will
+be unable to fill her engagement here to-night! Now, who are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I? Why, I&#8217;m her understudy, of course&mdash;and&mdash;I&#8217;m&mdash;so happy&mdash;&#8221;
+Whereupon Patricia O&#8217;Connell, late of the Irish National Players and
+later of the women&#8217;s free ward of the City Hospital, crumpled up on
+the veranda floor in a dead faint.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h2>A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">he</span> Brambleside Inn lost one of its guests at an inconceivably early
+hour the morning after Patsy O&#8217;Connell unexpectedly filled Miss St.
+Regis&#8217;s engagement there. The guest departed by way of the
+second-floor piazza and a fire-escape, and not even the night
+watchman saw her go. But it was not until she had put a mile or more
+of open country between herself and the Inn that Patsy indulged in
+the freedom of a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;After this I&#8217;ll keep away from inns and such like; &#8217;tis too
+wit-racking to make it anyways comfortable. I feel now as if I&#8217;d been
+caught lifting the crown jewels, instead of giving a hundred-guinea
+performance for the price of a night&#8217;s bed and board and coming away
+as poor as a tinker&#8217;s ass.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A smile caught at the corners of her mouth&mdash;a twitching, memory
+smile. She was thinking of the note she had left folded in with the
+green-and-gold <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>gown in Miriam St. Regis&#8217;s trunk. In it she had
+stated her payment of one Irish grandfather by the name of Denis&mdash;in
+return for the loan of the dress&mdash;and had hoped that Miriam would
+find him handy on future public occasions. Patsy could not forbear
+chuckling outright&mdash;the picture of anything so unmitigatedly British
+as Miriam St. Regis with an Irish ancestor trailing after her for the
+rest of her career was too entrancing.</p>
+
+<p>An early morning wind was blowing fresh from the clover-fields,
+rose-gardens, and new-leafed black birch and sassafras. Such a
+well-kept, clean world of open country it looked to Patsy as her eye
+followed the road before her, on to the greening meadows and wooded
+slopes, that her heart joined the chorus of song-sparrow and
+meadow-lark, who sang from the sheer gladness of being a live part of
+it all.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, not knowing it. &#8220;Faith! I&#8217;m wishing &#8217;twas more nor seven
+miles to Arden. I&#8217;d like to be following the road for days and days,
+and keeping the length of it between Billy Burgeman and myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Starting before the country was astir, she had met no one of whom she
+could inquire the way. A less adventuresome soul than Patsy might
+have sat herself down and waited for direction; but <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>that would have
+meant wasting minutes&mdash;precious minutes before the dawn should break
+and she should be no longer sole possessor of the road and the world
+that bounded it. So Patsy chose the way for herself&mdash;content that it
+would lead her to her destination in the end. The joy of true
+vagabondage was rampant within her: there was the road, urging her
+like an impatient comrade to be gone; there was her errand of
+good-will giving purpose to her journey; and the facts that she was
+homeless, penniless, breakfastless, a stranger in a strange country,
+mattered not a whit. So thoroughly had she always believed in good
+fortune that somehow she always managed to find it; and out of this
+she had evolved her philosophy of life.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye see, &#8217;tis this way,&#8221; she would say; &#8220;the world is much like a
+great cat&mdash;with claws to hide or use, as the notion takes it. If ye
+kick and slap at it, &#8217;twill hump its back and scratch at ye&mdash;sure as
+fate; but if ye are wise and a bit patient ye can have it coaxed and
+smoothed down till it&#8217;s purring to make room for ye at any
+hearthside. And there&#8217;s another thing it&#8217;s well to remember&mdash;that
+folks are folks the world over, whether they are wearing your dress
+and speaking your tongue or another&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And as Patsy was blessed in the matter of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>philosophy&mdash;so was she
+blessed in the matter of possessions. She did not have to own things
+to possess them.</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt but that Patsy had a larger share of the world
+than many who could reckon their estates in acreage or who owned so
+many miles of fenced-off property. She held a mortgage on every inch
+of free roadway, rugged hilltop, or virgin forest her feet crossed.
+She claimed squatters&#8217; rights on every bit of shaded pasture, or
+sunlit glade, or singing brook her heart rejoiced in. In other words,
+everything outside of walls and fences belonged to her by virtue of
+her vagabondage; and she had often found herself pitying the narrow
+folk who possessed only what their deeds or titles allotted to them.</p>
+
+<p>And yet never in Patsy&#8217;s life had she felt quite so sure about it as
+she did this morning, probably because she had never before set forth
+on a self-appointed adventure so heedless of means and consequences.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, there are enough wise people in the world,&#8221; she mused as she
+tramped along; &#8220;it needs a few foolish ones to keep things happening.
+And could a foolish adventuring body be bound for a better place than
+Arden!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She rounded a bend in the road and came upon a stretch of old stump
+fencing. From one of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>stumps appeared to be hanging a grotesque
+figure of some remarkable cut; it looked both ancient and romantic,
+sharply silhouetted against the iridescence of the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy eyed it curiously. &#8220;It comes natural for me to be partial to
+anything hanging to a thorn, or a stump; but&mdash;barring that&mdash;it still
+looks interesting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As she came abreast it she saw it was not hanging, however. It was
+perched on a lower prong of a root and it was a man, clothed in the
+most absolute garment of rags Patsy had ever seen off the legitimate
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From an artistic standpoint they are perfect,&#8221; was Patsy&#8217;s mental
+tribute. &#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t Willie Fay give his Sunday dinner if he could
+gather him in as he is, just&mdash;to play the tinker! Faith! those rags
+are so real I wager he keeps them together only by the grace of God.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As she stopped in front of the figure he turned his head slowly and
+gazed at her with an expression as far away and bewildered as a lost
+baby&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>In the half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural&mdash;a strange
+spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth.
+This was borne in upon Patsy&#8217;s consciousness, and it set her Celtic
+blood tingling and her eyes a-sparkling.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;He looks as half-witted as those back in the Old Country who have
+the second sight and see the faeries. Aye, and he&#8217;s as young and
+handsome as a king&#8217;s son. Poor lad!&#8221; And then she called aloud, &#8220;&#8217;Tis
+a brave day, this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hmm!&#8221; was the response, rendered impartially.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s alert eyes spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at
+the man&#8217;s feet and they set a-dancing. &#8220;Then ye <i>are</i> a tinker?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hmm!&#8221; was again the answer. It conveyed an impression of hesitant
+doubt, as if the speaker would have avoided, if he could, the
+responsibility of being anything at all, even a tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s grand,&#8221; encouraged Patsy. &#8220;I like tinkers, and, what&#8217;s more,
+I&#8217;m a bit of a vagabond myself. I&#8217;ll grant ye that of late years the
+tinkers are treated none too hearty about Ireland; but there was a
+time&mdash;&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s mind trailed off into the far past, into a maze of
+legend and folk-tale wherein tinkers were figures of romance and
+mystery. It was good luck then to fall in with such company; and
+Patsy, being more a product of past romance than present
+civilization, was pleased to read into this meeting the promise of a
+fair road and success to her quest.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, there was another appeal&mdash;the apparent helpless
+bewilderment of the man himself and his unreality. He was certainly
+not in possession <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>of all his senses, from whatever world he might
+have dropped; and helplessness in man or beast was a blood bond with
+Patsy, making instant claim on her own abundant sympathies and wits.</p>
+
+<p>She held the tinker with a smile of open comradeship while her voice
+took on an alluring hint of suggestion. &#8220;Ye can&#8217;t be thinking of
+hanging onto that stump all day&mdash;now what road might ye be
+taking&mdash;the one to Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For some minutes the tinker considered her and her question with an
+exaggerated gravity; then he nodded his head in a final agreement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Grand! I&#8217;m bound that way myself; maybe ye know Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And how far might it be?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Seven miles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy wrinkled her forehead. &#8220;That&#8217;s strange; &#8217;twas seven miles last
+night, and I&#8217;ve tramped half the distance already, I&#8217;m thinking.
+Never mind! What&#8217;s behind won&#8217;t trouble me, and the rest of the way
+will soon pass in good company. Come on,&#8221; and she beckoned her head
+in indisputable command.</p>
+
+<p>Once again he considered her slowly. Then, as if satisfied, he swung
+himself down from his perch on the stump fence, gathered up his kit,
+and in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>another minute had fallen into step with her; and the two
+were contentedly tramping along the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The man who&#8217;s writing this play,&#8221; mused Patsy, &#8220;is trying to match
+wits with Willie Shakespeare. If any one finds him out they&#8217;ll have
+him up for plagiarizing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She chuckled aloud, which caused the tinker to cast an uneasy glance
+in her direction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor lad! The half-wits are always suspicious of others&#8217; wits. He
+thinks I&#8217;m fey.&#8221; And then aloud: &#8220;Maybe ye are not knowing it, but
+anything at all is likely to happen to ye to-day&mdash;on the road to
+Arden. According to Willie Shakespeare&mdash;whom ye are not likely to be
+acquainted with&mdash;it&#8217;s a place where philosophers and banished dukes
+and peasants and love-sick youths and lions and serpents all live
+happily together under the &#8216;Greenwood Tree.&#8217; Now, I&#8217;m the banished
+duke&#8217;s own daughter&mdash;only no one knows it; and ye&mdash;sure, ye can take
+your choice between playing the younger brother&mdash;or the fool.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The fool,&#8221; said the tinker, solemnly; and then of a sudden he threw
+back his head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy stopped still on the road and considered him narrowly.
+&#8220;Couldn&#8217;t ye laugh again?&#8221; she suggested when the laugh was ended.
+&#8220;It improves ye wonderfully.&#8221; An afterthought flashed in her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>mind.
+&#8220;After all&#8217;s said and done, the fool is the best part in the whole
+play.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After this they tramped along in silence. The tinker kept a little in
+advance, his head erect, his hands swinging loosely at his sides, his
+eyes on nothing at all. He seemed oblivious of what lay back of him
+or before him&mdash;and only half conscious of the companion at his side.
+But Patsy&#8217;s fancy was busy with a hundred things, while her eyes went
+afield for every scrap of prettiness the country held. There were
+meadows of brilliant daisies, broken by clumps of silver poplars,
+white birches, and a solitary sentinel pine; and there was the
+roadside tangle with its constant surprises of meadowsweet and
+columbine, white violets&mdash;in the swampy places&mdash;and once in a while
+an early wild rose.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Ireland,&#8221; she mused, &#8220;the gorse would be out, fringing the
+pastures, and on the roadside would be heartsease and faery thimbles,
+and perhaps a few late primroses; and the meadow would be green with
+corn.&#8221; A faint wisp of a sigh escaped her at the thought, and the
+tinker looked across at her questioningly. &#8220;Sure, it&#8217;s my heart
+hungering a bit for the bogland and a whiff of the turf smoke. This
+exile idea is a grand one for a play, but it gets lonesome at times
+in real life. Maybe ye are Irish yourself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Maybe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was Patsy&#8217;s turn to glance across at the tinker, but all she saw
+was the far-away, wondering look that she had seen first in his face.
+&#8220;Poor lad! Like as not he finds it hard remembering where he&#8217;s from;
+they all do. I&#8217;ll not pester him again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked up and caught her eyes upon him and smiled foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy smiled back. &#8220;Do ye know, lad, I&#8217;ve not had a morsel of
+breakfast this day. Have ye any money with ye, by chance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker stopped, put down his kit, and hunted about in his rags
+where the pocket places might be; but all he drew forth were his two
+empty hands. He looked down the stretch of road they had come with an
+odd twist to his mouth, then he burst forth into another laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have ye been playing the pigeon, and some one plucked ye?&#8221; she
+asked, and went on without waiting for his answer. &#8220;Never mind! We&#8217;ll
+sharpen up our wits afresh and earn a breakfast. Are ye handy at
+tinkering, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You bet I am!&#8221; said the tinker. It was the longest speech he had
+made.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>At the next farm Patsy turned in, with a warning to the tinker to do
+as he was told and to hold his tongue. It was a thoroughly
+well-kept-looking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>farm, and she picked out what she decided must be
+the side door, and knocked. A kindly-faced, middle-aged woman opened
+it, and Patsy smiled with the good promise of her looks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are two&mdash;down on our luck, and strangers hereabouts. Have ye got
+any tinkering jobs for my man there? He&#8217;s a bit odd and says little;
+but he can solder a broken pot or mend a machine with the best. And
+we&#8217;ll take out our pay in a good, hearty meal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There be a pile of dishes in the pantry I&#8217;ve put by till we was
+goin&#8217; to town&mdash;handles off and holes in the bottom. He can mend them
+out on the stoop, if he likes. I&#8217;ve got to help with berry-pickin&#8217;;
+we&#8217;re short-handed this season.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are ye, just? Then I&#8217;m thinking I&#8217;ll come in handy.&#8221; Patsy smiled
+her smile of winning comradeship as she stooped and picked up a tray
+of empty berry-boxes that stood by the door; while the woman&#8217;s smile
+deepened with honest appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My! but you are willing folks; they&#8217;re sometimes scarce &#8217;round
+here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith, we&#8217;re hungry folks&mdash;so ye best set us quickly to work.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They left the tinker on the stoop, surrounded by a heterogeneous
+collection of household goods. Patsy cast an anxious backward glance
+at him, but <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>saw that he was rolling up the rags that served for
+sleeves, thereby baring a pair of brawny, capable-looking arms, while
+he spread his tools before him after the manner of a man who knows
+his business.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fine!&#8221; commented Patsy, with an inner satisfaction. &#8220;He may be
+foolish, but I bet he can tinker.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They picked berries for an hour or more, and then Patsy turned too
+and helped the woman get dinner. They bustled about in silence to the
+accompanying pounding and scraping of the tinker, who worked
+unceasingly. When they sat down to dinner at last there was a
+tableful&mdash;the woman and her husband, Patsy, the tinker, and the
+&#8220;hands,&#8221; and before them was spread the very best the farm could
+give. It was as if the woman wished to pay their free-will gift of
+service with her unstinted bounty.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We always ask a blessin&#8217;,&#8221; said the farmer, simply, folding his
+hands on the table, about to begin. Then he looked at Patsy, and,
+with that natural courtesy that is common to the true man of the
+soil, he added, &#8220;We&#8217;d be pleased if you&#8217;d ask it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy bowed her head. A little whimsical smile crept to her lips, but
+her voice rang deep with feeling: &#8220;For food and fellowship, good
+Lord, we thank Thee. Amen!&#8221; And she added under her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>breath, &#8220;And
+take a good grip of the Rich Man&#8217;s son till we get him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>The late afternoon found them back on the road once more. They parted
+from the farmer and his wife as friend parts with friend. The woman
+slipped a bundle of food&mdash;bread, cheese, and meat left from the
+dinner, with a box of berries&mdash;into Patsy&#8217;s hand, while the man gave
+the tinker a half-dollar and wished him luck.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy thanked them for both; but it was not until they were well out
+of earshot that she spoke to the tinker: &#8220;They are good folk, but
+they&#8217;d never understand in a thousand years how we came to be
+traveling along together. What folks don&#8217;t know can&#8217;t hurt them, and
+&#8217;tis often easier holding your tongue than trying to explain what
+will never get through another&#8217;s brain. Now put that lunch into your
+kit; it may come in handy&mdash;who knows? And God&#8217;s blessing on all kind
+hearts!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the tinker nodded solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>They had tramped for a mile or more when they came to a cross-roads
+marked by a little white church. From the moment they sighted it
+Patsy&#8217;s feet began to lag; and by the time they reached the crossing
+of the ways she had stopped altogether and was gazing up at the
+little gold cross with an odd expression of whimsical earnestness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Do ye know,&#8221; she said, slowly, clasping the hands long shorn of the
+vagabond gloves&mdash;&#8220;do ye know I&#8217;ve told so many lies these last two
+days I think I&#8217;ll bide yonder for a bit, and see can Saint Anthony
+lift the sins from me. &#8217;Twould make the rest o&#8217; the road less
+burdensome&mdash;don&#8217;t ye think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker looked uncomfortably confused, as though this sudden
+question of ethics or religion was too much for his scattered wits.
+He dug the toe of his boot in the gravel of the church path and
+removed his cap to aid the labor of his thinking. &#8220;Maybe&mdash;&#8221; he agreed
+at last. &#8220;An&#8217; will I be waitin&#8217; for you&mdash;or keepin&#8217; on?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye&#8217;ll wait, of course,&#8221; commanded Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>She had barely disappeared through the little white door, and the
+tinker thrown himself down with his back to the sign-post which
+marked the roads, when a sorrel mare and a runabout came racing down
+the road over which they had just come. There were two men in the
+runabout, both of them tense and alert, their heads craned far in
+advance of the rest of them, their eyes scanning the diverging roads.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I cal&#8217;ate she&#8217;s gone that way.&#8221; The driver swung the whip,
+indicating the road that ran south.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wall&mdash;I cal&#8217;ate so, too,&#8221; agreed the other. &#8220;But then again&mdash;she
+mightn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p><p>They reined in and discovered the tinker. &#8220;Some one passed this way
+sence you been settin&#8217; there?&#8221; they inquired almost in unison.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know&#8221;&mdash;the tinker&#8217;s fingers passed hurriedly across his eyes
+and forehead, by way of seeking misplaced wits&mdash;&#8220;some one might be
+almost any one,&#8221; he smiled, cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Look here, young feller, if you&#8217;re tryin&#8217; to be smart&mdash;&#8221; the driver
+began, angrily; but his companion silenced him with a nudge and a
+finger tapped significantly on the crown of his hat. He moderated his
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re after a girl in a brown suit and hat&mdash;undersized girl. She was
+asking the way to Arden. Seen any one of that description?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you want with her?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind,&#8221; growled the first man.</p>
+
+<p>But the second volunteered meager information, &#8220;She&#8217;s a suspect.
+Stayed last night in the Inn and this morning a couple of thousand
+dollars&#8217; worth of diamonds is missin&#8217;; that&#8217;s what we want her for.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker brightened perceptibly. &#8220;Guess she went by in a wagon half
+an hour ago&mdash;that way. I think I saw her,&#8221; and as the men turned
+southward down the road marked Arden he called after them, &#8220;Better
+hurry, if you want to catch her; the wagon was going at a right smart
+pace.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p><p>He waited for their backs to be turned and for the crack of the whip
+that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she
+plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he
+wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight
+behind a neighboring stone wall.</p>
+
+<p>The dust from departing wheels still filled the air when Patsy
+stepped out of the cross-roads church, peacefully radiant, and found
+the tinker sitting quietly with his back against the post.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So ye are still here. I thought ye might have grown tired of my
+company, after all, and gone on.&#8221; Patsy laughed happily. &#8220;Now do ye
+know which road goes to Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure,&#8221; and the tinker joined in her laugh, while he pointed to the
+straight road ahead, the road that ran west, at right angles to the
+one the runabout had taken.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come on, then,&#8221; said Patsy; &#8220;we ought to be there by sundown.&#8221; She
+stopped and looked him over for the space of a second. &#8220;Ye are
+improving wonderfully. Mind! ye mustn&#8217;t be getting too keen-witted or
+we&#8217;ll have to be parting company.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the why!&#8221; And with this satisfactory explanation she led the
+way down the road the tinker had pointed.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<h2>AT DAY&#8217;S END</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">heir</span> road went the way of the setting sun, and Patsy and the tinker
+traveled it leisurely&mdash;after the fashion of those born to the road,
+who find their joy in the wandering, not in the making of a distance
+or the reaching of a destination. Since they had left the cross-roads
+church behind Patsy had marked the tinker casting furtive glances
+along the way they had come; and each time she marked, as well, the
+flash of a smile that lightened his face for an instant when he saw
+that the road still remained empty of aught but themselves.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s odd,&#8221; she mused; &#8220;he hasn&#8217;t the look of a knave who might fear
+a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet&mdash;and yet his wits have
+him pestered about something that lies back of him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once it was otherwise. There was a rising of dust showing on one of
+the hills they had climbed a good half-hour before. When the tinker
+saw it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>he reached of a sudden for Patsy&#8217;s hand while he pointed
+excitedly beyond pasture bars ahead to a brownish field that lay some
+distance from the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See, lass, that&#8217;s sorrel. If you&#8217;ll break the road along with me
+I&#8217;ll show you where wild strawberries grow, lots of &#8217;em!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was to take the pasture bars at a run as easily as any
+country-bred urchin. The tinker swung himself after her, an odd wisp
+of a smile twisting the corners of his mouth, just such a smile as
+the fool might wear on the road to Arden. The two raced for the
+sorrel-tops&mdash;the tinker winning.</p>
+
+<p>When Patsy caught up he was on his knees, his head bare, his eyes
+sparkling riotously, running his fingers exultantly through the green
+leaves that carpeted the ground. &#8220;See,&#8221; he chuckled, &#8220;the tinker
+knows somethin&#8217; more &#8217;n solder and pots.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s eyes danced. There they were&mdash;millions of the tiny red
+berries, as thick and luscious as if they had been planted in Elysian
+fields for Arcadian folk to gather. &#8220;The wee, bonnie things!&#8221; she
+laughed. &#8220;Now, how were ye afther knowing they were here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker cocked his head wisely. &#8220;I know more &#8217;n that; I know where
+to find yellow lady&#8217;s-slippers &#8217;n&#8217; the yewberries &#8217;n&#8217; hummin&#8217;-bird
+nests.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p><p>She looked at him joyfully; he was turning out more and more to her
+liking. &#8220;Could ye be showing them to me, lad?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker eyed her bashfully. &#8220;Would you&mdash;care, then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, and I would;&#8221; and with that she was flat on the ground beside
+him, her fingers flying in search of strawberries.</p>
+
+<p>So close they lay to the earth, so hidden by the waving sorrel and
+neighboring timothy, that had a whole county full of constables been
+abroad they could have passed within earshot and never seen them
+there.</p>
+
+<p>With silence between them they ate until their lips were red and the
+cloud of dust on the hill back of them had whirled past, attendant on
+a sorrel mare and runabout. They ate until the road was quite empty
+once more; and then the tinker pulled Patsy to her feet by way of
+reminding her that Arden still lay beyond them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do ye know,&#8221; said Patsy, after another silence and they were once
+more afoot, &#8220;I&#8217;m a bit doubtful if the banished duke&#8217;s daughter ever
+tasted anything half as sweet as those berries on her road to Arden;
+or, for that matter, if she found her fool half as wise. I&#8217;m mortial
+glad ye didn&#8217;t fall off that stump this morning afore I came by to
+fetch ye off.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p><p>The tinker doffed his battered cap unexpectedly and swept her an
+astounding bow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Holy Saint Christopher!&#8221; ejaculated Patsy. &#8220;Ye&#8217;ll be telling me ye
+know Willie Shakespeare next.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the tinker answered with a blank stare, while the far-away,
+bewildered look of fear came back to his eyes. &#8220;Who&#8217;s he? Does he
+live &#8217;round here?&#8221; he asked, dully.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy wrinkled a perplexed forehead. &#8220;Lad, lad, ye have me bursting
+with wonderment! Ye are a rare combination, even for an Irish tinker;
+but if ye are a fair sample of what they are over here, sure the
+States have the Old Country beaten entirely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the tinker laughed as he had laughed once before that day&mdash;the
+free, untrammeled laugh of youth, while he saucily mimicked her Irish
+brogue. &#8220;Sure, &#8217;tis the road to Arden, ye were sayin&#8217;, and anythin&#8217;
+at all can happen on the way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The girl laughed with him. &#8220;And ye&#8217;ll be telling me next that this is
+three hundred years ago, and romance and Willie Shakespeare are still
+alive.&#8221; Her mind went racing back to the &#8220;once-upon-a-time days,&#8221; the
+days when chivalry walked abroad&mdash;before it took up its permanent
+residence between the covers of story-books&mdash;when poets and saints,
+kings&#8217; sons and&mdash;tinkers journeyed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>afar to prove their manhood in
+deeds instead of inheritances; when it was no shame to live by one&#8217;s
+wits or ask hospitality at any strange door. Ah&mdash;those were the days!
+And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;could not those days be given back to the world
+again? And would not the world be made a merrier, sweeter place
+because of them? If Patsy could have had her way she would have gone
+forth at the ring of each new day like the angel in the folk tale,
+and with her shears cut the nets that bound humanity down to petty
+differences in creed or birth or tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith, it makes one sick,&#8221; she thought. &#8220;We tell our children the
+tales of the Red Branch Knights&mdash;of King Arthur and the Knights of
+the Grail&mdash;and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we
+stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints&mdash;simple
+men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the
+Holy Book&mdash;the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about,
+looking for some good deed to do, some helpfulness to give, some word
+of good cheer to speak; and we pray, &#8216;Father, make us good&mdash;even as
+Thou wert.&#8217; And what does it all mean? We hurry through the streets
+afeared to stop on the corner and succor a stranger, or ashamed to
+speak a friendly word to a troubled soul in a tram-car; and we go
+home at night and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>lock our doors so that the beggar who asked for a
+bit of bread at noon can&#8217;t come round after dark and steal the
+silver.&#8221; Patsy sighed regretfully&mdash;if only this were olden times she
+would not be dreading to find Arden now and the man she was seeking
+there.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker caught the sigh and looked over at her with a puzzled
+frown. &#8220;Tired?&#8221; he asked, laconically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, a bit heart-tired,&#8221; she agreed, &#8220;and I&#8217;m wishing Arden was
+still a good seven miles away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the tinker turned his head and grinned sheepishly toward
+the south.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>The far-away hills had gathered in the last of the sun unto
+themselves when the two turned down the main street of a village. It
+was unquestionably a self-respecting village. The well-tarred
+sidewalks, the freshly painted meeting-house neighboring the
+engine-house &#8220;No. 1,&#8221; the homes with their well-mowed lawns in front
+and the tidily kept yards behind&mdash;all spoke of a decency and
+lawfulness that might easily have set the hearts of the most
+righteous of vagabonds a-quaking.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy looked it carefully over. &#8220;Sure, Arden&#8217;s no name for it at all.
+They&#8217;d better have called it Gospel Center&mdash;or New Canaan. &#8217;Twould be
+a grand place, though, to shut in all the Wilfred <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>Peterson-Joneses,
+to keep them off the county&#8217;s nerves&mdash;and the rich men&#8217;s sons, to
+keep them off the public sympathy. But &#8217;tis no place for us, lad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker shifted his kit from one shoulder to the other and held
+his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Their entrance was what Patsy might have termed &#8220;fit.&#8221; The dogs of
+the village were on hand; that self-appointed escort of all doubtful
+characters barked them down the street with a lusty chorus of growls
+and snarls and sharp, staccato yaps. There were the children, too, of
+course; the older ones followed hot-foot after the dogs; the smaller
+ones came, a stumbling vanguard, sucking speculative thumbs or
+forefingers, as the choice might be. The hurly-burly brought the
+grown-ups to windows and doors.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Hark! hark! the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town,&#8217;&#8221;
+quoted Patsy, with a grim little smile, and glanced across at the
+tinker. He was blushing fiercely. &#8220;Never mind, lad. &#8217;Tis better being
+barked into a town than bitten out of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For answer the tinker stopped and folded his arms sullenly. &#8220;I&#8217;m not
+such a fool I can&#8217;t feel somethin&#8217;. Don&#8217;t you reckon I know the shame
+it is to be keepin&#8217; a decent woman company with these rags&mdash;and no
+wits?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I&#8217;ve not misplaced my memory, &#8217;twas myself <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>that chose the
+company, and &#8217;twas largely on account of those very things, I&#8217;m
+thinking. Do ye guess for a minute that if ye had been a rich man&#8217;s
+son in grand clothes&mdash;and manners to match&mdash;I&#8217;d ever have tramped a
+millimeter with ye?&#8221; She smiled coaxingly. &#8220;Faith! there&#8217;s naught the
+matter with those rags; a king&#8217;s son might be proud o&#8217; them. As for
+foolishness, I&#8217;ve known worse faults in a man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker winced imperceptibly, and all unconsciously Patsy went on:
+&#8220;&#8217;Tis the heart of a man that measures him, after all, and not the
+wits that crowd his brain or the gold that lines his pockets. Oh,
+what do the folks who sit snug by their warm hearthsides, knitting
+their lives into comfortables to wrap around their real feelings and
+human impulses, ever know about their neighbors who come in to drink
+tea with them? And what do the neighbors in turn know about them? If
+I had my way, I&#8217;d tumble the whole sit-by-the-fire-and-gossip world
+out of doors and set them tramping the road to somewhere; &#8217;tis the
+surest way of getting them acquainted with themselves and the
+neighbors. For that matter, all of us need it&mdash;just once in so often.
+And so&mdash;to the road, say I, with a fair greeting to all alike, be
+they king&#8217;s son or beggar, for the road may prove the one&#8217;s the other
+afore the journey&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Amen!&#8221; said the tinker, devoutly, and Patsy laughed.</p>
+
+<p>They had stopped in the middle of the street, midway between the
+church and the engine-house, Patsy so absorbed in her theories, the
+tinker so absorbed in Patsy, that neither was aware of the changed
+disposition of their circling escort until a cold, inquisitive nose
+and a warm, friendly tongue brought them to themselves. Greetings
+were returned in kind; heads were patted, backs stroked, ears
+scratched&mdash;only the children stood aloof and unconvinced. That is
+ever the way of it; it is the dogs who can better tell glorious
+vagabondage from inglorious rascality.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, ye can&#8217;t fool dogs; I&#8217;d be taking the word of a dog before a
+man&#8217;s anywhere when it comes to judging human beings.&#8221; Patsy looked
+over her shoulder at the children. &#8220;Ye have the creatures won over
+entirely; &#8217;tis myself might try what I could do with the wee ones. If
+we had the dogs and the childther to say a good word for us&mdash;faith!
+the grown-ups might forget how terribly respectable they were and
+make us welcome for one night.&#8221; A sudden thought caught her memory.
+&#8220;I was almost forgetting why I had come. Hunt up a shop for me, lad,
+will ye? There must be one down the street a bit; and if ye&#8217;ll loan
+me some of that half-crown the good man paid for your tinkering, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>I&#8217;d
+like to be having a New York News&mdash;if they have one&mdash;along with the
+fixings for a letter I have to be writing. While ye are gone I&#8217;ll
+bewitch the childther.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And she did.</p>
+
+<p>When the tinker returned she was sitting on the church steps, the
+children huddled so close about her that she was barely
+distinguishable in the encircling mass of shingled heads, bobby
+curls, pigtails and hair-ribbons. Deaf little ears were being turned
+to parental calls for supper&mdash;a state of affairs unprecedented and
+unbelievable; while Patsy was bringing to an end the tale of Jack,
+the Irish hero of a thousand and one adventures.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And he married the king&#8217;s daughter&mdash;and they lived happier than ye
+can tell me&mdash;and twice as happy as I can tell ye&mdash;in a castle that
+had a window for every day in the year.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That would make a fine endin&#8217; for any lad&#8217;s story,&#8221; said the tinker,
+soberly. &#8220;&#8216;A window for every day in the year&#8217; would mean a whole lot
+of cheerfulness and sunshine, wouldn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy nodded. &#8220;But don&#8217;t those who take to the road fetch that castle
+along with them? Sure, there it is&#8221;&mdash;and her hand swept toward the
+skyline an encompassing circle about them&mdash;&#8220;with the sun flooding it
+from dawn to day&#8217;s end.&#8221; She <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>turned to the eager faces about her,
+waiting for more. &#8220;Are ye still there? Faith! what have I been
+hearing this half-hour but hungry childther being called for tea.
+&#8217;Twas &#8216;Joseph&#8217; from the house across the way, and &#8216;Rebecca&#8217; from off
+yonder, and &#8216;Susie May&#8217; from somewhere else. Away with yez all to
+your mothers!&#8221; And Patsy scattered them as if they had been a flock
+of young sheep, scampering helter-skelter in all directions.</p>
+
+<p>But one there was who lagged behind, a little boy with an old, old
+face, who watched the others go and then crept closer, held by the
+spell of the tale. He pulled at Patsy&#8217;s sleeve to gain attention.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m&mdash;I&#8217;m Joseph. Was it true&mdash;most of it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded a reply as solemn as his question, &#8220;Aye, as true as youth
+and the world itself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And would it come true for another boy&mdash;any boy&mdash;who went a-tramping
+off like that? Would he find&mdash;whatever he was wishin&#8217; for?&#8221; And even
+as he spoke his eyes left hers and went searching for the far-away
+hills&mdash;and what might lie beyond.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come here, little lad.&#8221; Patsy drew him to her and put two steadying
+hands on his shoulders. She knew that he, too, had heard the call of
+the road and the longing to be gone&mdash;to be one with it, journeying to
+meet the mysterious unknown&mdash;was upon him. &#8220;Hearken to me: &#8217;Tis <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>only
+safe for a little lad to be going when he has three things to fetch
+with him&mdash;the wish to find something worth the bringing home, the
+knowledge of what makes good company along the way, and trust in
+himself. When ye are sure of these, go; but ye&#8217;ll no longer be a
+little lad, I&#8217;m thinking. And remember first to get the mother&#8217;s
+blessing and &#8216;God-speed,&#8217; same as Jack; a lad&#8217;s journey ends nowhere
+that begins without that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went without a word, but content; and his eyes brimmed with
+visions.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy watched him tenderly. &#8220;Who knows&mdash;he may find greatness on his
+road. Who knows?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker dropped the bundle he had brought back from the store into
+her lap, but she scarcely heeded him. Her eyes were looking out into
+the gathering dusk while her voice sank almost to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Ochone!</i> but I&#8217;ve always envied that piper fellow from Hamelin
+town. Think of being able to gather up all the childther hereabouts,
+eager, hungry-hearted childther with mothers too busy or deaf to heed
+them, and leading them away to find their fortunes! Wouldn&#8217;t that be
+wonderful, just?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What kind of fortunes?&#8221; asked the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What but the best kind!&#8221; Patsy thought for a moment, and smiled
+whimsically while her eyes grew strangely starry in that early
+twilight. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t I like to be choosing those fortunes, and
+wouldn&#8217;t they be an odd lot, entirely! There&#8217;d be singing hearts that
+had learned to sing above trouble; there&#8217;d be true fellowship&mdash;the
+kind that finds brotherhood in beggars as well as&mdash;as prime
+ministers; there&#8217;d be peace of soul&mdash;not the kind that naps by the
+fire, content that the wind doesn&#8217;t be blowing down his chimney, but
+the kind that fights above fighting and keeps neighbor from harrying
+neighbor. Troth, the world is in mortial need of fortunes like the
+last.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And wouldn&#8217;t you be choosin&#8217; gold for a fortune?&#8221; asked the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy shook her head vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the why!&#8221; Suddenly Patsy clenched her hands and shook two
+menacing fists against the gathering dark. &#8220;I hate gold, along with
+the meanness and the lying and the thieving and the false judgment it
+brings into the world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the world can&#8217;t get along without it,&#8221; reminded the tinker,
+shrewdly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, but it can. It can get along without the hoarded gold, the
+inherited gold, the cheating, bribing, starving gold&mdash;that&#8217;s the kind
+I mean, the kind that gets into a man&#8217;s heart and veins until his
+fingers itch to gild everything he touches, like the rich man in the
+city yonder.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;What rich man? I thought the&mdash;I thought the city was full o&#8217; rich
+men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe; but there&#8217;s just one I&#8217;m thinking of now; and God pity
+him&mdash;and his son.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker eyed her stupidly. &#8220;How d&#8217;you know he has a son?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy laughed. &#8220;I guessed&mdash;maybe.&#8221; Then she looked down in her lap.
+&#8220;And here&#8217;s the news&mdash;with no light left to read it by; and I&#8217;m as
+hungry as an alley cat&mdash;and as tired as two. Ye&#8217;d never dream, to
+hear me talking, that I&#8217;d never had much more than a crooked sixpence
+to my name since I was born; and here I am, with that gone and not a
+slither to buy me bed or board for the night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker looked down at her with an altogether strange expression,
+very different from anything Patsy had seen on his face all day. Had
+she chanced to catch it before it flickered out, it might have
+puzzled even her O&#8217;Connell wits to fathom the meaning of it. For it
+was as if the two had unexpectedly changed places, and the tender
+pity and protectiveness that had belonged to her had suddenly become
+his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind, lass; there&#8217;s board in the kit for to-night&mdash;what the
+farm wife put up; and there&#8217;s this left, and I&#8217;ll&mdash;I&#8217;ll&mdash;&#8221; He did not
+finish; instead he dropped a few coins in her hand, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>the change from
+the half-dollar. Then he set about sweeping the dust from the step
+with his battered cap and spreading their meager meal before her.</p>
+
+<p>They ate in silence, so deep in the business of dulling their
+appetites that they never noticed a small figure crossing the street
+with two goblets and a pitcher hugged tight in his arms. They never
+looked up until the things were set down beside them and a voice
+announced at their elbow, &#8220;Mother said I could bring it; it&#8217;s better
+&#8217;n eatin&#8217; dry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was Joseph; and the pitcher held milk, still foamy from a late
+milking. He looked at Patsy a moment longingly, as if there was more
+he wanted to ask; but, overcome with a sudden bashful confusion, he
+took to his heels and disappeared around the corner of the
+meeting-house before they had time even to give thanks.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker poured the goblets full, handed Patsy&#8217;s to her with
+another grave bow, and, touching his to hers, said, soberly, &#8220;Here&#8217;s
+to a friendly lass&mdash;the first I ever knew, I reckon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For an instant she watched him, puzzled and amused; then she raised
+her glass slowly in reply. &#8220;And here&#8217;s to tinkers&mdash;the world over!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When everything but the crumbs were eaten <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>she left him to scatter
+these and return Joseph&#8217;s pitcher while she went to get &#8220;the loan of
+a light from the shopkeeper, and hunt up the news.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>The store was store, post-office, and general news center combined.
+The news was at that very moment in process of circulation among the
+&#8220;boys&#8221;&mdash;a shirt-sleeved quorum from the patriarchs of the town
+circling the molasses-keg&mdash;the storekeeper himself topped it. They
+looked up as Patsy entered and acknowledged her &#8220;Good evening&#8221; with
+that perfect indifference, the provincial cloak in habitual use for
+concealing the most absolute curiosity. The storekeeper graciously
+laid the hospitality of his stool and counter and kerosene-lamp at
+her feet; in other words, he &#8220;cal&#8217;ated she was welcome to make
+herself t&#8217; home.&#8221; All of which Patsy accepted. She spread out the
+newspaper on the counter in front of her; she unwrapped a series of
+small bundles&mdash;ink, pen, stamped envelope, letter-pad, and
+pen-holder, and eyed them with approval.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The tinker&#8217;s a wonder entirely,&#8221; she said to herself; &#8220;but I would
+like to be knowing, did he or did the shopkeeper do the choosing?&#8221;
+Then she remembered the thing above all others that she needed to
+know, and swung about on the stool to address the quorum. &#8220;I say&mdash;can
+you <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>tell me where I&#8217;d be likely to find a&mdash;person by the name of
+Bil&mdash;William Burgeman?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That rich feller&#8217;s boy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy nodded. &#8220;Have you seen him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The quorum thumbed the armholes of their vests and shook an emphatic
+negative. &#8220;Nope,&#8221; volunteered the storekeeper; &#8220;too early for him or
+his sort to be diggin&#8217; out o&#8217; winter quarters.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure? Do you know him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wall, can&#8217;t say exactly ef I know him; but I&#8217;d know ef he&#8217;d been
+hangin&#8217; round, sartin. Hain&#8217;t been nothin&#8217; like him loose in these
+parts. Has there, boys?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The quorum confirmed the statement.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy wrinkled up a perplexed forehead. &#8220;That&#8217;s odd. You see, he
+should have been here last night, to-day at the latest. I had it from
+somebody who knew, that he was coming to Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mebby he was,&#8221; drawled the storekeeper, while the quorum cackled in
+appreciation; &#8220;but this here is a good seven miles from Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s arms fell limp across the counter, her head followed, and she
+sat there a crumpled-up, dejected little heap.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By Jack-a-diamonds!&#8221; swore the storekeeper. &#8220;She &#8217;ain&#8217;t swoomed, has
+she, boys?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The quorum were on the verge of investigating <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>when she denied the
+fact&mdash;in person. &#8220;Where am I? In the name of Saint Peter, what place
+is this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This? Why, this is Lebanon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled weakly. &#8220;Lebanon! Sounds more like it, anyhow. Thank you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned about and settled down to the paper while the &#8220;boys&#8221;
+reverted to their original topic of discussion. There were two items
+of news that interested her: Burgeman, senior, was critically ill; he
+had been ill for some time, but there had been no cause for
+apprehension until the last twenty-four hours; and Marjorie Schuyler
+had left for San Francisco&mdash;on the way to China. She was to be gone
+indefinitely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The heathen idols and the laundrymen are welcome to her,&#8221; growled
+Patsy, maliciously. &#8220;If they&#8217;d only fix her with the evil eye, or
+wish such a homesickness and lovesickness on her that &#8217;twould last
+for a year and a day, I&#8217;d forgive her for what she&#8217;s made me wish on
+myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Having relieved her mind somewhat, she was able to attend to the
+business of the letter with less inward discomfort. The letter was
+written to George Travis, already known as the manager of Miss St.
+Regis. He was the head of a well-known theatrical managerial firm in
+New York, and an old friend and well-wisher of Patsy&#8217;s. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>In it she
+explained, partly, her continued sojourn in America, and frankly
+confessed to her financial needs. If he had anything anywhere that
+she could do until the fall bookings with her own company, she would
+be most humbly grateful. He might address her at Arden; she had great
+hopes of reaching there&mdash;some day. There was a postscript added in
+good, pure Donegal:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>And don&#8217;t ye be afeared of hurting my pride by offering
+anything too small. Just at present I&#8217;m like old Granny
+Donoghue&#8217;s lean pig&mdash;hungry for scrapings.</p></div>
+
+<p>As she sealed the envelope a shadow fell athwart the counter. Patsy
+looked up to find the tinker peering at her sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You look clean tuckered out,&#8221; he announced, baldly; then he laid a
+coaxing hand on her arm. &#8220;I want you to come along with me. Will you,
+lass? I&#8217;ve found a place for you&mdash;a nice place. I&#8217;ve been talkin&#8217; to
+Joseph&#8217;s mother, an&#8217; she&#8217;s goin&#8217; to look after you for the night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s face crinkled up all over; the tinker could not have
+told&mdash;even if he had been in possession of all his senses&mdash;whether
+she was going to laugh or cry. As it turned out, she did neither; she
+just sighed, a tired, contented little sigh, slipping off the stool
+and dropping the letter into the post-box.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p><p>When she faced the tinker again her eyes were misty, and for all her
+courage she could not keep the quivering from her lips. She reached
+up impulsive, trusting hands to his shoulders: &#8220;Lad&mdash;lad&mdash;how were ye
+ever guessing that I&#8217;d reached the end o&#8217; my wits and was needing
+some one to think for me? Holy Saint Michael! but won&#8217;t I be mortial
+glad to be feeling a respectable, Lebanon feather-bed under me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>As the tinker led her out of the store the quorum eyed her silently
+for a moment. For a brief space there was a scraping of chairs and
+clearing of throats, indicative of some important comment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What sort of a lookin&#8217; gal did that Green County sheriff say he was
+after?&#8221; inquired the storekeeper at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Small, warn&#8217;t it?&#8221; suggested one of the quorum.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yep, guess it was. And what sort o&#8217; clothes did he say she wore?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Brown!&#8221; chorused the quorum.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wall, boys&#8221;&mdash;the storekeeper wagged an accusing thumb in the
+direction of the recently vacated stool&mdash;&#8220;she was small, warn&#8217;t she?
+An&#8217; she&#8217;s got brown clothes, hain&#8217;t she? An&#8217; she acts queer, doan&#8217;t
+she?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The quorum nodded in solemn agreement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But she doan&#8217;t look like no thief,&#8221; interceded <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>the youngest of the
+&#8220;boys.&#8221; He couldn&#8217;t have been a day over seventy, and it was more
+than likely that he was still susceptible to youth and beauty!</p>
+
+<p>The rest glowered at him with plain disapproval, while the
+storekeeper shifted the course of his thumb and wagged it at him
+instead. &#8220;Si Perkins, that&#8217;s not for you to say&mdash;nor me, neither.
+That&#8217;s up to Green County; an&#8217; I cal&#8217;ate I&#8217;ll &#8217;phone over to
+the sheriff, come mornin&#8217;, an&#8217; tell him our suspicions. By
+Jack-a-diamonds! I&#8217;ve got to square my conscience.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The quorum invested their thumbs again and cleared their throats.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<h2>THE TINKER PLAYS A PART</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">here</span> is little of the day&#8217;s happenings that escapes the ears of a
+country boy. Every small item of local interest is so much grist for
+his mill; and there is no more reliable method for a stranger to
+collect news than a sociable game of &#8220;peg&#8221; interspersed with a few
+casual but diplomatic questions. The tinker played &#8220;peg&#8221; the night
+after he and Patsy reached Lebanon&mdash;on the barn floor by the light of
+a bleary-eyed lantern with Joseph and his brethren, and thereby
+learned of the visit of the sheriff.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward he sawed and split the apportioned wood which was to pay
+for Patsy&#8217;s lodging, and went to sleep on the hay in a state of
+complete exhaustion. But, for all that, Patsy was wakened an hour
+before sun-up by a shower of pebbles on the tin roof of the porch,
+just under her window. Looking out, she spied him below, a silencing
+finger against his lips, while he waved a beckoning arm <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>toward the
+road. Patsy dressed and slipped out without a sound.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What has happened ye?&#8221; she whispered, anxiously, looking him well
+over for some symptoms of sickness or trouble.</p>
+
+<p>His only reply was a mysterious shake of the head as he led the way
+down the village street, his rags flapping grotesquely in the dawn
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing for Patsy to do except to follow as fast as she
+could after his long, swinging strides. Lebanon still slept,
+close-wrapped in its peaceful respectability; even the dogs failed to
+give them a speeding bark. They stole away as silently as shadows,
+and as shadows went forth upon the open road to meet the coming day.</p>
+
+<p>A mile beyond the township stone the tinker stopped to let Patsy
+catch up with him; it was a very breathless, disgruntled Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, by Saint Brendan, what ails ye, lad, to be waking a body up at
+this time of day? Do ye think it&#8217;s good morals or good manners to be
+trailing us off on a bare stomach like this&mdash;as if a county full of
+constables was at our heels? What&#8217;s the meaning of it? And what will
+the good folk who cared for us the night think to find us gone with
+never a word of thanks or explanation?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker scratched his chin meditatively; it was marked by a day&#8217;s
+more growth than on <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>the previous morning, which did not enhance his
+comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something
+about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an
+uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied
+him yesterday&mdash;but to-day&mdash;Patsy&#8217;s gaze was critical and not
+over-flattering.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her look and met it, eye for eye, only he still fumbled his
+chin ineffectually. &#8220;Have you forgot?&#8221; he asked, a bit sheepishly.
+&#8220;There were the lady&#8217;s-slippers; you said as how you cared about
+findin&#8217; &#8217;em; and they&#8217;re not near so pretty an&#8217; bright if they&#8217;re
+left standin&#8217; too long after the dew dries.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy pulled a wry little smile. &#8220;Is that so? And ye&#8217;ve been after
+making me trade a feather-bed and a good breakfast for&mdash;for the best
+color of lady&#8217;s-slippers. Well, if I was Dan instead of myself,
+standing here, I&#8217;d be likely to tell ye to go to the devil&mdash;aye, an&#8217;
+help ye there with my two fists.&#8221; Her cheeks were flushed and all the
+comradeship faded quickly from her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker said never a word, only his lips parted in a coaxing smile
+which seemed to say, &#8220;Please go on believing in me,&#8221; and his eyes
+still held hers unwaveringly.</p>
+
+<p>And the tinker&#8217;s smile won. Bit by bit Patsy&#8217;s rigid attitude of
+condemnation relaxed; the comradeship <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>crept back in her eyes, the
+smile to her lips. &#8220;Heigho! &#8217;Tis a bad bargain ye can&#8217;t make the best
+of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! Ye&#8217;ll find the right road
+to Arden this time or ye and the duke&#8217;s daughter will part
+company&mdash;for all Willie Shakespeare wrote it otherwise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. &#8220;We can ask the way &#8217;s we go. But first we&#8217;ll be gettin&#8217;
+the lady&#8217;s-slippers and some breakfast. You&#8217;ll see&mdash;I&#8217;ll find them
+both for you, lass&#8221;; and he set off with his swinging stride straight
+across country, wagging his head wisely. Patsy fell in behind him,
+and the road was soon out of sight and earshot.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>It was just about this time that the storekeeper at Lebanon got the
+Green County sheriff on the &#8217;phone, and squared his conscience. &#8220;I
+cal&#8217;ate she&#8217;s the guilty party,&#8221; were his closing remarks. &#8220;She&#8217;d
+never ha&#8217; lighted out o&#8217; this &#8217;ere town afore Christian folks were
+out o&#8217; bed ef she hadn&#8217;t had somethin&#8217; takin&#8217; her. And what&#8217;s more,
+she&#8217;s keepin&#8217; bad company.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so it came about that all the time the sorrel mare was being
+harnessed into the runabout the tinker was leading Patsy farther
+afield. And so it came to pass that when the mare&#8217;s heels were
+raising the dust on the road between Lebanon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>and Arden, they were
+following a forest brook, deeper and deeper, into the woods.</p>
+
+<p>They found it the most cheery, neighborly, and comfortable kind of a
+brook, the quiet and well-contained sort that one could step at will
+from bank to bank, and see with half an eye what a prime favorite it
+was among its neighbors. Patsy and the tinker marked how close things
+huddled to it, even creeping on to cover stones and gravel stretches;
+there were moss and ferns and little, clinging things, like
+baby&#8217;s-breath and linnea. The major part of the bird population was
+bathing in the sunnier pools, soberly or with wild hilarity,
+according to disposition.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker knew them all, calling to them in friendly fashion, at
+which they always answered back. Patsy listened silently, wrapped in
+the delight and beauty of it. On went the brook&mdash;dancing here in a
+broken patch of sunshine&mdash;quieting there between the banks of
+rock-fern and columbine, to better paint their prettiness; and all
+the while singing one farther and farther into the woods. She was
+just wondering if there could be anything lovelier than this when the
+tinker stopped, still and tense as a pointer. She craned her head and
+looked beyond him&mdash;looked to where the woods broke, leaving for a few
+feet a thinly shaded growth of beech and maple. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>The sunlight sifted
+through in great, unbroken patches of gold, falling on the beds
+of fern and moss and&mdash;yes, there they were, the promised
+lady&#8217;s-slippers.</p>
+
+<p>A little, indrawn sigh of ecstasy from Patsy caused the tinker to
+turn about. &#8220;Then you&#8217;re not hatin&#8217; gold when you find it growin&#8217;
+green that-a-way?&#8221; he chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy shook her head with vehemence. &#8220;Never! And wouldn&#8217;t it be grand
+if nature could be gathering it all up from everywhere and spinning
+it over again into the likes of those! In the name o&#8217; Saint Francis,
+do ye suppose if the English poets had laid their two eyes to
+anything so beautiful as what&#8217;s yonder they&#8217;d ever have gone so daffy
+over daffodils?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They never would,&#8221; agreed the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy studied him with a sharp little look. &#8220;And what do ye know
+about English poets, pray?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His lower jaw dropped in a dull, foolish fashion. &#8220;Nothin&#8217;; but I
+know daff&#8217;dils,&#8221; he explained at last.</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment the call of a thrush came to them from just across
+the glade. Patsy listened spellbound while he sang his bubbling song
+of gladness through half a score of times.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it the flowers singing?&#8221; she asked at last, her eyes dancing
+mischievously.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;It might be the souls o&#8217; the dead ones.&#8221; The tinker considered
+thoughtfully a moment. &#8220;Maybe the souls o&#8217; flowers become birds, same
+as ours becomes angels&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t be such a deal o&#8217; difference&mdash;both
+takin&#8217; to wings and singin&#8217;.&#8221; He chuckled again. &#8220;Anyhow, that&#8217;s the
+bellbird; and I sent him word yesterday by one o&#8217; them tattlin&#8217;
+finches to be on hand just about this time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye didn&#8217;t order a breakfast the same way, did ye?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker threw back his head and laughed. &#8220;I did, then,&#8221; and,
+before Patsy could strip her tongue of its next teasing remark, he
+had vanished as quickly and completely as if magic had had a hand in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going,
+however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor
+fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady&#8217;s-slippers. She
+unpinned the rakish beaver and tossed it from her; off came the
+Norfolk jacket, and followed the beaver. She eyed the rest of her
+costume askance; she would have sorely liked to part with that, too,
+had she but the Lord&#8217;s assurance that He would do as well by her as
+he had by the lilies of the field or the lady&#8217;s-slippers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis surprising how wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the
+back of a human being&mdash;yet <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>a flower can wear them for a thousand
+years or more and ye never go tired of them. I&#8217;m not knowing why,
+but&mdash;somehow&mdash;I&#8217;d like to be looking gladsome&mdash;to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stretched her arms wide for a minute, in a gesture of intense
+longing; then the glory of the woods claimed her again and she gave
+herself over completely to the wonder and enjoyment of them. Her eyes
+roamed about her unceasingly for every bit of prettiness, her ears
+caught the symphony of bird and brook and soughing wind. So still did
+she sit that the tinker, returning, thought for a moment that she had
+gone, and stood, knee-deep in the brakes, laden to the chin and
+covered with the misery of poignant disappointment. For him all the
+music of the place had turned to laughing discord&mdash;until he spied
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought&#8221;&mdash;his tongue stumbled&mdash;&#8220;I was thinkin&#8217; you had
+gone&mdash;sudden-like&mdash;same as you came&mdash;down the road yesterday.&#8221; He
+paused a moment. &#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t go off by yourself and leave a lad
+without you said somethin&#8217; about it first, would you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll not leave ye till we get to Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217;&mdash;an&#8217; what then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The road must end for me there, lad. What I came to do will be done,
+and there&#8217;ll be no <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>excuse for lingering. But I&#8217;ll not forget to wish
+ye &#8216;God-speed&#8217; along your way before I go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A sly look came into the tinker&#8217;s eyes. Patsy never saw it, for he
+was bending close over the huge basket he had brought; she only
+caught a tinge of exultation in his voice as he said, &#8220;Then that&#8217;s
+a&#8217;right, if you&#8217;ll promise your comp&#8217;ny till we fetch up in Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With that he went busily about preparations for breakfast, Patsy
+watching him, plainly astonished. He gathered bark and brush and
+kindled a fire on a large flat rock which he had moved against a
+near-by boulder. About it he fastened a tripod of green saplings,
+from which he hung a coffee-pot, filled from the brook.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m praying there&#8217;s more nor water in it,&#8221; murmured Patsy. And a
+moment later, as the tinker shook out a small white table-cloth from
+the basket and spread it at her feet, she clasped her hands and
+repeated with perfect faith, &#8220;&#8216;Little goat bleat, table get set&#8217;; I
+smell the coffee.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Out of the basket came little green dishes, a pat of butter, a jug of
+cream, a bowl of berries, a plate of biscuits. &#8220;Riz,&#8221; was the
+tinker&#8217;s comment as he put down the last named; and then followed
+what appeared to Patsy to be round, brown, sugared buns with holes in
+them. These he passed twice under her nose with a triumphant
+flourish.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;And what might they be?&#8221; Her curiosity was reaching the
+breaking-point. &#8220;If ye bring out another thing from that basket I&#8217;ll
+believe ye&#8217;re in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye&#8217;ve stolen the
+faeries&#8217; trencher of plenty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For reply the tinker dived once more beneath the cover and brought
+out a frying-pan full of bacon, and four white eggs. &#8220;Think whatever
+you&#8217;re mind to, I&#8217;m going to fry these.&#8221; But after he had raked over
+the embers to his complete satisfaction and placed the pan on them,
+he came back and, picking up one of the &#8220;brown buns,&#8221; slipped it over
+Patsy&#8217;s forefinger. &#8220;This is a wishin&#8217;-ring,&#8221; he announced, soberly,
+&#8220;though most folks calls &#8217;em somethin&#8217; different. Now if you wish a
+wish&mdash;and eat it&mdash;all but the hole, you&#8217;ll have what you&#8217;ve been
+wishin&#8217; for all your life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How soon will ye be having it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In as many days as there are bites.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So Patsy bit while the tinker checked them off on his fingers. &#8220;One,
+two, three, four, five, six. You&#8217;ll get your wish by the seventh day,
+sure, or I&#8217;m no tinker.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illustration002.jpg" class="ispace jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="illustration2" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;If you wish a wish and eat it&mdash;all but the hole,
+you&#8217;ll have what you&#8217;ve been wishin&#8217; for all your life.&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;But are ye?&#8221; Patsy shook the de-ringed finger at him accusingly.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m beginning to have my doubts as to whether ye&#8217;re a tinker at all.
+Ye are foolish one minute, and ye&#8217;ve more wits than <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>I have the
+next; I&#8217;ve caught ye looking too lonesome and helpless to be allowed
+beyond reach of our mother&#8217;s kerchief-end, and yet last night and the
+day ye&#8217;ve taken care of me as if ye&#8217;d been hired out to tend babies
+since ye were one yourself. As for your language, ye never speak
+twice the same.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker grinned. &#8220;That bacon&#8217;s burnin&#8217;; I&mdash;cal&#8217;ate I&#8217;d better turn
+it, hadn&#8217;t I?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;cal&#8217;ate you had,&#8221; and Patsy grinned back at him derisively.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker was master of ceremonies, and he served her as any
+courtier might have served his liege lady. He shook out the
+diminutive serviette he had brought for her and spread it across her
+lap; he poured her coffee and sweetened it according to direction; he
+even buttered her &#8220;riz&#8221; biscuits and poured the cream on her berries.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are ye laboring under the delusion that the duke&#8217;s daughter was
+helpless, entirely?&#8221; she asked, at length.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker shook an emphatic negative. &#8220;I was just thinkin&#8217; she might
+like things a mite decent&mdash;onct in a while.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lad&mdash;lad&mdash;who in the wide world are ye!&#8221; Patsy checked her outburst
+with a warning hand: &#8220;No&mdash;don&#8217;t ye be telling me. Ye couldn&#8217;t turn
+out anything better nor a tinker&mdash;and I&#8217;d rather <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>keep ye as I found
+ye. So if ye have a secret&mdash;mind it well; and don&#8217;t ye be letting it
+loose to scare the two of us into over-wise, conventional folk. We&#8217;ll
+play Willie Shakespeare comedy to the end of the road&mdash;please God!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Amen!&#8221; agreed the tinker, devoutly, as he threw her portion of fried
+eggs neatly out of the pan into her plate.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until she was served that he looked after his own wants;
+then they ate in silence, both too hungry and too full of their own
+thoughts to loosen their tongues.</p>
+
+<p>Once the tinker broke the silence. &#8220;Your wish&mdash;what was it?&#8221; he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s telling,&#8221; said Patsy. &#8220;But if ye&#8217;ll confess to where ye came
+by this heavenly meal, I might confess to the wish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He rubbed his chin solemnly for an instant; then he beamed. &#8220;I&#8217;ll
+tell ye. I picked it off o&#8217; the fern-tops and brambles as I came
+along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course ye did,&#8221; agreed Patsy, with fine sarcasm, &#8220;and for my
+wish&mdash;I was after thinking I&#8217;d marry the king&#8217;s son.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other with the teasing, saucy stare of two
+children; then they laughed as care-free and as merrily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe you&#8217;ll get your wish,&#8221; he suggested, soberly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Maybe I will,&#8221; agreed Patsy, with mock solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>A look of shrewdness sprang into the tinker&#8217;s face. &#8220;But you said you
+hated gold. You couldn&#8217;t marry a king&#8217;s son &#8217;thout havin&#8217; gold&mdash;lots
+of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye&mdash;but I could! Couldn&#8217;t I be making him throw it away before ever
+I&#8217;d marry him?&#8221; And Patsy clapped her hands triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; you&#8217;d marry him&mdash;poor?&#8221; The tinker&#8217;s eyes kindled suddenly, as
+he asked it&mdash;for all the world as if her answer might have a meaning
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy never noticed. She was looking past him&mdash;into the
+indistinguishable wood-tangle beyond. &#8220;Sure, we wouldn&#8217;t be poor.
+We&#8217;d be blessed with nothing&mdash;that&#8217;s all!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For those golden moments of romancing Patsy&#8217;s quest was forgotten;
+they might have reached Arden and despatched her errand, for all the
+worriment their loitering caused her. As for the tinker, if he had
+either a mission or a destination he gave no sign for her to reckon
+by.</p>
+
+<p>They dallied over the breakfast; they dallied over the aftermath of
+picking up and putting away and stamping out the charred twigs and
+embers; and then they dallied over the memory of it all. Patsy spun a
+hundred threads of fancy into tales about the forest, while the
+tinker called <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>the thickets about them full of birds, and whistled
+their songs antiphonally with them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do ye know,&#8221; said Patsy, with a deep sigh, &#8220;I&#8217;m happier than ye can
+tell me, and twice as happy as I can tell ye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; this, hereabouts, wouldn&#8217;t make a bad castle,&#8221; suggested the
+tinker, irrelevantly.</p>
+
+<p>What Patsy might have answered is not recorded, for they both
+happened to look up for the first time in a long space and saw that
+the sky above their heads had grown a dull, leaden color. They were
+no longer sitting in the midst of sunlight; the lady&#8217;s-slippers had
+lost their golden radiance; the brook sounded plaintive and
+melancholy, and from the woods fringing the open came the call of the
+bob-white.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s singin&#8217; for rain. Won&#8217;t hurt a mite if we make toward some
+shelter.&#8221; The tinker pulled Patsy to her feet and gathered up the
+basket and left-overs.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hurry,&#8221; said Patsy, with a strange, little, twisted smile on her
+lips. &#8220;Of course I was knowing, like all faery tales, it had to have
+an ending; but I want to remember it, just as we found it
+first&mdash;sprinkled with sunshine and not turning dull and gray like
+this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She started plunging through the woods, and the tinker was obliged to
+turn her about and set <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>her going right, with the final instruction
+to follow her nose and he would catch up with her before she had
+caught up with it. She had reached the road, however, and thunder was
+grumbling uncomfortably near when the tinker joined her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s goin&#8217; to be a soaker,&#8221; he announced, cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then we&#8217;d better tramp fast as we can and ask the first person we
+pass, are we on the right road to Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They tramped, but they passed no one. The road was surprisingly
+barren of shelters, and, strangely enough, of the two houses they saw
+one was temporarily deserted and the other unoccupied. The wind came
+with the breaking of the storm&mdash;that cold, piercing wind that often
+comes in June as a reminder that winter has not passed by so very
+long before. It whipped the rain across their faces and cut down
+their headway until it seemed to Patsy as if they barely crawled.
+They came to a tumble-down barn, but she was too cold and wet to stop
+where there was no fire.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Any place that&#8217;s warm,&#8221; she shouted across to the tinker; and he
+shouted back, as they rounded the bend of the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See, there it is at last!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sight of a house ahead, whose active chimney gave good evidence
+of a fire within, spurred <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>Patsy&#8217;s lagging steps. But in response to
+their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the
+narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even
+before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith, &#8217;tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred
+years ago,&#8221; Patsy murmured between tightening lips. &#8220;How long in, do
+ye think, the fashion has been&mdash;to shut doors on poor wanderers?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The
+woman&#8217;s voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier
+was thrust out between the door and the woman&#8217;s skirts. As they
+turned away Patsy&#8217;s teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had
+crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks
+ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Curse them!&#8221; muttered the tinker, fiercely. &#8220;If I only had a coat to
+put around you&mdash;anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry
+inside there!&#8221; and he shook his fist at the forbidden door.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy tried to smile, but failed. &#8220;Faith! I haven&#8217;t the breath to
+curse them; but God pity them, that&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Before she had finished the tinker had a firm <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>grip of her arm. &#8220;Hang
+it! If no one will take us in, we&#8217;ll break in. Cheer up, lass; I&#8217;ll
+have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He hurried her along&mdash;somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression
+closed her eyes; and she let him lead her&mdash;whither she neither
+wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she
+stumbled along, conscious of but two things&mdash;a fear that she would be
+ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for
+heat&mdash;heat!</p>
+
+<p>When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing
+under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer
+cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet.
+In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of
+the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small,
+leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a
+matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted
+over the sill into the kitchen beyond.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye&#8217;d best stand me in the sink and wring me out, or I&#8217;ll flood the
+house,&#8221; Patsy managed to gasp. &#8220;I&#8217;d do it myself, but I know, if I
+once let go of my hands, I&#8217;ll shake to death.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p><p>The tinker followed her advice, working the water out of her dripping
+garments in much the same fashion that he would have employed had she
+been a half-drowned cat. In spite of her numbness Patsy saw the grim
+humor of it all and came perilously near to a hysterical laugh. The
+tinker unconsciously forestalled it by shouldering her, as if she had
+been a whole bag of water-soaked cats, and carrying her up the
+stairs. After looking into three rooms he deposited her on the
+threshold of a fourth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It has the look of women folks; you&#8217;re sure to find some left-behind
+clothes o&#8217; theirs hanging up somewhere. Come down when you&#8217;re dry an&#8217;
+I&#8217;ll have that fire waiting for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What followed was all a dream to Patsy&#8217;s benumbed senses: the search
+in drawers and closets for things to put on, and the finding of them;
+the insistent aching of fingers and arms in trying to adjust them,
+and the persistent refusal of brain to direct them with any degree of
+intelligence. She came down the stairs a few minutes later, dragging
+a bundle of wet clothes after her, and found the tinker kneeling by
+the hearth, still in his dripping rags, and heaping more logs on the
+already blazing fire.</p>
+
+<p>He rose as she came toward him, took the clothes from her and dropped
+them on the hearth. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>He seemed decidedly hazy and remote as he
+brought a steamer rug from somewhere and wrapped it about her; his
+voice, as he coaxed her over to the couch, apparently came from miles
+away. As Patsy sank down, too weary to speak, the figure above her
+took upon itself once more that suggestion of unearthliness that it
+had worn when she had discovered it at dawn&mdash;hanging to the stump
+fencing. For an instant the glow of the fire threw the profile into
+the same shadowy outlines that the rising sun had first marked for
+her; and the image lingered even after her eyes had closed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, he&#8217;s fading away like Oisiu, Gearoidh Iarla, and all of them
+in the old tales,&#8221; she thought, drowsily. &#8220;Like as not, when I open
+my eyes again he&#8217;ll be clear gone.&#8221; This was where the dream ended
+and complete oblivion began.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>How long it lasted she could not have told; she only knew she was
+awake at last and acutely conscious of everything about her; and that
+she was warm&mdash;warm&mdash;warm! The room was dark except for the firelight;
+but whether it was evening or night or midnight, she could not have
+guessed. She found herself speculating in a hazy fashion where she
+was, whose house they had broken into, and what the tinker had done
+with himself. She <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>had a vague, far-away feeling that she ought to be
+disturbed over something&mdash;her complete isolation with a strange
+companion on a night like this; but the physical contentment, the
+reaction from bodily torture, drugged her sensibilities. She closed
+her eyes lazily again and listened to the wind howling outside with
+the never-ceasing accompaniment of beating rain. She was content to
+revel in that feeling of luxury that only the snugly housed can know.</p>
+
+<p>A sound in the room roused her. She opened her eyes as lazily as she
+had closed them, expecting to find the tinker there replenishing the
+fire; instead&mdash;She sat up with a jerk, speechless, rubbing her eyes
+with two excited fists, intent on proving the unreality of what she
+had seen; but when she looked again there it was&mdash;the clean-cut
+figure of a man immaculate in white summer flannels.</p>
+
+<p>The blood rushed to Patsy&#8217;s face; mortification, dread, sank into her
+very soul; the drug of physical contentment had lost its power. For
+the first time in her life she was dominated by the dictates of
+convention. She cursed her irresponsible love of vagabondage along
+with her freedom of speech and manner and her lack of conservative
+judgment. These had played her false and shamed her womanhood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>The Patsys of this world are not given to trading on their charm or
+powers of attraction to win men to them&mdash;it is against their creed of
+true womanhood. Moreover, a man counts no more than a woman in their
+sum total of daily pleasure, and when they choose a comrade it is for
+human qualities, not sexualities. And because of this, this
+particular Patsy felt the more intensely the humiliation and
+challenge of the moment. She hated herself; she hated the man,
+whoever he might be; she hated the tinker for his share in it all.</p>
+
+<p>Anger loosened her tongue at last. &#8220;Who, in the name of Saint
+Bridget, are ye?&#8221; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>And the man in white flannels threw back his head and laughed.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<h2>WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">he</span> laughter would have proved contagious to any except one in
+Patsy&#8217;s humor; and, as laughing alone is sorry business, the man soon
+sobered and looked over at Patsy with the merriment lingering only in
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By Willie Shakespeare, it&#8217;s the duke&#8217;s daughter in truth!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The words made little impression on her; it was the laugh and voice
+that puzzled her; they were unmistakably the tinker&#8217;s. But there was
+nothing familiar about face, figure, or expression, although Patsy
+studied them hard to find some trace of the man she had been
+journeying with.</p>
+
+<p>With a final bewildered shake of the head her eyes met his coldly,
+mockingly. &#8220;My name is Patricia O&#8217;Connell&#8221;&mdash;her voice was crisp and
+tart; &#8220;it&#8217;s the Irish for a short temper and a hot one. Now maybe you
+will have the grace to favor me with yours.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Just the tinker,&#8221; he complied, amiably, &#8220;and very much at your
+service.&#8221; This was accompanied by a sweeping bow.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy had marked that bow on two previous occasions, and it testified
+undeniably to the man&#8217;s identity. Yet Patsy&#8217;s mind balked at
+accepting it; it was too galling to her pride, too slanderous of her
+past judgment and perceptibilities. A sudden rush of anger brought
+her to her feet, and, coming over to the opposite side of the hearth,
+she faced him, flushed, determined, and very dignified. It is to be
+doubted if Patsy could have sustained the latter with any degree of
+conviction if she could have seen herself. Straying strands of still
+damp hair curled bewitchingly about her face, bringing out the
+roundness of cheek and chin and the curious, guileless expression of
+her eyes. Moreover, the coquettish gown she wore was entrancing; it
+was a light blue, tunic affair with wide baby collar and cuffs, and a
+Roman girdle; and she had found stockings to match, with white
+buckskin pumps. It had been blind chance on her part&mdash;this making of
+a toilet, but the effect was none the less adorable&mdash;and condemning
+to dignity.</p>
+
+<p>This was evidently appreciated by the tinker, for his face was an odd
+mixture of grotesque solemnity and keen enjoyment. Patsy was
+altogether <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>too flustered to diagnose his expression, but it added
+considerably to the temperature of the O&#8217;Connell temper. In view of
+the civilized surroundings and her state of dignity Patsy had taken
+to King&#8217;s English with barely a hint of her native brogue.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you are the tinker&mdash;and I presume you are&mdash;I should very much
+appreciate an explanation. Would you mind telling me how you happened
+to be hanging onto that stump, in rags, and looking half-witted when
+I&mdash;when I came by?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why&mdash;just because I was a tinker,&#8221; he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then what are you now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once a tinker, always a tinker. I&#8217;m just a good-for-nothing; good to
+mend other people&#8217;s broken pots, and little else; knowing more about
+birds than human beings, and poor company for any one saving the very
+generous-hearted.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy stamped her foot. &#8220;Why can&#8217;t you play fair? Isn&#8217;t it only
+decent to tell who you are and what you were doing on the road when I
+found you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know as well as I what I was doing&mdash;hanging onto the stump and
+trying to gather my wits. And don&#8217;t you think it would be nicer if
+you talked Irish? It doesn&#8217;t make a lad feel half as comfortable or
+as much at home when he is addressed in such perfect English.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>Patsy snorted. &#8220;In a minute I&#8217;ll not be addressing you at all. Do you
+think, if I had known you were what you are, I would ever have been
+so&mdash;so brazen as to ask for your company and tramp along with you
+for&mdash;<i>two</i> days&mdash;or be here, now? Oh!&#8221; she finished, with a groan and
+a fierce clenching of her fists.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t think so. That&#8217;s why I didn&#8217;t hurry about gathering up
+the wits; it seemed more sociable without them. I wouldn&#8217;t have
+bothered with them now, only I couldn&#8217;t stay in those rags any
+longer; it wouldn&#8217;t have been kind to the furniture or the people who
+own it. These togs were the only things that came anywhere near to
+fitting me; and, somehow, a three-days&#8217; beard didn&#8217;t match them.
+Lucky for me, Heaven blessed the house with a good razor, and,
+presto! when the beard and the rags were gone the wits came back. I&#8217;m
+awfully sorry if you don&#8217;t like them&mdash;the wits, I mean.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, ye must be!&#8221; Unconsciously Patsy had stepped back onto her
+native sod and her tongue fairly dripped with irony. &#8220;So ye thought
+ye&#8217;d have a morsel o&#8217; fun at the expense of a strange lass, while ye
+laughed up your sleeve at how clever ye were.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See here! don&#8217;t be too hard, please! That foolishness was real
+enough; I had just been knocked <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>over the head by the kind gentleman
+from whom I borrowed the rags. I paid him a tidy sum for the use of
+them, and evidently he thought it was a shame to leave me burdened
+with the balance of my money. Arguing wouldn&#8217;t have done any good, so
+he took the simplest way&mdash;just sandbagged me and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was it much money?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mercy, no! Just a few dollars, hardly worth the an&aelig;sthesia.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And ye were&mdash;half-witted, then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Half? A bare sixteenth! It wasn&#8217;t until afternoon&mdash;until we reached
+the church at the cross-roads&mdash;that I really came into full
+possession&mdash;&#8221; The sentence trailed off into an inexplicable grin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And after that, &#8217;twas I played the fool.&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s eyes kindled.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker grew serious; he dug his hands deep into his capacious
+white flannels as if he were very much in earnest. &#8220;Can&#8217;t you
+understand? If I hadn&#8217;t played foolish you would never have let me
+wander with you&mdash;you just said so. I knew that, and I was selfish,
+lonely&mdash;and I didn&#8217;t want to give you up. You can&#8217;t blame me. When a
+man meets with genuine comradeship for the first time in his
+life&mdash;the kind he has always wanted, but has grown to believe doesn&#8217;t
+exist&mdash;he&#8217;s bound to win a crumb of it for himself, it costs no
+more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>than a trick of foolishness. Surely you understand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I understand! I&#8217;m understanding more and more every minute&mdash;&#8217;tis
+the gift of your tongue, I&#8217;m thinking&mdash;and I&#8217;m wondering which of us
+will be finding it the pleasantest.&#8221; She flashed a look of
+unutterable scorn upon him. &#8220;If ye were not half-witted, would ye
+mind telling me how we came to be taking the wrong road at the
+church?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker choked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, I thought so. Ye lied to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, not exactly; you see&mdash;&#8221; he floundered helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! don&#8217;t send a lie to mend a lie; &#8217;tis poor business, I can
+promise ye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221;&mdash;the tinker&#8217;s tone grew dogged&mdash;&#8220;was it such a heinous sin,
+after all, to want to keep you with me a little longer?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The fire in Patsy&#8217;s eyes leaped forth at last. &#8220;Sin, did ye
+say? Faith! &#8217;tis the wrong name ye&#8217;ve given it entirely. &#8217;Twas
+amusement, ye meant; the fun of trading on a girl&#8217;s ignorance
+and simple-heartedness; the trick of getting the good makings of
+a tale to tell afterward to other fine gentlemen like yourself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So you think&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, I think &#8217;twas a joke with ye&mdash;from first <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>to last. Maybe ye
+made a wager with some one&mdash;or ye were dared to take to the road in
+rags&mdash;or ye did it for copy; ye&#8217;re not the first man who has done the
+like for the sake of a new idea for a story. &#8217;Twas a pity, though, ye
+couldn&#8217;t have got what ye wanted without making a girl pay with her
+self-respect.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker winced, reaching out a deprecatory hand. &#8220;You are wrong;
+no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and
+fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere&mdash;in any
+company&mdash;without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one
+atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked
+your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been&mdash;what you
+are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the
+same wish to keep it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Patsy&#8217;s comprehension was strangely deaf.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis easy enough trimming up poor actions with grand words. There&#8217;d
+have been no need of risking anything if ye had set me on the right
+road this morning; I would have been in Arden now, where I belong.
+But that wasn&#8217;t your way. &#8217;Twas a grand scheme ye had&mdash;whatever it
+might be; and ye fetch me away afore the town is up and I can ask the
+road of any one; and ye coax me across pastures and woods, a far cry
+from passing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>folk and reliable information; and ye hold me,
+loitering the day through, till ye have me forgetting entirely why I
+came, along with the promise laid on me, and the other poor
+lad&mdash;Heaven help him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oho!&#8221; The tinker whistled unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oho!&#8221; mimicked Patsy; &#8220;and is there anything so wonderfully strange
+in a lass looking after a lad? Sure, I&#8217;m hating myself for not
+minding his need better; and, Holy Saint Michael, how I&#8217;m hating ye!&#8221;
+She ran out of the room and up the stairway.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker was after her in a twinkling. He reached the foot of the
+stairs before she was at the top. &#8220;Please&mdash;please wait a minute,&#8221; he
+pleaded. &#8220;If there&#8217;s another&mdash;lad, a lad you&mdash;love, that I have kept
+you from&mdash;then I hate myself as much as you do. All I can say is that
+I didn&#8217;t think&mdash;didn&#8217;t guess; and I&#8217;m no end sorry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy leaned over the banisters and looked down at him through eyes
+unmistakably wet. &#8220;What does it matter to ye if he&#8217;s the lad I love
+or not? And can&#8217;t a body do a kindness for a lad without loving him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank Heaven! she can. You have taught me that miracle&mdash;and I don&#8217;t
+believe the other lad will grudge me these few hours, even if you do.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>Who knows? My need may have been as great as his.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy frowned. &#8220;All ye needed was something soft to dull your wits
+on; what he&#8217;s needing is a father&mdash;and mother&mdash;and sweetheart&mdash;and
+some good 1915 bonds of human trust.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker folded his arms over the newel-post and smiled. &#8220;And do
+you expect to be able to supply them all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God forbid!&#8221; Patsy laughed in spite of herself.</p>
+
+<p>And the tinker, scoring a point, took courage and went on: &#8220;Don&#8217;t you
+suppose I realize that you have given me the finest gift a stranger
+can have&mdash;the gift of honest, unconditional friendship, asking no
+questions, demanding no returns? It is a rare gift for any man&mdash;and I
+want to keep it as rare and beautiful as when it was given. So please
+don&#8217;t mar it for me&mdash;now. Please&mdash;!&#8221; His hands went out in earnest
+appeal.</p>
+
+<p>The anger was leaving Patsy&#8217;s face; already the look of comradeship
+was coming back in her eyes; her lips were beginning to curve in the
+old, whimsical smile. And the tinker, seeing, doubled his courage.
+&#8220;Now, won&#8217;t you please forgive me and come down and get some supper?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated and, seeing that her decision was hanging in the
+balance, he recklessly tried his hand at tipping the scales in his
+favor. &#8220;I&#8217;m <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>no end of a good forager, and I&#8217;ve rooted out lots of
+things in tins and jars. You must be awfully hungry; remember, it&#8217;s
+hours since our magical breakfast with the lady&#8217;s-slippers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s fist banged the railing with a startling thud. &#8220;I&#8217;ll never
+break fast with ye again&mdash;never&mdash;never&mdash;never! Ye&#8217;ve blighted the
+greenest memory I ever had!&#8221; And with that she was gone, slamming the
+door after her by way of dramatic emphasis.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>It was a forlorn and dejected tinker that returned alone to the empty
+hearthside. The bright cheer of the fire had gone; the room had
+become a place of shadows and haunting memories. For a long time he
+stood, brutally kicking one of the fire-dogs and snapping his fingers
+at his feelings; and then, being a man and requiring food, he went
+out into the pantry where he had been busily preparing to set forth
+the hospitality of the house when Patsy had wakened.</p>
+
+<p>But before he ate he found a tray and covered it with the best the
+pantry afforded. He mounted the stairs with it in rather a lagging
+fashion, being wholly at sea concerning the temperature of his
+reception. His conscience finally compromised with his courage, and
+he put the tray down outside Patsy&#8217;s door.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p><p>It was not until he was half-way down the stairs again that he called
+out, bravely, &#8220;Oh&mdash;I say&mdash;Miss&mdash;O&#8217;Connell; you&#8217;d better change your
+mind and eat something.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He waited a good many minutes for an answer, but it came at last; the
+voice sounded broken and wistful as a crying child&#8217;s. &#8220;Thank&mdash;you!&#8221;
+and then, &#8220;Could ye be after telling me how far it is from here to
+Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me see&mdash;about&mdash;seven miles;&#8221; and the tinker laughed; he could
+not help it.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant Patsy&#8217;s door opened with a jerk and the tray was
+precipitated down the stairs upon him. It was the conclusive evidence
+of the O&#8217;Connell temper.</p>
+
+<p>But the tinker never knew that Patsy wept herself remorsefully to
+sleep; and Patsy never knew that the last thing the tinker did that
+night was to cut a bedraggled brown coat and skirt and hat into
+strips and burn them, bit by bit. It was not altogether a pleasant
+ceremony&mdash;the smell of burning wool is not incense to one&#8217;s nostrils;
+and the tinker heaved a deep sigh of relief as the last flare died
+down into a heap of black, smudgy embers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That Green County sheriff will have a long way to go now if he&#8217;s
+still looking for a girl in a brown suit,&#8221; he chuckled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p><p>Sleep laid the O&#8217;Connell temper. When Patsy awoke her eyes were as
+serene as the patches of June sky framed by her windows, and she felt
+at peace with the world and all the tinkers in it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Twould be flattering the lad too much entirely to make up with him
+before breakfast; but I&#8217;ll be letting him tramp the road to Arden
+with me, and we&#8217;ll part there good friends. Troth, maybe he was a bit
+lonesome,&#8221; she added by way of concession.</p>
+
+<p>She sprang out of bed with a glad little laugh; the day had a grand
+beginning, spilling sunshine and bird-song into every corner of her
+room, and to Patsy&#8217;s optimistic soul a good beginning insured a
+better ending. As she dressed she planned that ending to her own
+liking and according to the most approved rules of dramatic
+construction: The tinker should turn out a wandering genius, for in
+her heart she could not believe the accusations she had hurled
+against him the night past; when they reached Arden they would come
+upon the younger Burgeman, contemplating immediate suicide; this
+would give her her cue, and she would administer trust and a general
+bracer with one hand as she removed the revolver with the other; in
+gratitude he would divulge the truth about the forgery&mdash;he did it to
+save the honor of some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>lady&mdash;after which the tinker would sponsor
+him, tramping him off on the road to take the taste of gold out of
+his mouth and teach him the real meaning of life.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy had no difficulty with her construction until she came to the
+final curtain; here she hesitated. She might trail off to find King
+Midas and square Billy with him, or&mdash;the curtain might drop leaving
+her right center, wishing both lads &#8220;God-speed.&#8221; Neither ending was
+entirely satisfactory, however; the mental effect of the tinker going
+off with some one else&mdash;albeit it was another lad&mdash;was anything but
+satisfying.</p>
+
+<p>The house was strangely quiet. Patsy stopped frequently in her
+playmaking to listen for some sounds of human occupancy other than
+her own, but there was none.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor lad! Maybe I killed him last night when I kicked the tea-things
+down the stairs after him; or, most likely, the O&#8217;Connell temper has
+him stiffened out with fear so he daren&#8217;t move hand or foot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A moment later she came down the stairs humming, &#8220;Blow, blow, thou
+winter wind,&#8221; her eyes dancing riotously.</p>
+
+<p>Now, by all rights, dramatic or otherwise, the tinker should have
+been on hand, waiting her entrance. But tinker there was none;
+nothing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>but emptiness&mdash;and a breakfast-tray, spread and ready for
+her in the pantry.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity, uneasiness mastered her pride and she
+called&mdash;once&mdash;twice&mdash;several times. But there came no answering sound
+save the quickening of her own heart-beats under the pressure of her
+held breath.</p>
+
+<p>She was alone in the house.</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back
+to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post&mdash;for
+all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of
+the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel
+more deserted&mdash;more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an
+easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind,
+impersonal disaster. When it was a matter of deliberate, intentional
+human motives&mdash;it became well-nigh unbearable. Had the tinker gone to
+be rid of her company and her temper? Had he decided that the road
+was a better place without her? Maybe he had taken the matter of the
+other lad too seriously&mdash;and, thinking them sweethearts, had counted
+himself an undesired third, and betaken himself out of their ways.
+Or&mdash;maybe&mdash;he was fearsome of constables&mdash;and had hurried away to
+cover his trail and leave her safe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Maybe a hundred things,&#8221; moaned Patsy, disconsolately; &#8220;maybe &#8217;tis
+all a dream and there&#8217;s no road and no quest and no Rich Man&#8217;s son
+and no tinker, and no anything. Maybe&mdash;I&#8217;ll be waking up in another
+minute and finding myself back in the hospital with the delirium
+still on me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes, rubbed them hard with two mandatory fists, then
+opened them to test the truth of her last remark; and it happened
+that the first object they fell on was a photograph in a carved
+wooden frame on the mantel-shelf in the room across the hall. It was
+plainly visible from where Patsy stood by the stairs&mdash;it was also
+plainly familiar. With a run Patsy was over there in an instant, the
+photograph in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Holy Saint Patrick, &#8217;tis witchcraft!&#8221; she cried under her breath.
+&#8220;How in the name of devils&mdash;or saints&mdash;did he ever get this taken,
+developed, printed, and framed&mdash;between the middle of last night and
+the beginning of this morning!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For Patsy was looking down at a picture of the tinker, in white
+flannels, with head thrown back and laughing.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<h2>PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">ith</span> the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house
+suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a
+quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left
+spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in
+the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation,
+three meals&mdash;a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she
+was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch
+when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at
+her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room
+after room she searched, closet after closet.</p>
+
+<p>In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she
+passed them slowly&mdash;so slowly that her hands brushed them with a
+friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she
+returned to the porch as empty-handed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>and as mystified as she had
+left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and
+consequently told no tales.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis plain enough what&#8217;s happened,&#8221; she said, soberly, to the
+sparrows who were skirmishing for crumbs. &#8220;Just as I said, he was
+fearsome of those constables, after all, and he&#8217;s escaped in my
+clothes!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The picture of the tinker&#8217;s bulk trying to disguise itself behind
+anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible
+for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter
+which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like
+fog before a clearing wind.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anyhow, if he hasn&#8217;t worn them he&#8217;s fetched them away as a wee
+souvenir of an O&#8217;Connell; and if I&#8217;m to reach Arden in any degree of
+decency &#8217;twill have to be in stolen clothes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her
+promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected
+state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So
+she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white &#8220;middy&#8221; suit and a
+dark-blue &#8220;Norfolk.&#8221; The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a
+sigh, for a woman&#8217;s a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has
+not a marked preference for the more becoming frock?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p><p>Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and
+put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced
+over the broken window by the runaway tinker, she turned the knob of
+the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold.
+It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no
+lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf.
+With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed
+the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen
+Norfolk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, he promised his company to Arden,&#8221; she said, by way of
+stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and
+this time she closed the door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate
+where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was
+no way of Patsy&#8217;s telling from what direction she had come or where
+Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun
+wrathfully. &#8220;I&#8217;ll be bound you&#8217;re in league with the tinker; &#8217;tis all
+a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me
+just seven miles from it. That&#8217;s a grand number&mdash;seven.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A glint of white on the grass caught her eye; she stooped and found
+it to be a diminutive quill <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>feather dropped by some passing pigeon.
+It lay across her palm for a second, and then&mdash;the whim taking
+her&mdash;she shot it exultantly into the air. Where it fell she marked
+the way it pointed, and that was the road she took.</p>
+
+<p>It was beginning to seem years ago since she had sat in Marjorie
+Schuyler&#8217;s den listening to Billy Burgeman&#8217;s confession of a crime
+for which he had not sounded in the least responsible. That was on
+Tuesday. It was now Friday&mdash;three days&mdash;seventy-two hours later. She
+preferred to think of it in terms of hours&mdash;it measured the time
+proportionally nearer to the actual feeling of it. Strangely enough,
+it seemed half a lifetime instead of half a week, and Patsy could not
+fathom the why of it. But what puzzled her more was the present
+condition of Billy Burgeman, himself. As far as she was concerned he
+had suddenly ceased to exist, and she was pursuing a Balmacaan coat
+and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or&mdash;at most&mdash;they were
+supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder
+she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more
+persistently did it elude her&mdash;slipping through her mental grasp like
+so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing
+something, feeling something&mdash;the simplest human emotion&mdash;and the
+result was an absolute blank.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p><p>And all the while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the
+road&mdash;a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A
+dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet
+beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that
+pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like
+the left-behind cottage, the road became unexpectedly lonely and
+discouraging.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The devil take them both!&#8221; she sputtered at last. &#8220;When one man
+refuses to be real at all, and the other pesters ye with being too
+real&mdash;&#8217;tis time to quit their company and let them fetch up where and
+how they like.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But an O&#8217;Connell is never a quitter; and deep down in Patsy&#8217;s heart
+was the determination to see the end of the road for all three of
+them&mdash;if fate only granted the chance.</p>
+
+<p>She came to a cross-roads at length. She had spied it from afar and
+hailed it as the end of her troubles; now she would learn the right
+way to Arden. But Patsy reckoned without chance&mdash;or some one else.
+The sign-boards had all been ripped from their respective places on a
+central post and lay propped up against its base. There was little
+information in them for Patsy as she read: &#8220;Petersham, five miles;
+Lebanon, twelve miles; Arden, seven miles&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p><p>The last sign went spinning across the road, and Patsy dropped on a
+near-by stone with the anguish of a great tragedian. &#8220;Seven
+miles&mdash;seven miles! I&#8217;m as near to it and I know as much about it as
+when I started three days ago. Sure, I feel like a mule, just, on a
+treadmill, with Billy Burgeman in the hopper.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of utter helplessness took possession of her; it was as if
+her experiences, her actions, her very words and emotions, were
+controlled by an unseen power. Impulse might have precipitated her
+into the adventure, but since her feet had trod the first stretch of
+the road to Arden chance had sat somewhere, chuckling at his own
+comedy&mdash;making, while he pulled her hither and yon, like a marionette
+on a wire. Verily chance was still chuckling at the incongruity of
+his stage setting: A girl pursuing a strange man, and a strange
+sheriff pursuing the girl, and neither having an inkling of the
+pursuit or the reason for it.</p>
+
+<p>On one thing her mind clinched fast, however: she would at least sit
+where she was until some one came by who could put her right, once
+and for all; rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief&mdash;she would stop
+whoever came first.</p>
+
+<p>The arpeggio of an automobile horn brought her to her feet; the next
+moment the machine careened into sight and Patsy flagged it from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>middle of the road, the lines of her face set in grim determination.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you kindly tell me&mdash;&#8221; she was beginning when a girl in the
+tonneau cut her short:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, it&#8217;s Patsy O&#8217;Connell! How in the name of your blessed Saint
+Patrick did you ever get so far from home?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The car was full of young people, but the girl who had spoken was the
+only one who looked at all familiar. Patsy&#8217;s mind groped out of the
+present into the past; it was all a blind alley, however, and led
+nowhere.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, seeing her bewilderment, helped her out. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you
+remember, I was with Marjorie Schuyler in Dublin when you were all so
+jolly kind to us? I&#8217;m Janet Payne&mdash;those awful &#8216;Spitsburger
+Paynes&#8217;&#8221;&mdash;and the girl&#8217;s laugh rang out contagiously.</p>
+
+<p>The laugh swept Patsy&#8217;s mind out into the open. She reached out and
+gripped the girl&#8217;s hand. &#8220;Sure, I remember. But it&#8217;s a long way from
+Dublin, and my memory is slower at hearkening back than my heart. A
+brave day to all of you.&#8221; And her smile greeted the carful
+indiscriminately.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;&mdash;the girl was apologetic&mdash;&#8220;how beastly rude I am! I&#8217;m
+forgetting that you don&#8217;t know everybody as well as everybody knows
+you. Jean <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>Lewis, Mrs. Dempsy Carter, Dempsy Carter, Gregory Jessup,
+and Jay Clinton&mdash;Miss Patricia O&#8217;Connell, of the Irish National
+Players. We are all very much at your service&mdash;including the car,
+which is not mine, but the Dempsy Carters&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall we kidnap Miss O&#8217;Connell?&#8221; suggested the owner. &#8220;She appears
+an easy victim.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Janet Payne clapped her hands, but Patsy shook a decided negative.
+&#8220;That&#8217;s the genius of the Irish,&#8221; she laughed; &#8220;they look easy till
+you hold them up. I&#8217;m bound for Arden, and must make it by the
+quickest road if you&#8217;ll point it out to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, of course&mdash;Arden; that accounts for you perfectly. Stupid that
+I didn&#8217;t think of it at once. What part are you playing?&#8221; Janet Payne
+accompanied the question with unmistakable eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy shot a shrewd glance at the girl. Was she indulging in
+good-natured banter, or had she learned through Marjorie Schuyler of
+Patsy&#8217;s self-imposed quest, and was seeking information in figurative
+speech? Patsy decided in favor of the former and answered it in kind:
+&#8220;Faith! I&#8217;m not sure whether I&#8217;ve been cast for the duke&#8217;s
+daughter&mdash;or the fool. I can tell ye better after I reach Arden.&#8221; And
+she turned abruptly as if she would be gone.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl held her back. &#8220;No, you don&#8217;t. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>We are not going to lose
+you like that. We&#8217;ll kidnap you, as Dempsy suggested, till after
+lunch; then we&#8217;ll motor you back to Arden. You&#8217;ll get there just
+about as soon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy had not the slightest intention of yielding; her mind and her
+feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now;
+but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that
+scattered her resolutions like so much chaff.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve simply got to come, Miss O&#8217;Connell.&#8221; And he leaned over the
+side of the car in boyish enthusiasm. &#8220;Last summer Billy Burgeman
+used to read to me the parts of Marjorie&#8217;s letters that told about
+you, and they were great! We were making up our minds to go to
+Ireland and see if you were real when your company came to America.
+After that Marjorie would never introduce us after the plays, just to
+be contrary. You wouldn&#8217;t have the heart to grudge us a little
+acquaintanceship now, would you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Billy Burgeman,&#8221; repeated Patsy. &#8220;Do you know him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Dempsy Carter interposed. &#8220;They&#8217;re chums, Miss O&#8217;Connell. I&#8217;ll wager
+there isn&#8217;t a soul on earth that knows Billy as well as Greg does.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s hard on Marjorie, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221; asked Janet Payne.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Oh, hang Marjorie!&#8221; The sincerity of Gregory Jessup&#8217;s emotion
+somewhat excused his outburst.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, I thought they were betrothed!&#8221; Patsy looked innocent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They were. What they are now&mdash;Heaven only knows! Marjorie Schuyler
+has gone to China, and Billy has dropped off the face of the earth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A sudden silence fell on the cross-roads. It was Patsy who broke it
+at last. &#8220;Well?&#8221; A composite, interrogative stare came from the
+carful. Patsy laughed bewitchingly. &#8220;For a crowd of rascally
+kidnappers, you are the slowest I ever saw. Troth, in Ireland they&#8217;d
+have it done in half the time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The next instant Patsy was lifted bodily inside, and, amid a general
+burst of merriment, the car swung down the road.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>It was a picnic lunch&mdash;an elaborate affair put up in a hamper, a
+fireless cooker, and a thermos basket; and it was spread on a tiny,
+fir-covered peninsula jutting out into a diminutive lake. It was an
+enchanting spot and a delicious lunch, with good company to boot;
+but, to her annoyance, Patsy found herself continually comparing it
+unfavorably with a certain vagabond breakfast garnished with yellow
+lady&#8217;s-slippers, musicianed by throstles, and served by a tinker.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Something is on your mind, or do you find our American manners and
+food too hard to digest comfortably?&#8221; Gregory Jessup had curled up
+unceremoniously at her feet, balancing a caviar sandwich, a Camembert
+cheese, and a bottle of ale with extraordinary dexterity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was thinking about&mdash;Billy Burgeman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He cast a furtive look toward the others beyond them. They seemed
+engrossed for the moment in some hectic discussion over fashions, and
+he dropped his voice to a confidential pitch: &#8220;I can&#8217;t talk Billy
+with the others; I&#8217;m too much cut up over the whole thing to stand
+hearing them hold an autopsy over Billy&#8217;s character and motives.&#8221; He
+stopped abruptly and scanned Patsy&#8217;s face. &#8220;I believe a chap could
+turn his mind inside out with you, though, and you&#8217;d keep the
+contents as faithfully as a safe-deposit vault.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy smiled appreciatively. &#8220;Faith! you make me feel like Saint
+Martin&#8217;s chest that Satan himself couldn&#8217;t be opening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did he have in it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some good Christian souls.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Contents don&#8217;t tally&mdash;mine are some very un-Christian thoughts.&#8221; He
+abandoned the sandwich and cheese, and settled himself to the more
+serious business of balancing his remarks. &#8220;Billy <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>and I work for the
+same engineering firm; he walked out for lunch Tuesday and no one has
+seen him since&mdash;unless it&#8217;s Marjorie Schuyler. Couldn&#8217;t get anything
+out of the old man when I first went to see him, and now he&#8217;s too ill
+to see any one. Marjorie said she really didn&#8217;t know where he was,
+and quit town the next day. Now maybe they don&#8217;t either of them know
+what&#8217;s happened any more than I do; but I think it&#8217;s infernally queer
+for a man to disappear and say nothing to his father, the girl he&#8217;s
+engaged to, or his best friend. Don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s past training stood stanchly by her. She played the part of
+the politely interested listener&mdash;nothing more&mdash;and merely nodded her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You see,&#8221; the man went on, &#8220;Billy has a confoundedly queer sense of
+honor; he can stretch it at times to cover nearly everybody&#8217;s
+calamities and the fool shortcomings of all his acquaintances. Why,
+it wasn&#8217;t a month ago a crowd of us from the works were lunching
+together, and the talk came around to speculating. Billy&#8217;s hard
+against it on principle, but he happened to say that if he was going
+in for it at all he&#8217;d take cotton. What was in Billy&#8217;s mind was not
+the money in it, but the chance to give the South a boost. Well, one
+of the fellows took it as a straight tip to get rich <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>from the old
+man&#8217;s son and put in all he had saved up to be married on; lost it
+and squealed. And Billy&mdash;the big chump&mdash;claimed he was responsible
+for it&mdash;that, being the son of his father, he ought to know enough to
+hold his tongue on some subjects. He made it good to the fellow. I
+happen to know, for it took every cent of his own money and his next
+month&#8217;s salary into the bargain&mdash;and that he borrowed from me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t his father have helped him out?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup gave a bitter little laugh. &#8220;You don&#8217;t know the old
+man or you wouldn&#8217;t ask. He is just about as soft-hearted and human
+as a Labrador winter. I&#8217;ve known Billy since we were both little
+shavers&mdash;and, talk about the curse of poverty! It&#8217;s a saintly
+benediction compared to a fortune like that and life with the man who
+made it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And&mdash;himself, Billy&mdash;what does he think of money?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what he said once. He had dropped in late after a big
+dinner where he had been introduced to some one as the fellow who was
+going to inherit sixty millions some day. Phew! but he was sore! He
+walked miles&mdash;in ten-foot laps&mdash;about my den, while he cursed his
+father&#8217;s money from Baffin Bay to Cape Horn. &#8216;I tell you, Greg,&#8217; he
+finished up with, &#8216;I want enough <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>to keep the cramps out of life,
+that&#8217;s all; enough to help the next fellow who&#8217;s down on his luck;
+enough to give the woman I marry a home and not a residence to live
+in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for
+them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough
+myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions,
+I&#8217;d like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Patsy&#8217;s eyes danced; but the next, something tumbled out
+of her memory and quieted them. &#8220;Then why in the name of Saint
+Anthony did he choose to marry Marjorie Schuyler?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That does seem funny, I know, but that&#8217;s a totally different side of
+Billy. You see, all his life he&#8217;s been falling in with people who
+made up to him just for his money, and his father had a confounded
+way of reminding him that he was bound to be plucked unless he kept
+his wits sharp and distrusted every one. It made Billy sick, and yet
+it had its effect. He&#8217;s always been mighty shy with girls&mdash;reckon his
+father brought him up on tales of rich chaps and modern Circes.
+Anyway, when he met Marjorie Schuyler it was different&mdash;she had too
+much money of her own to make his any particular attraction, and he
+finally gave in that she liked him just for himself. That was a proud
+day for him, poor old Bill!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;And did she&mdash;could she really love him?&#8221; Patsy asked the question of
+herself rather than the man beside her.</p>
+
+<p>But he answered it promptly: &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe Marjorie Schuyler has
+anything to love with; it was overlooked when she was made. That&#8217;s
+what&#8217;s worrying me. If he&#8217;s got into a scrape he&#8217;d tell Marjorie the
+first thing; and she&#8217;s not the understanding, forgiving kind. He
+hasn&#8217;t any money; he wouldn&#8217;t go to his father; and because he&#8217;s
+borrowed from me once, he&#8217;s that idiotic he wouldn&#8217;t do it again. If
+Marjorie has given him his papers he&#8217;s in a jolly blue funk and
+perfectly capable of going off where he&#8217;ll never be heard of again.
+Hang it all! I don&#8217;t see why he couldn&#8217;t have come to me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy said nothing while he replenished her plate and helped himself
+to another sandwich. At last she asked, casually, &#8220;Did the two of you
+ever have a disagreement over Marjorie Schuyler?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He asked me once just what I thought of her, and I told him. We
+never discussed her again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No?&#8221; Inwardly Patsy was tabulating why Billy Burgeman had not gone
+to his friend when Marjorie Schuyler failed him. He would hardly have
+cared to criticize the shortcomings of the girl he loved with the man
+who had already discovered them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;What are you two jabbering about?&#8221; Janet Payne had left her group
+and the hectic argument over fashions.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, we&#8217;re threshing out whether it&#8217;s the Irish or the suffragettes
+will rule England when the war is over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, which is it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! the answer&#8217;s so simple I&#8217;m ashamed to give it. The women will
+rule England&mdash;that&#8217;s an easy matter; but the Irish will rule the
+women.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you are one of the old-fashioned kind who approves of a lord
+and master?&#8221; Gregory Jessup looked up at her quizzically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis the new fashion you&#8217;re meaning; having gone out so long since,
+&#8217;tis barely coming in yet. I&#8217;d not give a farthing for the man who
+couldn&#8217;t lead me; only, God help him! if he ever leaves his hands off
+the halter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The laugh that followed gave Patsy time to think. There was one more
+question she must be asking before the others joined them and the
+conversation became general. She turned to Janet Payne with a little
+air of anxious inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe you&#8217;d ask the rascally villain who kidnapped me, when he has
+it in his mind to keep his promise and fetch me to Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As the girl left them Patsy turned toward Gregory Jessup again and
+asked, softly: &#8220;Supposing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>Billy Burgeman has fallen among strangers?
+If they saw he was in need of friendliness, would it be so hard to do
+him a kindness?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head. &#8220;The hardest thing in the world. Billy
+Burgeman has been proud and lonely all his life, and it&#8217;s an infernal
+combination. You may know he&#8217;s out and out aching for a bit of
+sympathy, but you never offer it; you don&#8217;t dare. We could never get
+him to own up as a little shaver how neglected and lonely he was and
+how he hated to stay in that horrible, gloomy Fifth Avenue house. It
+wasn&#8217;t until he had grown up that he told me he used to come and play
+as often as they would let him&mdash;just because mother used to kiss him
+good-by as she did her own boys.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup looked beyond the firs to the little lake, and there
+was that in his face which showed that he was wrestling with a
+treasured memory. When he spoke again his voice sounded as if he had
+had to grip it hard against a sign of possible emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know Billy&#8217;s father never gave him an allowance; he didn&#8217;t
+believe in it&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t trust Billy with a cent. Poor little
+shaver&mdash;never had anything to treat with at school, the way the rest
+of the boys did; and never even had car-fare&mdash;always walked, rain or
+shine, unless his father took <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>him along with him in the machine.
+Billy used to say even in those days he liked walking better. Mother
+died in the winter&mdash;snowy time&mdash;when Billy was about twelve; and he
+borrowed a shovel from a corner grocer and cleared stoops all
+afternoon until he&#8217;d made enough to buy two white roses. Father
+hadn&#8217;t broken down all day&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t let us children show a tear; but
+when Billy came in with those roses&mdash;well, it was the children who
+finally had to cheer father up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy sprang to her feet with a little cry. &#8220;I must be going.&#8221; She
+turned to the others, a ring of appeal in her voice. &#8220;Can&#8217;t we hurry
+a bit? There&#8217;s a deal of work at Arden to be done, and no one but
+myself to be doing it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Rehearsals?&#8221; asked Janet Payne.</p>
+
+<p>And Patsy, unheeding, nodded her head.</p>
+
+<p>There was a babel of nonsense in the returning car. Patsy contributed
+her share the while her mind was busy building over again into a
+Balmacaan coat and plush hat the semblance of a man.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, I&#8217;m not saying I can make out his looks or the color of his
+eyes and hair, but he&#8217;s real, for all that. Holy Saint Patrick, but
+he&#8217;s a real man at last, and I&#8217;m liking him!&#8221; She smiled with deep
+contentment.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<h2>JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">H</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">aving</span> established the permanent reality of Billy Burgeman to her own
+satisfaction, Patsy&#8217;s mind went racing off to conjure up all the
+possible things Billy and the tinker might think of each other as
+soon as chance should bring them together. Whereas it was perfectly
+consistent that Billy should shun the consolation and companionship
+of his own world, he might follow after vagabond company as a thirsty
+dog trails water; and who could slake that thirst better than the
+tinker? For a second time that day she pictured the two swinging down
+the open road together; and for the second time she pulled a wry
+little smile.</p>
+
+<p>The car was nearing the cross-roads from which Patsy had been
+originally kidnapped. She looked up to identify it, and saw a second
+car speeding toward them from the opposite direction, while between
+the two plodded a solitary little figure, coming toward them,
+supported by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>a mammoth pilgrim staff. It was a boy, apparently
+conscious of but the one car&mdash;theirs; and he swerved to their
+left&mdash;straight into the path of the car behind&mdash;to let them pass.
+They sounded their horns, waved their hands, and shouted warnings. It
+seemed wholly unbelievable that he should not understand or that the
+other car would not stop. But the unbelievable happened; it does
+sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>Before Gregory Jessup could jump from their machine the other car had
+struck and the boy was tossed like a bundle of empty clothing to the
+roadside beyond. The nightmarish suddenness of it all held them
+speechless while they gaped at the car&#8217;s driver, who gave one
+backward glance and redoubled his speed. Patsy was the first out of
+the tonneau, and she reached the boy almost as soon as Gregory
+Jessup.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Damn them! That&#8217;s the second time in my life I&#8217;ve seen a machine run
+some one down and sneak&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off at Patsy&#8217;s sharp cry: &#8220;Holy Mary keep him! &#8217;Tis the wee
+lad from Lebanon!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By this time the rest of the carful had gathered about them; and
+Dempsy Carter&mdash;being a good Catholic&mdash;bared his head and crossed
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis wee Joseph of Lebanon,&#8221; Patsy repeated, dully; and then to
+Dempsy Carter, &#8220;Aye, make <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>a prayer for him; but ye&#8217;d best do it
+driving like the devil for the doctor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They left at once with her instructions to get the nearest doctor
+first, and then to go after the boy&#8217;s parents. Gregory Jessup stayed
+behind with her, and together they tried to lift the still, little
+figure onto some rugs and pillows. Then Patsy crept closer and wound
+her arms about him, chafing his cheeks and hands and watching for
+some sign of returning life.</p>
+
+<p>The man stood silently beside them, holding the pilgrim staff, while
+his eyes wandered from Patsy to the child and back to Patsy again,
+her face full of harboring tenderness and a great suffering as she
+gathered the little boy into her arms and pressed her warm cheek
+against the cold one.</p>
+
+<p>Only once during their long wait was the silence broken. &#8220;&#8217;Tis almost
+as if he&#8217;d slipped over the border,&#8221; Patsy whispered. &#8220;Maybe he&#8217;s
+there in the gray dusk&mdash;a wee shadow soul waiting for death to loosen
+its wings and send it lilting into the blue of the Far Country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How did you happen to know him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Chance, just. I stopped to tell him a tale of a wandering hero and
+he&mdash;&#8221; She broke off with a little moan. &#8220;<i>Ochone!</i> poor wee Joseph!
+did I send ye forth on a brave adventure only to bring ye to this?&#8221;
+Her fingers brushed the damp curls <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>from his forehead. &#8220;Laddy, laddy,
+why didn&#8217;t ye mind the promise I laid on ye?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was kindly and efficient, but professionally
+non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at
+once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so
+as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as
+carefully as he could down the road leading to the nearest
+farm-house.</p>
+
+<p>There they were met with a generous warmth of sympathy and
+hospitality; the spare chamber was opened, and the farm wife bustled
+about, turning down the bed and bringing what comforts the house
+possessed. The doctor stayed as long as he could; but the stork was
+flying at the other end of the township, and he was forced to leave
+Patsy in charge, with abundant instructions.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after his leaving the Dempsy Carters returned without Joseph&#8217;s
+parents; they had gone to town and were not expected home until
+&#8220;chore time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; Patsy sighed. &#8220;Now ye had best all go your ways and I&#8217;ll
+bide till morning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But can you?&#8221; Janet Payne asked it, wonderingly. &#8220;I thought you said
+you had to be in Arden to-day?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A smile, whimsical and baffling, crept to the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>corners of Patsy&#8217;s
+mouth. &#8220;Sure, life is crammed with things ye think have to be done
+to-day till they&#8217;re matched against a sudden greater need. Chance and
+I started the wee lad on his journey, and &#8217;twas meant I should see
+him safe to the end, I&#8217;m thinking. Good-by.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup lingered a moment behind the others; his eyes were
+suspiciously red, and the hands that gripped Patsy&#8217;s shook the least
+bit. &#8220;I wanted to say something: If&mdash;if you should ever happen to run
+up against Billy Burgeman&mdash;anywhere&mdash;don&#8217;t be afraid to do him a
+kindness. He&mdash;he wouldn&#8217;t mind it from you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy leaned against the door and watched him go. &#8220;There&#8217;s another
+good lad. I&#8217;d like to be finding him again, too, some day.&#8221; She
+pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she
+would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings.
+&#8220;Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has
+seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of
+it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably
+true to the finish. But to-night&mdash;to-night&mdash;&#8217;tis all a tangle of
+lanes and byways. There&#8217;s no sign-post ahead&mdash;and God alone knows
+where it&#8217;s leading.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She went back to the spare chamber and took up her watching by the
+bedside; and for the rest <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>of that waning day she sat as motionless
+as everything else in the room. The farm wife came and went softly,
+in between her preparations for supper. When it was ready she tried
+her best to urge Patsy down-stairs for a mouthful.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl refused to stir. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t. The wee lad might come
+back while I was gone and find no one to reach him a hand or smile
+him a welcome.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A little later, as the dark gathered, she begged two candles and
+stood them on the stand beside the bed. Something in her movements or
+the flickering light must have pierced his stupor, for Joseph moaned
+slightly and in a moment opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy leaned over him tenderly; could she only keep him content until
+the mother came and guard the mysterious borderland against all fear
+or pain, &#8220;Laddy, laddy,&#8221; she coaxed, &#8220;do ye mind me&mdash;now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The veriest wisp of a smile answered her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And were ye for playing Jack yourself, tramping off to find the
+castle with a window in it for every day in the year?&#8221; Her voice was
+full of gentle, teasing laughter, the voice of a mother playing with
+a very little child. &#8220;I&#8217;m hoping ye didn&#8217;t forget the promise&mdash;ye
+didn&#8217;t forget to ask for the blessing before ye went, now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>No sound came; but the boy&#8217;s lips framed a silent &#8220;No.&#8221; In another
+moment his eyes were drooping sleepily.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>Night had come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and
+katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the
+kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away
+murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or
+team upon the road; but there was none.</p>
+
+<p>Again the lids fluttered and opened; this time Joseph smiled
+triumphantly. &#8220;I thought&mdash;p&#8217;r&#8217;aps&mdash;I hadn&#8217;t found you&mdash;after
+all&mdash;there was&mdash;so many ways&mdash;you might ha&#8217; went.&#8221; He moistened his
+lips. &#8220;At the cross-roads&mdash;I wasn&#8217;t quite&mdash;sure which to be takin&#8217;,
+but I took&mdash;the right one, I did&mdash;didn&#8217;t I?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a ring of pride in the words, and Patsy moistened her lips.
+Something clutched at her throat that seemed to force the words back.
+&#8220;Aye,&#8221; she managed to say at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; I&#8217;ve&mdash;found you now&mdash;you&#8217;ll have to&mdash;promise me not to go
+back&mdash;not where they can get you. Si Perkins said&mdash;as how they&#8217;d soon
+forget&mdash;if you just stayed away long enough.&#8221; The boy looked at her
+happily. &#8220;Let&#8217;s&mdash;let&#8217;s keep on&mdash;an&#8217; see what lies over the next
+hill.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p><p>To Patsy this was all an unintelligible wandering of mind; she must
+humor it. &#8220;All right, laddy, let&#8217;s keep on. Maybe we&#8217;ll be finding a
+wood full of wild creatures, or an ocean full of ships.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;P&#8217;r&#8217;aps. But I&#8217;d rather&mdash;have it a big&mdash;big city. I never&mdash;saw a
+city.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, &#8217;tis a city then&#8221;&mdash;Patsy&#8217;s tone carried conviction&mdash;&#8220;the
+grandest city ever built; and the towers will be touching the clouds,
+and the streets will be white as sea-foam; and there will be a great
+stretch of green meadow for fairs&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; circuses?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What else but circuses! And at the entrance there will be a gate
+with tall white columns&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sound Patsy had been listening for came at last through the open
+windows: the pad-pad-pad of horses&#8217; hoofs coming fast.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph looked past Patsy and saw for the first time the candles by
+his bed. His eyes sparkled. &#8220;They <i>are</i>&mdash;woppin&#8217; big columns&mdash;an&#8217; at
+night&mdash;they have lighted lamps on top&mdash;all shinin&#8217;. Don&#8217;t they?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, to point the way in the dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s dark&mdash;now.&#8221; The boy&#8217;s voice lagged in a tired fashion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe we&#8217;d best hurry&mdash;then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>A door slammed below, and there was a rustle of tongues.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;ll be &#8217;tendin&#8217; the city gates?&#8221; asked Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who but the gatekeeper?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Muffled feet crept up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will he let us in?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll let ye in, laddy; I might be too much of a stranger.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I could speak for you. I&mdash;I wouldn&#8217;t like&mdash;goin&#8217; in alone in the
+dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bless ye! ye&#8217;d not be alone.&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s voice rang vibrant with
+gladness. &#8220;Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to
+the gate? Look yonder!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Joseph&#8217;s eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they
+were, with beacon lamps capping each. &#8220;Who?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was
+only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why&mdash;&#8217;course it&#8217;s mother&mdash;sure&#8217;s shootin&#8217;!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the
+spare chamber for Joseph&#8217;s mother to come out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been praying ye&#8217;d not hate me for the tale I told the little
+lad that day, the tale that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>brought him&mdash;yonder. And if it isn&#8217;t
+overlate, I&#8217;d like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. &#8220;I cal&#8217;ate
+there&#8217;s no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and
+split nigh a cord o&#8217; wood that night&mdash;must ha&#8217; taken him &#8217;most till
+mornin&#8217;.&#8221; She paused an instant. &#8220;Didn&#8217;t&mdash;he&#8221;&mdash;she nodded her head
+toward the closed door behind her&mdash;&#8220;never tell you what brought him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naught but that he wanted to find me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He believed in you,&#8221; the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless
+voice: &#8220;I cal&#8217;ate I couldn&#8217;t hate you. I never saw any one make death
+so&mdash;sweet like&mdash;as you done for&mdash;him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy spread her hands deprecatingly. &#8220;Why shouldn&#8217;t it be sweet
+like? Faith! is it anything but a bit of the very road we&#8217;ve been
+traveling since we were born, the bit that lies over the hill and out
+of sight?&#8221; She took the woman&#8217;s work-worn hands in hers. &#8220;&#8217;Tis
+terrible, losing a little lad; but &#8217;tis more terrible never having
+one. God and Mary be with ye!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When Patsy left the house a few minutes later Joseph&#8217;s pilgrim staff
+was in her hands, and she stopped on the threshold an instant to ask
+the way of Joseph&#8217;s father.</p>
+
+<p>The good man was dazed with his grief and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>he directed Patsy in terms
+of his own home-going: &#8220;Keep on, and take the first turn to your
+right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So Patsy kept on instead of returning to the cross-roads; and chance
+scored another point in his comedy and continued chuckling.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>Meanwhile Joseph&#8217;s father went back to the spare chamber.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;S she gone?&#8221; inquired Joseph&#8217;s mother.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yep.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know, the boy believed in her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yep, I know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I cal&#8217;ate we&#8217;ve got to, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure thing!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye&#8217;ll never say a word, then&mdash;about seein&#8217; her; nuthin&#8217; to give the
+sheriff a hint where she might be?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, mother!&#8221; The man laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at
+her with accusing eyes. &#8220;Hain&#8217;t you known me long enough to know I
+couldn&#8217;t tell on any one who&#8217;d been good to&mdash;&#8221; He broke off with a
+cough. &#8220;And what&#8217;s more, do you think any one who could take our
+little boy&#8217;s hand and lead him, as you might say, straight to
+heaven&mdash;would be a thief? No, siree!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim
+staff gripped tightly in her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>hand. She clung to it as the one
+tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of
+her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth
+had swallowed him, leaving behind no reason for his going, no hope of
+his coming again; Billy Burgeman was still but a flimsy promise; and
+Joseph had outstripped them both, passing beyond her farthest vision.
+Small wonder, then, that the road was lonely and haunted for Patsy,
+and that she plodded along shorn of all buoyancy.</p>
+
+<p>Her imagination began playing tricks with her. Twice it seemed as if
+she could feel a little lad&#8217;s hand, warm and eager, curled under hers
+about the staff; another time she found herself gazing through
+half-shut eyes at a strange lad&mdash;a lad of twelve&mdash;who walked ahead
+for a space, carrying two great white roses; and once she glanced up
+quickly and saw the tinker coming toward her, head thrown back and
+laughing. Her wits had barely time to check her answering laugh and
+hands outstretching, when he faded into empty winding road.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was uneventful. Patsy stopped but once&mdash;to trundle a
+perambulator laden with washing and twins for its small conductor, a
+mite of a girl who looked almost too frail to breast the weight of a
+doll&#8217;s carriage.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p><p>Even Patsy puffed under the strain of the burden. &#8220;How do you do it?&#8221;
+she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I started when them babies was tiny and the washin&#8217; was small;
+an&#8217; they both growed so gradual I didn&#8217;t notice&mdash;much. An&#8217; ma don&#8216;t
+make me hurry none.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How many children are there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nine. Last&#8217;s just come. Pa says he didn&#8217;t look on him as no
+blessin&#8217;, but ma says the Lord must provide&mdash;an&#8217; if it&#8217;s babies, then
+it&#8217;s babies.&#8221; She stopped and clasped her hands after the fashion of
+an ancient grandmother tottering in the nineties: &#8220;Land o&#8217; goodness,
+I do think an empty cradle&#8217;s an awful dismal thing to have round.
+Don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy agreed, and a moment later unloaded the twins and the washing
+for the child at her doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this she caught her first glimpse of the town she was
+making. &#8220;If luck will only turn stage-manager,&#8221; she thought, &#8220;and put
+Billy Burgeman in the center of the scene&mdash;handy, why, I&#8217;ll promise
+not to murder my lines or play under.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was not luck, however, but chance, still pulling the wires; and
+accordingly he managed Patsy&#8217;s entrance as he wished.</p>
+
+<p>The town had one main street, like Lebanon, and in front of the
+post-office in a two-seated car <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>sat a familiar figure. There was the
+Balmacaan coat and the round plush hat; and to Patsy, impulsive and
+heart-strong, it sufficed. She ran nearly the length of the street in
+her eagerness to reach him.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<h2>AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD<br /> OF COMEDY</h2>
+
+<p style="float: left; font-size: 100%; line-height: 80%; margin-top: 0;">&#8220;</p><p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">A</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">
+brave</span> day to ye!&#8221; A little bit of everything that made Patsy was
+wrapped in the smile she gave the man in the Balmacaan coat standing
+by the wheel-guard of the car before the town post-office, a hand on
+the front seat. &#8220;Maybe ye&#8217;re not knowing it, but it&#8217;s a rare good day
+for us both. If you&#8217;ll only take me for a spin in your car I&#8217;ll tell
+you what brings me&mdash;and who I am&mdash;if you haven&#8217;t that guessed
+already.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Plainly the occupant of the coat and the car was too much taken by
+surprise to guess. He simply stared; and by that stare conveyed a
+heart-sinking impression to Patsy. She looked at the puffed eyes and
+the grim, unyielding line of the mouth, and she wanted to run. It
+took all the O&#8217;Connell stubbornness, coupled with the things Gregory
+Jessup had told her about his friend, to keep her feet firm to the
+sidewalk and her resolution.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Maybe,&#8221; she thought, &#8220;he&#8217;s just taken on the look of a rascal
+because he thinks the world has written him down one. That&#8217;s often
+the way with a man; and often it takes but a bit of kindness to
+change it. If I could make him smile&mdash;now&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her next remark accomplished this, but it did not mend matters a
+whit. Patsy&#8217;s heart turned over disconsolately; and she was
+safety-locking her wits to keep them from scattering when she made
+her final plea.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not staying long, and I want to know you; there&#8217;s something I
+have to be saying before I go on my way. &#8217;Twould be easiest if you&#8217;d
+take me for a ride in your car; we could talk quieter there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She tried to finish with a reasonably cheerful look, but it was a
+tragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-office
+beyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenly
+rose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant&#8217;s
+intensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank away
+perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger and
+more&mdash;pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman had
+lost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen in
+with foul company.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust
+and failure&mdash;natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion
+and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.
+She had met a few of them in her life; but&mdash;thank God!&mdash;there were
+only a few.</p>
+
+<p>She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just
+what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him
+understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite
+of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested
+kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was
+a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who
+could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead
+friend was too fine to be lost out of life&#8217;s credit-sheet.</p>
+
+<p>She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she
+climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim
+staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for
+his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter,
+and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the
+doorway:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with&mdash;a lady.&#8221; There
+was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Please take a quiet road&mdash;where there will not be much passing,&#8221;
+commanded Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were
+well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands
+still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the
+king&#8217;s English&mdash;she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy
+of her own tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you
+this way. But when a man&#8217;s family and betrothed fail him&mdash;why, some
+one must&mdash;make it up&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned fiercely. &#8220;How did you know that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;she&mdash;Never mind; I know, that&#8217;s all. And I came, thinking maybe
+you&#8217;d be glad&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of another?&#8221; he laughed coarsely, looking her over with an
+appraising scrutiny. &#8220;Well, a fellow might have a worse&mdash;substitute.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy crimsoned. It seemed incredible that the man she had listened
+to that day in Marjorie Schuyler&#8217;s den, who had then gripped her
+sympathies and thereby pulled her after him in spite of past illness
+and all common sense, should be the man speaking now. And yet&mdash;what
+was it Gregory Jessup had said about him? Had he not implied that old
+King Midas had long ago warped his son&#8217;s trust in women until he had
+come to look upon them all as modern Circes? And <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>gradually shame for
+herself changed into pity for him. What a shabby performance life
+must seem to such as he!</p>
+
+<p>She had an irresistible desire to take him with her behind the scenes
+and show him what it really was; to point out how with a change of
+line here, a new cue there, and a different drop behind; with a
+choice of fellow-players, and better lights, and the right spirit
+back of it all&mdash;what a good thing he could make of his particular
+part. But would he see&mdash;could she make him understand? It was worth
+trying.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are every bit wrong,&#8221; she said, evenly. &#8220;Look at me. Do I look
+like an adventuress? And haven&#8217;t you ever had anybody kind to you
+simply because they had a preference for kindness?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The two looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled at
+minimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched under
+the blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop a
+hundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; she heard herself saying at last, &#8220;don&#8217;t you think you can
+believe in me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man laughed again, coarsely. &#8220;Believe in you? That&#8217;s precisely
+what I&#8217;m doing this minute&mdash;believing in your cleverness and a deuced
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>pretty way with you. Now don&#8217;t get mad, my dear. You are all
+daughters of Eve, and your intentions are very innocent&mdash;of course.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Pity and sympathy left Patsy like starved pensioners. The eyes
+looking into his blazed with righteous anger and a hating distrust;
+they carried to him a stronger, more direct message than words could
+have done. His answer was to double the speed of the car.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stop the car!&#8221; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, ho! we&#8217;re getting scared, are we? Repenting of our haste?&#8221; The
+grim line of his mouth became more sinister. &#8220;No man relishes a
+woman&#8217;s contempt, and he generally makes her pay when he can. Now I
+came for pleasure, and I&#8217;m going to get it.&#8221; An arm shot around Patsy
+and held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where he
+wished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. &#8220;Remember,
+I can prove you asked me to take you&mdash;and it was your choice&mdash;this
+nice, quiet spin!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously he
+relaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint and
+muscle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you scream?&#8221; he sneered at length.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m keeping my breath&mdash;till there&#8217;s need of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road;
+the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signs
+of human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see a
+suspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed for
+repairs&mdash;something, anything to bring to an end this hideous,
+nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all.
+She&mdash;Patricia O&#8217;Connell&mdash;who would have starved rather than play
+cheap, sordid melodrama&mdash;had been tricked by chance into becoming an
+actual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt no
+fear&mdash;she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the man
+beside her&mdash;and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger had
+crowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps&mdash;back of
+everything&mdash;she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency and
+good in him.</p>
+
+<p>Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. &#8220;Well, what&#8217;s in
+your mind?&#8221; he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your father
+throw so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everything
+about you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came to
+have a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What in thunder are you talking&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he had
+given up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his hold
+and was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantically to a
+figure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was a
+grotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of its
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good God!&#8221; muttered the man in the car, stiffening.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed;
+the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge,
+and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinker
+was upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy sank back on the seat, white and trembling, as she watched the
+instant&#8217;s grappling of the two, followed by a lurching tumble over
+the side of the car to the planking. The fall knocked them apart, and
+for the space of a few quick breaths they half rose and faced each
+other&mdash;the one almost crazed with fury, the other steady, calm, but
+terrifyingly determined.</p>
+
+<p>Before Patsy could move they were upon each other again&mdash;rolling
+about in the dust, clutching at each other&#8217;s throat&mdash;now half under
+the car, now almost through the girders of the bridge, with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>Patsy&#8217;s
+voice crying a warning. Again they were on their feet, grappling and
+hitting blindly; then down in the dust, rolling and clutching.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain melodrama of the most banal form; and the most
+convincing part of it all was the evident personal enmity that
+directed each blow. Somehow it was borne in upon Patsy that her share
+in the quarrel was an infinitesimal part; it was the old, old scene
+in the fourth act: the hero paying up the villain for all past
+scores.</p>
+
+<p>Like the scene in the fourth act, it came to an end at last. The time
+came when no answering blow met the tinker&#8217;s, when the hand that
+gripped his throat relaxed and the body back of it went down under
+him&mdash;breathless and inert. Patsy climbed out of the car to make room
+for the stowing away of its owner. He was conscious, but past
+articulate speech and thoroughly beaten; and the tinker kindly turned
+the car about for him and started him slowly off, so as to rid the
+road of him, as Patsy said. It looked possible, with a careful
+harboring of strength and persistence, for him to reach eventually
+the starting-point and his friend of the post-office. As his trail of
+dust lengthened between them Patsy gave a sigh of relieved content
+and turned to the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith, ye are a sight for a sore heart.&#8221; Her hand slid into his
+outstretched one. &#8220;I&#8217;ll make a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>bargain with ye: if ye&#8217;ll forgive and
+forget the unfair things I said to ye that night I&#8217;ll not stay hurt
+over your leaving without notice the next morning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a bargain,&#8221; but he winced as he said it. &#8220;It seems as if our
+meetings were dependent on a certain amount of&mdash;of physical
+disablement.&#8221; He smiled reassuringly. &#8220;I don&#8217;t really mind in the
+least. I&#8217;d stand for knockout blows down miles of road, if they would
+bring you back&mdash;every time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t joke!&#8221; Patsy covered her face. &#8220;If&mdash;if ye only knew&mdash;what it
+means to have ye standing there this minute!&#8221; She drew in her breath
+quickly; it sounded dangerously like a sob. &#8220;If ye only knew what ye
+have saved me from&mdash;and what I am owing ye&mdash;&#8221; Her hands fell, and she
+looked at him with a sudden shy concern. &#8220;Poor lad! Here ye are&mdash;a
+fit subject for a hospital, and I&#8217;m wasting time talking instead of
+trying to mend ye up. Do ye think there might be water hereabouts
+where we could wash off some of that&mdash;grease paint?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the tinker was contemplating his right foot; he was standing on
+the other. &#8220;Don&#8217;t bother about those scratches; they go rather well
+with the clothes, don&#8217;t you think? It&#8217;s this ankle that&#8217;s bothering
+me; I must have turned it when I jumped.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t ye walk on it? Ye can lean on this&#8221;&mdash;she passed him the
+pilgrim staff&mdash;&#8220;and we can go slowly. Bad luck to the man! If I had
+known ye were hurt I&#8217;d have made ye leave him in the road and we&#8217;d
+have driven his machine back to Arden for him.&#8221; She looked longingly
+after the trail of dust.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your ethics are questionable, but your geography is worse. Arden
+isn&#8217;t back there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do ye mean? Why, I saw Arden, back yonder, with my own
+eyes&mdash;not an hour ago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, you didn&#8217;t. You saw Dansville; Arden is over there,&#8221; and the
+tinker&#8217;s hand pointed over his shoulder at right angles to the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Holy Saint Branden!&#8221; gasped Patsy. &#8220;Maybe ye&#8217;ll have the boldness,
+then, to tell me I&#8217;m still seven miles from it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are.&#8221; But this time he did not laugh&mdash;a smile was the utmost he
+could manage with the pain in his ankle.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy looked as if she might have laughed or cried with equal ease.
+&#8220;Seven miles&mdash;seven miles! Tramp the road for four days and be just
+as near the end as I was at the start&mdash;&#8221; An expression of
+enlightenment shot into her face. &#8220;Faith, I must have been going in a
+circle, then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker nodded an affirmative.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;And who in the name of reason was the man in the car?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;d like to know; the unmitigated nerve of him!&#8221; he
+finished to himself. His chin set itself squarely; his face had grown
+as white as Patsy&#8217;s had been and his eyes became doggedly determined.
+&#8220;If it isn&#8217;t a piece of impertinence, I&#8217;d like to ask how you
+happened to be with him, that way?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy flushed. &#8220;I&#8217;m thinking ye&#8217;ve earned the right to an answer. I
+took him for the lad I was looking for. I thought the place was
+Arden, and&mdash;and the clothes were the same.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The clothes!&#8221; the tinker repeated it in the same bewildered way that
+had been his when Patsy first found him; then he turned and grasped
+Patsy&#8217;s shoulders with a sudden, inexplicable intensity. &#8220;What&#8217;s the
+name of the lad&mdash;the lad you&#8217;re after?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you,&#8221; said Patsy, slowly, &#8220;if you&#8217;ll tell me what you did
+with my brown clothes that morning before you left.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the answer to both questions was a blank, baffling stare.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<h2>A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">he</span> railroad ran under the suspension-bridge. Patsy could see the
+station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it
+as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured.
+The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten
+minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the
+telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished&mdash;after a fashion,
+and with persistent rebelling on the tinker&#8217;s part and scolding on
+Patsy&#8217;s. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to
+physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering hands,
+threw it over the bridge, and started down the road at his old,
+swinging stride.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it after more lady&#8217;s-slippers ye&#8217;re dandering?&#8221; called Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;More likely it&#8217;s after a pair of those wing&egrave;d shoes of Perseus; I&#8217;ll
+need them.&#8221; But his stride <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>soon broke to a walk and then to a
+lagging limp. &#8220;It&#8217;s no use,&#8221; he said at last; &#8220;I might keep on for
+another half-mile, a mile at the most; but that&#8217;s about all I&#8217;d be
+good for. You&#8217;ll have to go on to Arden alone, and you can&#8217;t miss it
+this time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy stopped abruptly. &#8220;Why don&#8217;t ye curse me for the trouble I have
+brought?&#8221; She considered both hands carefully for a minute, as if she
+expected to find in them the solution to the difficulty, then she
+looked up and away toward the rising woodland that marked Arden.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do ye know,&#8221; she said, wistfully, &#8220;I took the road, thinking I could
+mend trouble for that other lad; and instead it&#8217;s trouble I&#8217;ve been
+making for every one&mdash;ye, Joseph, and I don&#8217;t know how many more. And
+instead of doling kindness&mdash;why, I&#8217;m begging it. Now what&#8217;s the
+meaning of it all? What keeps me failing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;There&#8217;s a divinity that shapes&#8217;&mdash;&#8221; began the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>But Patsy cut him short. &#8220;Ye do know Willie Shakespeare!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, guiltily. &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I do&mdash;known him a good many years.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s grand company; best I know, barring tinkers.&#8221; She turned
+impulsively and, standing on tiptoe, her fingers reached to the top
+of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>shoulders. &#8220;See here, lad, ye can just give over thinking
+I&#8217;ll go on alone. If I&#8217;m cast for melodrama, sure I&#8217;ll play it
+according to the best rules; the villain has fled, the hero is hurt,
+and if I went now I&#8217;d be hissed by the gallery. I&#8217;ve got ye into
+trouble and I&#8217;ll not leave ye till I see ye out of it&mdash;someway. Oh,
+there&#8217;s lots of ways; I&#8217;m thinking them fast. Like as not a passing
+team or car would carry ye to Arden; or we might beg the loan of a
+horse for a bit from some kind-hearted farmer, and I could drive ye
+over and bring the horse back; or we&#8217;ll ask a corner for ye at a
+farm-house till ye are fit to walk&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are in the wrong part of the country for any of those things to
+happen. Look about! Don&#8217;t you see what a very different road it is
+from the one we took in the beginning?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy looked and saw. So engrossed had she been in the incidents of
+the last hour or more that she had not observed the changing country.
+Here were no longer pastures, tilled fields, houses with neighboring
+barn-yards, and unclaimed woodland; no longer was the road fringed
+with stone walls or stump fencing. Well-rolled golf-links stretched
+away on either hand as far as they could see; and, beyond, through
+the trees, showed roofs of red tile and stained shingle; and trimmed
+hedges skirted everything.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis the rich man&#8217;s country,&#8221; commented Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is, and I&#8217;d crawl into a hole and starve before I&#8217;d take charity
+from one of them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure and ye would. When a body&#8217;s poor &#8217;tis only the poor like
+himself he&#8217;d be asking help of. Don&#8217;t I know! What&#8217;s yonder house?&#8221;
+She broke off with a jerk and pointed ahead to a small building,
+sitting well back from the road, partly hidden in the surrounding
+clumps of trees.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a stable; house burned down last year and it hasn&#8217;t been used
+by any one since.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;ll wager it&#8217;s as snug as a pocket inside&mdash;with fresh hay or
+straw, plenty to make a lad comfortable. Isn&#8217;t that grand good luck
+for ye?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker found it hard to echo Patsy&#8217;s enthusiasm, but he did his
+best. &#8220;Of course; and it&#8217;s just the place to leave a lad behind in
+when a lass has seven miles to tramp before she gets to the end of
+her journey.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that so?&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s tone sounded suspiciously sarcastic. &#8220;Well,
+talking&#8217;s not walking; supposing ye take the staff in one hand and
+lean your other on me, and we&#8217;ll see can we make it before this time
+to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They made it in another hour, unobserved by the few straggling
+players on the links.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p><p>The stable proved all Patsy had anticipated. She watched the tinker
+sink, exhausted, on the bedded hay, while she pulled down a forgotten
+horse-blanket from a near-by peg to throw over him; then she turned
+in a business-like manner back to the door.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going to Arden?&#8221; came the faint voice of the tinker after
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might&mdash;and then again&mdash;I mightn&#8217;t. Was there any word ye might
+want me to fetch ahead for ye?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; only&mdash;perhaps&mdash;would you think a chap too everlastingly
+impertinent to ask you to wait there for him&mdash;until he caught up with
+you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might&mdash;and then again&mdash;I mightn&#8217;t.&#8221; At the door she stopped, and
+for the second time considered her hands speculatively. &#8220;It wouldn&#8217;t
+inconvenience your feelings any to take charity from me, would it,
+seeing I&#8217;m as poor as yourself and have dragged ye into this common,
+tuppenny brawl by my own foolishness?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You didn&#8217;t drag me in; I had one foot in already.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought so,&#8221; Patsy nodded, approvingly; her conviction had been
+correct, then. &#8220;And the charity?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;d take it from you.&#8221; The tinker rolled over with a little
+moan composed of physical pain <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>and mental discomfort. But in another
+moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as
+she disappeared through the door. &#8220;Remember&mdash;no help from the
+quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won&#8217;t have them coming
+around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of
+assistance to a&mdash;beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you
+bring any one back with you I&#8217;ll burn the stable down about me.
+Remember!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye,&#8221; she called back; &#8220;I&#8217;ll be remembering.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>She reached the road again; and for the manyeth time since she left
+the women&#8217;s free ward of the City Hospital she marshaled all the
+O&#8217;Connell wits. But even the best of wits require opportunity, and to
+Patsy the immediate outlook seemed barren of such.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s naught to do but keep going till something turns up,&#8221; she
+said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter.
+She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned
+house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of
+thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a
+cross-road. She looked to the right&mdash;it was empty. She looked to the
+left&mdash;and behold there was &#8220;Opportunity,&#8221; large, florid, and
+agitated, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed
+houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight of herself and
+her bag.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ze dep&ocirc;t&mdash;how long ees eet?&#8221; she demanded, when she caught sight of
+Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>The accent was unmistakably French, and Patsy obligingly answered her
+in her mother-tongue. &#8220;I cannot say exactly; about three&mdash;four
+kilometers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Opportunity&#8221; dropped her bag and embraced her. &#8220;Oh!&#8221; she burst out,
+volubly. &#8220;Think of Zo&euml; Marat finding a countrywoman in this wild
+land. <i>Moi</i>&mdash;I can no longer stand it; and when madame&#8217;s temper goes
+<i>pouffe</i>&mdash;I say, it is enough; let madame fast or cook for her
+guests, as she prefer. I go!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Eh, bien!</i>&#8221; agreed the outer Patsy, while her subjective
+consciousness addressed her objective self in plain Donegal: &#8220;Faith!
+this is the maddest luck&mdash;the maddest, merriest luck! If yonder
+Quality House has lost one cook, &#8217;twill be needing another; and &#8217;tis
+a poor cook entirely that doesn&#8217;t hold the keys of her own pantry.
+Food from Quality House needn&#8217;t be choking the maddest tinker, if
+it&#8217;s paid for in honest work.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Having been embraced by &#8220;Opportunity,&#8221; Patsy saw no reason for
+wasting time in futile sympathy that might better be spent in prompt
+execution. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>She despatched the woman to the station with the briefest
+of directions and herself made straight for Quality House.</p>
+
+<p>She was smiling over her appearance and the incongruities of the
+situation as she rang the bell at the front door and asked for
+&#8220;Madame&#8221; in her best parisien.</p>
+
+<p>The maid, properly impressed, carried the message at once; and
+curiosity brought madame in surprising haste to the hall, where she
+looked Patsy over with frank amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Madame speak French? Ah, I thought so. Madame desires a
+cook&mdash;<i>voil&agrave;!</i>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The abruptness of this announcement turned madame giddy. &#8220;How did you
+know? Mine did not leave half an hour ago; there isn&#8217;t another French
+cook within five miles; it is unbelievable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is Providence.&#8221; Patsy cast her eyes devoutly heavenward.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have references&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;References!&#8221; Patsy shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. &#8220;What
+would madame do with references? She cannot eat them; she cannot feed
+them to her guests. I can cook. Is that not sufficient?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But&mdash;you do not think&mdash;It is impossible that I ever employ a servant
+without references. And <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>you&mdash;you look like anything in the world but
+a French cook.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Madame is not so foolish as to find fault with the ways of
+Providence, or judge one by one&#8217;s clothes? Who knows&mdash;at this moment
+it may be <i>&agrave; la mode</i> in Paris for cooks to wear sailor blouses.
+Besides, madame is mistaken; I am not a servant. I am an artist&mdash;a
+culinary artist.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can cook, truly?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But yes, madame!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Excellent sauces?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Mon Dieu</i>&mdash;B&eacute;chamel&mdash;Hollandaise&mdash;chaud-froid&mdash;ma&icirc;tre
+d&#8217;h&ocirc;tel&mdash;Espagnole&mdash;B&eacute;arnaise&mdash;&#8221; Patsy completed the list with an
+ecstatic kiss blown into the air.</p>
+
+<p>Madame sighed and spoke in English: &#8220;It is unbelievable&mdash;absurd. I
+shouldn&#8217;t trust my own eyes or palate if I sat down to-night to the
+most remarkable dinner in the world; but one must feed one&#8217;s guests.&#8221;
+She looked Patsy over again. &#8220;Your trunk?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Trunk? Is it toilettes or sauces madame wishes me to make for her
+guests? <i>Ma foi!</i> Trunks&mdash;references&mdash;one is as unimportant as the
+other. Is it not enough for the present if I cook for madame?
+Afterward&mdash;&#8221; She ended with the all-expressive shrug.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently madame conceded the point, for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>without further comment she
+led the way to the kitchen and presented the bill of fare for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;For twelve,&#8217;&#8221; read Patsy. &#8220;And to-morrow is Sunday. Ah, Providence
+is good to madame, <i>mais-oui?</i>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But madame&#8217;s thoughts were on more practical matters. &#8220;Your wages?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One hundred francs a week, and the kitchen to myself. I, too, have a
+temper, madame.&#8221; Patsy gave a quick toss to her head, while her eyes
+snapped.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>That night the week-end guests at Quality House sat over their
+coffee, volubly commenting on the rare excellence of their dinner and
+the good fortune of their hostess in her possession of such a cook.
+Madame kept her own counsel and blessed Providence; but she did not
+allow that good fortune to escape with her better judgment&mdash;or
+anything else. She ordered the butler, before retiring, to count the
+silver and lock it in her dressing-room; this was to be done every
+night&mdash;as long as the new cook remained.</p>
+
+<p>And the new cook? Her work despatched, and her kitchen to herself,
+she was free to get dinner for one more of madame&#8217;s guests.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! he&#8217;d die of a black fit if he ever knew he was a guest of
+Quality House&mdash;and she&#8217;d die of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>another if she found out whom she
+was entertaining. But, glory be to Peter! what neither of them knows
+won&#8217;t hurt them.&#8221; And Patsy, unobserved, opened the back door and
+retraced the road to the deserted stable with a full basket and a
+glad heart.</p>
+
+<p>She found the tinker under some trees at the back, smoking a
+disreputable cuddy pipe with a worse accompaniment of tobacco. When
+he saw her he removed it apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It smells horrible, I know. I found it, forgotten, on a ledge of the
+stable, but it keeps a chap from remembering that he is hungry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor lad!&#8221; Patsy knelt on the ground beside him and opened her
+basket. &#8220;Put your nose into that, just. &#8217;Tis a nine-course dinner and
+every bit of the best. Faith! &#8217;tis lucky I was found on a Brittany
+rose-bush instead of one in Heidelberg, Birmingham, or Philadelphia;
+and if ye can&#8217;t be born with gold in your mouth the next best thing
+is a mixing-spoon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Meaning?&#8221; queried the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Meaning&mdash;that there&#8217;s many a poor soul who goes hungry through life
+because she is wanting the knowledge of how to mix what&#8217;s already
+under her nose.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker looked suspiciously from the contents of the basket to
+Patsy, kneeling beside it, and he dropped into a shameless mimicry of
+her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>brogue. &#8220;Aye, but how did she come by&mdash;what&#8217;s under her nose?
+Here&#8217;s a dinner for a king&#8217;s son.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll be letting ye play the king&#8217;s son instead of the fool
+to-night, just, if ye&#8217;ll give over asking any more questions and
+eat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But&#8221;&mdash;he sniffed the plate she had handed him with added
+suspicion&mdash;&#8220;roast duck and sherry sauce! Honest, now&mdash;have ye been
+begging?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No&mdash;nor stealing&mdash;nor, by the same token, have I murdered any one to
+get the dinner from him.&#8221; There was fine sarcasm in her voice as she
+returned the tinker&#8217;s searching look.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then where did it come from? I&#8217;ll not eat a mouthful until I get an
+honest answer.&#8221; The tinker put the plate down beside him and folded
+his arms.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy snorted with exasperation. &#8220;Was I ever saying ye could play the
+king&#8217;s son? Faith! ye&#8217;ll never play anything but the fool&mdash;first and
+last.&#8221; Her voice suddenly took on a more coaxing tone; she was
+thinking of that good dinner growing cold&mdash;spoiled by the man&#8217;s
+ridiculous curiosity. &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell ye what&mdash;if ye&#8217;ll agree to begin
+eating, I&#8217;ll agree to begin telling ye about it&mdash;and we&#8217;ll both agree
+not to stop till we get to the end. But Holy Saint Martin! who ever
+heard of a man before letting his conscience in ahead of his hunger!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The bargain was made; and while the tinker <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>devoured one plateful
+after another with a ravenous haste that almost discredited his
+previous restraint, Patsy spun a fanciful tale of having found a
+cluricaun under a quicken-tree. With great elaboration and seeming
+regard for the truth, she explained his magical qualities, and
+how&mdash;if you were clever enough to possess yourself of his cap&mdash;you
+could get almost anything from him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I held his cap firmly with the one hand and him by the scruff of the
+neck with the other; and says I to him, &#8216;Little man, ye&#8217;ll not be
+getting this back till ye&#8217;ve fetched me a dinner fit for a tinker.&#8217;
+&#8216;Well, and good,&#8217; says he, &#8216;but ye can&#8217;t find that this side of the
+King&#8217;s Hotel, Dublin; and that will take time.&#8217; &#8216;Take the time,&#8217; says
+I, &#8216;but get the dinner.&#8217; And from that minute till the present I&#8217;ve
+been waiting under that quicken-tree for him to make the trip there
+and back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy finished, and the two of them smiled at each other with rare
+good humor out under the June stars. Only the tinker&#8217;s smile was
+skeptical.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So&mdash;ye are not believing me&mdash;&#8221; Patsy shammed a solemn, grieved look.
+&#8220;Well&mdash;I&#8217;ll forgive ye this time if ye&#8217;ll agree that the dinner was
+good, for I&#8217;d hate like the devil to be giving the wee man back his
+cap for anything but the best.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With laggard grace the tinker stretched his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>hands over the now empty
+basket and gripped Patsy&#8217;s. &#8220;Lass, lass&mdash;what are you thinking of me?
+Faith! my manners are more ragged than my clothes&mdash;and I&#8217;m not fit to
+be a&mdash;tinker. The dinner was the best I ever ate, and&mdash;bless ye and
+the cluricaun!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy cooked for three days at Quality House, that the tinker might
+feast night and morning to his heart&#8217;s content while his ankle slowly
+mended. But he still persisted questioning concerning his food&mdash;where
+and how Patsy had come by it; she still maintained as persistent a
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve come by it honestly, and &#8217;tis no charity fare,&#8221; was the most
+she would say, adding by way of flavor: &#8220;For a sorry tinker ye are
+the proudest I ever saw. Did ye ever know another, now, who wanted a
+written certificate of moral character along with every morsel he
+ate?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>According to wage agreement she had the kitchen to herself; no one
+entered except on matters of necessity; no one lingered after her
+work was despatched. Madame came twice daily to confer with Patsy on
+intricacies of gestation, while she beamed upon her as a probationed
+soul might look upon the keeper of the keys of Paradise. But the days
+held more for Patsy than sauces and entr&eacute;es and pastries; they held
+gossip as well. Soup&ccedil;ons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>through open window and swinging door&mdash;straight from the dining-room
+and my lady&#8217;s chamber. Most of it passed her ears, unheeded; it was
+but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and
+baking&mdash;until news came at last that concerned herself&mdash;gossip of the
+Burgemans, father and son.</p>
+
+<p>The butler and the parlor maid were cleaning the silver in the
+pantry&mdash;and the slide was raised. As transmitters of gossip they were
+more than usually concerned, for had not the butler at one time
+served in the house of Burgeman, and the maid dusted next door?
+Therefore every item of news was well ripened before it dropped from
+either tongue, and Patsy gathered them in with eager ears.</p>
+
+<p>The master of Quality House happened to be a director of that bank on
+which the Burgeman check of ten thousand had been drawn. It had been
+the largest check drawn to cash presented at the bank; and the teller
+had confessed to the directors that he would never have paid over the
+money to any one except the old man&#8217;s son. In fact, he had been so
+much concerned over it afterward that he had called up the Burgeman
+office, and had been much relieved to have the assurance of the
+secretary that the check was certified and perfectly correct. Not a
+second thought <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>would have been given to the matter had not the
+secretary&#8217;s resignation been made public the next day&mdash;the day Billy
+Burgeman disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy&#8217;s ears fairly bristled with interest. &#8220;That&#8217;s news, if it is
+gossip. Where is the secretary now? And which of them has the ten
+thousand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The director had touched on the subject of the check the next day
+when business had demanded his presence at the Burgeman home. The
+result had been distinctly baffling. Not that the director could put
+his finger on any one suspicious point in the behavior of Burgeman,
+senior; but it left him with the distinct impression that the father
+was shielding the son.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, that&#8217;s what Billy said his father would do&mdash;shield him out of
+pride.&#8221; Patsy dusted the flour from her arms and stood motionless,
+thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given
+cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of
+the hands: &#8220;He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in
+shoe-laces and collar-buttons, I dare say. That&#8217;s the way rich men&#8217;s
+sons keep their fathers&#8217; incomes from getting too cumbersome.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Burgeman, senior, had been ill then&mdash;confined to his room; but the
+next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two
+statements were not merely gossip, but facts.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of
+Billy&#8217;s guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were
+passing through the kitchen on their way to the servants&#8217; hall.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course he took it&#8221;&mdash;the maid&#8217;s tone was positive&mdash;&#8220;those rich
+men&#8217;s sons always are a bad lot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;E didn&#8217;t take it, then. &#8217;Is father&#8217;s playin&#8217; some mean game on
+&#8217;im&mdash;that&#8217;s what. Hi worked five months hin that &#8217;ouse an&#8217; Hi&#8217;d as
+lief work for the devil!&#8221; And the butler pounded his fist for
+emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>It took all Patsy&#8217;s self-control to refrain from launching into the
+argument herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself,
+however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and
+hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the
+most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine
+horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that
+Patsy could recall with rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>When the kitchen was empty once more Patsy systematically gathered
+together all that she knew and all that she had heard of Billy
+Burgeman, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>weighed it against the bare possible chance she might
+have of helping him should she continue her quest. And in the end she
+made her decision unwaveringly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Troth! a conscience is a poor bit of property entirely,&#8221; she sighed,
+as she stood the p&acirc;t&eacute;-shells on the ledge of the range to dry. &#8220;It
+drives ye after a man ye don&#8217;t care a ha&#8217;penny about, and it drives
+ye from the one that ye do. Bad luck to it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>That night Patsy sat under the trees with the tinker while he ate his
+supper. A half-grown moon lighted the feast for them, for Patsy took
+an occasional mouthful at the tinker&#8217;s insistence that dining alone
+was a miserably unsociable affair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To watch ye eat that p&acirc;t&eacute; de fois gras a body would think ye had
+been reared on them. Honest, now, have ye ever tasted one before in
+your life?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then&mdash;ye have sat at rich men&#8217;s tables?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Or perhaps I have begged at rich men&#8217;s doors. Maybe that is how I
+came to have a distaste for their&mdash;charity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who are ye? Ye know I&#8217;d give the full of my empty pockets to know
+who ye are, and what started ye tramping the road&mdash;in rags.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p><p>The tinker considered a moment. &#8220;Perhaps I took the road because I
+believed it led to the only place I cared to find. Perhaps I lost the
+way to it, as you lost yours to Arden, and in the losing I
+found&mdash;something else. Perhaps&mdash;perhaps&mdash;oh, perhaps a hundred
+things; but I&#8217;ll make another bargain with you. I&#8217;ll tell you all
+about it when we reach Arden, if you&#8217;ll tell me the name of the lad
+you came to find.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll do more than that&mdash;I&#8217;ll bring ye together and let ye help mend
+him,&#8221; and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted
+down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten
+his hunger.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221; queried Patsy at last. &#8220;A ha&#8217;penny for them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking the same old thoughts I&#8217;ve thought a hundred times
+already&mdash;since that first day: What makes you so different from
+everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your
+gospel of kindness&mdash;on your lips and in your hands?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would ye really like to know?&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s fingers stole through the
+grass about them. &#8220;Faith! the world&#8217;s not so soft and green as this
+under every one&#8217;s feet. Ye see &#8217;twas by a thorn I was found hanging
+to that Killarney rose-bush <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>in Brittany, and I&#8217;ve always remembered
+the feeling of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging
+memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and
+letting the rest of the world hug theirs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe it!&#8221; Patsy shook her head fiercely. &#8220;What&#8217;s the use
+of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if
+it can&#8217;t put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first
+tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn&#8217;t it
+the best thing in the world?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it? Can it cure&mdash;gold?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And why not? If every man had more kindness than he had gold, would
+neighbor ever have to fear neighbor or childther go hungry for love?&#8221;
+The tinker did not answer, and Patsy went on with a deepening
+intensity: &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell ye a tale&mdash;a foolish tale that keeps repeating
+itself over and over in my memory like the tick-tick-tick of a clock.
+Ye know that the Jesuit Fathers say&mdash;give them the care of a child
+till he&#8217;s ten and nothing afterward matters. Well, it&#8217;s true; a child
+can feel all the sweetness or bitterness, hunger or plenty, that life
+holds before he is that age even.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy stopped. A veery was singing in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>woods close by, and she
+listened for a moment. &#8220;Hearken to that bird, now. A good-for-naught
+lad may have stolen his nest, or a cat filched his young, or his sons
+and daughters flown away and left him; but he&#8217;ll sing, for all that.
+&#8217;Tis a pity the rest of us can&#8217;t do as well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; agreed the tinker, &#8220;but the story&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, the story. It begins with a wee white cottage in Brittany,
+fronted by roses and backed by great cliffs and the open sea.&#8221; Patsy
+clasped her hands about her knees, while her eyes left the shadow of
+the trees and traveled to the open where the moonlight spread silvery
+clear and unbroken. And the tinker, watching, knew that her eyes were
+seeing the things of which she was telling. &#8220;A wee white cottage&mdash;the
+roses and the cliffs,&#8221; repeated Patsy, &#8220;and a great, grim, silent
+figure of a man sitting there idle all day, watching a little lass at
+her play. Just the man and the child. And the trouble in his mind
+that had kept the man silent and idle was an old, old trouble&mdash;old as
+the peopled world itself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Long before, he had married a woman who cared for two things&mdash;love
+and gold; and he had but the one to give her. She had been a great
+actress, a favorite at the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise; but she left her work
+and all the applause and adulation for him, an expatriated Irishman
+with naught <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>but a great love, because she thought she cared for love
+more. They had been wonderfully happy at first; he wrote beautiful
+verses about her&mdash;and his beloved motherland, and she said them for
+him in that wonderful singing voice of hers that had made her the
+idol of half of France. And she had made a game of their poverty in
+the wee white cottage with the roses&mdash;until her child was born and
+poverty could no longer be played at. Then work became drudgery, and
+love naught. The woman went back to her theater&mdash;and another man, a
+man who had gold a-plenty. And the child grew up playing alone beside
+the silent, grim Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then one day the child played with no one by to watch her; the man
+had walked over the cliff and forgot ever to come back. Aye, and the
+child played on till dark came and she fell asleep&mdash;there on the
+door-sill, under the roses. &#8217;Twas a neighbor, passing, that found
+her, and carried her home to put to bed with her own children. After
+that the child was taken away to a convent, and the rich children
+called her &#8216;<i>la pauvre petite</i>,&#8217; shared their saints&#8217;-days&#8217; gifts
+with her, and bought her candles that she might make a <i>novena</i> to
+bring her father back again. But &#8217;twas her mother it brought
+instead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>was not singing alone
+now, and she smiled wistfully. &#8220;See! he&#8217;s found a friend, a comrade
+to sing with him. That&#8217;s grand!&#8221; Then she went back to the story:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The child was taken from the convent in the night and by somber-clad
+servants who seemed in a great hurry. She was brought a long way to a
+ch&acirc;teau, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the south of France;
+and a small, shrivel-faced man in royal clothes met her at the door
+and carried her up great marble stairs to a chamber lighted by two
+tall candles, just. They stopped on the threshold for a breath, and
+the child saw that a woman was lying in the canopied bed&mdash;a very,
+very beautiful woman. To the child she seemed some goddess&mdash;or saint.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Here is the child,&#8217; said the man; and the woman answered: &#8216;Alone,
+R&eacute;n&eacute;. Remember you promised&mdash;alone.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;After that the man left them together&mdash;the dying woman and her
+child. Ah!&mdash;how can I be telling you the way she fondled and caressed
+her! How starved were the lips that touched the child&#8217;s hair, cheeks,
+and eyelids! And when her strength failed she drew the child into her
+tired arms and whispered fragments of prayers, haunting memories,
+pitiful regrets. Of all the things she said the child remembered but
+one: &#8216;Gold buys plenty <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>for the body, but nothing for the
+heart&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And that kept repeating itself over and over in the child&#8217;s mind.
+She remembered it all through the night after they had taken her away
+from those lifeless arms and she lay awake alone in a terrifying,
+dark room; she remembered it all through the long day when she sat
+beside the gorgeous catafalque that held her mother, and watched the
+tall candles in the dim chapel burn lower and lower and lower. And
+that was why she refused to stay afterward&mdash;and be taken care of by
+the shrivel-faced man in that oldest and most beautiful ch&acirc;teau.
+Instead she slipped out early one morning, before any one was awake
+to see and mark the way she went. It is unbelievable, sometimes, how
+children who have the will to do it can lose themselves. And so this
+child&mdash;alone&mdash;went out into the world, empty-handed, seeking life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But did she go empty-handed?&#8221; asked the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, but not empty-hearted, thank God!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And wherever the child went, she carried with her that hatred of
+gold,&#8221; mused the tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye; why not? She had learned how pitifully little it was worth,
+when all&#8217;s said and done. &#8217;Twas her father&#8217;s name she heard last on
+her mother&#8217;s lips, and it was their child she prayed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>for with her
+dying breath.&#8221; Patsy sprang to her feet. &#8220;Do ye see&mdash;the moon will be
+beating me to bed, and &#8217;twas a poor tale, after all. How is your
+foot?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Better&mdash;much better.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would ye be able to travel on it to-morrow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker shook his head. &#8220;The day after, perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, keep on coaxing it. Good night.&#8221; And she had picked up her
+basket and was gone before the tinker could stumble to his feet.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>When the tinker woke the next morning the basket stood just inside
+the stable door, linked through the pilgrim&#8217;s staff. On investigation
+it proved to contain his breakfast and an envelope, and the envelope
+contained a ten-dollar bill and a letter, which read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Lad</span>,&mdash;I&#8217;ll be well on the road when you get this; and
+with a tongue in my head and luck at my heels, please God,
+I&#8217;ll reach Arden this time. You need not be afraid to use
+the money&mdash;or too proud, either. It was honestly earned and
+the charity of no one; you can take it as a loan or a
+gift&mdash;whichever you choose. Anyhow, it will bring you after
+me faster&mdash;which was your own promise.</p>
+
+<p class="right">Yours in advance,</p>
+
+<p class="right2"><span class="smcap">P. O&#8217;Connell</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Surprise, disappointment, indignation, amusement, all battled for the
+upper hand; but it was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>a very different emotion from any of these
+which finally mastered the tinker. He smoothed the bill very tenderly
+between his hands before he returned it to the envelope; but he did
+something more than smooth the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>And meanwhile Patsy tramped the road to Arden.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+<h2>A MESSAGE AND A MAP</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">T</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">his</span> time there was no mistaking the right road; it ran straight past
+Quality House to Arden&mdash;unbroken but for graveled driveways leading
+into private estates. Patsy traveled it at a snail&#8217;s pace. Now that
+Arden had become a definitely unavoidable goal, she was more loath to
+reach it than she had been on any of the seven days since the
+beginning of her quest. However the quest ended&mdash;whether she found
+Billy Burgeman or not, or whether there was any need now of finding
+him&mdash;this much she knew: for her the road ended at Arden. What lay
+beyond she neither tried nor cared to prophesy. Was it not enough
+that her days of vagabondage would be over&mdash;along with the company of
+tinkers and such like? There might be an answer awaiting her to the
+letter sent from Lebanon to George Travis; in that case she could in
+all probability count on some dependable income for the rest of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>the
+summer. Otherwise&mdash;there were her wits. The very thought of them
+wrung a pitiful little groan from Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! I&#8217;ve been overworking Dan&#8217;s legacy long enough, I&#8217;m thinking.
+Poor wee things! They&#8217;re needing rest and nourishment for a while,&#8221;
+and she patted her forehead sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>Of one thing she was certain&mdash;if her wits must still serve her, they
+should do so within the confines of some respectable community; in
+other words, she would settle down and work at something that would
+provide her with bed and board until the fall bookings began. And,
+the road and the tinker would become as a dream, fading with the
+summer into a sweet, illusive memory&mdash;and a photograph. Patsy felt in
+the pocket of her Norfolk for the latter with a sudden eagerness. It
+had been forgotten since she had found the tinker himself; but, now
+that the road was lengthening between them again, it brought her a
+surprising amount of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are three things I shall have to be asking him&mdash;if he ever
+fetches up in Arden, himself,&#8221; mused Patsy as she loitered along.
+&#8220;And, what&#8217;s more, this time I&#8217;ll be getting an answer to every one
+of them or I&#8217;m no relation of Dan&#8217;s. First, I&#8217;ll know the fate of the
+brown dress; he hadn&#8217;t a rag of it about him&mdash;that&#8217;s certain. Next,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>there&#8217;s that breakfast with the lady&#8217;s-slippers. How did he come by
+it? And, last of all, how ever did this picture come on the
+mantel-shelf of a closed cottage where he knew the way of breaking in
+and what clothes would be hanging in the chamber closets? &#8217;Tis all
+too great a mystery&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, Miss O&#8217;Connell&mdash;what luck!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy had been so deep in her musing that a horse and rider had come
+upon her unnoticed. She turned quickly to see the rider dismounting
+just back of her; it was Gregory Jessup.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The top o&#8217; the morning to ye!&#8221; She broke into a glad laugh, blessing
+that luck, herself, which had broken into her disquieting thoughts
+and provided at least fair company and some news&mdash;perhaps. She held
+out her hand in hearty welcome. &#8220;Are ye &#8216;up so early or down so
+late&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might ask that, myself. Is it the habit of celebrated Irish
+actresses to tramp miles between sun-up and breakfast?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis a habit more likely to fasten itself on French cooks, I&#8217;m
+thinking,&#8221; and Patsy smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then how is a man to account for you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;d best not try; I&#8217;m a mortial poor person to account for. Maybe
+I&#8217;m up early&mdash;getting my lines for the next act.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course. What a stupid duffer I am! You <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>must find us plain,
+plodding Americans horribly short-witted sometimes. Don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy shook a contradiction. &#8220;It&#8217;s your turn, now. What fetched ye
+abroad at this hour?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup slipped his arm through the horse&#8217;s bridle and fell
+into step with her. &#8220;Principally because I like the early morning
+better than any other part of the day; it&#8217;s fresh and sweet and
+unspoiled&mdash;like some Irish actresses. There&mdash;please don&#8217;t mind my
+crude attempt at poetic&mdash;simile,&#8221; for Patsy&#8217;s eyes had snapped
+dangerously. &#8220;If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever
+came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn&#8217;t want to
+discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was another
+reason for my being up&mdash;a downright foolish reason.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup accompanied the remark with a downright foolish smile,
+and then lapsed into silence. In this fashion they walked to the bend
+of the road where another graveled driveway branched forth; and here
+the horse stopped of his own accord and whinnied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is the Dempsy Carters&#8217; place&mdash;where I&#8217;m stopping,&#8221; Gregory
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, but the other reason?&#8221; Patsy reminded him, her eyes friendly
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;the other reason; I told you it was a foolish one.&#8221; He stood
+rubbing his horse&#8217;s nose <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>and looking over the road they had come for
+some seconds before he finally confessed to it. &#8220;It&#8217;s Billy, you see.
+Somehow it occurred to me that if he should be in trouble and at the
+same time knowing his father was sick&mdash;dying&mdash;he might be hanging
+around somewhere near here&mdash;uncertain just what to do&mdash;and not
+wanting any one to see him. In that case, the best time to run across
+him would be early morning before the rest of the people were awake
+and up. Don&#8217;t you think so?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It sounds more sensible than foolish; but I don&#8217;t think ye&#8217;ll ever
+find him that way. If he was clever enough to let the earth swallow
+him up, he&#8217;s clever enough to keep swallowed. There&#8217;s but one way to
+reach him&mdash;and it&#8217;s been in my mind since yester-eve.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A look of surprise came into Gregory Jessup&#8217;s face. &#8220;Why, Miss
+O&#8217;Connell! I had no idea what I said that day would fasten Billy on
+your mind like this. It&#8217;s awfully good of you; and he&#8217;s a perfect
+stranger&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy broke in with a whimsical chuckle. &#8220;Aye, I&#8217;ve grown overpartial
+to strangers of late; but ye hearken to me. Ye&#8217;ll have to leave a
+sign by the roadside for him&mdash;if ye want to reach him. Otherwise
+he&#8217;ll see ye first and be gone before ever ye know he&#8217;s about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;What kind of a sign?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! I&#8217;m not sure of that yet&mdash;myself. It must be something that
+will put trust back in a lad and tell him to come home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And where would you put it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where? On the roadside, just, anywhere along the road he&#8217;s used to
+tramping.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup&#8217;s face lost its puzzled frown and became suddenly
+illumined with an inspiration. &#8220;I know! By Hec! I&#8217;ve got it! There&#8217;s
+that path that runs down from the Burgeman estate to our old cottage.
+It was a short cut for us kids, and we were almost the only ones to
+use it. Billy would be far more likely to take that than the
+highroad&mdash;and it leads to the Burgeman farm, too, run by an old
+couple that simply adore Billy. He might go there when he wouldn&#8217;t go
+anywhere else. That&#8217;s the place for a message. But what message?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know!&#8221; Patsy clapped her hands. &#8220;Have ye a scrap of paper
+anywheres about ye&mdash;and a pencil?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Hunting through the pockets of his riding-clothes, Gregory Jessup
+discovered a business letter, the back of which provided ample
+writing space, and the stub of a red-ink pencil. &#8220;We use &#8217;em in the
+drafting-room,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;If these will do&mdash;here&#8217;s a desk,&#8221; and
+he raised the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>end of his saddle, supporting it with a large expanse
+of palm.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy accepted them all with a gracious little nod, and, spreading
+the paper on the improvised desk, she wrote quickly:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;If it do come to pass</span>
+<span class="i0">That any man turn ass,&#8221;</span>
+<span class="i0">Thinking the world is blind</span>
+<span class="i0">And trust forsworn mankind,</span>
+<span class="i2">&#8220;Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame&#8221;:</span>
+<span class="i0">Here shall he find</span>
+<span class="i0">Both trust and peace of mind,</span>
+<span class="i0">An he but leave all foolishness behind.</span></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;With apologies to Willie Shakespeare,&#8221; Patsy chuckled again as she
+returned paper and pencil to their owner. &#8220;Ye put it somewhere he&#8217;d
+be likely to look&mdash;furninst something that would naturally take his
+notice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know just the spot&mdash;and they&#8217;re in blossom now, too. I&#8217;ll fasten
+it to a rock, there, wedge it in the cracks. Billy won&#8217;t miss it if
+he comes within yards of the place.&#8221; He grasped Patsy&#8217;s hand with
+growing fervor that gave promise of developing suddenly into almost
+anything. &#8220;You&#8217;re a brick, Miss O&#8217;Connell&mdash;a solid gold brick of a
+girl, and I wish&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take care!&#8221; warned Patsy. &#8220;Ye&#8217;re not improving <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>as fast in your
+compliments as ye might&mdash;and there&#8217;s no poetry in gold&mdash;for me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory Jessup looked puzzled, but his fervor did not abate one whit.
+&#8220;I want you to promise me if you ever need a friend&mdash;if there is
+anything I can ever do&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye can,&#8221; interrupted Patsy, &#8220;and ye can do it now. Take that
+riding-crop of yours and draw me a map in the dust there of the
+country hereabouts&mdash;ye can make a cross for Arden.... That&#8217;s grand.
+Now where would ye put Brambleside Inn? And is it seven miles from
+there to Arden?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory nodded an affirmative while he considered Patsy with grave
+perplexity. Patsy saw it, and smiled reassuringly. &#8220;&#8217;Tis all right.
+I&#8217;ve always had a great interest entirely to know the geography of
+every new country&mdash;and I haven&#8217;t the wits to discover it for myself.
+Now where would ye put the cross-roads and the Catholic church? And
+where would Lebanon be? Aye&mdash;Did ye ever see an old tabby chasing her
+tail? Faith! &#8217;tis a very intelligent spectacle, I&#8217;m thinking. Now
+where might ye put the cross-roads where ye picked me up with the
+Dempsy Carters?... And Dansville?... and the railroad bridge? ... and
+the golf links, back yonder?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stood for many minutes, studying the rough <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>chart in the dust at
+her feet. The connecting lines of roads between the places named made
+fully a hundred and twenty degrees of a circle about the cross
+marking Arden. And as chance would have it, every one of the
+encircling towns measured approximately seven miles from the central
+cross. Patsy smiled, and the smile grew to a chuckle&mdash;and the chuckle
+to a long, rippling laugh. Patsy was forced to hold her sides with
+the ache of it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know ye think I&#8217;m crazy&mdash;but &#8217;tis the rarest bit of humor this
+side of Ireland. Willie Shakespeare himself would steal it if he
+could to put in one of his comedies. There is just one thing I&#8217;d like
+to be knowing&mdash;how much of it was chance, and how much was the tricks
+of a tinker?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think I understand,&#8221; mumbled Gregory Jessup.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course ye don&#8217;t,&#8221; agreed Patsy. &#8220;I don&#8217;t, myself. But there&#8217;s one
+thing more I&#8217;ll be telling ye&mdash;if ye&#8217;ll swear never to let it pass
+your lips?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy paused for dramatic effect while Gregory Jessup bound himself
+twice over to secrecy. &#8220;Well,&#8221; she said, at length, &#8220;&#8217;tis this: If I
+had the road to travel again I&#8217;d pray to Saint Brendan to keep my
+feet fast to the wrong turn. That&#8217;s what!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy left him, still looking after her in a puzzled <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>fashion; and
+with quickening steps she passed out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>But once again did she stop; and again it was by a graveled driveway.
+She was deep in green memories when a figure in nurse&#8217;s uniform
+coming down the drive caught her attention. She was immediately
+reminded of two facts: that the Burgeman estate was in Arden, and
+that Burgeman senior was dying. Impulsively she turned toward the
+nurse.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is Mr. Burgeman any better this morning?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We hardly expect that.&#8221; The nurse&#8217;s tone was cordial but
+professionally cautious.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know&#8221;&mdash;Patsy nodded wisely, as if she had been following the case
+professionally herself&mdash;&#8220;but there is often a last rallying of
+strength. Isn&#8217;t there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes. I hardly think there will be anything very lasting in Mr.
+Burgeman&#8217;s case. There are moments, now, when his strength and will
+are remarkably vigorous&mdash;any other man would be in his bed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh! Then he is&mdash;up?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s taken about on a wheeled chair or cot. He is too restless to
+stay in any place very long. He seems more contented outdoors, where
+he can watch&mdash;&#8221; She broke off abruptly. &#8220;Lovely morning&mdash;isn&#8217;t it?
+Good-by.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>She turned about and went up the drive again. Patsy watched her go, a
+strange, brooding look in her eyes. &#8220;So&mdash;he likes to be out of doors
+best&mdash;where he can be watching. And if a body chanced to trespass
+that way&mdash;she might come upon him, sudden like, and stay long enough
+to set him a-thinking. Would it be too late, now, I wonder?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She resumed her way&mdash;and her memories. She passed a half-dozen more
+driveways and she climbed a hill; and when she came to the top she
+found herself looking down on a thickly wooded hamlet. Spires and
+gabled roofs broke the foliage here and there, and on the rising
+slope beyond towered a veritable forest. Patsy stood on the brink of
+the hill and gazed down long and thoughtfully; at last she flung out
+her arms in an impetuous gesture of confirmation, while the old,
+whimsical smile crept into her lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Aye, now am I in Arden, the more fool I; when I was at home, I was
+in a better place&mdash;but travelers must be content.&#8217;&#8221; And taking a firm
+grip of her memories, her wits, and her courage, she went down the
+hill.</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+<h2>ENTER KING MIDAS</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">W</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">hen</span> Patsy at last reached Arden she went direct to the post-office
+and was there confronted by a huge poster occupying an entire wall:</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE SYLVAN PLAYERS<br />
+Under the Management of Geo. Travis<br />
+Presenting Wm. Shakespeare&#8217;s Comedy<br />
+&#8220;AS YOU LIKE IT&#8221;<br />
+In the Forest of Arden, on the Estate of Peterson-Jones, Esq.</p>
+
+<p>The date given was Wednesday, the day following; and the cast
+registered her name opposite Rosalind.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s the answer to the letter I wrote, and a grand answer it
+is. And that&#8217;s the meaning of Janet Payne&#8217;s remarks, and I never
+guessed it.&#8221; She heaved the faintest wisp of a sigh&mdash;it might <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>have
+been pleasure; it might have been a twinge of pain. &#8220;And I&#8217;m to be
+playing the Duke&#8217;s daughter, after all, at the end of the road.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She went to the general delivery and asked for mail. The clerk
+responded with three letters; Patsy almost whistled under her breath.
+Retiring to a corner, she looked them over and opened first the one
+from George Travis:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Irish Patsy</span>,&mdash;You are a lucky beggar, and so am I. Here
+comes the news of Miriam St. Regis&#8217;s illness and the
+canceling of all of her summer engagements in the same mail
+as your letter.</p>
+
+<p>Just think of it! Here you are actually in Arden all ready
+for me to pick up and put in Miriam&#8217;s place without having
+to budge from my desk. The Sylvan Players open with &#8220;As You
+Like It.&#8221; If the critics like it&mdash;and you&mdash;as well as I
+think they will, I&#8217;ll book you straight through the summer.
+Felton&#8217;s managing for me, so please report to him on Monday
+when he gets there. I may run down myself for a glimpse of
+your work.</p>
+
+<p class="right">Yours,</p>
+
+<p class="right2"><span class="smcap">G. Travis.</span></p>
+
+<p>P. S. More good luck. We are just in time to get your name
+on the posters; and unless my memory greatly deceives me,
+you will be able to walk right into all of Miriam&#8217;s
+costumes.</p></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, they&#8217;ll fit,&#8221; agreed Patsy, with a chuckle. The second letter
+was from Felton&mdash;dated Monday. He was worried over her continued
+absence. He had not found her registered at either of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>two
+hotels, and the postal clerk reported her mail uncalled for. Would
+she come to the Hillcrest Hotel at once. The third was from Janet
+Payne, expressing her grief over Joseph&#8217;s death, and their
+disappointment at finding her gone the next morning when they motored
+over to take her to Arden. They were all looking forward to seeing
+her play on Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy returned the letters to their envelopes and marveled that her
+new-found prosperity should affect her so drearily. Why was she not
+elated, transported with the surprise and the sudden promise of
+success? She was free to go now to a good hotel and sign for a room
+and three regular meals a day. She could wire at once to Miss Gibbs,
+of the select boarding-house, and have her trunk down in twenty-four
+hours. In very truth, her days of vagabondage were over, yet the fact
+brought her no happiness.</p>
+
+<p>She hunted Felton up at the hotel and explained her absence: &#8220;Just a
+week-end at one of the fashionable places. No, not exactly
+professional. No, not social either. You might call it&mdash;providential,
+like this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The morning was spent meeting her fellow-players&mdash;going over the
+text, trying on the St. Regis costumes, adjourning at last to the
+estate of Peterson-Jones.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>Until the middle of the afternoon they were busy with rehearsals: the
+mental tabulating of new stage business, the adapting of strange
+stage property, the accustoming of one&#8217;s feet to tread gracefully
+over roots and tangling vines and slippery patches of pine needles
+instead of a good stage flooring. And through all this maze Patsy&#8217;s
+mind played truant. A score of times it raced off back to the road
+again, to wait between a stretch of woodland and a grove of giant
+pines for the coming of a grotesque, vagabond figure in rags.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come, come, Miss O&#8217;Connell; what&#8217;s the matter?&#8221; Felton&#8217;s usual
+patience snapped under the strain of her persistent wit-wandering.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ve had to tell you to change that entrance three times.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye&mdash;and what is the matter?&#8221; Patsy repeated the question
+remorsefully. &#8220;Maybe I&#8217;ve acquired the habit of taking the wrong
+entrance. What can you expect from any one taking seven days to go
+seven miles. I&#8217;m dreadfully sorry. If you&#8217;ll only let me off this
+time I promise to remember to-morrow; I promise!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>The day had been growing steadily hotter and more sultry. By five
+o&#8217;clock every one who was doing anything, and could stop doing it,
+went slothfully about looking for cool spots and cooler <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>drinks.
+Burgeman senior, alone with his servants on the largest estate in
+Arden, ordered one of the nurses to wheel him to the border of his
+own private lake&mdash;a place where breezes blew if there were any
+about&mdash;and leave him there alone until Fitzpatrick, his lawyer, came
+from town. And there he was sitting, his eyes on nothing at all, when
+Patsy scrambled up the bank of the lake and dropped breathless under
+a tree&mdash;not three feet from him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Merciful Saint Patrick! I never saw you! Maybe I&#8217;m trespassing,
+now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are,&#8221; agreed Burgeman senior in a colorless voice. &#8220;But I hardly
+think any one will put you off the grounds&mdash;at least until you have
+caught your breath.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you. Maybe the grounds are yours, now?&#8221; she questioned again.</p>
+
+<p>The sick man signified they were by a slight nod.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, &#8217;tis the prettiest place hereabouts.&#8221; Patsy offered the
+information as if she had made the discovery herself and was
+generously sharing it with him. &#8220;I&#8217;m a stranger; and when I saw yon
+bit of cool, gray water, and the pines clustering round, and the wee
+green faery isle in the midst&mdash;with the bridge holding onto it to
+keep it from disappearing entirely&mdash;and the sand so white, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>and the
+lawns so green&mdash;why, it looked like a Japanese garden set in a great
+sedge bowl. Do you wonder I had to come closer and see it better?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Burgeman said nothing; but the ghost of a feeling showed, the greed
+of possession.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And it all belongs to you. You bought it all&mdash;the lake and the woods
+and the lawns.&#8221; It was not a question, but a statement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I own three miles in every direction.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Except that one.&#8221; Patsy smiled as she pointed a finger upward. &#8220;Did
+you ever think how generous the blessed Lord is to lend a bit of His
+sky to put over the land men buy and fence in and call &#8216;private
+property&#8217;? It&#8217;s odd how a body can think he owns something because he
+has paid money for it; and yet the things that make it worth the
+owning he hasn&#8217;t paid for at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you think much of this place if you couldn&#8217;t be looking yonder
+and watching the clouds scud by, all turning to pink and flame color
+and purple as the sun gathers them in? What would you do if no wild
+flowers grew for you, or the birds forgot you in the spring and built
+their nests and sang for your neighbor instead? And can you hire the
+sun to shine by the day, or order the rain by the hogshead?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p><p>Burgeman senior was contemplating her with genuine amazement. &#8220;I do
+not believe I have ever heard any one put forth such extraordinary
+theories before. May I ask if you are a socialist?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bless you, no! I am a very ordinary human being, just; principally
+human.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you know who I am?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Patsy looked at him without speaking; then she
+answered, slowly: &#8220;You have told me, haven&#8217;t you? You are the master
+of the place, and you look a mortal lonely one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;am.&#8221; The words seemed to slip from his lips without his being at
+all conscious of having spoken.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And the money couldn&#8217;t keep it from you.&#8221; There was no mockery in
+her tone. &#8220;&#8217;Tis pitifully few comforts you can buy in life, when
+all&#8217;s said and done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Comforts!&#8221; The sick man&#8217;s eyes grew sharp, attacking, with a force
+that had not been his for days. &#8220;You are talking now like a fool.
+Money is the only thing that can buy comforts. What comforts have the
+poor?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you meaning butlers and limousines, electric vibrators and
+mud-baths? Those are only cures for the bodily necessities and ills
+that money brings on a man: the over-feeding and the over-drinking
+and the&mdash;under-living. But what <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>comforts would they bring to a
+troubled mind and a pinched heart? Tell me that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So! You would prefer to be poor&mdash;more pastorally poetic?&#8221; Burgeman
+sneered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;More comfortable,&#8221; corrected Patsy. &#8220;Mind you, I&#8217;m not meaning
+starved, ground-under-the-heel poverty, the kind that breeds
+anarchists and criminals. God pity them, too! I mean the man who is
+still too poor to reckon his worth to a community in mere money, who,
+instead, doles kindness and service to his neighbors. Did you ever
+see a man richer than the one who comes home at day&#8217;s end, after
+eight hours of good, clean work, and finds the wife and children
+watching for him, happy-eyed and laughing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sick man stirred uneasily. &#8220;Well&mdash;can&#8217;t a rich man find the same
+happiness?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, he can; but does he? Does he even want it? Count up the rich
+men you know, and how many are there&mdash;like that?&#8221; No answer being
+given, Patsy continued: &#8220;Take the richest man&mdash;the very richest man
+in all this country&mdash;do you suppose in all his life he ever saw his
+own lad watching for him to come home?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you know about the richest man&mdash;and his son?&#8221; The sick man
+had for a moment become again a fiercely bitter, fighting force, a
+power given to sweeping what it willed before it. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>He sat with hands
+clenched, his eyes burning into the girl&#8217;s on the ground beside him.
+&#8220;I know what the world says.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The world lies; it has always lied.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are wrong. It is a tongue here and a tongue there that bears
+false witness; but the world passes on the truth; it has to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You forget&#8221;&mdash;Burgeman senior spoke with difficulty&mdash;&#8220;it is the rich
+who bear the burdens of the world&#8217;s cares and troubles, and what do
+they get for it? The hatred of every one else, even their sons! Every
+one hates and envies the man richer and more powerful than himself;
+the more he has the more he is feared. He lives friendless; he
+dies&mdash;lonely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy rose to her knees and knelt there, shaking her fist&mdash;a
+composite picture of supplicating Justice and accusing Truth. She had
+forgotten that the man before her was sick&mdash;dying; that he must have
+suffered terribly in spirit as well as body; and that her words were
+so many barbed shafts striking at his soul. She remembered nothing
+save the thing against which she was fighting: the hard, merciless
+possession of money and the arrogant boast of it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you forget that the burden of trouble which the brave rich bear
+so nobly are troubles they&#8217;ve put into the world themselves. They
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>hoard their money to buy power; and then they use that power to get
+more money. And so the chain grows&mdash;money and power, money and power!
+I heard of a rich man once who turned a terrible fever loose all over
+the land because he bribed the health inspectors not to close down
+his factories. And after death had swept his books clean he gave
+large sums of money to stamp out the epidemic in the near-by towns.
+Faith! that was grand&mdash;the bearing of that trouble! And why are the
+rich hated? Why do they live friendless and die lonely? Not because
+they hold money, not because they give it away or help others with
+it. No! But because they use it to crush others, to rob those who
+have less than they have, to turn their power into a curse. That&#8217;s
+the why!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy, the fanatic, turned suddenly into Patsy, the human, again. The
+fist that had been beating the air under his nose dropped and spread
+itself tenderly on the sick man&#8217;s knee. &#8220;But I&#8217;m sorry you&#8217;re lonely.
+If there was anything you wanted&mdash;that you couldn&#8217;t buy and I could
+earn for you&mdash;I would get it gladly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I believe you would,&#8221; and the confession surprised the man himself
+more than it did Patsy. &#8220;Who are you?&#8221; he asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside&mdash;a lass with no home,
+no kin, and that for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>a fortune,&#8221; and she flung out her two empty
+hands, palm uppermost, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you are audacious enough to think you are richer than I.&#8221; This
+time there was no sneer in his voice, only an amused toleration.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am,&#8221; said Patsy, simply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have youth and health,&#8221; he conceded, grudgingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye, and trust in other folks; that&#8217;s a fearfully rich possession.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is. I might exchange with you&mdash;all this,&#8221; and his hand swept
+encompassingly over his great estate, &#8220;for that last&mdash;trust in other
+folks&mdash;in one&#8217;s own folks!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe I&#8217;d give it to you for nothing&mdash;a little of it at any rate.
+See, you trust me; and here&#8217;s&mdash;trust in your son.&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s voice
+dropped to a whisper; she leaned forward and opened one of the sick
+man&#8217;s hands, then folded the fingers tightly over something that
+appeared to be invisible&mdash;and precious. &#8220;Now, you believe in him, no
+matter what he&#8217;s done; you believe he wouldn&#8217;t wrong you or himself
+by doing anything base; you believe that he is coming back to you&mdash;to
+break the loneliness, and that he&#8217;ll find a poor, plain man for a
+father, waiting him. Don&#8217;t you remember the prodigal lad&mdash;how his
+father saw him a long way off and went to meet him? <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>Well, you can
+meet him with a long-distance trust&mdash;understanding. And there&#8217;s one
+thing more; don&#8217;t you be so blind or so foolish as to crush him with
+the weight of &#8216;all this.&#8217; Mind, he has the right to the making of his
+own life&mdash;for a bit at least; and it&#8217;s your privilege to give him
+that right&mdash;somehow. You&#8217;ve still a chance to keep him from wanting
+to pitch your money for quoits off the Battery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy sprang to her feet; but Burgeman senior had reached forward
+quickly and caught her skirt, holding it in a marvelously firm grip.
+&#8220;Then you do know who I am; you&#8217;ve known it all along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know you&#8217;re the master of all this, and your lad is the Rich Man&#8217;s
+Son; that&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you think&mdash;you think I have no right to leave my son the
+inheritance I have worked and saved for him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think you have no right to leave him your&mdash;greed. &#8217;Tis a mortal
+poor inheritance for any lad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your vocabulary is rather blunt.&#8221; Burgeman smiled faintly. &#8220;But it
+is very refreshing. It is a long time since naked truth and I met
+face to face.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But will it do you any good&mdash;or is it too late?&#8221; Patsy eyed him
+contemplatively.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Too late for what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Too late for the inheritance&mdash;too late to give it away somewhere
+else&mdash;or loan it for a few years till the lad had a chance to find
+out if he could make some decent use of it himself. There&#8217;s many ways
+of doing it; I have thought of a few this last half-hour. You might
+loan it to the President to buy up some of the railroads for the
+government&mdash;or to purchase the coal or oil supply; or you might offer
+it as a prize to the country that will stop fighting first; or it
+might buy clean politics into some of the cities&mdash;or endow a
+university.&#8221; She laughed. &#8220;It&#8217;s odd, isn&#8217;t it, how a body without a
+cent to her name can dispose of a few score millions&mdash;in less
+minutes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you please, sir.&#8221; A motionless, impersonal figure in livery stood
+at a respectful distance behind the wheel-chair. Neither of them had
+been conscious of his presence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, Parsons?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Billy, sir, has come back, sir. He and Mr. Fitzpatrick came
+together. Shall I bring them out here or wheel you inside, sir?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Inside!&#8221; Burgeman senior almost shouted it. Then he turned to Patsy
+and there was more than mere curiosity in his voice: &#8220;Who are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside,&#8221; she repeated,
+wistfully. And then she added in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>her own Donegal: &#8220;But don&#8217;t ye let
+the lagging count for naught. Promise me that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sick man turned his head for a last look at her. &#8220;Such a simple
+promise&mdash;to throw away the fruits of a lifetime!&#8221; Bitterness was in
+his voice again, but Patsy caught the muttering under his breath. &#8220;I
+might think about the boy, though, if the Lord granted me time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Amen!&#8221; whispered Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>She scrambled down the bank the way she had come. For a moment she
+stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its
+mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and
+spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind
+no mark where they had been.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yonder&#8217;s the way with the going and coming of most of us, a little
+ripple and naught else&mdash;unless it is one more stone at the bottom.&#8221;
+She heaved a sigh. &#8220;Well, the quest is over, and I&#8217;ve never laid eyes
+on the lad once. But it&#8217;s ended well, I&#8217;m thinking; aye, it&#8217;s ended
+right for him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+<h2>ARDEN</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">S</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">ummer</span> must have made one day in June purposely as a setting
+for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave,
+and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people
+look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene;
+a Forest of Arden, built by the greatest scenic artist since the
+world began. Birds flew about the trees and sang&mdash;whenever the
+orchestra permitted; a rabbit or two scuttled out from under
+rhododendron-bushes and skipped in shy ing&eacute;nue fashion across the
+stage; while overhead a blue, windless sky spread radiance about
+players and audience alike.</p>
+
+<p>Shorn of so much of the theatricalism of ordinary stage performances,
+there was reality and charm about this that warmed the spectators
+into frequent bursts of spontaneous enthusiasm which were as draughts
+of elixir to the players. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>Those who were playing creditably played
+well; those who were playing well excelled themselves, and Patsy
+outplayed them all.</p>
+
+<p>She lived every minute of the three hours that spanned the throwing
+of Charles, the wrestler, and her promise &#8220;to make all this matter
+even.&#8221; There was no touch of coarseness in her rollicking laughter,
+no hoydenish swagger in her masquerading; it was all subtly,
+irresistibly feminine. And George Travis, watching from the obscurity
+of a back seat, pounded his knee with triumph and swore he would make
+her the greatest Shakespearean actress of the day.</p>
+
+<p>As Hymen sang her parting song, Patsy scanned the sea of faces beyond
+the bank of juniper which served instead of footlights. Already she
+had picked out Travis, Janet Payne and her party, the people from
+Quality House, who still gaped at her, unbelieving, and young
+Peterson-Jones, looking more melancholy, myopic, and poetical than
+before. But the one face she hoped to find was missing, even among
+the stragglers at the back; and it took all her self-control to keep
+disappointment and an odd, hurt feeling out of her voice as she gave
+the epilogue.</p>
+
+<p>On the way to her tent&mdash;a half-score of them were used as
+dressing-rooms behind the stage&mdash;George Travis overtook her. &#8220;It&#8217;s
+all right, girl. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>You&#8217;ve made a bigger hit than even I expected. I&#8217;m
+going to try you out in&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy cut him short. &#8220;You sat at the back. Did you see a vagabond lad
+hanging around anywhere&mdash;with a limp to him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The manager looked at her with amused toleration. &#8220;Does a mere man
+happen to be of more consequence this minute than your success? Oh, I
+say, that&#8217;s not like you, Irish Patsy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She crimsoned, and the manager teased no more. &#8220;We play Greyfriars
+to-morrow and back to Brambleside the day after; and I&#8217;ve made up my
+mind to try you out there in Juliet. If you can handle tragedy as you
+can comedy, I&#8217;ll star you next winter on Broadway. Oh, your future&#8217;s
+very nearly made, you lucky girl!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Patsy, slipping into her tent, hardly heard the last. If they
+played Greyfriars the next day, that meant they would leave Arden on
+the first train after they were packed; and that meant she was
+passing once and for all beyond tramping reach of the tinker. There
+was a dull ache at her heart which she attempted neither to explain
+nor to analyze; it was there&mdash;that was enough. With impatient fingers
+she tore off Rosalind&#8217;s wedding finery and attacked her make-up. Then
+she lingered over her dressing, hoping to avoid the rest of the
+company and any congratulatory friends <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>who might happen to be
+browsing around. She wanted to be alone with her memories&mdash;to have
+and to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and
+far away.</p>
+
+<p>A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne&#8217;s voice
+broke into her reverie: &#8220;Can&#8217;t we see you, please, for just a moment?
+We&#8217;ll solemnly promise not to stay long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into
+her greeting.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was simply ripping!&#8221; chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. &#8220;It was the best,
+the very best I&#8217;ve ever seen you or any one else play it. For the
+first time Rosalind seemed a real girl.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others:
+&#8220;Have you heard, Miss O&#8217;Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy
+was with him. He&#8217;s come home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! then there&#8217;s some virtue in signs, after all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. &#8220;I&#8217;m glad
+for you&mdash;I&#8217;m glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see
+him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For a few minutes. There wasn&#8217;t time to say much; but he looked like
+a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a good
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>talk together for the first time in their lives&mdash;said it had given
+him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I
+wanted to tell you, so you wouldn&#8217;t have him on your mind any
+longer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled retrospectively. &#8220;Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly
+twenty-four hours ago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her
+chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers,
+still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she
+went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.</p>
+
+<p>The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the
+tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of
+the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of
+Orlando&#8217;s poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since
+forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it&mdash;once, twice,
+three times:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i4">Where twin oaks rustle in the wind,</span>
+<span class="i4">There waits a lad for Rosalind.</span>
+<span class="i4">If still she be so wond&#8217;rous kind,</span>
+<span class="i4">Perchance she&#8217;ll ease the fretted mind</span>
+<span class="i4">That naught can cure&mdash;but Rosalind.</span></div>
+
+<p>With a glad little cry she crumpled the paper in her hand and fled,
+straight as a throstle to its <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>mate, to the giant twin oaks which
+were landmarks in the forest. Her eyes were a-search for a vagabond
+figure in rags; it was small wonder, therefore, that they refused to
+acknowledge the man in his well-cut suit of gray who was leaning
+partly against the hole of a tree and partly on a pilgrim staff. She
+stood and stared and gave no sign of greeting.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, so the Duke&#8217;s daughter found her rhyme?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not knowing whether I&#8217;ll own ye or not. Sure, ye&#8217;ve no longer
+the look of an honest tinker; and maybe we&#8217;d best part company
+now&mdash;before we meet at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the tinker had her firmly by both hands. &#8220;That&#8217;s too late now. I
+would have come in rags if there&#8217;d been anything left of them, but
+they are the only things I intend to part company with. And do you
+know&#8221;&mdash;he gripped her hands tighter&mdash;&#8220;I met an acquaintance as I came
+this way who told me, with eyes nearly popping out of his head, that
+the wonderful little person who had played herself straight into
+hundreds of hearts had actually been his cook for three days. Oh,
+lass! lass! how could you do it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Troth! God made me a better cook than actress. Ye wouldn&#8217;t want me
+to be slighting His handiwork entirely, would ye?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>The tinker shook his head at her. &#8220;Do you know what I wanted to say
+to every one of those people who had been watching you? I wanted to
+say: &#8216;You think she is a wonderful actress; she is more than that.
+She is a rare, sweet, true woman, better and finer than any play she
+may act in or any part she may play in it. I, the tinker, have
+discovered this; and I know her better than does any one else in the
+whole world.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that so?&#8221; A teasing touch of irony crept into Patsy&#8217;s voice.
+&#8220;&#8217;Tis a pity, now, the manager couldn&#8217;t be hearing ye; he might give
+ye a chance to understudy Orlando.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you think I&#8217;d be content to understudy any one! Why, I&#8217;m going
+to pitch Orlando straight out of the Forest of Arden; I&#8217;m going to
+pull Willie Shakespeare out of his grave and make him rewrite the
+whole play&mdash;putting a tinker in the leading role.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And is it a tragedy ye would have him make it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would it be a tragedy to take a tinker &#8216;for better&mdash;for worse&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! that would depend on the tinker.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh-ho, so it&#8217;s up to the tinker, is it? Well, the tinker will prove
+it otherwise; he will guarantee to keep the play running pure comedy
+to the end. So that settles it, Miss Patricia O&#8217;Connell&mdash;alias
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>Rosalind, alias the cook&mdash;alias Patsy&mdash;the best little comrade a
+lonely man ever found. I am going to marry you the day after
+to-morrow, right here in Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy looked at him long and thoughtfully from under the beguiling
+shadow of the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet. &#8220;&#8217;Tis a shame,
+just, to discourage anything so brave as a self-made&mdash;tinker. But
+I&#8217;ll not be here the day after to-morrow. And what&#8217;s more, a man is a
+fool to marry any woman because he&#8217;s lonely and she can cook.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker&#8217;s eyes twinkled. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know. A man might marry for
+worse reasons.&#8221; Then he grew suddenly sober and his eyes looked deep
+into hers. &#8220;But you know and I know that that is not my reason for
+wanting you, or yours for taking me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t say I would take ye.&#8221; This time it was Patsy&#8217;s eyes that
+twinkled. &#8220;Do ye think it would be so easy to give up my career&mdash;the
+big success I&#8217;ve hoped and worked and waited for&mdash;just&mdash;just for a
+tinker? I&#8217;d be a fool to think of it.&#8221; She was smiling inwardly at
+her own power of speech, which made what she held as naught sound of
+such immeasurable consequence.</p>
+
+<p>But the tinker smiled outwardly. &#8220;Where did you say you were going to
+be the day after to-morrow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s another thing I did not say. If ye are going to marry me &#8217;tis
+your business to find me.&#8221; She freed her hands and started off
+without a backward glance at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Patsy, Patsy!&#8221; he called after her, &#8220;wouldn&#8217;t you like to know the
+name of the man you&#8217;re going to marry?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned and faced him. Framed in the soft, green fringe of the
+trees, she seemed to him the very embodiment of young summer&mdash;the
+free, untrammeled spirit of Arden. Ever since the first he had been
+growing more and more conscious of what she was: a nature vital,
+beautiful, tender, untouched by the searing things of life&mdash;trusting
+and worthy of trust; but it was not until this moment that he
+realized the future promise of her. And the realization swept all his
+smoldering love aflame into his eyes and lips. His arms went out to
+her in a sudden, passionate appeal.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Patsy&mdash;Patsy! Would the name make any difference?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why should it?&#8221; she cried, with saucy coquetry. &#8220;I&#8217;m marrying the
+man and not his name. If I can stand the one, I can put up with the
+other, I&#8217;m thinking. Anyhow, &#8217;twill be on the marriage license the
+day after to-morrow, and that&#8217;s time enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you really mean you would marry a man, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>not knowing his name or
+anything about his family&mdash;or his income&mdash;or&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the civilized way, isn&#8217;t it?&mdash;to find out about those things
+first; and afterward it&#8217;s time enough when you&#8217;re married to get
+acquainted with your man. But that&#8217;s not the way that leads off the
+road to Arden&mdash;and it&#8217;s not my way. I know my man now&mdash;God bless
+him.&#8221; And away she ran through the trees and out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker watched the trees and underbrush swing into place,
+covering her exit. So tense and motionless he stood, one might have
+suspected him of trying to conjure her back again by the simple magic
+of heart and will. It turned out a disappointing piece of conjuring,
+however; the green parted again, but not to redisclose Patsy. A man,
+instead, walked into the open, toward the giant oaks, and one glimpse
+of him swept the tinker&#8217;s memory back to a certain afternoon and a
+cross-roads. He could see himself sitting propped up by the
+sign-post, watching the door of a little white church, while down the
+road clattered a sorrel mare and a runabout. And the man that
+drove&mdash;the man who was trailing Patsy&mdash;was the man that came toward
+him now, looking for&mdash;some one.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You haven&#8217;t seen&mdash;&#8221; he began, but the tinker interrupted him:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Guess not. I&#8217;ve been watching the company break up. Rather
+interesting to any one not used to that sort of thing&mdash;don&#8217;t you
+think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man eyed him narrowly; then cautiously he dropped into an
+attitude of exaggerated indifference. &#8220;It sure is&mdash;young feller. Now
+you hain&#8217;t been watchin&#8217; that there leadin&#8217; lady more particularly,
+have you? I sort o&#8217; cal&#8217;ate she might have a takin&#8217; way with the
+fellers,&#8221; and he prodded the tinker with a jocular thumb.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker responded promptly with a foolish grin. &#8220;Maybe I
+have; but the luck was dead against me. Guess she had a lot of
+friends with her. I saw them carry her off in triumph in a big
+touring-car&mdash;probably they&#8217;ll dine her at the country club.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man did not wait for further exchange of pleasantries. He took
+the direction the tinker indicated, and the tinker watched him go
+with a suppressed chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;History positively stutters sometimes. Now if that property-man knew
+what he was talking about the company will be safe out of Arden
+before a runabout could make the country club and back.&#8221; But the
+tinker&#8217;s mirth was of short duration. With a shout of derision, he
+slapped the pocket of his trousers viciously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What a confounded fool I am! Why in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>name of reason didn&#8217;t I
+give them to him and stop this sleuth business before it really gets
+her into trouble? Of all the idiotic&mdash;senseless&mdash;&#8221; and, leaning on
+the pilgrim staff, he slowly hobbled in the same direction he had
+given the man.</p>
+
+<hr class="medium" />
+
+<p>One last piece of news concerning Billy Burgeman came to Patsy before
+she left Arden that afternoon. Gregory Jessup was at the station to
+see her off, and he took her aside for the few minutes before the
+train arrived.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I tried to get Billy to join me&mdash;knew it would do him good to meet
+you; but he wouldn&#8217;t budge. I rather think he&#8217;s still a trifle sore
+on girls. Nothing personal, you understand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy certainly did&mdash;far better than his friend knew. In her heart
+she was trying her best to be interested and grateful to the Rich
+Man&#8217;s Son for his unconscious part in her happiness. Had it not been
+for him there would have been no quest, no road; and without the road
+there would have been no tinker; and without the tinker, no
+happiness. It was none the less hard to be interested, however, now
+that her mind had given over the lonely occupation of contemplating
+memories for that most magical of all mental crafts&mdash;future-building.
+She jerked up her attention sharply as Gregory Jessup began speaking
+again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Billy told me just before I came down why he had gone away; and I
+wanted to tell you. I don&#8217;t know how much you know about the old
+man&#8217;s reputation, but he was credited with being the hardest master
+with his men that you could find either side of the water. In the
+beginning he made his money by screwing down the wages and unscrewing
+the labor&mdash;and no sentiment. That was his slogan. Whether he kept it
+up from habit or pure cussedness I can&#8217;t tell, but that&#8217;s the real
+reason Billy would never go into his father&#8217;s business&mdash;he couldn&#8217;t
+stand his meanness. The old man&#8217;s secretary forged a check for ten
+thousand; Billy caught him and cashed it himself&mdash;to save the man. He
+shouldered the guilt so his father wouldn&#8217;t suspect the man and hound
+him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; said Patsy, forgetting that she was supposed to know
+nothing. &#8220;But why in the name of all the saints did the secretary
+want to forge a check?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why does any one forge? He needs money. When Billy caught him the
+old fellow went all to pieces and told a pretty tough story. You see,
+he&#8217;d been Burgeman&#8217;s secretary for almost twenty years, given him the
+best years of his life&mdash;slaved for him&mdash;lied for him&mdash;made money for
+him. Billy said his father regarded him as an excellent piece of
+office machinery, and treated him as if he were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>nothing more. The
+poor chap had always had hard luck; a delicate wife, three or four
+children who were eternally having or needing something, and poor
+relations demanding help he couldn&#8217;t refuse. Between doctors&#8217; bills
+and clothing&mdash;and the relatives&mdash;he had no chance to save. At last he
+broke down, and the doctor told him it was an outdoor life, with
+absolute freedom from the strain of serving a man like Burgeman&mdash;or
+the undertaker for him. So he went to Burgeman, asked him to loan him
+the money to invest in a fruit-farm, and let him pay it off as fast
+as he could.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well?&#8221; Patsy was interested at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, the old man turned him down&mdash;shouted his &#8216;no sentiment&#8217; slogan
+at him, and shrugged his shoulders at what the doctor said. He told
+him, flat, that a man who hadn&#8217;t saved a cent in twenty years
+couldn&#8217;t in twenty years more; and he only put money into investments
+that paid. The poor chap went away, frantic, worked himself into
+thinking he was entitled to that last chance; and when Billy heard
+the story he thought so, too. In the end, Billy cashed the check,
+gave the secretary the money, and they both cleared out. He knew, if
+his father ever suspected the truth, he would have the poor chap
+followed and dragged back to pay the full penalty of the law&mdash;he and
+all his family with him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p><p>Patsy smiled whimsically. &#8220;It sounds so simple and believable when
+you have it explained; but it would have been rather nice, now, if
+Billy Burgeman could have known that one person believed in him from
+the beginning without an explanation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who did?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! how should I know? I was supposing, just.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But as Patsy climbed onto the train she muttered under her breath:
+&#8220;We come out even, I&#8217;m thinking. If he&#8217;s missed knowing that, I&#8217;ve
+missed knowing a fine lad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="large" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN</h2>
+
+<p class="n"><span style="float:left;font-size:50px;line-height:32px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:1px;">O</span><span style="margin-left:0%;">n</span> the second day following Patsy played Juliet at Brambleside, and
+more than satisfied George Travis. While his mind was racing ahead,
+planning her particular stardom on Broadway, and her mind was
+pestering her with its fears and uncertainties into a state of
+&#8220;private prostration,&#8221; the manager of the Brambleside Inn was
+telephoning the Green County sheriff to come at once&mdash;he had found
+the girl.</p>
+
+<p>So it came about at the final dropping of the curtain, as Patsy was
+climbing down from her bier, that four eagerly determined men
+confronted her, each plainly wishful to be the first to gain her
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the tinker, pointedly, &#8220;are you ready?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all settled.&#8221; Travis was jubilant. &#8220;You&#8217;ll play Broadway for
+six months next winter&mdash;or I&#8217;m no manager.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p><p>It was the manager of the Brambleside Inn and the Green County
+sheriff, however, who gave the greatest dramatic effect. They placed
+themselves adroitly on either side of Patsy and announced together:
+&#8220;You&#8217;re under arrest!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Holy Saint Patrick!&#8221; Patsy hardly knew whether to be amused or
+angry. With the actual coming of the tinker, and the laying of her
+fears, her mind seemed strangely limp and inadequate. Her lips
+quivered even as they smiled. &#8220;Maybe I had best go back to my bier;
+you couldn&#8217;t arrest a dead Capulet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But George Travis swept her aside; he saw nothing amusing in the
+situation. &#8220;What do you mean by insulting Miss O&#8217;Connell and myself
+by such a performance? Why should she be under arrest&mdash;for being one
+of the best Shakespearean actresses we&#8217;ve had in this country for
+many a long, barren year?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No! For stealing two thousand dollars&#8217; worth of diamonds from a
+guest in this hotel the night she palmed herself off as Miss St.
+Regis!&#8221; The manager of the Inn bit off his words as if he thoroughly
+enjoyed their flavor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But she never was here,&#8221; shouted Travis.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I was,&#8221; contradicted Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And she sneaked off in the morning with the jewels,&#8221; growled the
+manager.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;And I trailed over the country for four days, trying to find the
+girl in a brown suit that he&#8217;d described&mdash;said she was on her way to
+Arden. I&#8217;d give a doggoned big cigar to know where you was all that
+time.&#8221; And there was something akin to admiration in the sheriff&#8217;s
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>But Patsy did not see. She was looking hard at the tinker, with an
+odd little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker smiled back, while he reached deep into his trousers
+pocket and brought out a small package which he presented to the
+sheriff. &#8220;Are those what you are looking for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were five unset diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll be hanged! Did she give them to you?&#8221; The manager of the
+Inn looked suspiciously from the tinker to Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; she didn&#8217;t know I had them&mdash;didn&#8217;t even know they existed and
+that she was being trailed as a suspected thief. Why, what&#8217;s the
+matter?&#8221; For Patsy had suddenly grown white and her lips were
+trembling past control.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naught&mdash;naught they could understand. But I&#8217;m finding out there was
+more than one quest on the road to Arden, more than one soul who
+fared forth to help another in trouble. And my heart is breaking,
+just, with the memory of it.&#8221; And Patsy sank back on the bier and
+covered her face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;What is it, dear?&#8221; whispered a distressed tinker.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t ask&mdash;now&mdash;here. Sometime I&#8217;ll be telling ye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well&#8221;&mdash;the sheriff thumbed the armholes of his vest in a
+business-like manner&mdash;&#8220;I cal&#8217;ate we&#8217;ve waited about long enough,
+young man; supposin&#8217; you explain how you come to have those stones in
+your possession; and why you lied to me about her and sent me hiking
+off to that country club&mdash;when you knew durned well where she was.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker laughed in spite of himself. &#8220;Certainly; it&#8217;s very simple.
+I found these, in a suit of rags which I saw on a tramp the morning
+you lost the diamonds&mdash;and Miss O&#8217;Connell. I liked the rags so well
+that I paid the tramp to change clothes with me; he took mine and
+gave me his, along with a knockout blow for good measure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The manager of the Inn interrupted with an exclamation of surprise:
+&#8220;So! You were the young fellow they picked up senseless by the
+stables that morning. When the grooms saw the other man running, they
+made out it was you who had struck him first.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wish I had. But I squared it off with him a few days later,&#8221; the
+tinker chuckled. &#8220;At the time I couldn&#8217;t make out why he struck me
+except <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>to get the rest of the money I had; but of course he wanted
+to get the stones he&#8217;d sewed up in these rags and forgotten. I began
+to suspect something when I found you trailing Miss O&#8217;Connell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See here, young man, and wasn&#8217;t you the feller that put me on the
+wrong road twice?&#8221; The sheriff laid a hand of the law suggestively
+against his chest.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker chuckled again. &#8220;I certainly was. It would have been
+pretty discouraging for Miss O&#8217;Connell if you&#8217;d found her before we
+had the defense ready; and it would have been awkward for you&mdash;to
+have to take a lady in custody.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I cal&#8217;ate that&#8217;s about right.&#8221; And the sheriff relaxed into a grin.
+Suddenly he turned to the manager of the Inn and pounded his palm
+with his fist. &#8220;By Jupiter! I betcher that there tramp is the feller
+that&#8217;s been cleanin&#8217; up these parts for the past two years. Hangs
+round as a tramp at back doors and stables, and picks up what
+information he needs to break into the house easy. Never hitched him
+up in my mind to the thefts afore&mdash;but I cal&#8217;ate it&#8217;s the one
+man&mdash;and he&#8217;s it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Guess you&#8217;re right,&#8221; the tinker agreed. &#8220;Last Saturday, when I came
+upon him again&mdash;in an automobile&mdash;still in my clothes, we had a final
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>fight for the possession of the rags, which I still wore, and the&mdash;&#8221;
+But he never finished.</p>
+
+<p>Patsy had sprung to her feet and was looking at him, bewilderment,
+accusation, almost fright, showing through her tears. &#8220;Your
+clothes&mdash;your clothes! You wore a&mdash;Then you are&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hush!&#8221; said the tinker. He turned to the others. &#8220;I think that is
+all, gentlemen. I searched the rags after I had finished my score
+with the thief and found the stones. I brought them over this
+afternoon to return to their rightful owner. I might have returned
+them that day after the play&mdash;but I forgot until the sheriff had
+gone. You are entirely welcome. Good afternoon!&#8221; He dismissed them
+promptly, but courteously, as if the stage had been his own
+drawing-room and the two had suddenly expressed a desire to take
+their leave.</p>
+
+<p>At the wings he left them and came back direct to George Travis.
+&#8220;There is more thieving to be done this afternoon, and I am going to
+do it. I am going to steal your future star, right from under your
+nose; and I shall never return her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean?&#8221; Travis stared at him blankly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just what I say; Miss O&#8217;Connell and I are to be married this
+afternoon in Arden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s simply out of the&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p><p>Patsy, who had found her tongue at last, laid a coaxing hand on
+Travis&#8217;s arm. &#8220;No, it isn&#8217;t. I wired Miriam yesterday&mdash;to see if she
+was really as sick as you thought. She was sick; but she&#8217;s ever so
+much better and her nerves are not going to be nearly as troublesome
+as she feared. She&#8217;s quite willing to come back and take her old
+place, and she&#8217;ll be well enough next week.&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s voice had become
+vibrant with feeling. &#8220;Now don&#8217;t ye be hard-hearted and think I&#8217;m
+ungrateful. We&#8217;ve all been playing in a bigger comedy than Willie
+Shakespeare ever wrote; and, sure, we&#8217;ve got to be playing it out to
+the end as it was meant to be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you mean to give up your career, your big chance of success?&#8221;
+Travis still looked incredulous. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you realize you&#8217;ll be
+famous&mdash;famous and rich!&#8221; he emphasized the last word unduly.</p>
+
+<p>It set Patsy&#8217;s eyes to blazing. &#8220;Aye, I&#8217;d no longer be like Granny
+Donoghue&#8217;s lean pig, hungry for scrapings. Well, I&#8217;d rather be hungry
+for scrapings than starving for love. I knew one woman who threw away
+love to be famous and rich, and I watched her die. Thank God she&#8217;s
+kept my feet from that road! Sure, I wouldn&#8217;t be rich&mdash;&#8221; She choked
+suddenly and looked helplessly at the tinker.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Neither would I.&#8221; And he spoke with a solemn conviction.</p>
+
+<p>In the end Travis gave in. He took his disappointment and his loss
+like the true gentleman he was, and sent them away with his blessing,
+mixed with an honest twinge of self-pity. It was not, however, until
+Patsy turned to wave him a last farewell and smile a last grateful
+smile from under the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet that he
+remembered that convention had been slighted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait a minute,&#8221; he said, running after them. &#8220;If I am not mistaken I
+have not had the pleasure of meeting your&mdash;future husband; perhaps
+you&#8217;ll introduce us&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For once in her life Patsy looked fairly aghast, and Travis repeated,
+patiently, &#8220;His name, Irish Patsy&mdash;I want to know his name.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker might have helped her out, but he chose otherwise. He kept
+silent, his eyes on Patsy&#8217;s as if he would read her answer there
+before she spoke it to Travis.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; she said at last, slowly, &#8220;maybe I&#8217;m not sure of it
+myself&mdash;except&mdash;I&#8217;m knowing it must be a good tinker name.&#8221; And then
+laughter danced all over her face. &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell ye; ye can be reading
+it to-morrow&mdash;in the papers.&#8221; Whereupon she slipped her arm through
+the tinker&#8217;s, and he led her away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p><p>And so it came to pass that once more Patsy and the tinker found
+themselves tramping the road to Arden; only this time it was down the
+straight road marked, &#8220;Seven Miles,&#8221; and it was early evening instead
+of morning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do ye think we&#8217;ll reach it now?&#8221; inquired Patsy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We have reached it already; we&#8217;re just going back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And what happened to the brown dress?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I burned it that night in the cottage&mdash;to fool the sheriff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I thought that night it was me ye had tricked&mdash;just for the whim
+of it. Did ye know who I was&mdash;by chance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course I knew. I had seen you with the Irish Players many, many
+times, and I knew you the very moment your voice came over the road
+to me&mdash;wishing me &#8216;a brave day.&#8217;&#8221; The tinker&#8217;s eyes deepened with
+tenderness. &#8220;Do you think for a moment if I hadn&#8217;t known something
+about you&mdash;and wasn&#8217;t hungering to know more&mdash;that I would have
+schemed and cheated to keep your comradeship?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye might tell me, then, how ye came to know about the cottage&mdash;and
+how your picture ever climbed to the mantel-shelf?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know&mdash;I meant to burn that along with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>the dress&mdash;and I forgot.
+What did you think when you discovered it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Faith! I thought it was the picture of the truest gentleman God had
+ever made&mdash;and I fetched it along with me&mdash;for company.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker threw back his head and laughed as of old. &#8220;What will poor
+old Greg say when he finds it gone? Oh, I know how you almost stole
+his faithful old heart by being so pitying of his friend&mdash;and how you
+made the sign for him to follow&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye,&#8221; agreed Patsy, &#8220;but what of the cottage?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That belongs to Greg&#8217;s father; he and the girls are West this
+summer, so the cottage was closed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And the breakfast with the throstles and the lady&#8217;s-slippers?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker laid his finger over her lips. &#8220;Please, sweetheart&mdash;don&#8217;t
+try to steal away all the magic and the poetry from our road. You
+will leave it very barren if you do&mdash;&#8216;I&#8217;m thinking.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Silence held their tongues until curiosity again loosened Patsy&#8217;s.
+&#8220;And what started ye on the road in rags? Ye have never really
+answered that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have never honestly wanted to; it is not a pleasant answer.&#8221; He
+drew Patsy closer, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>his hands closed over hers. &#8220;Promise you will
+never think of it again, that you and I will forget that part of the
+road&mdash;after to-day?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Patsy nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I borrowed the rags so that it would take a pretty smart coroner to
+identify the person in it after the train had passed under the
+suspension-bridge from which he fell&mdash;by accident. Don&#8217;t shudder,
+dear. Was it so terrible&mdash;that wish to get away from a world that
+held nothing, not even some one to grieve? Remember, when I started
+there wasn&#8217;t a soul who believed in me, who would care much one way
+or another&mdash;unless, perhaps, poor old Greg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would ye mind letting me look at the marriage license? I&#8217;d like to
+be seeing it written down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The tinker produced it, and she read &#8220;William Burgeman.&#8221; Then she
+added, with a stubborn shake of the head, &#8220;Mind, though, I&#8217;ll not be
+rich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will not have to be. Father has left me absolutely nothing for
+ten years; after that I can inherit his money or not, as we choose.
+It&#8217;s a glorious arrangement. The money is all disposed of to good
+civic purpose, if we refuse. I am very glad it&#8217;s settled that way;
+for I&#8217;m afraid I would never have had the heart to come to you, dear,
+dragging all those millions after me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p><p>&#8220;Then it is a free, open road for the both of us; and, please Heaven!
+we&#8217;ll never misuse it.&#8221; She laughed joyously; some day she would tell
+him of her meeting with his father; life was too full now for that.</p>
+
+<p>The tinker fell into his old swinging stride that Patsy had found so
+hard to keep pace with; and silence again held their tongues.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you think we shall find the castle with a window for every day in
+the year?&#8221; the tinker asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye. Why not? And we&#8217;ll be as happy as I can tell ye, and twice as
+happy as ye can tell me. Doesn&#8217;t every lad and lass find it anew for
+themselves when they take to the long road with naught but love and
+trust in their hearts&mdash;and their hands together? They may find it
+when they&#8217;re young&mdash;they may not find it till they&#8217;re old&mdash;but it
+will be there, ever beckoning them on&mdash;with the purple hills rising
+toward it. And there&#8217;s a miracle in the castle that I&#8217;ve never told
+ye: no matter how old and how worn and how stooped the lad and his
+lass may have grown, there he sees her only fresh and fair and she
+sees him only brave and straight and strong.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped and faced him, her hands slipping out of his and creeping
+up to his shoulders and about his neck. &#8220;Dear lad&mdash;promise me one
+thing!&mdash;promise <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>me we shall never forget the road! No matter how
+snugly we may be housed, or how close comfort and happiness sit at
+our hearthside&mdash;we&#8217;ll be faring forth just once in so often&mdash;to touch
+earth again. And we&#8217;ll help to keep faith in human nature&mdash;aye, and
+simple-hearted kindness alive in the world; and we&#8217;ll make our
+friends by reason of that and not because of the gold we may or may
+not be having.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And do you still think kindness is the greatest thing in the world?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No. There is one thing better; but kindness tramps mortal close at
+its heels.&#8221; Patsy&#8217;s hands slipped from his shoulders; she clasped
+them together in sudden intensity. &#8220;Haven&#8217;t ye any curiosity at all
+to know what fetched me after ye?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. But there is to-morrow&mdash;and all the days after&mdash;to tell me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, there is just to-day. The telling of it is the only wedding-gift
+I have for ye, dear lad. I was with Marjorie Schuyler in the den that
+day you came to her and told her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You heard everything?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aye.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you came, believing in me, after all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I came to show you there was one person in the world who trusted
+you, who would trust you <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>across the world and back again. That&#8217;s all
+the wedding-gift I have for ye, dear, barring love.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And then and there&mdash;in the open road, still a good three miles from
+the Arden church&mdash;the tinker gathered her close in the embrace he had
+kept for her so long.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="medium" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Transcriber&#8217;s Note:</span></h3>
+
+<p>Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters&#8217; errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author&#8217;s words and intent.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Seven Miles to Arden, by Ruth Sawyer
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Seven Miles to Arden
+
+
+Author: Ruth Sawyer
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 7, 2009  [eBook #28271]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Janet Keller, D. Alexander, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 28271-h.htm or 28271-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271/28271-h/28271-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/2/7/28271/28271-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN
+
+by
+
+RUTH SAWYER
+
+Author of
+_The Primrose Ring_
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Harper & Brothers Publishers
+New York & London
+
+SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN
+
+Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Curtis Publishing Company
+Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
+Printed in the United States of America
+Published April, 1916
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BOOKS BY
+RUTH SAWYER
+
+   SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN. Illustrated. Post 8vo
+   THE PRIMROSE RING. Illustrated. Post 8vo
+
+   HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: (See page 220)
+ "Where twin oaks rustle in the wind
+ There waits a lad for Rosalind"]
+
+
+
+
+ _TO
+ HIMSELF_
+
+ _It leads away, at the ring o' day,
+   On to the beckoning hills;
+ And the throstles sing by the holy spring
+   Which the Blessed Virgin fills.
+
+ White is the road and light is the load,
+   For the burden we bear together.
+ Our feet beat time on the upward climb
+   That ends in the purpling heather.
+
+ There is spring in the air and everywhere
+   The throb of a life new-born,
+ In mating thrush and blossoming brush,
+   In the hush o' the glowing morn.
+
+ Our hearts bound free as the open sea;
+   Where now is our dole o' sorrow?
+ The winds have swept the tears we've wept--
+   And promise a braver morrow.
+
+ But this I pray as we go our way:
+   To find the Hills o' Heather,
+ And, at hush o' night, in peace to light
+   Our roadside fire together._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   CHAP.                                             PAGE
+
+    I.    THE WAY OF IT                                1
+
+    II.   A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE          12
+
+    III.  PATSY PLAYS A PART                          25
+
+    IV.   THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT            39
+
+    V.    A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD                    48
+
+    VI.   AT DAY'S END                                64
+
+    VII.  THE TINKER PLAYS A PART                     85
+
+    VIII. WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY                  106
+
+    IX.   PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION            121
+
+    X.    JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY           139
+
+    XI.   AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF
+          COMEDY                                     153
+
+    XII.  A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY                    165
+
+    XIII. A MESSAGE AND A MAP                        191
+
+    XIV.  ENTER KING MIDAS                           202
+
+    XV.   ARDEN                                      216
+
+    XVI. THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN              231
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE WAY OF IT
+
+
+Patsy O'Connell sat on the edge of her cot in the women's free ward
+of the City Hospital. She was pulling on a vagabond pair of gloves
+while she mentally gathered up a somewhat doubtful, ragged lot of
+prospects and stood them in a row before her for contemplation,
+comparison, and a final choice. They strongly resembled the contents
+of her steamer trunk, held at a respectable boarding-house in
+University Square by a certain Miss Gibb for unpaid board, for these
+were made up of a jumble of priceless and worthless belongings,
+unmarketable because of their extremes.
+
+She had time a-plenty for contemplation; the staff wished to see her
+before she left, and the staff at that moment was consulting at the
+other end of the hospital.
+
+Properly speaking, Patsy was Patricia O'Connell, but no one had ever
+been known to refer to her in that cold-blooded manner, save on the
+programs of the Irish National Plays--and in the City Hospital's
+register. What the City Hospital knew of Patsy was precisely what the
+American public and press knew, what the National Players knew, what
+the world at large knew--precisely what Patricia O'Connell had chosen
+to tell--nothing more, nothing less. They had accepted her on her own
+scanty terms and believed in her implicitly. There was one thing
+undeniably true about her--her reality. Having established this fact
+beyond a doubt, it was a simple matter to like her and trust her.
+
+No one had ever thought it necessary to question Patsy about her
+nationality; it was too obvious. Concerning her past and her family
+she answered every one alike: "Sure, I was born without either. I was
+found by accident, just, one morning hanging on to the thorn of a
+Killarney rose-bush that happened to be growing by the Brittany
+coast. They say I was found by the Physician to the King, who was
+traveling past, and that's how it comes I can speak French and King's
+English equally pure; although I'm not denying I prefer them both
+with a bit of brogue." She always thought in Irish--straight, Donegal
+Irish--with a dropping of final g's, a bur to the r's, and a "ye"
+for a "you." Invariably this was her manner of speech with those she
+loved, or toward whom she felt the kinship of sympathetic
+understanding.
+
+To those who pushed their inquisitiveness about ancestry to the
+breaking-point Patsy blinked a pair of steely-blue eyes while she
+wrinkled her forehead into a speculative frown: "Faith! I can hearken
+back to Adam the same as yourselves; but if it's some one more modern
+you're asking for--there's that rascal, Dan O'Connell. He's too long
+dead to deny any claim I might put on him, so devil a word will I be
+saying. Only--if ye should find by chance, any time, that I'd rather
+fight with my wits than my fists, ye can lay that to Dan's door;
+along with the stubbornness of a tinker's ass."
+
+People had been known to pry into her religion; and on these Patsy
+smiled indulgently as one does sometimes on overcurious children.
+"Sure, I believe in every one--and as for a church, there's not a
+place that goes by the name--synagogue, meeting-house, or
+cathedral--that I can't be finding a wee bit of God waiting inside
+for me. But I'll own to it, honestly, that when I'm out seeking Him,
+I find Him easiest on some hilltop, with the wind blowing hard from
+the sea and never a human soul in sight."
+
+This was approximately all the world and the press knew of Patsy
+O'Connell, barring the fact that she was neighboring in the twenties,
+was fresh, unspoiled, and charming, and that she had played the
+ingenue parts with the National Players, revealing an art that
+promised a good future, should luck bring the chance. Unfortunately
+this chance was not numbered among the prospects Patsy reviewed from
+the edge of her hospital cot that day.
+
+The interest of the press and the public approval of the National
+Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that
+iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into
+bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final
+curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on
+a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the
+company's home passage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for
+the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that
+night she filled the only vacant bed in the women's free ward of the
+City Hospital.
+
+It was pneumonia. Patsy had tossed about and moaned with the racking
+pain of it, raving deliriously through her score or more of roles.
+She had gone dancing off with the Faery Child to the Land of Heart's
+Desire; she had sat beside the bier in "The Riders to the Sea"; she
+had laughed through "The Full o' Moon," and played the Fool while the
+Wise Man died. The nurses and doctors had listened with open-eyed
+wonder and secret enjoyment; she had allowed them to peep into a new
+world too full of charm and lure to be denied; and then of a sudden
+she had settled down to a silent, grim tussle with the "Gray
+Brother."
+
+This was all weeks past. It was early June now; the theatrical season
+was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies
+until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six
+cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid
+board bill.
+
+Patsy felt sorry for Miss Gibb, but she felt no shame. Boarding-house
+keepers, dressmakers, bootmakers, and the like must take the risk
+along with the players themselves in the matter of getting paid for
+their services. If the public--who paid two dollars a seat for a
+performance--failed to appear, and box-office receipts failed to
+margin their salaries, it was their misfortune, not their fault; and
+others had to suffer along with them. But these debts of circumstance
+never troubled Patsy. She paid them when she could, and when she
+could not--there was always her trunk.
+
+The City Hospital happened to know the extent of Patsy's property; it
+is their business to find out these little private matters
+concerning their free patients. They had also drawn certain
+conclusions from the facts that no one had come to see Patsy and that
+no communications had reached her from anywhere. It looked to them as
+if Patsy were down and out, to state it baldly. Now the Patsys that
+come to free wards of city hospitals are very rare; and the
+superintendent and staff and nurses were interested beyond the usual
+limits set by their time and work and the professional hardening of
+their cardiac region.
+
+"She's not to leave here until we find out just who she's got to look
+after her until she gets on her feet again, understand"--and the old
+doctor tapped the palm of his left hand with his right forefinger, a
+sign of important emphasis.
+
+Therefore the day nurse had gone to summon the staff while Patsy
+still sat obediently on the edge of her cot, pulling on her vagabond
+gloves, reviewing her prospects, and waiting.
+
+"My! but we'll miss you!" came the voice from the woman in the next
+bed, who had been watching her regretfully for some time.
+
+"It's my noise ye'll be missing." And Patsy smiled back at her a
+winning, comrade sort of smile.
+
+"You kind o' got us all acquainted with one another and thinkin'
+about somethin' else but pains and troubles. It'll seem awful
+lonesome with you gone," and the woman beyond heaved a prodigious
+sigh.
+
+"Don't ye believe it," said Patsy, with conviction. "They'll be
+fetching in some one a good bit better to fill my place--ye see,
+just."
+
+"No, they won't; 'twill be another dago, likely--"
+
+"Whist!" Patsy raised a silencing finger and looked fearsomely over
+her shoulder to the bed back of her.
+
+Its inmate lay covered to the cheek, but one could catch a glimpse of
+tangled black hair and a swarthy skin. Patsy rose and went softly
+over to the bed; her movement disturbed the woman, who opened dumb,
+reproachful eyes.
+
+"I'll be gone in a minute, dear; I want just to tell you how sorry I
+am. But--sure--Mother Mary has it safe--and she's keeping it for ye."
+She stooped and brushed the forehead with her lips, as the staff and
+two of the nurses appeared.
+
+"Faith! is it a delegation or a constabulary?" And Patsy laughed the
+laugh that had made her famous from Dublin to Duluth, where the
+bankruptcy had occurred.
+
+"It's a self-appointed committee to find out just where you're going
+after you leave here," said the young doctor.
+
+Patsy eyed him quizzically. "That's not manners to ask personal
+questions. But I don't mind telling ye all, confidentially, that I
+haven't my mind made yet between--a reception at the Vincent
+Wanderlusts'--or a musicale at the Ritz-Carlton."
+
+"Look here, lassie"--the old doctor ruffled his beard and threw out
+his chest like a mammoth pouter pigeon--"you'll have to give us a
+sensible answer before we let you go one step. You know you can't
+expect to get very far with that--in this city," and he tapped the
+bag on her wrist significantly.
+
+Patsy flushed crimson. For the first time in her life, to her
+knowledge, the world had discovered more about her than she had
+intended. Those humiliating eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and the
+crooked sixpence seemed to be scorching their way through the leather
+that held them. But she met the eyes looking into hers with a flinty
+resistance.
+
+"Sure, 'twould carry me a long way, I'm thinking, if I spent it by
+the ha'penny bit." Then she laughed in spite of herself. "If ye don't
+look for all the world like a parcel of old mother hens that have
+just hatched out a brood o' wild turkeys!" She suddenly checked her
+Irish--it was apt to lead her into compromising situations with
+Anglo-Saxon folk, if she did not leash her tongue--and slid into
+English. "You see, I really know quite a number of people
+here--rather well--too."
+
+"Why haven't they come to see you, then?" asked the day nurse,
+bluntly.
+
+Patsy eyed her with admiration. "You'd never make a press agent--or a
+doctor, I'm afraid; you're too truthful."
+
+"You see," explained the old doctor, "these friends of yours are what
+we professional people term hypothetical cases. We'd like to be sure
+of something real."
+
+One of Patsy's vagabond gloves closed over the doctor's hand. "Bless
+you all for your goodness! but the people are more real than you
+think. Everybody believes I went back with the company and I never
+bothered them with the truth, you see. I've more than one good friend
+among the theatrical crowd right here; but--well, you know how it is;
+if you are a bit down on your luck you keep away from your own world,
+if you can. There is a girl--just about my own age--in society here.
+We did a lot for her in the way of giving her a good time when she
+was in Dublin, and I've seen her quite a bit over here. I'm going to
+her to get something to do before the season begins. She may need a
+secretary or a governess--or a--cook. Holy Saint Martin! but I can
+cook!" And Patsy clasped her hands in an ecstatic appreciation of her
+culinary art; it was the only one of which she was boastful.
+
+"I'll tell you what," said the old doctor, gruffly, "we will let you
+go if you will promise to come back if--if no one's at home. It's
+against rules, but I'll see the superintendent keeps your bed for you
+to-night."
+
+"Thank you," said Patsy. She waved a farewell to the staff and the
+ward as she went through the door. "I don't know where I'm going or
+what I shall be finding, but if it's anything worth sharing I'll send
+some back to you all."
+
+The staff watched her down the corridor to the elevator.
+
+"Gee!" exclaimed the youngest doctor, his admiration working out to
+the surface. "When she's made her name I'm going to marry her."
+
+"Oh, are you?" The voice of the old doctor took on its habitual
+tartness. "Acute touch of philanthropy, what--eh?"
+
+Patricia O'Connell swung the hospital door behind her and stepped out
+into a blaze of June sunshine. "Holy Saint Patrick! but it feels
+good. Now if I could be an alley cat for two months I could get along
+fine."
+
+She cast a backward look toward the granite front of the City
+Hospital and her eyes grew as blue and soft as the waters of
+Killarney. "Sure, cat or human, the world's a grand place to be alive
+in."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE
+
+
+Marjorie Schuyler sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby
+spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white,
+shimmering crepes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her
+mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled
+between an ultimate choice between October and June of the following
+year.
+
+The world knew all there was to know about Marjorie Schuyler. It
+could tell to a nicety who her paternal and maternal grandparents
+were, back to old Peter Schuyler's time and the settling of the
+Virginian Berkeleys. It could figure her income down to a paltry
+hundred of the actual amount. It knew her age to the month and day.
+In fact, it had kept her calendar faithfully, from her coming-out
+party, through the periods of mourning for her parents and her
+subsequent returns to society, through the rumors of her engagements
+to half a dozen young leaders at home and abroad, down to her latest
+conquest.
+
+The last date on her calendar was the authorized announcement of her
+engagement to young Burgeman. Hence the shimmering samples and the
+relative values of October and June for a wedding journey.
+
+And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie
+Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and
+distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and
+chaperonage to her position; but she managed her own affairs, social
+and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a
+modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the
+leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named
+Marjorie Schuyler.
+
+As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man's Son. That
+was the best and worst it could say of him.
+
+"I think, Toto," said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, "it
+will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October--a
+church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so
+many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last,
+untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we'll not have to
+think about these yet awhile." Whereupon she dropped the shimmering
+samples into the waste-basket.
+
+A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the
+great Schuyler library. "There's a young person giving the name of
+O'Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?"
+
+"O'Connell?" Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory
+eyebrows. "Why--it can't be. The entire company went back weeks ago.
+What is she like--small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very
+blue eyes?"
+
+The maid nodded ambiguously.
+
+"Bring her up. I know it can't be, but--"
+
+But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip
+of Patsy's shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at
+the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.
+
+"Patsy O'Connell! Why didn't you go home with the others--and what
+have you done to your cheeks?"
+
+Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. "Sure, they're after
+needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that's all. How's
+yourself?"
+
+Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she
+herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of
+anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the
+comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious
+ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the
+comparison--oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush
+neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a
+shabby affair--positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown
+beaver--lacking feather or flower--was pulled down rakishly over her
+mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish
+to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied
+comparison even with Marjorie Schuyler; moreover--a thrush sings.
+
+"Now tell me," said Marjorie Schuyler, "where have you been all these
+weeks?"
+
+Patsy considered. "Well--I've been taking up hospital training."
+
+"Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?"
+
+Patsy shook her head. "You see, they only kept me until they had
+demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders--and fresh-air
+treatment, and then they dismissed me. I'm fearsome they were after
+finding out I hadn't the making of a nurse."
+
+"That's too bad! What are you going to do now?"
+
+An amused little smile twitched at the corners of Patsy's mouth; it
+acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. "Sure, I
+haven't my mind made--quite. And yourself?"
+
+"Oh--I?" Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. "Did you know I
+was engaged?"
+
+"Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!" And the vagabond gloves
+clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a
+hard little squeeze. "Who's himself?"
+
+"It's Billy Burgeman, son of _the_ Burgeman."
+
+"Old King Midas?"
+
+"That's a new name for him."
+
+"It has fitted him years enough." Patsy's face sobered. "Oh, why does
+money always have to mate with money? Why couldn't you have married a
+poor great man--a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer--some one who
+ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for
+bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs
+and sent him soaring--given the world another 'Prometheus Unbound.'
+As for Billy Burgeman--he could have married--me," and Patsy spread
+her hands in mock petition.
+
+Marjorie Schuyler laughed. "You! That is too beautifully delicious!
+Why, Patsy O'Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young
+gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a
+semi-comatose condition in an afternoon--and, pray, what would you
+do with him?"
+
+"Sure, I'd make a man of him, that's what. His father's son might
+need it, I'm thinking."
+
+Marjorie Schuyler's face became perfectly blank for a second, then
+she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted
+her head, and mused aloud: "I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does
+lack? Sometimes I've wondered if it was not having a mother, or
+growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his
+father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not
+a lack of manhood--I'm sure of that; and it's not lack of caring, for
+he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a
+great deal to know."
+
+"If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth
+in them, it might be his father's meanness that's ailing him."
+
+Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. "No; Billy's almost a prodigal. His
+father says he hasn't the slightest idea of the value of money; it's
+just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him;
+something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why,
+when he was a boy--in fact, until he was almost grown--his father
+couldn't trust Billy with a cent."
+
+"Who said that--Billy or the king?"
+
+"His father, of course. That's why he has never taken Billy into
+business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs--on his own
+merits; and he's not going to let him into the firm until he's worth
+at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman
+has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to
+a great deal."
+
+"Meaning money or character?" inquired Patsy.
+
+Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. "Are you laughing?"
+
+"Faith, I'm closer to weeping; 'twould be a lonesome, hard rearing
+that would come to a son of King Midas, I'm thinking. I'd far rather
+be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing."
+
+She leaned forward impulsively and gathered up the hands of the girl
+opposite in the warm, friendly compass of those vagabond gloves. "Do
+ye really love him, _cailin a'sthore_?" And this time it was her look
+that was sharp.
+
+"Why, of course I love him! What a foolish question! Why should I be
+marrying him if I didn't love him? Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because--the son of King Midas with no mother, with no one at all
+but the king, growing up all alone in a gloomy old castle, with no
+one trusting him, would need a great deal of love--a great, great
+deal--"
+
+"That's all right, Ellen. I'll find her for myself." It was a man's
+voice, pitched overhigh; it came from somewhere beyond and below the
+inclosing curtains and cut off the last of Patsy's speech.
+
+"That's funny," said Marjorie Schuyler, rising. "There's Billy now.
+I'll bring him in and let you see for yourself that he's not at all
+an object of sympathy--or pity."
+
+She disappeared into the library, leaving Patsy speculating
+recklessly. They must have met just the other side of the closed
+hangings, for to Patsy their voices sounded very near and close
+together.
+
+"Hello, Billy!"
+
+"Listen, Marjorie; if a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to
+trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out
+and make good again--that's true, isn't it?"
+
+"Billy Burgeman! What do you mean?"
+
+"Just answer my question. If a girl loves a man she'll trust him,
+won't she?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"You know she would, dear. What would the man do if she didn't?"
+
+The voice sounded strained and unnatural in its intensity and appeal.
+Patsy rose, troubled in mind, and tiptoed to the only other door in
+the den.
+
+"'Tis a grand situation for a play," she remarked, dryly, "but 'tis
+a mortial poor one in real life, and I'm best out of it." She turned
+the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened
+on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy's expression would
+have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no
+audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to
+ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced
+to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to
+improvise in the way of lines.
+
+"... I told you, _forged_--"
+
+Patsy was tempted to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the
+sound of his voice and what he was saying, but she knew even then she
+would go on hearing; his voice was too vibrant, too insistent, to be
+shut out.
+
+"... my father's name for ten thousand. I took the check to the bank
+myself, and cashed it; father's vice-president.... Of course the
+cashier knew me.... I tell you I can't explain--not now. I've got to
+get away and stay away until I've squared the thing and paid father
+back."
+
+"Billy Burgeman, did you forge that check yourself?"
+
+"What does that matter--whether I forged it or had it forged or saw
+it forged? I tell you I cashed it, knowing it was forged. Don't you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes; but if you didn't forge it, you could easily prove it; people
+wouldn't have to know the rest--they are hushing up things of that
+kind every day."
+
+A silence dropped on the three like a choking, blinding fog. The two
+outside the hangings must have been staring at each other, too
+bewildered or shocked to speak. The one inside clutched her throat,
+muttering, "If my heart keeps up this thumping, faith, he'll think
+it's the police and run."
+
+At last the voice of the man came, hushed but strained almost to
+breaking. To Patsy it sounded as if he were staking his very soul in
+the words, uncertain of the balance. "Marjorie, you don't understand!
+I cashed that check because--because I want to take the
+responsibility of it and whatever penalty comes along with it. I
+don't believe father will ever tell. He's too proud; it would strike
+back at him too hard. But you would have to know; he'd tell you; and
+I wanted to tell you first myself. I want to go away knowing you
+believe and trust me, no matter what father says about me, no matter
+what every one thinks about me. I want to hear you say it--that you
+will be waiting--just like this--for me to come back to when I've
+squared it all off and can explain.... Why, Marjorie--Marjorie!"
+
+Patsy waited in an agony of dread, hope, prayer--waited for the
+answer she, the girl he loved, would make. It came at last, slowly,
+deliberately, as if spoken, impersonally, by the foreman of a jury:
+
+"I don't believe in you, Billy. I'm sorry, but I don't believe I
+could ever trust you again. Your father has always said you couldn't
+take care of money; this simply means you have got yourself into some
+wretched hole, and forging your father's name was the only way out of
+it. I suppose you think the circumstances, whatever they may be, have
+warranted the act; but that act puts a stigma on your name which
+makes it unfit for any woman to bear; and if you have any spark of
+manhood left, you'll unwish the wish--you will unthink the
+thought--that I would wait--or even want you--ever--to come back."
+
+A cry--a startled, frightened cry--rang through the rooms. It did not
+come from either Marjorie or her leading man. Patsy stood with a
+vagabond glove pressed hard over her mouth--quite unconscious that
+the cry had escaped and that there was no longer need of
+muzzling--then plunged headlong through the hangings into the
+library. Marjorie Schuyler was standing alone.
+
+"Where is he--your man?"
+
+"He's gone--and please don't call him--that!"
+
+"Go after him--hurry--don't let him go! Don't ye understand? He
+mustn't go away with no one believing in him. Tell him it's a
+mistake; tell him anything--only go!"
+
+While Patsy's tongue burred out its Irish brogue she pushed at the
+tall figure in front of her--pushed with all her might. "Are ye
+nailed to the floor? What's happened to your feet? For Heaven's sake,
+lift them and let them take ye after him. Don't ye hear? There's the
+front door slamming behind him. He'll be gone past your calling in
+another minute. Dear heart alive, ye can't be meaning to let him
+go--this way!"
+
+But Marjorie Schuyler stood immovable and deaf to her pleading.
+Incredulity, bewilderment, pity, and despair swept over Patsy's face
+like clouds scudding over the surface of a clear lake. Then scorn
+settled in her eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry for ye, sorry for any woman that fails the man who loves
+her. I don't know this son of old King Midas; I never saw him in my
+life, and all I know about him is what ye told me this day and scraps
+of what he had to say for himself; but I believe in him. I know he
+never forged that check--or used the money for any mean use of his
+own. I'd wager he's shielding some one, some one weaker than he, too
+afeared to step up and say so. Why, I'd trust him across the world
+and back again; and, holy Saint Patrick! I'm going after him to tell
+him so."
+
+For the second time within a few seconds Marjorie Schuyler listened
+and heard the front door slam; then the goddess came to life. She
+walked slowly, regally, across the library and passed between the
+hangings which curtained her den. Her eyes, probably by pure chance,
+glanced over the shimmering contents of the waste-basket. A little
+cold smile crept to the corners of her mouth, while her chin
+stiffened.
+
+"I think, Toto," she said, addressing the toy ruby spaniel, "that it
+will not be even a June wedding," and she laughed a crisp, dry little
+laugh.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PATSY PLAYS A PART
+
+
+Patsy ran down the steps of the Schuyler house, jumping the last
+four. As her feet struck the pavement she looked up and down the
+street for what she sought. There it was--the back of a
+fast-retreating man in a Balmacaan coat of Scotch tweed and a round,
+plush hat, turning the corner to Madison Avenue. Patsy groaned
+inwardly when she saw the outlines of the figure; they were so
+conventional, so disappointing; they lacked simplicity and
+directness--two salient life principles with Patsy.
+
+"Pshaw! What's in a back?" muttered Patsy. "He may be a man, for all
+his clothes;" and she took to her heels after him.
+
+As she reached the corner he jumped on a passing car going south.
+"Tracking for the railroad station," was her mental comment, and she
+looked north for the next car following; there was none. As far as
+eye could see there was an unbroken stretch of track--fate seemed
+strangely averse to aiding and abetting her deed.
+
+"When in doubt, take a taxi," suggested Patsy's inner consciousness,
+and she accepted the advice without argument.
+
+She raced down two blocks and found one. "Grand Central--and
+drive--like the devil!"
+
+As the door clicked behind her her eye caught the jumping indicator,
+and she smiled a grim smile. "Faith, in two-shilling jumps like that
+I'll be bankrupt afore I've my hand on the tails of that coat." And
+with a tired little sigh she leaned back in the corner, closed her
+eyes, and relaxed her grip on mind and will and body.
+
+A series of jerks and a final stop shook her into a thinking, acting
+consciousness again; she was out of the taxi in a twinkling--with the
+man paid and her eyes on the back of a Balmacaan coat and plush hat
+disappearing through a doorway. She could not follow it as fast as
+she had reckoned. She balanced corners with a stout, indeterminate
+old gentleman who blocked her way and insisted on wavering in her
+direction each time she tried to dodge him. In her haste to make up
+for those precious lost seconds she upset a pair of twins belonging
+to an already overburdened mother. These she righted and went dashing
+on her way. Groups waylaid her; people with time to kill sauntered
+in front of her; wandering, indecisive people tried to stop her for
+information; and she reached the gate just as it was closing. Through
+it she could see--down a discouraging length of platform--a
+Balmacaaned figure disappearing into a car.
+
+"Too late, lady; train's leaving."
+
+It was well for Patsy that she was ignorant of the law governing
+closing gates and departing trains, for the foolish and the ignorant
+can sometimes achieve the impossible. She confronted the guard with a
+look of unconquerable determination. "No, 'tisn't; the train guard is
+still on the platform. You've got to let me through."
+
+She emphasized the importance of it with two tight fists placed not
+overgently in the center of the guard's rotundity, and accompanied by
+a shove. In some miraculous fashion this accomplished it. The gate
+clanged at Patsy's back instead of in her face, as she had expected.
+A bell rang, a whistle tooted, and Patsy's feet clattered like mad
+down the platform.
+
+A good-natured brakeman picked her up and lifted her to the rear
+platform of the last car as it drew out. That saved the day for
+Patsy, for her strength and breath had gone past summoning.
+
+"Thank you," she said, feebly, with a vagabond glove held out in
+proffered fellowship. "That's the kindest thing any one has done for
+me since I came over."
+
+"Are ye--"
+
+"Irish--same as yourself."
+
+"How did ye know?"
+
+"Sure, who but an Irishman would have had his wits and his heart
+working at the same time?" And with a laugh Patsy left him and went
+inside.
+
+Her eye ran systematically down the rows of seats. Billy Burgeman was
+not there. She passed through to the next car, and a second, and a
+third. Still there was no back she could identify as belonging to the
+man she was pursuing.
+
+She was crossing a fourth platform when she ran into the conductor,
+who barred her way. "Smoking-car ahead, lady; this is the last of the
+passenger-coaches."
+
+Patsy had it on the end of her tongue to say she preferred
+smoking-cars, intending to duck simultaneously under the conductor's
+arm and enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the
+tongue's edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and
+taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was
+responsible. It had spun the day's events before her like a roulette
+wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler's
+concerning William Burgeman: "He's the most conventional young
+gentleman I ever saw in my life. Why, you would shock--"
+
+A strange young woman doling out consolation to him in a smoking-car
+would be anything but a dramatic success; Patsy felt this all too
+keenly. He was decidedly not of her world or the men and women she
+knew, who gave help when the need came regardless of time, place,
+acquaintanceship, or sex.
+
+"Faith, he's the kind that will expect an introduction first, and a
+month or two of tangoing, tea-drinking, and tennis-playing; after
+which, if I ask his permission, he might consider it proper--" Patsy
+groaned. "Oh, I hate the man already!"
+
+"Ticket!"
+
+"Ticket? What for?"
+
+"What for? Do you think this is a joy ride?" The conductor radiated
+sarcasm.
+
+Patsy crimsoned. "I haven't mine. I--I was to--meet my--aunt--who had
+the ticket--and--she must have missed the train."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"I--I--Why, I was telling--My aunt had the tickets. How would I know
+where I was going without the tickets?"
+
+The conductor snorted.
+
+Patsy looked hard at him and knew the time had come for wits--good,
+sharp O'Connell wits. She smiled coaxingly. "It sounds so stupid,
+but, you see, I haven't an idea where I am going. I was to meet my
+aunt and go down with her to her summer place. I--I can't remember
+the name." Her mouth drooped for the fraction of a second, then she
+brightened all over. "I know what I can do--very probably she missed
+the train because she expects to be at the station to meet me--I can
+look out each time the train stops, and when I see her I can get off.
+That makes it all right, doesn't it?" And she smiled in open
+confidence as a sacrificial maiden might have propitiated the dragon.
+
+But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. "And who pays
+for the ticket?"
+
+"Oh!" Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a
+contagious laugh. "I do--of course. I'll take a ticket to--just name
+over the stations, please?"
+
+The conductor growled them forth: "Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville,
+Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars--"
+
+"What's that last--Greyfriars? I'll take a ticket to Greyfriars." She
+said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a
+mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill.
+
+When he had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled,
+Patsy allowed herself what she called a "temporary attack of private
+prostration."
+
+"Idiot!" she groaned in self-address. "Ye are the biggest fool in two
+continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he
+were topside o' green earth to hear." Whereupon she gripped one
+vagabond glove with the other--in fellow misery; and for the second
+time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway
+and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it
+started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another
+furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had
+long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an
+individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such
+failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her
+determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come
+for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete
+oblivion.
+
+She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for
+spice--and artistic finish--"After that--the devil take him!" when
+the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied
+herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly
+something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of
+the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in
+the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim
+outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable.
+
+"A million curses on the house of Burgeman!" quoth Patsy. "Well,
+there's naught for it but to get off at the next station and go
+back."
+
+The conductor watched her get off with a distinct feeling of relief.
+He had very much feared she was not a responsible person and in no
+mental position to be traveling alone. Her departure cleared him of
+all uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business
+with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing
+train and then at her empty hands, with the nearest she had ever come
+in her life to utter, abject despair. She had left her bag in the
+car!
+
+When articulate thinking was possible she remarked, acridly, "Ye need
+a baby nurse to mind ye, Patricia O'Connell; and I'm not sure but ye
+need a perambulator as well." She gave a tired little stretch to her
+body and rubbed her eyes. "I feel as if this was all a silly play and
+I was cast for the part of an Irish simpleton; a low-comedy
+burlesque--that ye'd swear never happened in real life outside of
+the county asylums."
+
+A headlight raced down the track toward her and the city, and she
+gathered up what was left of her scattered wits. As the train slowed
+up she stepped into the shadows, and her eye fell on the open
+baggage-car. She smiled grimly. "Faith! I have a notion I like
+brakemen and baggagemen better than conductors."
+
+And so it came to pass as the train started that the baggageman, who
+happened to be standing in the doorway, was somewhat startled to see
+a small figure come racing toward it out of the dusk and land
+sprawling on the floor beside him.
+
+"A girl tramp!" he ejaculated in amazement and disgust, and then, as
+he helped her to her feet, "Don't you know you're breaking the law?"
+
+She laughed. "From the feelings, I thought it was something else."
+She sobered and turned on him fiercely. "I want ye to understand I've
+paid my fare on the train out, which entitled me to one continuous
+passage--_with my trunk_. Well, I'm returning--_as my trunk_, I'll
+take up no more room and I'll ask no more privileges."
+
+"That may sound sensible, but it's not law," and the man grinned
+broadly. "I'm sorry, miss, but off you go at the next station."
+
+"All right," agreed Patsy; "only please don't argue. Sure, I'm sick
+entirely of arguing."
+
+She dropped down on a trunk and buried her face in her hands. The
+baggageman watched her, hypnotized with curiosity and wonder. At the
+next station he helped her to drop through the opening she had
+entered, and called a shamefaced "good-by" after her in the dusk.
+
+She hunted up the station-agent and received scanty encouragement:
+Very likely he had seen such a man; there were many of that
+description getting off every day. They generally went to the
+Inn--Brambleside Inn. The season was just open and society people
+were beginning to come. No, there was no conveyance. The Inn's 'buses
+did not meet any train after the six-thirty from town, unless ordered
+especially by guests. Was she expected?
+
+Patsy was about to shake her head when a roadster swung around the
+corner of the station and came to a dead stop in front of where she
+and the station-master were standing.
+
+The driver peered at her through his goggles in a questioning,
+hesitating manner. "Is this--are you Miss St. Regis?" he finally
+asked.
+
+"Miriam St. Regis?" Patsy intended it for a question, realizing even
+as she spoke the absurdity of inquiring the name of an English
+actress at such a place.
+
+But the driver took it for a statement of identity. "Yes, of course,
+Miss Miriam St. Regis. Mr. Blake made a mistake and thought because
+your box came from town you'd be coming that way. It wasn't until
+your manager, Mr. Travis, telephoned half an hour ago that he
+realized you'd be on that southbound train. Awfully sorry to have
+kept you waiting. Step right in, please."
+
+Whereupon the driver removed himself from the roadster, assisted her
+to a seat, covered her with a rug--for early June evenings can be
+rather sharp--and the next moment Patsy found herself tearing down a
+stretch of country road with the purr of a motor as music to her
+ears.
+
+"Sure, I don't know who wrote the play and starred me in it," she
+mused, dreamily, "but he certainly knows how to handle situations."
+
+For the space of a few breaths she gave herself over completely to
+the luxury of bodily comfort and mental inertia. It seemed as if she
+would have been content to keep on whirling into an eternity of
+darkness--with a destination so remote, and a mission so obscure, as
+not to be of the slightest disturbance to her immediate
+consciousness. All she asked of fate that moment was the blessedness
+of nothing; and for answer--her mind was jerked back ruthlessly to
+the curse of more complexities.
+
+The lights of a large building in the distance reminded her there was
+more work for her wits before her and no time to lose. "I must
+think--think--think, and it grows harder every minute. If Miriam St.
+Regis is coming here, it means, like as not, she's filling in between
+seasons, entertaining. Well, until she comes, they're all hearty
+welcome to the mistake they've made. And afterward--troth! there'll
+be a corner in her room for me the night, or Saint Michael's a
+sinner; either way, 'tis all right."
+
+The driver unbundled her and helped her out as courteously as he had
+helped her in. He led the way across a broad veranda to the main
+entrance, and there she fell behind him as he pushed open the great
+swinging door.
+
+"Oh, that you, Masters? Did Miss St. Regis come?"
+
+"Sure thing, sir; she's right here."
+
+The next moment Patsy stood in a blaze of lights between a personally
+conducting chauffeur and a pompous hotel manager, who looked down
+upon her with distrustful scrutiny. She was wholly aware of every
+inch of her appearance--the shabbiness of her brown Norfolk suit,
+the rakishness of her boyish brown beaver hat, and the vagabond
+gloves. But of what value is the precedent of having been found
+hanging on the thorn of a Killarney rose-bush by the Physician to
+the King, of what value is the knowledge of past kinship with a
+certain Dan O'Connell, if one allows a little matter of clothes to
+spoil one's entrance and murder one's lines?
+
+The blood came flushing back into Patsy's cheeks, turning them the
+color of thorn bloom, and her eyes deepened to the blue of Killarney,
+sparkling as when the sun goes a-dancing. She smiled--a fresh,
+radiant, witching smile upon that clay lump of commercialism--until
+she saw his appraisement of her treble its original figure.
+
+Then she said, sweetly: "I have had rather a hard time getting here,
+Mr. Blake; making connections in your country is not always as simple
+as one might expect. My room, please." And with an air of a grand
+duchess Patsy O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players, Dublin,
+and later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, led the way
+across one of the most brilliant summer hotel foyers in America.
+
+As she entered the elevator a young man stepped out--a young man with
+a small, blond, persevering mustache, a rather thin, esthetic,
+melancholy face, and a myopic squint. He wore a Balmacaan of Scotch
+tweed and carried a round, plush hat.
+
+Patsy turned to the bell-boy. "Did that man arrive to-night?"
+
+"Yes, miss; I took him up."
+
+"What is his name--do you know?"
+
+"Can't say, miss. I'll find out, if you like."
+
+"There is no need. I rather think I know it myself." And under her
+breath she ejaculated, "Saint Peter deliver us!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE OCCUPANT OF A BALMACAAN COAT
+
+
+Safe in her room, with the door closed and locked, Patsy stood
+transfixed before a trunk--likewise closed and locked.
+
+"Thank Heaven for many blessings!" she said, fervently. "Thank Heaven
+Miriam St. Regis has worn wigs of every conceivable color and style
+on the stage, so there is small chance of any one here knowing the
+real color of her hair. Thank Heaven she's given to missing her
+engagements and not wiring about it until the next day. Thank Heaven
+I've played with her long enough to imitate her mannerisms, and know
+her well enough to explain away the night, if the need ever comes.
+Thank Heaven that George Travis is an old friend and can help out, if
+I fail. Thank Heaven for all of these! But, holy Saint Patrick! how
+will I ever be getting inside that box?"
+
+On the heels of her fervor came an inspiration. Off came her gloves
+and hat, off came coat and skirt, blouse and shoes, and into the
+closet they all went. For, whereas Patsy could carry off her
+shabbiness before masculine eyes, she had neither the desire nor the
+fortitude to brave the keener, more critical gaze of her own sex. It
+was always for the women that Patsy dressed, and above all else did
+she stand in awe of the opinion of the hotel chambermaid, going down
+in tottering submission before it. Unlocking her door, she rang the
+bell; then crept in between the covers of her bed, drawing them up
+about her.
+
+The chambermaid came and Patsy ordered the housekeeper. The
+housekeeper came and Patsy explained to her the loss of her bag--the
+loss of the keys was only implied; it was a part of Patsy's creed of
+life never to lie unless cornered. She further implied that she was
+entertaining no worry, as a well-appointed hotel always carried a
+bunch of skeleton trunk keys for the convenience of their guests.
+
+Patsy's inspiration worked to perfection. In a few minutes the Inn
+had proved itself a well-appointed hostelry, and the trunk stood open
+before her. Alone again, she slipped out of bed--to lock the door and
+investigate. A wistaria lounging-robe was on in a twinkling, with
+quilted slippers to match. Then Patsy's eager fingers drew forth a
+dark emerald velvet, with bodice and panniers of gold lace, and she
+clasped it ecstatically in her arms.
+
+"Miriam always had divine taste, but the faeries must have guided her
+hand for the choosing of this. Sure, I'd be feeling like a king's
+daughter if I wasn't so weak and heartsick. I feel more like a young
+gosling that some one has coaxed out of its shell a day too soon. Is
+it the effect of Billy Burgeman, I wonder, or the left-overs from the
+City Hospital, or an overdose of foolishness--or hunger, just?"
+
+"Miss St. Regis" dined in her own room, and she dined like a king's
+daughter, with an appetite whetted by weeks of convalescing, charity
+fare. Even the possible appearance at any minute of her original self
+offered no terrors for her in the presence of such a soul-satisfying,
+hunger-appeasing feast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At nine-thirty that evening, when the manager sent the hall-boy to
+call her, she looked every inch the king's daughter she had dined.
+The hall-boy, accustomed to "creations," gave her a frank stare of
+admiration, which Patsy noted out of the tail of her eye.
+
+She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint
+of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head,
+ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of
+her ears; little gold shoes twinkled in and out of the clinging green
+as she walked.
+
+"Faith! I feel like a whiff of Old Ireland herself," was Patsy
+O'Connell's subconscious comment as "Miss St. Regis" crossed the
+stage; and something of the feeling must have been wafted across the
+footlights to the audience, for it drew in its breath with a little
+gasp of genuine appreciation.
+
+She heard it and was grateful for the few seconds it gave her to look
+at the program the manager had handed her as she was entering. It had
+never occurred to her that Miss St. Regis might arrange her program
+beforehand, that the audience might be expecting something definite
+and desired in the form of entertainment. It took all the control of
+a well-ordered Irish head to keep her from bolting for the little
+stage door after one glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the
+impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the
+reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes
+from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously,
+absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O'Connell geared up her
+wits, as any true kinswoman of Dan's should.
+
+In a flash there came back to her what the company had done once
+when they were playing one-night stands and the wrong scenery had
+come for the play advertised. It was worth trying here.
+
+"Dear people," said Patsy O'Connell-St. Regis, smiling at the
+audience as one friend to another, "I have had so many requests from
+among you--since I made out my program--to give instead an evening of
+old Irish tales, that I have--capitulated; you shall have your wish."
+
+The almost unbelievable applause that greeted her tempted her to
+further wickedness. "Very few people seem ever to remember that I had
+an Irish grandfather, Denis St. Regis, and that I like once in a
+while to be getting back to the sod."
+
+There was something so hypnotic in her intimacy--this taking of every
+one into her confidence--that one budding youth forgot himself
+entirely and naively remarked, "It's a long way to Tipperary."
+
+That clinched her success. She might have chanted "Old King Cole" and
+reaped a houseful of applause. As it was, she turned faery child and
+led them all forth to the Land of Faery--a world that neighbored so
+close to the real with her that long ago she had acquired the habit
+of carrying a good bit of it about with her wherever she went. It was
+small wonder, therefore, that, at the end of the evening, when she
+fixed upon a certain young man in the audience--a man with a
+persevering mustache, an esthetic face, and a melancholy, myopic
+squint--and told the last tale to him direct, that he felt called
+upon to go to her as she came down the steps into the ball-room and
+express his abject, worshipful admiration.
+
+"That's all right," Patsy cut him short, "but--but--it would sound so
+much nicer outside, somewhere in the moonlight--away from everybody.
+Wouldn't it, now?"
+
+This sudden amending of matter-of-factness with arch coquetry would
+have sounded highly amusing to ears less self-atuned than the
+erstwhile wearer of the Balmacaan. But he heard in it only the
+flattering tribute to a man chosen of men; and the hand that reached
+for Patsy's was almost masterful.
+
+"Oh, would you really?" he asked, and he almost broke his melancholy
+with a smile.
+
+"It must be my clothes," was her mental comment as he led her away;
+"they've gone to my own head; it's not altogether strange they've
+touched his a bit. But for a man who's forged his father's name and
+lost the girl he loved and then plunged into mortal despair, he's
+convalescing terribly fast."
+
+They had reached a quiet corner of the veranda. Patsy dropped into a
+chair, while her companion leaned against a near-by railing and
+looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression.
+
+"I might have known all along," Patsy was thinking, "that a back like
+that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn't get a real man
+to dress in knee-length petticoats." And then, to settle all doubts,
+she faced him with grim determination. "I let you bring me here
+because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come
+down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?"
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the
+corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?"
+
+"Why, how did you know?" The melancholy was giving place to rather
+pleased curiosity.
+
+"How do I know!" Patsy glared at him. "I know because I've followed
+you every inch of the way--followed you to tell you I believed in
+you--you--you!" and her voice broke with a groan.
+
+"Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you." This time the smile had
+right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was!
+"You know everybody takes me rather as a joke."
+
+"Joke!" Patsy's eyes blazed. "Well, you're the most serious,
+impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would
+have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you."
+
+"I don't think I understand." He felt about in his waistcoat pocket
+and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. "Would you
+mind saying that again?"
+
+Patsy's hands dropped helplessly to her lap. "I couldn't--only, after
+a woman has trailed a man she doesn't know across a country she
+doesn't know to a place she doesn't know--and without a wardrobe
+trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes
+in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever
+happened to her in all her life."
+
+"Oh, I say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never
+thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that."
+
+"Poetry! Do you--do that, too?"
+
+"That's all I do. I am devoting my life to it; that's why my family
+take me a little--flippantly."
+
+A faint streak of hope shot through Patsy's mind. "Would you mind
+telling me your name?"
+
+"Why, I thought you knew. I thought you said that was why you
+wanted to--to--Hang it all! my name's Peterson-Jones--Wilfred
+Peterson-Jones."
+
+Patsy was on her feet, clasping her hands in a shameless burst of
+emotion while she dropped into her own tongue. "Oh, that's a
+beautiful name--a grand name! Don't ye ever be changing it! And don't
+ye ever give up writing poetry; it's a beautiful pastime for any man
+by that name. But what--what, in the name of Saint Columkill, ever
+happened to Billy Burgeman!"
+
+"Billy Burgeman? Why, he came down on the train with me and went back
+to Arden."
+
+Patsy threw back her head and laughed--laughed until she almost
+feared she could not stop laughing. And then she suddenly became
+conscious of the pompous manager standing beside her, a yellow sheet
+of paper in his hand.
+
+"Will you kindly explain what this means?" and he slapped the paper
+viciously.
+
+"I'll try to," said Patsy; "but will you tell me just one thing
+first? How far is it to Arden?"
+
+"Arden? It's seven miles to Arden. But what's that got to do with
+this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will
+be unable to fill her engagement here to-night! Now, who are you?"
+
+"I? Why, I'm her understudy, of course--and--I'm--so happy--"
+Whereupon Patricia O'Connell, late of the Irish National Players and
+later of the women's free ward of the City Hospital, crumpled up on
+the veranda floor in a dead faint.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A TINKER POINTS THE ROAD
+
+
+The Brambleside Inn lost one of its guests at an inconceivably early
+hour the morning after Patsy O'Connell unexpectedly filled Miss St.
+Regis's engagement there. The guest departed by way of the
+second-floor piazza and a fire-escape, and not even the night
+watchman saw her go. But it was not until she had put a mile or more
+of open country between herself and the Inn that Patsy indulged in
+the freedom of a long breath.
+
+"After this I'll keep away from inns and such like; 'tis too
+wit-racking to make it anyways comfortable. I feel now as if I'd been
+caught lifting the crown jewels, instead of giving a hundred-guinea
+performance for the price of a night's bed and board and coming away
+as poor as a tinker's ass."
+
+A smile caught at the corners of her mouth--a twitching, memory
+smile. She was thinking of the note she had left folded in with the
+green-and-gold gown in Miriam St. Regis's trunk. In it she had
+stated her payment of one Irish grandfather by the name of Denis--in
+return for the loan of the dress--and had hoped that Miriam would
+find him handy on future public occasions. Patsy could not forbear
+chuckling outright--the picture of anything so unmitigatedly British
+as Miriam St. Regis with an Irish ancestor trailing after her for the
+rest of her career was too entrancing.
+
+An early morning wind was blowing fresh from the clover-fields,
+rose-gardens, and new-leafed black birch and sassafras. Such a
+well-kept, clean world of open country it looked to Patsy as her eye
+followed the road before her, on to the greening meadows and wooded
+slopes, that her heart joined the chorus of song-sparrow and
+meadow-lark, who sang from the sheer gladness of being a live part of
+it all.
+
+She sighed, not knowing it. "Faith! I'm wishing 'twas more nor seven
+miles to Arden. I'd like to be following the road for days and days,
+and keeping the length of it between Billy Burgeman and myself."
+
+Starting before the country was astir, she had met no one of whom she
+could inquire the way. A less adventuresome soul than Patsy might
+have sat herself down and waited for direction; but that would have
+meant wasting minutes--precious minutes before the dawn should break
+and she should be no longer sole possessor of the road and the world
+that bounded it. So Patsy chose the way for herself--content that it
+would lead her to her destination in the end. The joy of true
+vagabondage was rampant within her: there was the road, urging her
+like an impatient comrade to be gone; there was her errand of
+good-will giving purpose to her journey; and the facts that she was
+homeless, penniless, breakfastless, a stranger in a strange country,
+mattered not a whit. So thoroughly had she always believed in good
+fortune that somehow she always managed to find it; and out of this
+she had evolved her philosophy of life.
+
+"Ye see, 'tis this way," she would say; "the world is much like a
+great cat--with claws to hide or use, as the notion takes it. If ye
+kick and slap at it, 'twill hump its back and scratch at ye--sure as
+fate; but if ye are wise and a bit patient ye can have it coaxed and
+smoothed down till it's purring to make room for ye at any
+hearthside. And there's another thing it's well to remember--that
+folks are folks the world over, whether they are wearing your dress
+and speaking your tongue or another's."
+
+And as Patsy was blessed in the matter of philosophy--so was she
+blessed in the matter of possessions. She did not have to own things
+to possess them.
+
+There was no doubt but that Patsy had a larger share of the world
+than many who could reckon their estates in acreage or who owned so
+many miles of fenced-off property. She held a mortgage on every inch
+of free roadway, rugged hilltop, or virgin forest her feet crossed.
+She claimed squatters' rights on every bit of shaded pasture, or
+sunlit glade, or singing brook her heart rejoiced in. In other words,
+everything outside of walls and fences belonged to her by virtue of
+her vagabondage; and she had often found herself pitying the narrow
+folk who possessed only what their deeds or titles allotted to them.
+
+And yet never in Patsy's life had she felt quite so sure about it as
+she did this morning, probably because she had never before set forth
+on a self-appointed adventure so heedless of means and consequences.
+
+"Sure, there are enough wise people in the world," she mused as she
+tramped along; "it needs a few foolish ones to keep things happening.
+And could a foolish adventuring body be bound for a better place than
+Arden!"
+
+She rounded a bend in the road and came upon a stretch of old stump
+fencing. From one of the stumps appeared to be hanging a grotesque
+figure of some remarkable cut; it looked both ancient and romantic,
+sharply silhouetted against the iridescence of the dawn.
+
+Patsy eyed it curiously. "It comes natural for me to be partial to
+anything hanging to a thorn, or a stump; but--barring that--it still
+looks interesting."
+
+As she came abreast it she saw it was not hanging, however. It was
+perched on a lower prong of a root and it was a man, clothed in the
+most absolute garment of rags Patsy had ever seen off the legitimate
+stage.
+
+"From an artistic standpoint they are perfect," was Patsy's mental
+tribute. "Wouldn't Willie Fay give his Sunday dinner if he could
+gather him in as he is, just--to play the tinker! Faith! those rags
+are so real I wager he keeps them together only by the grace of God."
+
+As she stopped in front of the figure he turned his head slowly and
+gazed at her with an expression as far away and bewildered as a lost
+baby's.
+
+In the half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural--a strange
+spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth.
+This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic
+blood tingling and her eyes a-sparkling.
+
+"He looks as half-witted as those back in the Old Country who have
+the second sight and see the faeries. Aye, and he's as young and
+handsome as a king's son. Poor lad!" And then she called aloud, "'Tis
+a brave day, this."
+
+"Hmm!" was the response, rendered impartially.
+
+Patsy's alert eyes spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at
+the man's feet and they set a-dancing. "Then ye _are_ a tinker?"
+
+"Hmm!" was again the answer. It conveyed an impression of hesitant
+doubt, as if the speaker would have avoided, if he could, the
+responsibility of being anything at all, even a tinker.
+
+"That's grand," encouraged Patsy. "I like tinkers, and, what's more,
+I'm a bit of a vagabond myself. I'll grant ye that of late years the
+tinkers are treated none too hearty about Ireland; but there was a
+time--" Patsy's mind trailed off into the far past, into a maze of
+legend and folk-tale wherein tinkers were figures of romance and
+mystery. It was good luck then to fall in with such company; and
+Patsy, being more a product of past romance than present
+civilization, was pleased to read into this meeting the promise of a
+fair road and success to her quest.
+
+Moreover, there was another appeal--the apparent helpless
+bewilderment of the man himself and his unreality. He was certainly
+not in possession of all his senses, from whatever world he might
+have dropped; and helplessness in man or beast was a blood bond with
+Patsy, making instant claim on her own abundant sympathies and wits.
+
+She held the tinker with a smile of open comradeship while her voice
+took on an alluring hint of suggestion. "Ye can't be thinking of
+hanging onto that stump all day--now what road might ye be
+taking--the one to Arden?"
+
+For some minutes the tinker considered her and her question with an
+exaggerated gravity; then he nodded his head in a final agreement.
+
+"Grand! I'm bound that way myself; maybe ye know Arden?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"And how far might it be?"
+
+"Seven miles."
+
+Patsy wrinkled her forehead. "That's strange; 'twas seven miles last
+night, and I've tramped half the distance already, I'm thinking.
+Never mind! What's behind won't trouble me, and the rest of the way
+will soon pass in good company. Come on," and she beckoned her head
+in indisputable command.
+
+Once again he considered her slowly. Then, as if satisfied, he swung
+himself down from his perch on the stump fence, gathered up his kit,
+and in another minute had fallen into step with her; and the two
+were contentedly tramping along the road.
+
+"The man who's writing this play," mused Patsy, "is trying to match
+wits with Willie Shakespeare. If any one finds him out they'll have
+him up for plagiarizing."
+
+She chuckled aloud, which caused the tinker to cast an uneasy glance
+in her direction.
+
+"Poor lad! The half-wits are always suspicious of others' wits. He
+thinks I'm fey." And then aloud: "Maybe ye are not knowing it, but
+anything at all is likely to happen to ye to-day--on the road to
+Arden. According to Willie Shakespeare--whom ye are not likely to be
+acquainted with--it's a place where philosophers and banished dukes
+and peasants and love-sick youths and lions and serpents all live
+happily together under the 'Greenwood Tree.' Now, I'm the banished
+duke's own daughter--only no one knows it; and ye--sure, ye can take
+your choice between playing the younger brother--or the fool."
+
+"The fool," said the tinker, solemnly; and then of a sudden he threw
+back his head and laughed.
+
+Patsy stopped still on the road and considered him narrowly.
+"Couldn't ye laugh again?" she suggested when the laugh was ended.
+"It improves ye wonderfully." An afterthought flashed in her mind.
+"After all's said and done, the fool is the best part in the whole
+play."
+
+After this they tramped along in silence. The tinker kept a little in
+advance, his head erect, his hands swinging loosely at his sides, his
+eyes on nothing at all. He seemed oblivious of what lay back of him
+or before him--and only half conscious of the companion at his side.
+But Patsy's fancy was busy with a hundred things, while her eyes went
+afield for every scrap of prettiness the country held. There were
+meadows of brilliant daisies, broken by clumps of silver poplars,
+white birches, and a solitary sentinel pine; and there was the
+roadside tangle with its constant surprises of meadowsweet and
+columbine, white violets--in the swampy places--and once in a while
+an early wild rose.
+
+"In Ireland," she mused, "the gorse would be out, fringing the
+pastures, and on the roadside would be heartsease and faery thimbles,
+and perhaps a few late primroses; and the meadow would be green with
+corn." A faint wisp of a sigh escaped her at the thought, and the
+tinker looked across at her questioningly. "Sure, it's my heart
+hungering a bit for the bogland and a whiff of the turf smoke. This
+exile idea is a grand one for a play, but it gets lonesome at times
+in real life. Maybe ye are Irish yourself?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+It was Patsy's turn to glance across at the tinker, but all she saw
+was the far-away, wondering look that she had seen first in his face.
+"Poor lad! Like as not he finds it hard remembering where he's from;
+they all do. I'll not pester him again."
+
+He looked up and caught her eyes upon him and smiled foolishly.
+
+Patsy smiled back. "Do ye know, lad, I've not had a morsel of
+breakfast this day. Have ye any money with ye, by chance?"
+
+The tinker stopped, put down his kit, and hunted about in his rags
+where the pocket places might be; but all he drew forth were his two
+empty hands. He looked down the stretch of road they had come with an
+odd twist to his mouth, then he burst forth into another laugh.
+
+"Have ye been playing the pigeon, and some one plucked ye?" she
+asked, and went on without waiting for his answer. "Never mind! We'll
+sharpen up our wits afresh and earn a breakfast. Are ye handy at
+tinkering, now?"
+
+"You bet I am!" said the tinker. It was the longest speech he had
+made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the next farm Patsy turned in, with a warning to the tinker to do
+as he was told and to hold his tongue. It was a thoroughly
+well-kept-looking farm, and she picked out what she decided must be
+the side door, and knocked. A kindly-faced, middle-aged woman opened
+it, and Patsy smiled with the good promise of her looks.
+
+"We are two--down on our luck, and strangers hereabouts. Have ye got
+any tinkering jobs for my man there? He's a bit odd and says little;
+but he can solder a broken pot or mend a machine with the best. And
+we'll take out our pay in a good, hearty meal."
+
+"There be a pile of dishes in the pantry I've put by till we was
+goin' to town--handles off and holes in the bottom. He can mend them
+out on the stoop, if he likes. I've got to help with berry-pickin';
+we're short-handed this season."
+
+"Are ye, just? Then I'm thinking I'll come in handy." Patsy smiled
+her smile of winning comradeship as she stooped and picked up a tray
+of empty berry-boxes that stood by the door; while the woman's smile
+deepened with honest appreciation.
+
+"My! but you are willing folks; they're sometimes scarce 'round
+here."
+
+"Faith, we're hungry folks--so ye best set us quickly to work."
+
+They left the tinker on the stoop, surrounded by a heterogeneous
+collection of household goods. Patsy cast an anxious backward glance
+at him, but saw that he was rolling up the rags that served for
+sleeves, thereby baring a pair of brawny, capable-looking arms, while
+he spread his tools before him after the manner of a man who knows
+his business.
+
+"Fine!" commented Patsy, with an inner satisfaction. "He may be
+foolish, but I bet he can tinker."
+
+They picked berries for an hour or more, and then Patsy turned too
+and helped the woman get dinner. They bustled about in silence to the
+accompanying pounding and scraping of the tinker, who worked
+unceasingly. When they sat down to dinner at last there was a
+tableful--the woman and her husband, Patsy, the tinker, and the
+"hands," and before them was spread the very best the farm could
+give. It was as if the woman wished to pay their free-will gift of
+service with her unstinted bounty.
+
+"We always ask a blessin'," said the farmer, simply, folding his
+hands on the table, about to begin. Then he looked at Patsy, and,
+with that natural courtesy that is common to the true man of the
+soil, he added, "We'd be pleased if you'd ask it."
+
+Patsy bowed her head. A little whimsical smile crept to her lips, but
+her voice rang deep with feeling: "For food and fellowship, good
+Lord, we thank Thee. Amen!" And she added under her breath, "And
+take a good grip of the Rich Man's son till we get him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The late afternoon found them back on the road once more. They parted
+from the farmer and his wife as friend parts with friend. The woman
+slipped a bundle of food--bread, cheese, and meat left from the
+dinner, with a box of berries--into Patsy's hand, while the man gave
+the tinker a half-dollar and wished him luck.
+
+Patsy thanked them for both; but it was not until they were well out
+of earshot that she spoke to the tinker: "They are good folk, but
+they'd never understand in a thousand years how we came to be
+traveling along together. What folks don't know can't hurt them, and
+'tis often easier holding your tongue than trying to explain what
+will never get through another's brain. Now put that lunch into your
+kit; it may come in handy--who knows? And God's blessing on all kind
+hearts!"
+
+Whereupon the tinker nodded solemnly.
+
+They had tramped for a mile or more when they came to a cross-roads
+marked by a little white church. From the moment they sighted it
+Patsy's feet began to lag; and by the time they reached the crossing
+of the ways she had stopped altogether and was gazing up at the
+little gold cross with an odd expression of whimsical earnestness.
+
+"Do ye know," she said, slowly, clasping the hands long shorn of the
+vagabond gloves--"do ye know I've told so many lies these last two
+days I think I'll bide yonder for a bit, and see can Saint Anthony
+lift the sins from me. 'Twould make the rest o' the road less
+burdensome--don't ye think?"
+
+The tinker looked uncomfortably confused, as though this sudden
+question of ethics or religion was too much for his scattered wits.
+He dug the toe of his boot in the gravel of the church path and
+removed his cap to aid the labor of his thinking. "Maybe--" he agreed
+at last. "An' will I be waitin' for you--or keepin' on?"
+
+"Ye'll wait, of course," commanded Patsy.
+
+She had barely disappeared through the little white door, and the
+tinker thrown himself down with his back to the sign-post which
+marked the roads, when a sorrel mare and a runabout came racing down
+the road over which they had just come. There were two men in the
+runabout, both of them tense and alert, their heads craned far in
+advance of the rest of them, their eyes scanning the diverging roads.
+
+"I cal'ate she's gone that way." The driver swung the whip,
+indicating the road that ran south.
+
+"Wall--I cal'ate so, too," agreed the other. "But then again--she
+mightn't."
+
+They reined in and discovered the tinker. "Some one passed this way
+sence you been settin' there?" they inquired almost in unison.
+
+"I don't know"--the tinker's fingers passed hurriedly across his eyes
+and forehead, by way of seeking misplaced wits--"some one might be
+almost any one," he smiled, cheerfully.
+
+"Look here, young feller, if you're tryin' to be smart--" the driver
+began, angrily; but his companion silenced him with a nudge and a
+finger tapped significantly on the crown of his hat. He moderated his
+tone:
+
+"We're after a girl in a brown suit and hat--undersized girl. She was
+asking the way to Arden. Seen any one of that description?"
+
+"What do you want with her?"
+
+"Never mind," growled the first man.
+
+But the second volunteered meager information, "She's a suspect.
+Stayed last night in the Inn and this morning a couple of thousand
+dollars' worth of diamonds is missin'; that's what we want her for."
+
+The tinker brightened perceptibly. "Guess she went by in a wagon half
+an hour ago--that way. I think I saw her," and as the men turned
+southward down the road marked Arden he called after them, "Better
+hurry, if you want to catch her; the wagon was going at a right smart
+pace."
+
+He waited for their backs to be turned and for the crack of the whip
+that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she
+plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he
+wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight
+behind a neighboring stone wall.
+
+The dust from departing wheels still filled the air when Patsy
+stepped out of the cross-roads church, peacefully radiant, and found
+the tinker sitting quietly with his back against the post.
+
+"So ye are still here. I thought ye might have grown tired of my
+company, after all, and gone on." Patsy laughed happily. "Now do ye
+know which road goes to Arden?"
+
+"Sure," and the tinker joined in her laugh, while he pointed to the
+straight road ahead, the road that ran west, at right angles to the
+one the runabout had taken.
+
+"Come on, then," said Patsy; "we ought to be there by sundown." She
+stopped and looked him over for the space of a second. "Ye are
+improving wonderfully. Mind! ye mustn't be getting too keen-witted or
+we'll have to be parting company."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's the why!" And with this satisfactory explanation she led the
+way down the road the tinker had pointed.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+AT DAY'S END
+
+
+Their road went the way of the setting sun, and Patsy and the tinker
+traveled it leisurely--after the fashion of those born to the road,
+who find their joy in the wandering, not in the making of a distance
+or the reaching of a destination. Since they had left the cross-roads
+church behind Patsy had marked the tinker casting furtive glances
+along the way they had come; and each time she marked, as well, the
+flash of a smile that lightened his face for an instant when he saw
+that the road still remained empty of aught but themselves.
+
+"It's odd," she mused; "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear
+a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet--and yet his wits have
+him pestered about something that lies back of him."
+
+Once it was otherwise. There was a rising of dust showing on one of
+the hills they had climbed a good half-hour before. When the tinker
+saw it he reached of a sudden for Patsy's hand while he pointed
+excitedly beyond pasture bars ahead to a brownish field that lay some
+distance from the road.
+
+"See, lass, that's sorrel. If you'll break the road along with me
+I'll show you where wild strawberries grow, lots of 'em!"
+
+Her answer was to take the pasture bars at a run as easily as any
+country-bred urchin. The tinker swung himself after her, an odd wisp
+of a smile twisting the corners of his mouth, just such a smile as
+the fool might wear on the road to Arden. The two raced for the
+sorrel-tops--the tinker winning.
+
+When Patsy caught up he was on his knees, his head bare, his eyes
+sparkling riotously, running his fingers exultantly through the green
+leaves that carpeted the ground. "See," he chuckled, "the tinker
+knows somethin' more 'n solder and pots."
+
+Patsy's eyes danced. There they were--millions of the tiny red
+berries, as thick and luscious as if they had been planted in Elysian
+fields for Arcadian folk to gather. "The wee, bonnie things!" she
+laughed. "Now, how were ye afther knowing they were here?"
+
+The tinker cocked his head wisely. "I know more 'n that; I know where
+to find yellow lady's-slippers 'n' the yewberries 'n' hummin'-bird
+nests."
+
+She looked at him joyfully; he was turning out more and more to her
+liking. "Could ye be showing them to me, lad?" she asked.
+
+The tinker eyed her bashfully. "Would you--care, then?"
+
+"Sure, and I would;" and with that she was flat on the ground beside
+him, her fingers flying in search of strawberries.
+
+So close they lay to the earth, so hidden by the waving sorrel and
+neighboring timothy, that had a whole county full of constables been
+abroad they could have passed within earshot and never seen them
+there.
+
+With silence between them they ate until their lips were red and the
+cloud of dust on the hill back of them had whirled past, attendant on
+a sorrel mare and runabout. They ate until the road was quite empty
+once more; and then the tinker pulled Patsy to her feet by way of
+reminding her that Arden still lay beyond them.
+
+"Do ye know," said Patsy, after another silence and they were once
+more afoot, "I'm a bit doubtful if the banished duke's daughter ever
+tasted anything half as sweet as those berries on her road to Arden;
+or, for that matter, if she found her fool half as wise. I'm mortial
+glad ye didn't fall off that stump this morning afore I came by to
+fetch ye off."
+
+The tinker doffed his battered cap unexpectedly and swept her an
+astounding bow.
+
+"Holy Saint Christopher!" ejaculated Patsy. "Ye'll be telling me ye
+know Willie Shakespeare next."
+
+But the tinker answered with a blank stare, while the far-away,
+bewildered look of fear came back to his eyes. "Who's he? Does he
+live 'round here?" he asked, dully.
+
+Patsy wrinkled a perplexed forehead. "Lad, lad, ye have me bursting
+with wonderment! Ye are a rare combination, even for an Irish tinker;
+but if ye are a fair sample of what they are over here, sure the
+States have the Old Country beaten entirely."
+
+And the tinker laughed as he had laughed once before that day--the
+free, untrammeled laugh of youth, while he saucily mimicked her Irish
+brogue. "Sure, 'tis the road to Arden, ye were sayin', and anythin'
+at all can happen on the way."
+
+The girl laughed with him. "And ye'll be telling me next that this is
+three hundred years ago, and romance and Willie Shakespeare are still
+alive." Her mind went racing back to the "once-upon-a-time days," the
+days when chivalry walked abroad--before it took up its permanent
+residence between the covers of story-books--when poets and saints,
+kings' sons and--tinkers journeyed afar to prove their manhood in
+deeds instead of inheritances; when it was no shame to live by one's
+wits or ask hospitality at any strange door. Ah--those were the days!
+And yet--and yet--could not those days be given back to the world
+again? And would not the world be made a merrier, sweeter place
+because of them? If Patsy could have had her way she would have gone
+forth at the ring of each new day like the angel in the folk tale,
+and with her shears cut the nets that bound humanity down to petty
+differences in creed or birth or tongue.
+
+"Faith, it makes one sick," she thought. "We tell our children the
+tales of the Red Branch Knights--of King Arthur and the Knights of
+the Grail--and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we
+stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints--simple
+men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the
+Holy Book--the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about,
+looking for some good deed to do, some helpfulness to give, some word
+of good cheer to speak; and we pray, 'Father, make us good--even as
+Thou wert.' And what does it all mean? We hurry through the streets
+afeared to stop on the corner and succor a stranger, or ashamed to
+speak a friendly word to a troubled soul in a tram-car; and we go
+home at night and lock our doors so that the beggar who asked for a
+bit of bread at noon can't come round after dark and steal the
+silver." Patsy sighed regretfully--if only this were olden times she
+would not be dreading to find Arden now and the man she was seeking
+there.
+
+The tinker caught the sigh and looked over at her with a puzzled
+frown. "Tired?" he asked, laconically.
+
+"Aye, a bit heart-tired," she agreed, "and I'm wishing Arden was
+still a good seven miles away."
+
+Whereupon the tinker turned his head and grinned sheepishly toward
+the south.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The far-away hills had gathered in the last of the sun unto
+themselves when the two turned down the main street of a village. It
+was unquestionably a self-respecting village. The well-tarred
+sidewalks, the freshly painted meeting-house neighboring the
+engine-house "No. 1," the homes with their well-mowed lawns in front
+and the tidily kept yards behind--all spoke of a decency and
+lawfulness that might easily have set the hearts of the most
+righteous of vagabonds a-quaking.
+
+Patsy looked it carefully over. "Sure, Arden's no name for it at all.
+They'd better have called it Gospel Center--or New Canaan. 'Twould be
+a grand place, though, to shut in all the Wilfred Peterson-Joneses,
+to keep them off the county's nerves--and the rich men's sons, to
+keep them off the public sympathy. But 'tis no place for us, lad."
+
+The tinker shifted his kit from one shoulder to the other and held
+his tongue.
+
+Their entrance was what Patsy might have termed "fit." The dogs of
+the village were on hand; that self-appointed escort of all doubtful
+characters barked them down the street with a lusty chorus of growls
+and snarls and sharp, staccato yaps. There were the children, too, of
+course; the older ones followed hot-foot after the dogs; the smaller
+ones came, a stumbling vanguard, sucking speculative thumbs or
+forefingers, as the choice might be. The hurly-burly brought the
+grown-ups to windows and doors.
+
+"'Hark! hark! the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town,'"
+quoted Patsy, with a grim little smile, and glanced across at the
+tinker. He was blushing fiercely. "Never mind, lad. 'Tis better being
+barked into a town than bitten out of it."
+
+For answer the tinker stopped and folded his arms sullenly. "I'm not
+such a fool I can't feel somethin'. Don't you reckon I know the shame
+it is to be keepin' a decent woman company with these rags--and no
+wits?"
+
+"If I've not misplaced my memory, 'twas myself that chose the
+company, and 'twas largely on account of those very things, I'm
+thinking. Do ye guess for a minute that if ye had been a rich man's
+son in grand clothes--and manners to match--I'd ever have tramped a
+millimeter with ye?" She smiled coaxingly. "Faith! there's naught the
+matter with those rags; a king's son might be proud o' them. As for
+foolishness, I've known worse faults in a man."
+
+The tinker winced imperceptibly, and all unconsciously Patsy went on:
+"'Tis the heart of a man that measures him, after all, and not the
+wits that crowd his brain or the gold that lines his pockets. Oh,
+what do the folks who sit snug by their warm hearthsides, knitting
+their lives into comfortables to wrap around their real feelings and
+human impulses, ever know about their neighbors who come in to drink
+tea with them? And what do the neighbors in turn know about them? If
+I had my way, I'd tumble the whole sit-by-the-fire-and-gossip world
+out of doors and set them tramping the road to somewhere; 'tis the
+surest way of getting them acquainted with themselves and the
+neighbors. For that matter, all of us need it--just once in so often.
+And so--to the road, say I, with a fair greeting to all alike, be
+they king's son or beggar, for the road may prove the one's the other
+afore the journey's done."
+
+"Amen!" said the tinker, devoutly, and Patsy laughed.
+
+They had stopped in the middle of the street, midway between the
+church and the engine-house, Patsy so absorbed in her theories, the
+tinker so absorbed in Patsy, that neither was aware of the changed
+disposition of their circling escort until a cold, inquisitive nose
+and a warm, friendly tongue brought them to themselves. Greetings
+were returned in kind; heads were patted, backs stroked, ears
+scratched--only the children stood aloof and unconvinced. That is
+ever the way of it; it is the dogs who can better tell glorious
+vagabondage from inglorious rascality.
+
+"Sure, ye can't fool dogs; I'd be taking the word of a dog before a
+man's anywhere when it comes to judging human beings." Patsy looked
+over her shoulder at the children. "Ye have the creatures won over
+entirely; 'tis myself might try what I could do with the wee ones. If
+we had the dogs and the childther to say a good word for us--faith!
+the grown-ups might forget how terribly respectable they were and
+make us welcome for one night." A sudden thought caught her memory.
+"I was almost forgetting why I had come. Hunt up a shop for me, lad,
+will ye? There must be one down the street a bit; and if ye'll loan
+me some of that half-crown the good man paid for your tinkering, I'd
+like to be having a New York News--if they have one--along with the
+fixings for a letter I have to be writing. While ye are gone I'll
+bewitch the childther."
+
+And she did.
+
+When the tinker returned she was sitting on the church steps, the
+children huddled so close about her that she was barely
+distinguishable in the encircling mass of shingled heads, bobby
+curls, pigtails and hair-ribbons. Deaf little ears were being turned
+to parental calls for supper--a state of affairs unprecedented and
+unbelievable; while Patsy was bringing to an end the tale of Jack,
+the Irish hero of a thousand and one adventures.
+
+"And he married the king's daughter--and they lived happier than ye
+can tell me--and twice as happy as I can tell ye--in a castle that
+had a window for every day in the year."
+
+"That would make a fine endin' for any lad's story," said the tinker,
+soberly. "'A window for every day in the year' would mean a whole lot
+of cheerfulness and sunshine, wouldn't it?"
+
+Patsy nodded. "But don't those who take to the road fetch that castle
+along with them? Sure, there it is"--and her hand swept toward the
+skyline an encompassing circle about them--"with the sun flooding it
+from dawn to day's end." She turned to the eager faces about her,
+waiting for more. "Are ye still there? Faith! what have I been
+hearing this half-hour but hungry childther being called for tea.
+'Twas 'Joseph' from the house across the way, and 'Rebecca' from off
+yonder, and 'Susie May' from somewhere else. Away with yez all to
+your mothers!" And Patsy scattered them as if they had been a flock
+of young sheep, scampering helter-skelter in all directions.
+
+But one there was who lagged behind, a little boy with an old, old
+face, who watched the others go and then crept closer, held by the
+spell of the tale. He pulled at Patsy's sleeve to gain attention.
+"I'm--I'm Joseph. Was it true--most of it?"
+
+She nodded a reply as solemn as his question, "Aye, as true as youth
+and the world itself."
+
+"And would it come true for another boy--any boy--who went a-tramping
+off like that? Would he find--whatever he was wishin' for?" And even
+as he spoke his eyes left hers and went searching for the far-away
+hills--and what might lie beyond.
+
+"Come here, little lad." Patsy drew him to her and put two steadying
+hands on his shoulders. She knew that he, too, had heard the call of
+the road and the longing to be gone--to be one with it, journeying to
+meet the mysterious unknown--was upon him. "Hearken to me: 'Tis only
+safe for a little lad to be going when he has three things to fetch
+with him--the wish to find something worth the bringing home, the
+knowledge of what makes good company along the way, and trust in
+himself. When ye are sure of these, go; but ye'll no longer be a
+little lad, I'm thinking. And remember first to get the mother's
+blessing and 'God-speed,' same as Jack; a lad's journey ends nowhere
+that begins without that."
+
+He went without a word, but content; and his eyes brimmed with
+visions.
+
+Patsy watched him tenderly. "Who knows--he may find greatness on his
+road. Who knows?"
+
+The tinker dropped the bundle he had brought back from the store into
+her lap, but she scarcely heeded him. Her eyes were looking out into
+the gathering dusk while her voice sank almost to a whisper.
+
+"_Ochone!_ but I've always envied that piper fellow from Hamelin
+town. Think of being able to gather up all the childther hereabouts,
+eager, hungry-hearted childther with mothers too busy or deaf to heed
+them, and leading them away to find their fortunes! Wouldn't that be
+wonderful, just?"
+
+"What kind of fortunes?" asked the tinker.
+
+"What but the best kind!" Patsy thought for a moment, and smiled
+whimsically while her eyes grew strangely starry in that early
+twilight. "Wouldn't I like to be choosing those fortunes, and
+wouldn't they be an odd lot, entirely! There'd be singing hearts that
+had learned to sing above trouble; there'd be true fellowship--the
+kind that finds brotherhood in beggars as well as--as prime
+ministers; there'd be peace of soul--not the kind that naps by the
+fire, content that the wind doesn't be blowing down his chimney, but
+the kind that fights above fighting and keeps neighbor from harrying
+neighbor. Troth, the world is in mortial need of fortunes like the
+last."
+
+"And wouldn't you be choosin' gold for a fortune?" asked the tinker.
+
+Patsy shook her head vehemently.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's the why!" Suddenly Patsy clenched her hands and shook two
+menacing fists against the gathering dark. "I hate gold, along with
+the meanness and the lying and the thieving and the false judgment it
+brings into the world."
+
+"But the world can't get along without it," reminded the tinker,
+shrewdly.
+
+"Aye, but it can. It can get along without the hoarded gold, the
+inherited gold, the cheating, bribing, starving gold--that's the kind
+I mean, the kind that gets into a man's heart and veins until his
+fingers itch to gild everything he touches, like the rich man in the
+city yonder."
+
+"What rich man? I thought the--I thought the city was full o' rich
+men."
+
+"Maybe; but there's just one I'm thinking of now; and God pity
+him--and his son."
+
+The tinker eyed her stupidly. "How d'you know he has a son?"
+
+Patsy laughed. "I guessed--maybe." Then she looked down in her lap.
+"And here's the news--with no light left to read it by; and I'm as
+hungry as an alley cat--and as tired as two. Ye'd never dream, to
+hear me talking, that I'd never had much more than a crooked sixpence
+to my name since I was born; and here I am, with that gone and not a
+slither to buy me bed or board for the night."
+
+The tinker looked down at her with an altogether strange expression,
+very different from anything Patsy had seen on his face all day. Had
+she chanced to catch it before it flickered out, it might have
+puzzled even her O'Connell wits to fathom the meaning of it. For it
+was as if the two had unexpectedly changed places, and the tender
+pity and protectiveness that had belonged to her had suddenly become
+his.
+
+"Never mind, lass; there's board in the kit for to-night--what the
+farm wife put up; and there's this left, and I'll--I'll--" He did not
+finish; instead he dropped a few coins in her hand, the change from
+the half-dollar. Then he set about sweeping the dust from the step
+with his battered cap and spreading their meager meal before her.
+
+They ate in silence, so deep in the business of dulling their
+appetites that they never noticed a small figure crossing the street
+with two goblets and a pitcher hugged tight in his arms. They never
+looked up until the things were set down beside them and a voice
+announced at their elbow, "Mother said I could bring it; it's better
+'n eatin' dry."
+
+It was Joseph; and the pitcher held milk, still foamy from a late
+milking. He looked at Patsy a moment longingly, as if there was more
+he wanted to ask; but, overcome with a sudden bashful confusion, he
+took to his heels and disappeared around the corner of the
+meeting-house before they had time even to give thanks.
+
+The tinker poured the goblets full, handed Patsy's to her with
+another grave bow, and, touching his to hers, said, soberly, "Here's
+to a friendly lass--the first I ever knew, I reckon."
+
+For an instant she watched him, puzzled and amused; then she raised
+her glass slowly in reply. "And here's to tinkers--the world over!"
+
+When everything but the crumbs were eaten she left him to scatter
+these and return Joseph's pitcher while she went to get "the loan of
+a light from the shopkeeper, and hunt up the news."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The store was store, post-office, and general news center combined.
+The news was at that very moment in process of circulation among the
+"boys"--a shirt-sleeved quorum from the patriarchs of the town
+circling the molasses-keg--the storekeeper himself topped it. They
+looked up as Patsy entered and acknowledged her "Good evening" with
+that perfect indifference, the provincial cloak in habitual use for
+concealing the most absolute curiosity. The storekeeper graciously
+laid the hospitality of his stool and counter and kerosene-lamp at
+her feet; in other words, he "cal'ated she was welcome to make
+herself t' home." All of which Patsy accepted. She spread out the
+newspaper on the counter in front of her; she unwrapped a series of
+small bundles--ink, pen, stamped envelope, letter-pad, and
+pen-holder, and eyed them with approval.
+
+"The tinker's a wonder entirely," she said to herself; "but I would
+like to be knowing, did he or did the shopkeeper do the choosing?"
+Then she remembered the thing above all others that she needed to
+know, and swung about on the stool to address the quorum. "I say--can
+you tell me where I'd be likely to find a--person by the name of
+Bil--William Burgeman?"
+
+"That rich feller's boy?"
+
+Patsy nodded. "Have you seen him?"
+
+The quorum thumbed the armholes of their vests and shook an emphatic
+negative. "Nope," volunteered the storekeeper; "too early for him or
+his sort to be diggin' out o' winter quarters."
+
+"Are you sure? Do you know him?"
+
+"Wall, can't say exactly ef I know him; but I'd know ef he'd been
+hangin' round, sartin. Hain't been nothin' like him loose in these
+parts. Has there, boys?"
+
+The quorum confirmed the statement.
+
+Patsy wrinkled up a perplexed forehead. "That's odd. You see, he
+should have been here last night, to-day at the latest. I had it from
+somebody who knew, that he was coming to Arden."
+
+"Mebby he was," drawled the storekeeper, while the quorum cackled in
+appreciation; "but this here is a good seven miles from Arden."
+
+Patsy's arms fell limp across the counter, her head followed, and she
+sat there a crumpled-up, dejected little heap.
+
+"By Jack-a-diamonds!" swore the storekeeper. "She 'ain't swoomed, has
+she, boys?"
+
+The quorum were on the verge of investigating when she denied the
+fact--in person. "Where am I? In the name of Saint Peter, what place
+is this?"
+
+"This? Why, this is Lebanon."
+
+She smiled weakly. "Lebanon! Sounds more like it, anyhow. Thank you."
+
+She turned about and settled down to the paper while the "boys"
+reverted to their original topic of discussion. There were two items
+of news that interested her: Burgeman, senior, was critically ill; he
+had been ill for some time, but there had been no cause for
+apprehension until the last twenty-four hours; and Marjorie Schuyler
+had left for San Francisco--on the way to China. She was to be gone
+indefinitely.
+
+"The heathen idols and the laundrymen are welcome to her," growled
+Patsy, maliciously. "If they'd only fix her with the evil eye, or
+wish such a homesickness and lovesickness on her that 'twould last
+for a year and a day, I'd forgive her for what she's made me wish on
+myself."
+
+Having relieved her mind somewhat, she was able to attend to the
+business of the letter with less inward discomfort. The letter was
+written to George Travis, already known as the manager of Miss St.
+Regis. He was the head of a well-known theatrical managerial firm in
+New York, and an old friend and well-wisher of Patsy's. In it she
+explained, partly, her continued sojourn in America, and frankly
+confessed to her financial needs. If he had anything anywhere that
+she could do until the fall bookings with her own company, she would
+be most humbly grateful. He might address her at Arden; she had great
+hopes of reaching there--some day. There was a postscript added in
+good, pure Donegal:
+
+     And don't ye be afeared of hurting my pride by offering
+     anything too small. Just at present I'm like old Granny
+     Donoghue's lean pig--hungry for scrapings.
+
+As she sealed the envelope a shadow fell athwart the counter. Patsy
+looked up to find the tinker peering at her sharply.
+
+"You look clean tuckered out," he announced, baldly; then he laid a
+coaxing hand on her arm. "I want you to come along with me. Will you,
+lass? I've found a place for you--a nice place. I've been talkin' to
+Joseph's mother, an' she's goin' to look after you for the night."
+
+Patsy's face crinkled up all over; the tinker could not have
+told--even if he had been in possession of all his senses--whether
+she was going to laugh or cry. As it turned out, she did neither; she
+just sighed, a tired, contented little sigh, slipping off the stool
+and dropping the letter into the post-box.
+
+When she faced the tinker again her eyes were misty, and for all her
+courage she could not keep the quivering from her lips. She reached
+up impulsive, trusting hands to his shoulders: "Lad--lad--how were ye
+ever guessing that I'd reached the end o' my wits and was needing
+some one to think for me? Holy Saint Michael! but won't I be mortial
+glad to be feeling a respectable, Lebanon feather-bed under me!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the tinker led her out of the store the quorum eyed her silently
+for a moment. For a brief space there was a scraping of chairs and
+clearing of throats, indicative of some important comment.
+
+"What sort of a lookin' gal did that Green County sheriff say he was
+after?" inquired the storekeeper at last.
+
+"Small, warn't it?" suggested one of the quorum.
+
+"Yep, guess it was. And what sort o' clothes did he say she wore?"
+
+"Brown!" chorused the quorum.
+
+"Wall, boys"--the storekeeper wagged an accusing thumb in the
+direction of the recently vacated stool--"she was small, warn't she?
+An' she's got brown clothes, hain't she? An' she acts queer, doan't
+she?"
+
+The quorum nodded in solemn agreement.
+
+"But she doan't look like no thief," interceded the youngest of the
+"boys." He couldn't have been a day over seventy, and it was more
+than likely that he was still susceptible to youth and beauty!
+
+The rest glowered at him with plain disapproval, while the
+storekeeper shifted the course of his thumb and wagged it at him
+instead. "Si Perkins, that's not for you to say--nor me, neither.
+That's up to Green County; an' I cal'ate I'll 'phone over to
+the sheriff, come mornin', an' tell him our suspicions. By
+Jack-a-diamonds! I've got to square my conscience."
+
+The quorum invested their thumbs again and cleared their throats.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE TINKER PLAYS A PART
+
+
+There is little of the day's happenings that escapes the ears of a
+country boy. Every small item of local interest is so much grist for
+his mill; and there is no more reliable method for a stranger to
+collect news than a sociable game of "peg" interspersed with a few
+casual but diplomatic questions. The tinker played "peg" the night
+after he and Patsy reached Lebanon--on the barn floor by the light of
+a bleary-eyed lantern with Joseph and his brethren, and thereby
+learned of the visit of the sheriff.
+
+Afterward he sawed and split the apportioned wood which was to pay
+for Patsy's lodging, and went to sleep on the hay in a state of
+complete exhaustion. But, for all that, Patsy was wakened an hour
+before sun-up by a shower of pebbles on the tin roof of the porch,
+just under her window. Looking out, she spied him below, a silencing
+finger against his lips, while he waved a beckoning arm toward the
+road. Patsy dressed and slipped out without a sound.
+
+"What has happened ye?" she whispered, anxiously, looking him well
+over for some symptoms of sickness or trouble.
+
+His only reply was a mysterious shake of the head as he led the way
+down the village street, his rags flapping grotesquely in the dawn
+wind.
+
+There was nothing for Patsy to do except to follow as fast as she
+could after his long, swinging strides. Lebanon still slept,
+close-wrapped in its peaceful respectability; even the dogs failed to
+give them a speeding bark. They stole away as silently as shadows,
+and as shadows went forth upon the open road to meet the coming day.
+
+A mile beyond the township stone the tinker stopped to let Patsy
+catch up with him; it was a very breathless, disgruntled Patsy.
+
+"Now, by Saint Brendan, what ails ye, lad, to be waking a body up at
+this time of day? Do ye think it's good morals or good manners to be
+trailing us off on a bare stomach like this--as if a county full of
+constables was at our heels? What's the meaning of it? And what will
+the good folk who cared for us the night think to find us gone with
+never a word of thanks or explanation?"
+
+The tinker scratched his chin meditatively; it was marked by a day's
+more growth than on the previous morning, which did not enhance his
+comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something
+about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an
+uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied
+him yesterday--but to-day--Patsy's gaze was critical and not
+over-flattering.
+
+He saw her look and met it, eye for eye, only he still fumbled his
+chin ineffectually. "Have you forgot?" he asked, a bit sheepishly.
+"There were the lady's-slippers; you said as how you cared about
+findin' 'em; and they're not near so pretty an' bright if they're
+left standin' too long after the dew dries."
+
+Patsy pulled a wry little smile. "Is that so? And ye've been after
+making me trade a feather-bed and a good breakfast for--for the best
+color of lady's-slippers. Well, if I was Dan instead of myself,
+standing here, I'd be likely to tell ye to go to the devil--aye, an'
+help ye there with my two fists." Her cheeks were flushed and all the
+comradeship faded quickly from her eyes.
+
+The tinker said never a word, only his lips parted in a coaxing smile
+which seemed to say, "Please go on believing in me," and his eyes
+still held hers unwaveringly.
+
+And the tinker's smile won. Bit by bit Patsy's rigid attitude of
+condemnation relaxed; the comradeship crept back in her eyes, the
+smile to her lips. "Heigho! 'Tis a bad bargain ye can't make the best
+of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! Ye'll find the right road
+to Arden this time or ye and the duke's daughter will part
+company--for all Willie Shakespeare wrote it otherwise."
+
+He nodded. "We can ask the way 's we go. But first we'll be gettin'
+the lady's-slippers and some breakfast. You'll see--I'll find them
+both for you, lass"; and he set off with his swinging stride straight
+across country, wagging his head wisely. Patsy fell in behind him,
+and the road was soon out of sight and earshot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was just about this time that the storekeeper at Lebanon got the
+Green County sheriff on the 'phone, and squared his conscience. "I
+cal'ate she's the guilty party," were his closing remarks. "She'd
+never ha' lighted out o' this 'ere town afore Christian folks were
+out o' bed ef she hadn't had somethin' takin' her. And what's more,
+she's keepin' bad company."
+
+And so it came about that all the time the sorrel mare was being
+harnessed into the runabout the tinker was leading Patsy farther
+afield. And so it came to pass that when the mare's heels were
+raising the dust on the road between Lebanon and Arden, they were
+following a forest brook, deeper and deeper, into the woods.
+
+They found it the most cheery, neighborly, and comfortable kind of a
+brook, the quiet and well-contained sort that one could step at will
+from bank to bank, and see with half an eye what a prime favorite it
+was among its neighbors. Patsy and the tinker marked how close things
+huddled to it, even creeping on to cover stones and gravel stretches;
+there were moss and ferns and little, clinging things, like
+baby's-breath and linnea. The major part of the bird population was
+bathing in the sunnier pools, soberly or with wild hilarity,
+according to disposition.
+
+The tinker knew them all, calling to them in friendly fashion, at
+which they always answered back. Patsy listened silently, wrapped in
+the delight and beauty of it. On went the brook--dancing here in a
+broken patch of sunshine--quieting there between the banks of
+rock-fern and columbine, to better paint their prettiness; and all
+the while singing one farther and farther into the woods. She was
+just wondering if there could be anything lovelier than this when the
+tinker stopped, still and tense as a pointer. She craned her head and
+looked beyond him--looked to where the woods broke, leaving for a few
+feet a thinly shaded growth of beech and maple. The sunlight sifted
+through in great, unbroken patches of gold, falling on the beds
+of fern and moss and--yes, there they were, the promised
+lady's-slippers.
+
+A little, indrawn sigh of ecstasy from Patsy caused the tinker to
+turn about. "Then you're not hatin' gold when you find it growin'
+green that-a-way?" he chuckled.
+
+Patsy shook her head with vehemence. "Never! And wouldn't it be grand
+if nature could be gathering it all up from everywhere and spinning
+it over again into the likes of those! In the name o' Saint Francis,
+do ye suppose if the English poets had laid their two eyes to
+anything so beautiful as what's yonder they'd ever have gone so daffy
+over daffodils?"
+
+"They never would," agreed the tinker.
+
+Patsy studied him with a sharp little look. "And what do ye know
+about English poets, pray?"
+
+His lower jaw dropped in a dull, foolish fashion. "Nothin'; but I
+know daff'dils," he explained at last.
+
+And at that moment the call of a thrush came to them from just across
+the glade. Patsy listened spellbound while he sang his bubbling song
+of gladness through half a score of times.
+
+"Is it the flowers singing?" she asked at last, her eyes dancing
+mischievously.
+
+"It might be the souls o' the dead ones." The tinker considered
+thoughtfully a moment. "Maybe the souls o' flowers become birds, same
+as ours becomes angels--wouldn't be such a deal o' difference--both
+takin' to wings and singin'." He chuckled again. "Anyhow, that's the
+bellbird; and I sent him word yesterday by one o' them tattlin'
+finches to be on hand just about this time."
+
+"Ye didn't order a breakfast the same way, did ye?"
+
+The tinker threw back his head and laughed. "I did, then," and,
+before Patsy could strip her tongue of its next teasing remark, he
+had vanished as quickly and completely as if magic had had a hand in
+it.
+
+A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going,
+however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor
+fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady's-slippers. She
+unpinned the rakish beaver and tossed it from her; off came the
+Norfolk jacket, and followed the beaver. She eyed the rest of her
+costume askance; she would have sorely liked to part with that, too,
+had she but the Lord's assurance that He would do as well by her as
+he had by the lilies of the field or the lady's-slippers.
+
+"'Tis surprising how wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the
+back of a human being--yet a flower can wear them for a thousand
+years or more and ye never go tired of them. I'm not knowing why,
+but--somehow--I'd like to be looking gladsome--to-day."
+
+She stretched her arms wide for a minute, in a gesture of intense
+longing; then the glory of the woods claimed her again and she gave
+herself over completely to the wonder and enjoyment of them. Her eyes
+roamed about her unceasingly for every bit of prettiness, her ears
+caught the symphony of bird and brook and soughing wind. So still did
+she sit that the tinker, returning, thought for a moment that she had
+gone, and stood, knee-deep in the brakes, laden to the chin and
+covered with the misery of poignant disappointment. For him all the
+music of the place had turned to laughing discord--until he spied
+her.
+
+"I thought"--his tongue stumbled--"I was thinkin' you had
+gone--sudden-like--same as you came--down the road yesterday." He
+paused a moment. "You wouldn't go off by yourself and leave a lad
+without you said somethin' about it first, would you?"
+
+"I'll not leave ye till we get to Arden."
+
+"An'--an' what then?"
+
+"The road must end for me there, lad. What I came to do will be done,
+and there'll be no excuse for lingering. But I'll not forget to wish
+ye 'God-speed' along your way before I go."
+
+A sly look came into the tinker's eyes. Patsy never saw it, for he
+was bending close over the huge basket he had brought; she only
+caught a tinge of exultation in his voice as he said, "Then that's
+a'right, if you'll promise your comp'ny till we fetch up in Arden."
+
+With that he went busily about preparations for breakfast, Patsy
+watching him, plainly astonished. He gathered bark and brush and
+kindled a fire on a large flat rock which he had moved against a
+near-by boulder. About it he fastened a tripod of green saplings,
+from which he hung a coffee-pot, filled from the brook.
+
+"I'm praying there's more nor water in it," murmured Patsy. And a
+moment later, as the tinker shook out a small white table-cloth from
+the basket and spread it at her feet, she clasped her hands and
+repeated with perfect faith, "'Little goat bleat, table get set'; I
+smell the coffee."
+
+Out of the basket came little green dishes, a pat of butter, a jug of
+cream, a bowl of berries, a plate of biscuits. "Riz," was the
+tinker's comment as he put down the last named; and then followed
+what appeared to Patsy to be round, brown, sugared buns with holes in
+them. These he passed twice under her nose with a triumphant
+flourish.
+
+"And what might they be?" Her curiosity was reaching the
+breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll
+believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the
+faeries' trencher of plenty."
+
+For reply the tinker dived once more beneath the cover and brought
+out a frying-pan full of bacon, and four white eggs. "Think whatever
+you're mind to, I'm going to fry these." But after he had raked over
+the embers to his complete satisfaction and placed the pan on them,
+he came back and, picking up one of the "brown buns," slipped it over
+Patsy's forefinger. "This is a wishin'-ring," he announced, soberly,
+"though most folks calls 'em somethin' different. Now if you wish a
+wish--and eat it--all but the hole, you'll have what you've been
+wishin' for all your life."
+
+"How soon will ye be having it?"
+
+"In as many days as there are bites."
+
+So Patsy bit while the tinker checked them off on his fingers. "One,
+two, three, four, five, six. You'll get your wish by the seventh day,
+sure, or I'm no tinker."
+
+[Illustration: "If you wish a wish and eat it--all but the hole,
+you'll have what you've been wishin' for all your life."]
+
+"But are ye?" Patsy shook the de-ringed finger at him accusingly.
+"I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether ye're a tinker at all.
+Ye are foolish one minute, and ye've more wits than I have the
+next; I've caught ye looking too lonesome and helpless to be allowed
+beyond reach of our mother's kerchief-end, and yet last night and the
+day ye've taken care of me as if ye'd been hired out to tend babies
+since ye were one yourself. As for your language, ye never speak
+twice the same."
+
+The tinker grinned. "That bacon's burnin'; I--cal'ate I'd better turn
+it, hadn't I?"
+
+"I--cal'ate you had," and Patsy grinned back at him derisively.
+
+The tinker was master of ceremonies, and he served her as any
+courtier might have served his liege lady. He shook out the
+diminutive serviette he had brought for her and spread it across her
+lap; he poured her coffee and sweetened it according to direction; he
+even buttered her "riz" biscuits and poured the cream on her berries.
+
+"Are ye laboring under the delusion that the duke's daughter was
+helpless, entirely?" she asked, at length.
+
+The tinker shook an emphatic negative. "I was just thinkin' she might
+like things a mite decent--onct in a while."
+
+"Lad--lad--who in the wide world are ye!" Patsy checked her outburst
+with a warning hand: "No--don't ye be telling me. Ye couldn't turn
+out anything better nor a tinker--and I'd rather keep ye as I found
+ye. So if ye have a secret--mind it well; and don't ye be letting it
+loose to scare the two of us into over-wise, conventional folk. We'll
+play Willie Shakespeare comedy to the end of the road--please God!"
+
+"Amen!" agreed the tinker, devoutly, as he threw her portion of fried
+eggs neatly out of the pan into her plate.
+
+It was not until she was served that he looked after his own wants;
+then they ate in silence, both too hungry and too full of their own
+thoughts to loosen their tongues.
+
+Once the tinker broke the silence. "Your wish--what was it?" he
+asked.
+
+"That's telling," said Patsy. "But if ye'll confess to where ye came
+by this heavenly meal, I might confess to the wish."
+
+He rubbed his chin solemnly for an instant; then he beamed. "I'll
+tell ye. I picked it off o' the fern-tops and brambles as I came
+along."
+
+"Of course ye did," agreed Patsy, with fine sarcasm, "and for my
+wish--I was after thinking I'd marry the king's son."
+
+They looked at each other with the teasing, saucy stare of two
+children; then they laughed as care-free and as merrily.
+
+"Maybe you'll get your wish," he suggested, soberly.
+
+"Maybe I will," agreed Patsy, with mock solemnity.
+
+A look of shrewdness sprang into the tinker's face. "But you said you
+hated gold. You couldn't marry a king's son 'thout havin' gold--lots
+of it."
+
+"Aye--but I could! Couldn't I be making him throw it away before ever
+I'd marry him?" And Patsy clapped her hands triumphantly.
+
+"An' you'd marry him--poor?" The tinker's eyes kindled suddenly, as
+he asked it--for all the world as if her answer might have a meaning
+for him.
+
+Patsy never noticed. She was looking past him--into the
+indistinguishable wood-tangle beyond. "Sure, we wouldn't be poor.
+We'd be blessed with nothing--that's all!"
+
+For those golden moments of romancing Patsy's quest was forgotten;
+they might have reached Arden and despatched her errand, for all the
+worriment their loitering caused her. As for the tinker, if he had
+either a mission or a destination he gave no sign for her to reckon
+by.
+
+They dallied over the breakfast; they dallied over the aftermath of
+picking up and putting away and stamping out the charred twigs and
+embers; and then they dallied over the memory of it all. Patsy spun a
+hundred threads of fancy into tales about the forest, while the
+tinker called the thickets about them full of birds, and whistled
+their songs antiphonally with them.
+
+"Do ye know," said Patsy, with a deep sigh, "I'm happier than ye can
+tell me, and twice as happy as I can tell ye."
+
+"An' this, hereabouts, wouldn't make a bad castle," suggested the
+tinker, irrelevantly.
+
+What Patsy might have answered is not recorded, for they both
+happened to look up for the first time in a long space and saw that
+the sky above their heads had grown a dull, leaden color. They were
+no longer sitting in the midst of sunlight; the lady's-slippers had
+lost their golden radiance; the brook sounded plaintive and
+melancholy, and from the woods fringing the open came the call of the
+bob-white.
+
+"He's singin' for rain. Won't hurt a mite if we make toward some
+shelter." The tinker pulled Patsy to her feet and gathered up the
+basket and left-overs.
+
+"Hurry," said Patsy, with a strange, little, twisted smile on her
+lips. "Of course I was knowing, like all faery tales, it had to have
+an ending; but I want to remember it, just as we found it
+first--sprinkled with sunshine and not turning dull and gray like
+this."
+
+She started plunging through the woods, and the tinker was obliged to
+turn her about and set her going right, with the final instruction
+to follow her nose and he would catch up with her before she had
+caught up with it. She had reached the road, however, and thunder was
+grumbling uncomfortably near when the tinker joined her.
+
+"It's goin' to be a soaker," he announced, cheerfully.
+
+"Then we'd better tramp fast as we can and ask the first person we
+pass, are we on the right road to Arden."
+
+They tramped, but they passed no one. The road was surprisingly
+barren of shelters, and, strangely enough, of the two houses they saw
+one was temporarily deserted and the other unoccupied. The wind came
+with the breaking of the storm--that cold, piercing wind that often
+comes in June as a reminder that winter has not passed by so very
+long before. It whipped the rain across their faces and cut down
+their headway until it seemed to Patsy as if they barely crawled.
+They came to a tumble-down barn, but she was too cold and wet to stop
+where there was no fire.
+
+"Any place that's warm," she shouted across to the tinker; and he
+shouted back, as they rounded the bend of the road.
+
+"See, there it is at last!"
+
+The sight of a house ahead, whose active chimney gave good evidence
+of a fire within, spurred Patsy's lagging steps. But in response to
+their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the
+narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even
+before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter.
+
+"Faith, 'tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred
+years ago," Patsy murmured between tightening lips. "How long in, do
+ye think, the fashion has been--to shut doors on poor wanderers?"
+
+At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The
+woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier
+was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they
+turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had
+crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks
+ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them.
+
+"Curse them!" muttered the tinker, fiercely. "If I only had a coat to
+put around you--anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry
+inside there!" and he shook his fist at the forbidden door.
+
+Patsy tried to smile, but failed. "Faith! I haven't the breath to
+curse them; but God pity them, that's all."
+
+Before she had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang
+it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll
+have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood."
+
+He hurried her along--somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression
+closed her eyes; and she let him lead her--whither she neither
+wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she
+stumbled along, conscious of but two things--a fear that she would be
+ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for
+heat--heat!
+
+When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing
+under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer
+cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet.
+In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of
+the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small,
+leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a
+matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted
+over the sill into the kitchen beyond.
+
+"Ye'd best stand me in the sink and wring me out, or I'll flood the
+house," Patsy managed to gasp. "I'd do it myself, but I know, if I
+once let go of my hands, I'll shake to death."
+
+The tinker followed her advice, working the water out of her dripping
+garments in much the same fashion that he would have employed had she
+been a half-drowned cat. In spite of her numbness Patsy saw the grim
+humor of it all and came perilously near to a hysterical laugh. The
+tinker unconsciously forestalled it by shouldering her, as if she had
+been a whole bag of water-soaked cats, and carrying her up the
+stairs. After looking into three rooms he deposited her on the
+threshold of a fourth.
+
+"It has the look of women folks; you're sure to find some left-behind
+clothes o' theirs hanging up somewhere. Come down when you're dry an'
+I'll have that fire waiting for you."
+
+What followed was all a dream to Patsy's benumbed senses: the search
+in drawers and closets for things to put on, and the finding of them;
+the insistent aching of fingers and arms in trying to adjust them,
+and the persistent refusal of brain to direct them with any degree of
+intelligence. She came down the stairs a few minutes later, dragging
+a bundle of wet clothes after her, and found the tinker kneeling by
+the hearth, still in his dripping rags, and heaping more logs on the
+already blazing fire.
+
+He rose as she came toward him, took the clothes from her and dropped
+them on the hearth. He seemed decidedly hazy and remote as he
+brought a steamer rug from somewhere and wrapped it about her; his
+voice, as he coaxed her over to the couch, apparently came from miles
+away. As Patsy sank down, too weary to speak, the figure above her
+took upon itself once more that suggestion of unearthliness that it
+had worn when she had discovered it at dawn--hanging to the stump
+fencing. For an instant the glow of the fire threw the profile into
+the same shadowy outlines that the rising sun had first marked for
+her; and the image lingered even after her eyes had closed.
+
+"Sure, he's fading away like Oisiu, Gearoidh Iarla, and all of them
+in the old tales," she thought, drowsily. "Like as not, when I open
+my eyes again he'll be clear gone." This was where the dream ended
+and complete oblivion began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How long it lasted she could not have told; she only knew she was
+awake at last and acutely conscious of everything about her; and that
+she was warm--warm--warm! The room was dark except for the firelight;
+but whether it was evening or night or midnight, she could not have
+guessed. She found herself speculating in a hazy fashion where she
+was, whose house they had broken into, and what the tinker had done
+with himself. She had a vague, far-away feeling that she ought to be
+disturbed over something--her complete isolation with a strange
+companion on a night like this; but the physical contentment, the
+reaction from bodily torture, drugged her sensibilities. She closed
+her eyes lazily again and listened to the wind howling outside with
+the never-ceasing accompaniment of beating rain. She was content to
+revel in that feeling of luxury that only the snugly housed can know.
+
+A sound in the room roused her. She opened her eyes as lazily as she
+had closed them, expecting to find the tinker there replenishing the
+fire; instead--She sat up with a jerk, speechless, rubbing her eyes
+with two excited fists, intent on proving the unreality of what she
+had seen; but when she looked again there it was--the clean-cut
+figure of a man immaculate in white summer flannels.
+
+The blood rushed to Patsy's face; mortification, dread, sank into her
+very soul; the drug of physical contentment had lost its power. For
+the first time in her life she was dominated by the dictates of
+convention. She cursed her irresponsible love of vagabondage along
+with her freedom of speech and manner and her lack of conservative
+judgment. These had played her false and shamed her womanhood.
+
+The Patsys of this world are not given to trading on their charm or
+powers of attraction to win men to them--it is against their creed of
+true womanhood. Moreover, a man counts no more than a woman in their
+sum total of daily pleasure, and when they choose a comrade it is for
+human qualities, not sexualities. And because of this, this
+particular Patsy felt the more intensely the humiliation and
+challenge of the moment. She hated herself; she hated the man,
+whoever he might be; she hated the tinker for his share in it all.
+
+Anger loosened her tongue at last. "Who, in the name of Saint
+Bridget, are ye?" she demanded.
+
+And the man in white flannels threw back his head and laughed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+WHEN TWO WERE NOT COMPANY
+
+
+The laughter would have proved contagious to any except one in
+Patsy's humor; and, as laughing alone is sorry business, the man soon
+sobered and looked over at Patsy with the merriment lingering only in
+his eyes.
+
+"By Willie Shakespeare, it's the duke's daughter in truth!"
+
+The words made little impression on her; it was the laugh and voice
+that puzzled her; they were unmistakably the tinker's. But there was
+nothing familiar about face, figure, or expression, although Patsy
+studied them hard to find some trace of the man she had been
+journeying with.
+
+With a final bewildered shake of the head her eyes met his coldly,
+mockingly. "My name is Patricia O'Connell"--her voice was crisp and
+tart; "it's the Irish for a short temper and a hot one. Now maybe you
+will have the grace to favor me with yours."
+
+"Just the tinker," he complied, amiably, "and very much at your
+service." This was accompanied by a sweeping bow.
+
+Patsy had marked that bow on two previous occasions, and it testified
+undeniably to the man's identity. Yet Patsy's mind balked at
+accepting it; it was too galling to her pride, too slanderous of her
+past judgment and perceptibilities. A sudden rush of anger brought
+her to her feet, and, coming over to the opposite side of the hearth,
+she faced him, flushed, determined, and very dignified. It is to be
+doubted if Patsy could have sustained the latter with any degree of
+conviction if she could have seen herself. Straying strands of still
+damp hair curled bewitchingly about her face, bringing out the
+roundness of cheek and chin and the curious, guileless expression of
+her eyes. Moreover, the coquettish gown she wore was entrancing; it
+was a light blue, tunic affair with wide baby collar and cuffs, and a
+Roman girdle; and she had found stockings to match, with white
+buckskin pumps. It had been blind chance on her part--this making of
+a toilet, but the effect was none the less adorable--and condemning
+to dignity.
+
+This was evidently appreciated by the tinker, for his face was an odd
+mixture of grotesque solemnity and keen enjoyment. Patsy was
+altogether too flustered to diagnose his expression, but it added
+considerably to the temperature of the O'Connell temper. In view of
+the civilized surroundings and her state of dignity Patsy had taken
+to King's English with barely a hint of her native brogue.
+
+"If you are the tinker--and I presume you are--I should very much
+appreciate an explanation. Would you mind telling me how you happened
+to be hanging onto that stump, in rags, and looking half-witted when
+I--when I came by?"
+
+"Why--just because I was a tinker," he laughed.
+
+"Then what are you now?"
+
+"Once a tinker, always a tinker. I'm just a good-for-nothing; good to
+mend other people's broken pots, and little else; knowing more about
+birds than human beings, and poor company for any one saving the very
+generous-hearted."
+
+Patsy stamped her foot. "Why can't you play fair? Isn't it only
+decent to tell who you are and what you were doing on the road when I
+found you?"
+
+"You know as well as I what I was doing--hanging onto the stump and
+trying to gather my wits. And don't you think it would be nicer if
+you talked Irish? It doesn't make a lad feel half as comfortable or
+as much at home when he is addressed in such perfect English."
+
+Patsy snorted. "In a minute I'll not be addressing you at all. Do you
+think, if I had known you were what you are, I would ever have been
+so--so brazen as to ask for your company and tramp along with you
+for--_two_ days--or be here, now? Oh!" she finished, with a groan and
+a fierce clenching of her fists.
+
+"No, I don't think so. That's why I didn't hurry about gathering up
+the wits; it seemed more sociable without them. I wouldn't have
+bothered with them now, only I couldn't stay in those rags any
+longer; it wouldn't have been kind to the furniture or the people who
+own it. These togs were the only things that came anywhere near to
+fitting me; and, somehow, a three-days' beard didn't match them.
+Lucky for me, Heaven blessed the house with a good razor, and,
+presto! when the beard and the rags were gone the wits came back. I'm
+awfully sorry if you don't like them--the wits, I mean."
+
+"Sure, ye must be!" Unconsciously Patsy had stepped back onto her
+native sod and her tongue fairly dripped with irony. "So ye thought
+ye'd have a morsel o' fun at the expense of a strange lass, while ye
+laughed up your sleeve at how clever ye were."
+
+"See here! don't be too hard, please! That foolishness was real
+enough; I had just been knocked over the head by the kind gentleman
+from whom I borrowed the rags. I paid him a tidy sum for the use of
+them, and evidently he thought it was a shame to leave me burdened
+with the balance of my money. Arguing wouldn't have done any good, so
+he took the simplest way--just sandbagged me and--"
+
+"Was it much money?"
+
+"Mercy, no! Just a few dollars, hardly worth the anaesthesia."
+
+"And ye were--half-witted, then?"
+
+"Half? A bare sixteenth! It wasn't until afternoon--until we reached
+the church at the cross-roads--that I really came into full
+possession--" The sentence trailed off into an inexplicable grin.
+
+"And after that, 'twas I played the fool." Patsy's eyes kindled.
+
+The tinker grew serious; he dug his hands deep into his capacious
+white flannels as if he were very much in earnest. "Can't you
+understand? If I hadn't played foolish you would never have let me
+wander with you--you just said so. I knew that, and I was selfish,
+lonely--and I didn't want to give you up. You can't blame me. When a
+man meets with genuine comradeship for the first time in his
+life--the kind he has always wanted, but has grown to believe doesn't
+exist--he's bound to win a crumb of it for himself, it costs no
+more than a trick of foolishness. Surely you understand?"
+
+"Oh, I understand! I'm understanding more and more every minute--'tis
+the gift of your tongue, I'm thinking--and I'm wondering which of us
+will be finding it the pleasantest." She flashed a look of
+unutterable scorn upon him. "If ye were not half-witted, would ye
+mind telling me how we came to be taking the wrong road at the
+church?"
+
+The tinker choked.
+
+"Aye, I thought so. Ye lied to me."
+
+"No, not exactly; you see--" he floundered helplessly.
+
+"Faith! don't send a lie to mend a lie; 'tis poor business, I can
+promise ye."
+
+"Well,"--the tinker's tone grew dogged--"was it such a heinous sin,
+after all, to want to keep you with me a little longer?"
+
+The fire in Patsy's eyes leaped forth at last. "Sin, did ye
+say? Faith! 'tis the wrong name ye've given it entirely. 'Twas
+amusement, ye meant; the fun of trading on a girl's ignorance
+and simple-heartedness; the trick of getting the good makings of
+a tale to tell afterward to other fine gentlemen like yourself."
+
+"So you think--"
+
+"Aye, I think 'twas a joke with ye--from first to last. Maybe ye
+made a wager with some one--or ye were dared to take to the road in
+rags--or ye did it for copy; ye're not the first man who has done the
+like for the sake of a new idea for a story. 'Twas a pity, though, ye
+couldn't have got what ye wanted without making a girl pay with her
+self-respect."
+
+The tinker winced, reaching out a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong;
+no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and
+fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere--in any
+company--without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one
+atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked
+your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been--what you
+are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the
+same wish to keep it."
+
+But Patsy's comprehension was strangely deaf.
+
+"'Tis easy enough trimming up poor actions with grand words. There'd
+have been no need of risking anything if ye had set me on the right
+road this morning; I would have been in Arden now, where I belong.
+But that wasn't your way. 'Twas a grand scheme ye had--whatever it
+might be; and ye fetch me away afore the town is up and I can ask the
+road of any one; and ye coax me across pastures and woods, a far cry
+from passing folk and reliable information; and ye hold me,
+loitering the day through, till ye have me forgetting entirely why I
+came, along with the promise laid on me, and the other poor
+lad--Heaven help him!"
+
+"Oho!" The tinker whistled unconsciously.
+
+"Oho!" mimicked Patsy; "and is there anything so wonderfully strange
+in a lass looking after a lad? Sure, I'm hating myself for not
+minding his need better; and, Holy Saint Michael, how I'm hating ye!"
+She ran out of the room and up the stairway.
+
+The tinker was after her in a twinkling. He reached the foot of the
+stairs before she was at the top. "Please--please wait a minute," he
+pleaded. "If there's another--lad, a lad you--love, that I have kept
+you from--then I hate myself as much as you do. All I can say is that
+I didn't think--didn't guess; and I'm no end sorry."
+
+Patsy leaned over the banisters and looked down at him through eyes
+unmistakably wet. "What does it matter to ye if he's the lad I love
+or not? And can't a body do a kindness for a lad without loving him?"
+
+"Thank Heaven! she can. You have taught me that miracle--and I don't
+believe the other lad will grudge me these few hours, even if you do.
+Who knows? My need may have been as great as his."
+
+Patsy frowned. "All ye needed was something soft to dull your wits
+on; what he's needing is a father--and mother--and sweetheart--and
+some good 1915 bonds of human trust."
+
+The tinker folded his arms over the newel-post and smiled. "And do
+you expect to be able to supply them all?"
+
+"God forbid!" Patsy laughed in spite of herself.
+
+And the tinker, scoring a point, took courage and went on: "Don't you
+suppose I realize that you have given me the finest gift a stranger
+can have--the gift of honest, unconditional friendship, asking no
+questions, demanding no returns? It is a rare gift for any man--and I
+want to keep it as rare and beautiful as when it was given. So please
+don't mar it for me--now. Please--!" His hands went out in earnest
+appeal.
+
+The anger was leaving Patsy's face; already the look of comradeship
+was coming back in her eyes; her lips were beginning to curve in the
+old, whimsical smile. And the tinker, seeing, doubled his courage.
+"Now, won't you please forgive me and come down and get some supper?"
+
+She hesitated and, seeing that her decision was hanging in the
+balance, he recklessly tried his hand at tipping the scales in his
+favor. "I'm no end of a good forager, and I've rooted out lots of
+things in tins and jars. You must be awfully hungry; remember, it's
+hours since our magical breakfast with the lady's-slippers."
+
+Patsy's fist banged the railing with a startling thud. "I'll never
+break fast with ye again--never--never--never! Ye've blighted the
+greenest memory I ever had!" And with that she was gone, slamming the
+door after her by way of dramatic emphasis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a forlorn and dejected tinker that returned alone to the empty
+hearthside. The bright cheer of the fire had gone; the room had
+become a place of shadows and haunting memories. For a long time he
+stood, brutally kicking one of the fire-dogs and snapping his fingers
+at his feelings; and then, being a man and requiring food, he went
+out into the pantry where he had been busily preparing to set forth
+the hospitality of the house when Patsy had wakened.
+
+But before he ate he found a tray and covered it with the best the
+pantry afforded. He mounted the stairs with it in rather a lagging
+fashion, being wholly at sea concerning the temperature of his
+reception. His conscience finally compromised with his courage, and
+he put the tray down outside Patsy's door.
+
+It was not until he was half-way down the stairs again that he called
+out, bravely, "Oh--I say--Miss--O'Connell; you'd better change your
+mind and eat something."
+
+He waited a good many minutes for an answer, but it came at last; the
+voice sounded broken and wistful as a crying child's. "Thank--you!"
+and then, "Could ye be after telling me how far it is from here to
+Arden?"
+
+"Let me see--about--seven miles;" and the tinker laughed; he could
+not help it.
+
+The next instant Patsy's door opened with a jerk and the tray was
+precipitated down the stairs upon him. It was the conclusive evidence
+of the O'Connell temper.
+
+But the tinker never knew that Patsy wept herself remorsefully to
+sleep; and Patsy never knew that the last thing the tinker did that
+night was to cut a bedraggled brown coat and skirt and hat into
+strips and burn them, bit by bit. It was not altogether a pleasant
+ceremony--the smell of burning wool is not incense to one's nostrils;
+and the tinker heaved a deep sigh of relief as the last flare died
+down into a heap of black, smudgy embers.
+
+"That Green County sheriff will have a long way to go now if he's
+still looking for a girl in a brown suit," he chuckled.
+
+Sleep laid the O'Connell temper. When Patsy awoke her eyes were as
+serene as the patches of June sky framed by her windows, and she felt
+at peace with the world and all the tinkers in it.
+
+"'Twould be flattering the lad too much entirely to make up with him
+before breakfast; but I'll be letting him tramp the road to Arden
+with me, and we'll part there good friends. Troth, maybe he was a bit
+lonesome," she added by way of concession.
+
+She sprang out of bed with a glad little laugh; the day had a grand
+beginning, spilling sunshine and bird-song into every corner of her
+room, and to Patsy's optimistic soul a good beginning insured a
+better ending. As she dressed she planned that ending to her own
+liking and according to the most approved rules of dramatic
+construction: The tinker should turn out a wandering genius, for in
+her heart she could not believe the accusations she had hurled
+against him the night past; when they reached Arden they would come
+upon the younger Burgeman, contemplating immediate suicide; this
+would give her her cue, and she would administer trust and a general
+bracer with one hand as she removed the revolver with the other; in
+gratitude he would divulge the truth about the forgery--he did it to
+save the honor of some lady--after which the tinker would sponsor
+him, tramping him off on the road to take the taste of gold out of
+his mouth and teach him the real meaning of life.
+
+Patsy had no difficulty with her construction until she came to the
+final curtain; here she hesitated. She might trail off to find King
+Midas and square Billy with him, or--the curtain might drop leaving
+her right center, wishing both lads "God-speed." Neither ending was
+entirely satisfactory, however; the mental effect of the tinker going
+off with some one else--albeit it was another lad--was anything but
+satisfying.
+
+The house was strangely quiet. Patsy stopped frequently in her
+playmaking to listen for some sounds of human occupancy other than
+her own, but there was none.
+
+"Poor lad! Maybe I killed him last night when I kicked the tea-things
+down the stairs after him; or, most likely, the O'Connell temper has
+him stiffened out with fear so he daren't move hand or foot."
+
+A moment later she came down the stairs humming, "Blow, blow, thou
+winter wind," her eyes dancing riotously.
+
+Now, by all rights, dramatic or otherwise, the tinker should have
+been on hand, waiting her entrance. But tinker there was none;
+nothing but emptiness--and a breakfast-tray, spread and ready for
+her in the pantry.
+
+Curiosity, uneasiness mastered her pride and she
+called--once--twice--several times. But there came no answering sound
+save the quickening of her own heart-beats under the pressure of her
+held breath.
+
+She was alone in the house.
+
+A feeling of unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back
+to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post--for
+all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of
+the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel
+more deserted--more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an
+easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind,
+impersonal disaster. When it was a matter of deliberate, intentional
+human motives--it became well-nigh unbearable. Had the tinker gone to
+be rid of her company and her temper? Had he decided that the road
+was a better place without her? Maybe he had taken the matter of the
+other lad too seriously--and, thinking them sweethearts, had counted
+himself an undesired third, and betaken himself out of their ways.
+Or--maybe--he was fearsome of constables--and had hurried away to
+cover his trail and leave her safe.
+
+"Maybe a hundred things," moaned Patsy, disconsolately; "maybe 'tis
+all a dream and there's no road and no quest and no Rich Man's son
+and no tinker, and no anything. Maybe--I'll be waking up in another
+minute and finding myself back in the hospital with the delirium
+still on me."
+
+She closed her eyes, rubbed them hard with two mandatory fists, then
+opened them to test the truth of her last remark; and it happened
+that the first object they fell on was a photograph in a carved
+wooden frame on the mantel-shelf in the room across the hall. It was
+plainly visible from where Patsy stood by the stairs--it was also
+plainly familiar. With a run Patsy was over there in an instant, the
+photograph in her hands.
+
+"Holy Saint Patrick, 'tis witchcraft!" she cried under her breath.
+"How in the name of devils--or saints--did he ever get this taken,
+developed, printed, and framed--between the middle of last night and
+the beginning of this morning!"
+
+For Patsy was looking down at a picture of the tinker, in white
+flannels, with head thrown back and laughing.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION
+
+
+With the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house
+suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a
+quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left
+spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in
+the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation,
+three meals--a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she
+was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch
+when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at
+her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room
+after room she searched, closet after closet.
+
+In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she
+passed them slowly--so slowly that her hands brushed them with a
+friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she
+returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had
+left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and
+consequently told no tales.
+
+"'Tis plain enough what's happened," she said, soberly, to the
+sparrows who were skirmishing for crumbs. "Just as I said, he was
+fearsome of those constables, after all, and he's escaped in my
+clothes!"
+
+The picture of the tinker's bulk trying to disguise itself behind
+anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible
+for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter
+which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like
+fog before a clearing wind.
+
+"Anyhow, if he hasn't worn them he's fetched them away as a wee
+souvenir of an O'Connell; and if I'm to reach Arden in any degree of
+decency 'twill have to be in stolen clothes."
+
+But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her
+promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected
+state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So
+she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white "middy" suit and a
+dark-blue "Norfolk." The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a
+sigh, for a woman's a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has
+not a marked preference for the more becoming frock?
+
+Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and
+put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced
+over the broken window by the runaway tinker, she turned the knob of
+the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold.
+It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no
+lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf.
+With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed
+the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen
+Norfolk.
+
+"Sure, he promised his company to Arden," she said, by way of
+stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and
+this time she closed the door behind her.
+
+The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate
+where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was
+no way of Patsy's telling from what direction she had come or where
+Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun
+wrathfully. "I'll be bound you're in league with the tinker; 'tis all
+a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me
+just seven miles from it. That's a grand number--seven."
+
+A glint of white on the grass caught her eye; she stooped and found
+it to be a diminutive quill feather dropped by some passing pigeon.
+It lay across her palm for a second, and then--the whim taking
+her--she shot it exultantly into the air. Where it fell she marked
+the way it pointed, and that was the road she took.
+
+It was beginning to seem years ago since she had sat in Marjorie
+Schuyler's den listening to Billy Burgeman's confession of a crime
+for which he had not sounded in the least responsible. That was on
+Tuesday. It was now Friday--three days--seventy-two hours later. She
+preferred to think of it in terms of hours--it measured the time
+proportionally nearer to the actual feeling of it. Strangely enough,
+it seemed half a lifetime instead of half a week, and Patsy could not
+fathom the why of it. But what puzzled her more was the present
+condition of Billy Burgeman, himself. As far as she was concerned he
+had suddenly ceased to exist, and she was pursuing a Balmacaan coat
+and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or--at most--they were
+supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder
+she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more
+persistently did it elude her--slipping through her mental grasp like
+so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing
+something, feeling something--the simplest human emotion--and the
+result was an absolute blank.
+
+And all the while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the
+road--a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A
+dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet
+beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that
+pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like
+the left-behind cottage, the road became unexpectedly lonely and
+discouraging.
+
+"The devil take them both!" she sputtered at last. "When one man
+refuses to be real at all, and the other pesters ye with being too
+real--'tis time to quit their company and let them fetch up where and
+how they like."
+
+But an O'Connell is never a quitter; and deep down in Patsy's heart
+was the determination to see the end of the road for all three of
+them--if fate only granted the chance.
+
+She came to a cross-roads at length. She had spied it from afar and
+hailed it as the end of her troubles; now she would learn the right
+way to Arden. But Patsy reckoned without chance--or some one else.
+The sign-boards had all been ripped from their respective places on a
+central post and lay propped up against its base. There was little
+information in them for Patsy as she read: "Petersham, five miles;
+Lebanon, twelve miles; Arden, seven miles--"
+
+The last sign went spinning across the road, and Patsy dropped on a
+near-by stone with the anguish of a great tragedian. "Seven
+miles--seven miles! I'm as near to it and I know as much about it as
+when I started three days ago. Sure, I feel like a mule, just, on a
+treadmill, with Billy Burgeman in the hopper."
+
+A feeling of utter helplessness took possession of her; it was as if
+her experiences, her actions, her very words and emotions, were
+controlled by an unseen power. Impulse might have precipitated her
+into the adventure, but since her feet had trod the first stretch of
+the road to Arden chance had sat somewhere, chuckling at his own
+comedy--making, while he pulled her hither and yon, like a marionette
+on a wire. Verily chance was still chuckling at the incongruity of
+his stage setting: A girl pursuing a strange man, and a strange
+sheriff pursuing the girl, and neither having an inkling of the
+pursuit or the reason for it.
+
+On one thing her mind clinched fast, however: she would at least sit
+where she was until some one came by who could put her right, once
+and for all; rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief--she would stop
+whoever came first.
+
+The arpeggio of an automobile horn brought her to her feet; the next
+moment the machine careened into sight and Patsy flagged it from the
+middle of the road, the lines of her face set in grim determination.
+
+"Would you kindly tell me--" she was beginning when a girl in the
+tonneau cut her short:
+
+"Why, it's Patsy O'Connell! How in the name of your blessed Saint
+Patrick did you ever get so far from home?"
+
+The car was full of young people, but the girl who had spoken was the
+only one who looked at all familiar. Patsy's mind groped out of the
+present into the past; it was all a blind alley, however, and led
+nowhere.
+
+The girl, seeing her bewilderment, helped her out. "Don't you
+remember, I was with Marjorie Schuyler in Dublin when you were all so
+jolly kind to us? I'm Janet Payne--those awful 'Spitsburger
+Paynes'"--and the girl's laugh rang out contagiously.
+
+The laugh swept Patsy's mind out into the open. She reached out and
+gripped the girl's hand. "Sure, I remember. But it's a long way from
+Dublin, and my memory is slower at hearkening back than my heart. A
+brave day to all of you." And her smile greeted the carful
+indiscriminately.
+
+"Oh!"--the girl was apologetic--"how beastly rude I am! I'm
+forgetting that you don't know everybody as well as everybody knows
+you. Jean Lewis, Mrs. Dempsy Carter, Dempsy Carter, Gregory Jessup,
+and Jay Clinton--Miss Patricia O'Connell, of the Irish National
+Players. We are all very much at your service--including the car,
+which is not mine, but the Dempsy Carters'."
+
+"Shall we kidnap Miss O'Connell?" suggested the owner. "She appears
+an easy victim."
+
+Janet Payne clapped her hands, but Patsy shook a decided negative.
+"That's the genius of the Irish," she laughed; "they look easy till
+you hold them up. I'm bound for Arden, and must make it by the
+quickest road if you'll point it out to me."
+
+"Why, of course--Arden; that accounts for you perfectly. Stupid that
+I didn't think of it at once. What part are you playing?" Janet Payne
+accompanied the question with unmistakable eagerness.
+
+Patsy shot a shrewd glance at the girl. Was she indulging in
+good-natured banter, or had she learned through Marjorie Schuyler of
+Patsy's self-imposed quest, and was seeking information in figurative
+speech? Patsy decided in favor of the former and answered it in kind:
+"Faith! I'm not sure whether I've been cast for the duke's
+daughter--or the fool. I can tell ye better after I reach Arden." And
+she turned abruptly as if she would be gone.
+
+But the girl held her back. "No, you don't. We are not going to lose
+you like that. We'll kidnap you, as Dempsy suggested, till after
+lunch; then we'll motor you back to Arden. You'll get there just
+about as soon."
+
+Patsy had not the slightest intention of yielding; her mind and her
+feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now;
+but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that
+scattered her resolutions like so much chaff.
+
+"You've simply got to come, Miss O'Connell." And he leaned over the
+side of the car in boyish enthusiasm. "Last summer Billy Burgeman
+used to read to me the parts of Marjorie's letters that told about
+you, and they were great! We were making up our minds to go to
+Ireland and see if you were real when your company came to America.
+After that Marjorie would never introduce us after the plays, just to
+be contrary. You wouldn't have the heart to grudge us a little
+acquaintanceship now, would you?"
+
+"Billy Burgeman," repeated Patsy. "Do you know him?"
+
+Dempsy Carter interposed. "They're chums, Miss O'Connell. I'll wager
+there isn't a soul on earth that knows Billy as well as Greg does."
+
+"That's hard on Marjorie, isn't it?" asked Janet Payne.
+
+"Oh, hang Marjorie!" The sincerity of Gregory Jessup's emotion
+somewhat excused his outburst.
+
+"Why, I thought they were betrothed!" Patsy looked innocent.
+
+"They were. What they are now--Heaven only knows! Marjorie Schuyler
+has gone to China, and Billy has dropped off the face of the earth."
+
+A sudden silence fell on the cross-roads. It was Patsy who broke it
+at last. "Well?" A composite, interrogative stare came from the
+carful. Patsy laughed bewitchingly. "For a crowd of rascally
+kidnappers, you are the slowest I ever saw. Troth, in Ireland they'd
+have it done in half the time."
+
+The next instant Patsy was lifted bodily inside, and, amid a general
+burst of merriment, the car swung down the road.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a picnic lunch--an elaborate affair put up in a hamper, a
+fireless cooker, and a thermos basket; and it was spread on a tiny,
+fir-covered peninsula jutting out into a diminutive lake. It was an
+enchanting spot and a delicious lunch, with good company to boot;
+but, to her annoyance, Patsy found herself continually comparing it
+unfavorably with a certain vagabond breakfast garnished with yellow
+lady's-slippers, musicianed by throstles, and served by a tinker.
+
+"Something is on your mind, or do you find our American manners and
+food too hard to digest comfortably?" Gregory Jessup had curled up
+unceremoniously at her feet, balancing a caviar sandwich, a Camembert
+cheese, and a bottle of ale with extraordinary dexterity.
+
+"I was thinking about--Billy Burgeman."
+
+He cast a furtive look toward the others beyond them. They seemed
+engrossed for the moment in some hectic discussion over fashions, and
+he dropped his voice to a confidential pitch: "I can't talk Billy
+with the others; I'm too much cut up over the whole thing to stand
+hearing them hold an autopsy over Billy's character and motives." He
+stopped abruptly and scanned Patsy's face. "I believe a chap could
+turn his mind inside out with you, though, and you'd keep the
+contents as faithfully as a safe-deposit vault."
+
+Patsy smiled appreciatively. "Faith! you make me feel like Saint
+Martin's chest that Satan himself couldn't be opening."
+
+"What did he have in it?"
+
+"Some good Christian souls."
+
+"Contents don't tally--mine are some very un-Christian thoughts." He
+abandoned the sandwich and cheese, and settled himself to the more
+serious business of balancing his remarks. "Billy and I work for the
+same engineering firm; he walked out for lunch Tuesday and no one has
+seen him since--unless it's Marjorie Schuyler. Couldn't get anything
+out of the old man when I first went to see him, and now he's too ill
+to see any one. Marjorie said she really didn't know where he was,
+and quit town the next day. Now maybe they don't either of them know
+what's happened any more than I do; but I think it's infernally queer
+for a man to disappear and say nothing to his father, the girl he's
+engaged to, or his best friend. Don't you?"
+
+Patsy's past training stood stanchly by her. She played the part of
+the politely interested listener--nothing more--and merely nodded her
+head.
+
+"You see," the man went on, "Billy has a confoundedly queer sense of
+honor; he can stretch it at times to cover nearly everybody's
+calamities and the fool shortcomings of all his acquaintances. Why,
+it wasn't a month ago a crowd of us from the works were lunching
+together, and the talk came around to speculating. Billy's hard
+against it on principle, but he happened to say that if he was going
+in for it at all he'd take cotton. What was in Billy's mind was not
+the money in it, but the chance to give the South a boost. Well, one
+of the fellows took it as a straight tip to get rich from the old
+man's son and put in all he had saved up to be married on; lost it
+and squealed. And Billy--the big chump--claimed he was responsible
+for it--that, being the son of his father, he ought to know enough to
+hold his tongue on some subjects. He made it good to the fellow. I
+happen to know, for it took every cent of his own money and his next
+month's salary into the bargain--and that he borrowed from me."
+
+"Wouldn't his father have helped him out?"
+
+Gregory Jessup gave a bitter little laugh. "You don't know the old
+man or you wouldn't ask. He is just about as soft-hearted and human
+as a Labrador winter. I've known Billy since we were both little
+shavers--and, talk about the curse of poverty! It's a saintly
+benediction compared to a fortune like that and life with the man who
+made it."
+
+"And--himself, Billy--what does he think of money?"
+
+"I'll tell you what he said once. He had dropped in late after a big
+dinner where he had been introduced to some one as the fellow who was
+going to inherit sixty millions some day. Phew! but he was sore! He
+walked miles--in ten-foot laps--about my den, while he cursed his
+father's money from Baffin Bay to Cape Horn. 'I tell you, Greg,' he
+finished up with, 'I want enough to keep the cramps out of life,
+that's all; enough to help the next fellow who's down on his luck;
+enough to give the woman I marry a home and not a residence to live
+in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for
+them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough
+myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions,
+I'd like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.'"
+
+For a moment Patsy's eyes danced; but the next, something tumbled out
+of her memory and quieted them. "Then why in the name of Saint
+Anthony did he choose to marry Marjorie Schuyler?"
+
+"That does seem funny, I know, but that's a totally different side of
+Billy. You see, all his life he's been falling in with people who
+made up to him just for his money, and his father had a confounded
+way of reminding him that he was bound to be plucked unless he kept
+his wits sharp and distrusted every one. It made Billy sick, and yet
+it had its effect. He's always been mighty shy with girls--reckon his
+father brought him up on tales of rich chaps and modern Circes.
+Anyway, when he met Marjorie Schuyler it was different--she had too
+much money of her own to make his any particular attraction, and he
+finally gave in that she liked him just for himself. That was a proud
+day for him, poor old Bill!"
+
+"And did she--could she really love him?" Patsy asked the question of
+herself rather than the man beside her.
+
+But he answered it promptly: "I don't believe Marjorie Schuyler has
+anything to love with; it was overlooked when she was made. That's
+what's worrying me. If he's got into a scrape he'd tell Marjorie the
+first thing; and she's not the understanding, forgiving kind. He
+hasn't any money; he wouldn't go to his father; and because he's
+borrowed from me once, he's that idiotic he wouldn't do it again. If
+Marjorie has given him his papers he's in a jolly blue funk and
+perfectly capable of going off where he'll never be heard of again.
+Hang it all! I don't see why he couldn't have come to me?"
+
+Patsy said nothing while he replenished her plate and helped himself
+to another sandwich. At last she asked, casually, "Did the two of you
+ever have a disagreement over Marjorie Schuyler?"
+
+"He asked me once just what I thought of her, and I told him. We
+never discussed her again."
+
+"No?" Inwardly Patsy was tabulating why Billy Burgeman had not gone
+to his friend when Marjorie Schuyler failed him. He would hardly have
+cared to criticize the shortcomings of the girl he loved with the man
+who had already discovered them.
+
+"What are you two jabbering about?" Janet Payne had left her group
+and the hectic argument over fashions.
+
+"Sure, we're threshing out whether it's the Irish or the suffragettes
+will rule England when the war is over."
+
+"Well, which is it?"
+
+"Faith! the answer's so simple I'm ashamed to give it. The women will
+rule England--that's an easy matter; but the Irish will rule the
+women."
+
+"Then you are one of the old-fashioned kind who approves of a lord
+and master?" Gregory Jessup looked up at her quizzically.
+
+"'Tis the new fashion you're meaning; having gone out so long since,
+'tis barely coming in yet. I'd not give a farthing for the man who
+couldn't lead me; only, God help him! if he ever leaves his hands off
+the halter."
+
+The laugh that followed gave Patsy time to think. There was one more
+question she must be asking before the others joined them and the
+conversation became general. She turned to Janet Payne with a little
+air of anxious inquiry.
+
+"Maybe you'd ask the rascally villain who kidnapped me, when he has
+it in his mind to keep his promise and fetch me to Arden?"
+
+As the girl left them Patsy turned toward Gregory Jessup again and
+asked, softly: "Supposing Billy Burgeman has fallen among strangers?
+If they saw he was in need of friendliness, would it be so hard to do
+him a kindness?"
+
+The man shook his head. "The hardest thing in the world. Billy
+Burgeman has been proud and lonely all his life, and it's an infernal
+combination. You may know he's out and out aching for a bit of
+sympathy, but you never offer it; you don't dare. We could never get
+him to own up as a little shaver how neglected and lonely he was and
+how he hated to stay in that horrible, gloomy Fifth Avenue house. It
+wasn't until he had grown up that he told me he used to come and play
+as often as they would let him--just because mother used to kiss him
+good-by as she did her own boys."
+
+Gregory Jessup looked beyond the firs to the little lake, and there
+was that in his face which showed that he was wrestling with a
+treasured memory. When he spoke again his voice sounded as if he had
+had to grip it hard against a sign of possible emotion.
+
+"You know Billy's father never gave him an allowance; he didn't
+believe in it--wouldn't trust Billy with a cent. Poor little
+shaver--never had anything to treat with at school, the way the rest
+of the boys did; and never even had car-fare--always walked, rain or
+shine, unless his father took him along with him in the machine.
+Billy used to say even in those days he liked walking better. Mother
+died in the winter--snowy time--when Billy was about twelve; and he
+borrowed a shovel from a corner grocer and cleared stoops all
+afternoon until he'd made enough to buy two white roses. Father
+hadn't broken down all day--wouldn't let us children show a tear; but
+when Billy came in with those roses--well, it was the children who
+finally had to cheer father up."
+
+Patsy sprang to her feet with a little cry. "I must be going." She
+turned to the others, a ring of appeal in her voice. "Can't we hurry
+a bit? There's a deal of work at Arden to be done, and no one but
+myself to be doing it."
+
+"Rehearsals?" asked Janet Payne.
+
+And Patsy, unheeding, nodded her head.
+
+There was a babel of nonsense in the returning car. Patsy contributed
+her share the while her mind was busy building over again into a
+Balmacaan coat and plush hat the semblance of a man.
+
+"Sure, I'm not saying I can make out his looks or the color of his
+eyes and hair, but he's real, for all that. Holy Saint Patrick, but
+he's a real man at last, and I'm liking him!" She smiled with deep
+contentment.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+JOSEPH JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY
+
+
+Having established the permanent reality of Billy Burgeman to her own
+satisfaction, Patsy's mind went racing off to conjure up all the
+possible things Billy and the tinker might think of each other as
+soon as chance should bring them together. Whereas it was perfectly
+consistent that Billy should shun the consolation and companionship
+of his own world, he might follow after vagabond company as a thirsty
+dog trails water; and who could slake that thirst better than the
+tinker? For a second time that day she pictured the two swinging down
+the open road together; and for the second time she pulled a wry
+little smile.
+
+The car was nearing the cross-roads from which Patsy had been
+originally kidnapped. She looked up to identify it, and saw a second
+car speeding toward them from the opposite direction, while between
+the two plodded a solitary little figure, coming toward them,
+supported by a mammoth pilgrim staff. It was a boy, apparently
+conscious of but the one car--theirs; and he swerved to their
+left--straight into the path of the car behind--to let them pass.
+They sounded their horns, waved their hands, and shouted warnings. It
+seemed wholly unbelievable that he should not understand or that the
+other car would not stop. But the unbelievable happened; it does
+sometimes.
+
+Before Gregory Jessup could jump from their machine the other car had
+struck and the boy was tossed like a bundle of empty clothing to the
+roadside beyond. The nightmarish suddenness of it all held them
+speechless while they gaped at the car's driver, who gave one
+backward glance and redoubled his speed. Patsy was the first out of
+the tonneau, and she reached the boy almost as soon as Gregory
+Jessup.
+
+"Damn them! That's the second time in my life I've seen a machine run
+some one down and sneak--"
+
+He broke off at Patsy's sharp cry: "Holy Mary keep him! 'Tis the wee
+lad from Lebanon!"
+
+By this time the rest of the carful had gathered about them; and
+Dempsy Carter--being a good Catholic--bared his head and crossed
+himself.
+
+"'Tis wee Joseph of Lebanon," Patsy repeated, dully; and then to
+Dempsy Carter, "Aye, make a prayer for him; but ye'd best do it
+driving like the devil for the doctor."
+
+They left at once with her instructions to get the nearest doctor
+first, and then to go after the boy's parents. Gregory Jessup stayed
+behind with her, and together they tried to lift the still, little
+figure onto some rugs and pillows. Then Patsy crept closer and wound
+her arms about him, chafing his cheeks and hands and watching for
+some sign of returning life.
+
+The man stood silently beside them, holding the pilgrim staff, while
+his eyes wandered from Patsy to the child and back to Patsy again,
+her face full of harboring tenderness and a great suffering as she
+gathered the little boy into her arms and pressed her warm cheek
+against the cold one.
+
+Only once during their long wait was the silence broken. "'Tis almost
+as if he'd slipped over the border," Patsy whispered. "Maybe he's
+there in the gray dusk--a wee shadow soul waiting for death to loosen
+its wings and send it lilting into the blue of the Far Country."
+
+"How did you happen to know him?"
+
+"Chance, just. I stopped to tell him a tale of a wandering hero and
+he--" She broke off with a little moan. "_Ochone!_ poor wee Joseph!
+did I send ye forth on a brave adventure only to bring ye to this?"
+Her fingers brushed the damp curls from his forehead. "Laddy, laddy,
+why didn't ye mind the promise I laid on ye?"
+
+The doctor was kindly and efficient, but professionally
+non-committal. The boy was badly injured, and he must be moved at
+once to the nearest house. Somehow they lifted Joseph and held him so
+as to break the jar of stone and rut as the doctor drove his car as
+carefully as he could down the road leading to the nearest
+farm-house.
+
+There they were met with a generous warmth of sympathy and
+hospitality; the spare chamber was opened, and the farm wife bustled
+about, turning down the bed and bringing what comforts the house
+possessed. The doctor stayed as long as he could; but the stork was
+flying at the other end of the township, and he was forced to leave
+Patsy in charge, with abundant instructions.
+
+Soon after his leaving the Dempsy Carters returned without Joseph's
+parents; they had gone to town and were not expected home until
+"chore time."
+
+"All right," Patsy sighed. "Now ye had best all go your ways and I'll
+bide till morning."
+
+"But can you?" Janet Payne asked it, wonderingly. "I thought you said
+you had to be in Arden to-day?"
+
+A smile, whimsical and baffling, crept to the corners of Patsy's
+mouth. "Sure, life is crammed with things ye think have to be done
+to-day till they're matched against a sudden greater need. Chance and
+I started the wee lad on his journey, and 'twas meant I should see
+him safe to the end, I'm thinking. Good-by."
+
+Gregory Jessup lingered a moment behind the others; his eyes were
+suspiciously red, and the hands that gripped Patsy's shook the least
+bit. "I wanted to say something: If--if you should ever happen to run
+up against Billy Burgeman--anywhere--don't be afraid to do him a
+kindness. He--he wouldn't mind it from you."
+
+Patsy leaned against the door and watched him go. "There's another
+good lad. I'd like to be finding him again, too, some day." She
+pressed her hands over her eyes with a fierce little groan, as if she
+would blot out the enveloping tragedy along with her surroundings.
+"Faith! what is the meaning of life, anyway? Until to-day it has
+seemed such a simple, straight road; I could have drawn a fair map of
+it myself, marking well the starting-point and tracing it reasonably
+true to the finish. But to-night--to-night--'tis all a tangle of
+lanes and byways. There's no sign-post ahead--and God alone knows
+where it's leading."
+
+She went back to the spare chamber and took up her watching by the
+bedside; and for the rest of that waning day she sat as motionless
+as everything else in the room. The farm wife came and went softly,
+in between her preparations for supper. When it was ready she tried
+her best to urge Patsy down-stairs for a mouthful.
+
+But the girl refused to stir. "I couldn't. The wee lad might come
+back while I was gone and find no one to reach him a hand or smile
+him a welcome."
+
+A little later, as the dark gathered, she begged two candles and
+stood them on the stand beside the bed. Something in her movements or
+the flickering light must have pierced his stupor, for Joseph moaned
+slightly and in a moment opened his eyes.
+
+Patsy leaned over him tenderly; could she only keep him content until
+the mother came and guard the mysterious borderland against all fear
+or pain, "Laddy, laddy," she coaxed, "do ye mind me--now?"
+
+The veriest wisp of a smile answered her.
+
+"And were ye for playing Jack yourself, tramping off to find the
+castle with a window in it for every day in the year?" Her voice was
+full of gentle, teasing laughter, the voice of a mother playing with
+a very little child. "I'm hoping ye didn't forget the promise--ye
+didn't forget to ask for the blessing before ye went, now?"
+
+No sound came; but the boy's lips framed a silent "No." In another
+moment his eyes were drooping sleepily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night had come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and
+katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the
+kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away
+murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or
+team upon the road; but there was none.
+
+Again the lids fluttered and opened; this time Joseph smiled
+triumphantly. "I thought--p'r'aps--I hadn't found you--after
+all--there was--so many ways--you might ha' went." He moistened his
+lips. "At the cross-roads--I wasn't quite--sure which to be takin',
+but I took--the right one, I did--didn't I?"
+
+There was a ring of pride in the words, and Patsy moistened her lips.
+Something clutched at her throat that seemed to force the words back.
+"Aye," she managed to say at last.
+
+"An' I've--found you now--you'll have to--promise me not to go
+back--not where they can get you. Si Perkins said--as how they'd soon
+forget--if you just stayed away long enough." The boy looked at her
+happily. "Let's--let's keep on--an' see what lies over the next
+hill."
+
+To Patsy this was all an unintelligible wandering of mind; she must
+humor it. "All right, laddy, let's keep on. Maybe we'll be finding a
+wood full of wild creatures, or an ocean full of ships."
+
+"P'r'aps. But I'd rather--have it a big--big city. I never--saw a
+city."
+
+"Aye, 'tis a city then"--Patsy's tone carried conviction--"the
+grandest city ever built; and the towers will be touching the clouds,
+and the streets will be white as sea-foam; and there will be a great
+stretch of green meadow for fairs--"
+
+"An' circuses?"
+
+"What else but circuses! And at the entrance there will be a gate
+with tall white columns--"
+
+The sound Patsy had been listening for came at last through the open
+windows: the pad-pad-pad of horses' hoofs coming fast.
+
+Joseph looked past Patsy and saw for the first time the candles by
+his bed. His eyes sparkled. "They _are_--woppin' big columns--an' at
+night--they have lighted lamps on top--all shinin'. Don't they?"
+
+"Aye, to point the way in the dark."
+
+"It's dark--now." The boy's voice lagged in a tired fashion.
+
+"Maybe we'd best hurry--then."
+
+A door slammed below, and there was a rustle of tongues.
+
+"Who'll be 'tendin' the city gates?" asked Joseph.
+
+"Who but the gatekeeper?"
+
+Muffled feet crept up the stairs.
+
+"Will he let us in?"
+
+"He'll let ye in, laddy; I might be too much of a stranger."
+
+"But I could speak for you. I--I wouldn't like--goin' in alone in the
+dark."
+
+"Bless ye! ye'd not be alone." Patsy's voice rang vibrant with
+gladness. "Now, who do you think will be watching for ye, close to
+the gate? Look yonder!"
+
+Joseph's eyes went back to the candles, splendid, tall columns they
+were, with beacon lamps capping each. "Who?"
+
+Dim faces looked at him through the flickering light; but there was
+only one he saw, and it brought the merriest smile to his lips.
+
+"Why--'course it's mother--sure's shootin'!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early the next morning Patsy waited on the braided rug outside the
+spare chamber for Joseph's mother to come out.
+
+"I've been praying ye'd not hate me for the tale I told the little
+lad that day, the tale that brought him--yonder. And if it isn't
+overlate, I'd like to be thanking ye for taking me in that night."
+
+The woman looked at her searchingly through swollen lids. "I cal'ate
+there's no thanks due; your man paid for your keep; he sawed and
+split nigh a cord o' wood that night--must ha' taken him 'most till
+mornin'." She paused an instant. "Didn't--he"--she nodded her head
+toward the closed door behind her--"never tell you what brought him?"
+
+"Naught but that he wanted to find me."
+
+"He believed in you," the woman said, simply, adding in a toneless
+voice: "I cal'ate I couldn't hate you. I never saw any one make death
+so--sweet like--as you done for--him."
+
+Patsy spread her hands deprecatingly. "Why shouldn't it be sweet
+like? Faith! is it anything but a bit of the very road we've been
+traveling since we were born, the bit that lies over the hill and out
+of sight?" She took the woman's work-worn hands in hers. "'Tis
+terrible, losing a little lad; but 'tis more terrible never having
+one. God and Mary be with ye!"
+
+When Patsy left the house a few minutes later Joseph's pilgrim staff
+was in her hands, and she stopped on the threshold an instant to ask
+the way of Joseph's father.
+
+The good man was dazed with his grief and he directed Patsy in terms
+of his own home-going: "Keep on, and take the first turn to your
+right."
+
+So Patsy kept on instead of returning to the cross-roads; and chance
+scored another point in his comedy and continued chuckling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Joseph's father went back to the spare chamber.
+
+"'S she gone?" inquired Joseph's mother.
+
+"Yep."
+
+"You know, the boy believed in her."
+
+"Yep, I know."
+
+"Well, I cal'ate we've got to, too."
+
+"Sure thing!"
+
+"Ye'll never say a word, then--about seein' her; nuthin' to give the
+sheriff a hint where she might be?"
+
+"Why, mother!" The man laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at
+her with accusing eyes. "Hain't you known me long enough to know I
+couldn't tell on any one who'd been good to--" He broke off with a
+cough. "And what's more, do you think any one who could take our
+little boy's hand and lead him, as you might say, straight to
+heaven--would be a thief? No, siree!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim
+staff gripped tightly in her hand. She clung to it as the one
+tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of
+her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth
+had swallowed him, leaving behind no reason for his going, no hope of
+his coming again; Billy Burgeman was still but a flimsy promise; and
+Joseph had outstripped them both, passing beyond her farthest vision.
+Small wonder, then, that the road was lonely and haunted for Patsy,
+and that she plodded along shorn of all buoyancy.
+
+Her imagination began playing tricks with her. Twice it seemed as if
+she could feel a little lad's hand, warm and eager, curled under hers
+about the staff; another time she found herself gazing through
+half-shut eyes at a strange lad--a lad of twelve--who walked ahead
+for a space, carrying two great white roses; and once she glanced up
+quickly and saw the tinker coming toward her, head thrown back and
+laughing. Her wits had barely time to check her answering laugh and
+hands outstretching, when he faded into empty winding road.
+
+The morning was uneventful. Patsy stopped but once--to trundle a
+perambulator laden with washing and twins for its small conductor, a
+mite of a girl who looked almost too frail to breast the weight of a
+doll's carriage.
+
+Even Patsy puffed under the strain of the burden. "How do you do it?"
+she gasped.
+
+"Well, I started when them babies was tiny and the washin' was small;
+an' they both growed so gradual I didn't notice--much. An' ma don't
+make me hurry none."
+
+"How many children are there?"
+
+"Nine. Last's just come. Pa says he didn't look on him as no
+blessin', but ma says the Lord must provide--an' if it's babies, then
+it's babies." She stopped and clasped her hands after the fashion of
+an ancient grandmother tottering in the nineties: "Land o' goodness,
+I do think an empty cradle's an awful dismal thing to have round.
+Don't you?"
+
+Patsy agreed, and a moment later unloaded the twins and the washing
+for the child at her doorstep.
+
+Soon after this she caught her first glimpse of the town she was
+making. "If luck will only turn stage-manager," she thought, "and put
+Billy Burgeman in the center of the scene--handy, why, I'll promise
+not to murder my lines or play under."
+
+It was not luck, however, but chance, still pulling the wires; and
+accordingly he managed Patsy's entrance as he wished.
+
+The town had one main street, like Lebanon, and in front of the
+post-office in a two-seated car sat a familiar figure. There was the
+Balmacaan coat and the round plush hat; and to Patsy, impulsive and
+heart-strong, it sufficed. She ran nearly the length of the street in
+her eagerness to reach him.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AND CHANCE STAGES MELODRAMA INSTEAD OF COMEDY
+
+
+"A brave day to ye!" A little bit of everything that made Patsy was
+wrapped in the smile she gave the man in the Balmacaan coat standing
+by the wheel-guard of the car before the town post-office, a hand on
+the front seat. "Maybe ye're not knowing it, but it's a rare good day
+for us both. If you'll only take me for a spin in your car I'll tell
+you what brings me--and who I am--if you haven't that guessed
+already."
+
+Plainly the occupant of the coat and the car was too much taken by
+surprise to guess. He simply stared; and by that stare conveyed a
+heart-sinking impression to Patsy. She looked at the puffed eyes and
+the grim, unyielding line of the mouth, and she wanted to run. It
+took all the O'Connell stubbornness, coupled with the things Gregory
+Jessup had told her about his friend, to keep her feet firm to the
+sidewalk and her resolution.
+
+"Maybe," she thought, "he's just taken on the look of a rascal
+because he thinks the world has written him down one. That's often
+the way with a man; and often it takes but a bit of kindness to
+change it. If I could make him smile--now--"
+
+Her next remark accomplished this, but it did not mend matters a
+whit. Patsy's heart turned over disconsolately; and she was
+safety-locking her wits to keep them from scattering when she made
+her final plea.
+
+"I'm not staying long, and I want to know you; there's something I
+have to be saying before I go on my way. 'Twould be easiest if you'd
+take me for a ride in your car; we could talk quieter there."
+
+She tried to finish with a reasonably cheerful look, but it was a
+tragic failure. The man was looking past her to the post-office
+beyond, and the things Patsy had seemed to feel in his face suddenly
+rose to the surface and revealed themselves with an instant's
+intensity. Patsy followed the look over her shoulder and shrank away
+perceptibly.
+
+In the doorway of the office stood another man, younger and
+more--pronounced. It could mean but one thing: Billy Burgeman had
+lost his self-respect along with Marjorie Schuyler and had fallen in
+with foul company.
+
+There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust
+and failure--natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion
+and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity.
+She had met a few of them in her life; but--thank God!--there were
+only a few.
+
+She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just
+what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him
+understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite
+of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested
+kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was
+a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who
+could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead
+friend was too fine to be lost out of life's credit-sheet.
+
+She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she
+climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim
+staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for
+his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter,
+and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the
+doorway:
+
+"Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with--a lady." There
+was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.
+
+"Please take a quiet road--where there will not be much passing,"
+commanded Patsy.
+
+She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were
+well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands
+still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the
+king's English--she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy
+of her own tongue.
+
+"I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you
+this way. But when a man's family and betrothed fail him--why, some
+one must--make it up--"
+
+He turned fiercely. "How did you know that?"
+
+"I--she--Never mind; I know, that's all. And I came, thinking maybe
+you'd be glad--"
+
+"Of another?" he laughed coarsely, looking her over with an
+appraising scrutiny. "Well, a fellow might have a worse--substitute."
+
+Patsy crimsoned. It seemed incredible that the man she had listened
+to that day in Marjorie Schuyler's den, who had then gripped her
+sympathies and thereby pulled her after him in spite of past illness
+and all common sense, should be the man speaking now. And yet--what
+was it Gregory Jessup had said about him? Had he not implied that old
+King Midas had long ago warped his son's trust in women until he had
+come to look upon them all as modern Circes? And gradually shame for
+herself changed into pity for him. What a shabby performance life
+must seem to such as he!
+
+She had an irresistible desire to take him with her behind the scenes
+and show him what it really was; to point out how with a change of
+line here, a new cue there, and a different drop behind; with a
+choice of fellow-players, and better lights, and the right spirit
+back of it all--what a good thing he could make of his particular
+part. But would he see--could she make him understand? It was worth
+trying.
+
+"You are every bit wrong," she said, evenly. "Look at me. Do I look
+like an adventuress? And haven't you ever had anybody kind to you
+simply because they had a preference for kindness?"
+
+The two looked at each other steadily while the machine crawled at
+minimum speed down the deserted road. Her eyes never flinched under
+the blighting weight of his, although her heart seemed to stop a
+hundred times and the soul of her shrivel into nothing.
+
+"Well," she heard herself saying at last, "don't you think you can
+believe in me?"
+
+The man laughed again, coarsely. "Believe in you? That's precisely
+what I'm doing this minute--believing in your cleverness and a deuced
+pretty way with you. Now don't get mad, my dear. You are all
+daughters of Eve, and your intentions are very innocent--of course."
+
+Pity and sympathy left Patsy like starved pensioners. The eyes
+looking into his blazed with righteous anger and a hating distrust;
+they carried to him a stronger, more direct message than words could
+have done. His answer was to double the speed of the car.
+
+"Stop the car!" she demanded.
+
+"Oh, ho! we're getting scared, are we? Repenting of our haste?" The
+grim line of his mouth became more sinister. "No man relishes a
+woman's contempt, and he generally makes her pay when he can. Now I
+came for pleasure, and I'm going to get it." An arm shot around Patsy
+and held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where he
+wished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. "Remember,
+I can prove you asked me to take you--and it was your choice--this
+nice, quiet spin!"
+
+She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously he
+relaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint and
+muscle.
+
+"Why didn't you scream?" he sneered at length.
+
+"I'm keeping my breath--till there's need of it."
+
+Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road;
+the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signs
+of human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see a
+suspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed for
+repairs--something, anything to bring to an end this hideous,
+nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all.
+She--Patricia O'Connell--who would have starved rather than play
+cheap, sordid melodrama--had been tricked by chance into becoming an
+actual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt no
+fear--she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the man
+beside her--and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger had
+crowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps--back of
+everything--she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency and
+good in him.
+
+Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. "Well, what's in
+your mind?" he snapped.
+
+"Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your father
+throw so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everything
+about you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came to
+have a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses."
+
+"What in thunder are you talking--"
+
+But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he had
+given up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his hold
+and was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantically to a
+figure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was a
+grotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of its
+head.
+
+"Good God!" muttered the man in the car, stiffening.
+
+Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed;
+the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge,
+and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinker
+was upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.
+
+Patsy sank back on the seat, white and trembling, as she watched the
+instant's grappling of the two, followed by a lurching tumble over
+the side of the car to the planking. The fall knocked them apart, and
+for the space of a few quick breaths they half rose and faced each
+other--the one almost crazed with fury, the other steady, calm, but
+terrifyingly determined.
+
+Before Patsy could move they were upon each other again--rolling
+about in the dust, clutching at each other's throat--now half under
+the car, now almost through the girders of the bridge, with Patsy's
+voice crying a warning. Again they were on their feet, grappling and
+hitting blindly; then down in the dust, rolling and clutching.
+
+It was plain melodrama of the most banal form; and the most
+convincing part of it all was the evident personal enmity that
+directed each blow. Somehow it was borne in upon Patsy that her share
+in the quarrel was an infinitesimal part; it was the old, old scene
+in the fourth act: the hero paying up the villain for all past
+scores.
+
+Like the scene in the fourth act, it came to an end at last. The time
+came when no answering blow met the tinker's, when the hand that
+gripped his throat relaxed and the body back of it went down under
+him--breathless and inert. Patsy climbed out of the car to make room
+for the stowing away of its owner. He was conscious, but past
+articulate speech and thoroughly beaten; and the tinker kindly turned
+the car about for him and started him slowly off, so as to rid the
+road of him, as Patsy said. It looked possible, with a careful
+harboring of strength and persistence, for him to reach eventually
+the starting-point and his friend of the post-office. As his trail of
+dust lengthened between them Patsy gave a sigh of relieved content
+and turned to the tinker.
+
+"Faith, ye are a sight for a sore heart." Her hand slid into his
+outstretched one. "I'll make a bargain with ye: if ye'll forgive and
+forget the unfair things I said to ye that night I'll not stay hurt
+over your leaving without notice the next morning."
+
+"It's a bargain," but he winced as he said it. "It seems as if our
+meetings were dependent on a certain amount of--of physical
+disablement." He smiled reassuringly. "I don't really mind in the
+least. I'd stand for knockout blows down miles of road, if they would
+bring you back--every time."
+
+"Don't joke!" Patsy covered her face. "If--if ye only knew--what it
+means to have ye standing there this minute!" She drew in her breath
+quickly; it sounded dangerously like a sob. "If ye only knew what ye
+have saved me from--and what I am owing ye--" Her hands fell, and she
+looked at him with a sudden shy concern. "Poor lad! Here ye are--a
+fit subject for a hospital, and I'm wasting time talking instead of
+trying to mend ye up. Do ye think there might be water hereabouts
+where we could wash off some of that--grease paint?"
+
+But the tinker was contemplating his right foot; he was standing on
+the other. "Don't bother about those scratches; they go rather well
+with the clothes, don't you think? It's this ankle that's bothering
+me; I must have turned it when I jumped."
+
+"Can't ye walk on it? Ye can lean on this"--she passed him the
+pilgrim staff--"and we can go slowly. Bad luck to the man! If I had
+known ye were hurt I'd have made ye leave him in the road and we'd
+have driven his machine back to Arden for him." She looked longingly
+after the trail of dust.
+
+"Your ethics are questionable, but your geography is worse. Arden
+isn't back there."
+
+"What do ye mean? Why, I saw Arden, back yonder, with my own
+eyes--not an hour ago."
+
+"No, you didn't. You saw Dansville; Arden is over there," and the
+tinker's hand pointed over his shoulder at right angles to the road.
+
+"Holy Saint Branden!" gasped Patsy. "Maybe ye'll have the boldness,
+then, to tell me I'm still seven miles from it?"
+
+"You are." But this time he did not laugh--a smile was the utmost he
+could manage with the pain in his ankle.
+
+Patsy looked as if she might have laughed or cried with equal ease.
+"Seven miles--seven miles! Tramp the road for four days and be just
+as near the end as I was at the start--" An expression of
+enlightenment shot into her face. "Faith, I must have been going in a
+circle, then."
+
+The tinker nodded an affirmative.
+
+"And who in the name of reason was the man in the car?"
+
+"That's what I'd like to know; the unmitigated nerve of him!" he
+finished to himself. His chin set itself squarely; his face had grown
+as white as Patsy's had been and his eyes became doggedly determined.
+"If it isn't a piece of impertinence, I'd like to ask how you
+happened to be with him, that way?"
+
+Patsy flushed. "I'm thinking ye've earned the right to an answer. I
+took him for the lad I was looking for. I thought the place was
+Arden, and--and the clothes were the same."
+
+"The clothes!" the tinker repeated it in the same bewildered way that
+had been his when Patsy first found him; then he turned and grasped
+Patsy's shoulders with a sudden, inexplicable intensity. "What's the
+name of the lad--the lad you're after?"
+
+"I'll tell you," said Patsy, slowly, "if you'll tell me what you did
+with my brown clothes that morning before you left."
+
+And the answer to both questions was a blank, baffling stare.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+A CHANGE OF NATIONALITY
+
+
+The railroad ran under the suspension-bridge. Patsy could see the
+station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it
+as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured.
+The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten
+minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the
+telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished--after a fashion,
+and with persistent rebelling on the tinker's part and scolding on
+Patsy's. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to
+physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering hands,
+threw it over the bridge, and started down the road at his old,
+swinging stride.
+
+"Is it after more lady's-slippers ye're dandering?" called Patsy.
+
+"More likely it's after a pair of those winged shoes of Perseus; I'll
+need them." But his stride soon broke to a walk and then to a
+lagging limp. "It's no use," he said at last; "I might keep on for
+another half-mile, a mile at the most; but that's about all I'd be
+good for. You'll have to go on to Arden alone, and you can't miss it
+this time."
+
+Patsy stopped abruptly. "Why don't ye curse me for the trouble I have
+brought?" She considered both hands carefully for a minute, as if she
+expected to find in them the solution to the difficulty, then she
+looked up and away toward the rising woodland that marked Arden.
+
+"Do ye know," she said, wistfully, "I took the road, thinking I could
+mend trouble for that other lad; and instead it's trouble I've been
+making for every one--ye, Joseph, and I don't know how many more. And
+instead of doling kindness--why, I'm begging it. Now what's the
+meaning of it all? What keeps me failing?"
+
+"'There's a divinity that shapes'--" began the tinker.
+
+But Patsy cut him short. "Ye do know Willie Shakespeare!"
+
+He smiled, guiltily. "I'm afraid I do--known him a good many years."
+
+"He's grand company; best I know, barring tinkers." She turned
+impulsively and, standing on tiptoe, her fingers reached to the top
+of his shoulders. "See here, lad, ye can just give over thinking
+I'll go on alone. If I'm cast for melodrama, sure I'll play it
+according to the best rules; the villain has fled, the hero is hurt,
+and if I went now I'd be hissed by the gallery. I've got ye into
+trouble and I'll not leave ye till I see ye out of it--someway. Oh,
+there's lots of ways; I'm thinking them fast. Like as not a passing
+team or car would carry ye to Arden; or we might beg the loan of a
+horse for a bit from some kind-hearted farmer, and I could drive ye
+over and bring the horse back; or we'll ask a corner for ye at a
+farm-house till ye are fit to walk--"
+
+"We are in the wrong part of the country for any of those things to
+happen. Look about! Don't you see what a very different road it is
+from the one we took in the beginning?"
+
+Patsy looked and saw. So engrossed had she been in the incidents of
+the last hour or more that she had not observed the changing country.
+Here were no longer pastures, tilled fields, houses with neighboring
+barn-yards, and unclaimed woodland; no longer was the road fringed
+with stone walls or stump fencing. Well-rolled golf-links stretched
+away on either hand as far as they could see; and, beyond, through
+the trees, showed roofs of red tile and stained shingle; and trimmed
+hedges skirted everything.
+
+"'Tis the rich man's country," commented Patsy.
+
+"It is, and I'd crawl into a hole and starve before I'd take charity
+from one of them."
+
+"Sure and ye would. When a body's poor 'tis only the poor like
+himself he'd be asking help of. Don't I know! What's yonder house?"
+She broke off with a jerk and pointed ahead to a small building,
+sitting well back from the road, partly hidden in the surrounding
+clumps of trees.
+
+"It's a stable; house burned down last year and it hasn't been used
+by any one since."
+
+"And I'll wager it's as snug as a pocket inside--with fresh hay or
+straw, plenty to make a lad comfortable. Isn't that grand good luck
+for ye?"
+
+The tinker found it hard to echo Patsy's enthusiasm, but he did his
+best. "Of course; and it's just the place to leave a lad behind in
+when a lass has seven miles to tramp before she gets to the end of
+her journey."
+
+"Is that so?" Patsy's tone sounded suspiciously sarcastic. "Well,
+talking's not walking; supposing ye take the staff in one hand and
+lean your other on me, and we'll see can we make it before this time
+to-morrow."
+
+They made it in another hour, unobserved by the few straggling
+players on the links.
+
+The stable proved all Patsy had anticipated. She watched the tinker
+sink, exhausted, on the bedded hay, while she pulled down a forgotten
+horse-blanket from a near-by peg to throw over him; then she turned
+in a business-like manner back to the door.
+
+"Are you going to Arden?" came the faint voice of the tinker after
+her.
+
+"I might--and then again--I mightn't. Was there any word ye might
+want me to fetch ahead for ye?"
+
+"No; only--perhaps--would you think a chap too everlastingly
+impertinent to ask you to wait there for him--until he caught up with
+you?"
+
+"I might--and then again--I mightn't." At the door she stopped, and
+for the second time considered her hands speculatively. "It wouldn't
+inconvenience your feelings any to take charity from me, would it,
+seeing I'm as poor as yourself and have dragged ye into this common,
+tuppenny brawl by my own foolishness?"
+
+"You didn't drag me in; I had one foot in already."
+
+"I thought so," Patsy nodded, approvingly; her conviction had been
+correct, then. "And the charity?"
+
+"Yes, I'd take it from you." The tinker rolled over with a little
+moan composed of physical pain and mental discomfort. But in another
+moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as
+she disappeared through the door. "Remember--no help from the
+quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming
+around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of
+assistance to a--beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you
+bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down about me.
+Remember!"
+
+"Aye," she called back; "I'll be remembering."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She reached the road again; and for the manyeth time since she left
+the women's free ward of the City Hospital she marshaled all the
+O'Connell wits. But even the best of wits require opportunity, and to
+Patsy the immediate outlook seemed barren of such.
+
+"There's naught to do but keep going till something turns up," she
+said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter.
+She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned
+house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of
+thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a
+cross-road. She looked to the right--it was empty. She looked to the
+left--and behold there was "Opportunity," large, florid, and
+agitated, coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed
+houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight of herself and
+her bag.
+
+"Ze depot--how long ees eet?" she demanded, when she caught sight of
+Patsy.
+
+The accent was unmistakably French, and Patsy obligingly answered her
+in her mother-tongue. "I cannot say exactly; about three--four
+kilometers."
+
+"Opportunity" dropped her bag and embraced her. "Oh!" she burst out,
+volubly. "Think of Zoe Marat finding a countrywoman in this wild
+land. _Moi_--I can no longer stand it; and when madame's temper goes
+_pouffe_--I say, it is enough; let madame fast or cook for her
+guests, as she prefer. I go!"
+
+"_Eh, bien!_" agreed the outer Patsy, while her subjective
+consciousness addressed her objective self in plain Donegal: "Faith!
+this is the maddest luck--the maddest, merriest luck! If yonder
+Quality House has lost one cook, 'twill be needing another; and 'tis
+a poor cook entirely that doesn't hold the keys of her own pantry.
+Food from Quality House needn't be choking the maddest tinker, if
+it's paid for in honest work."
+
+Having been embraced by "Opportunity," Patsy saw no reason for
+wasting time in futile sympathy that might better be spent in prompt
+execution. She despatched the woman to the station with the briefest
+of directions and herself made straight for Quality House.
+
+She was smiling over her appearance and the incongruities of the
+situation as she rang the bell at the front door and asked for
+"Madame" in her best parisien.
+
+The maid, properly impressed, carried the message at once; and
+curiosity brought madame in surprising haste to the hall, where she
+looked Patsy over with frank amazement.
+
+"Madame speak French? Ah, I thought so. Madame desires a
+cook--_voila!_"
+
+The abruptness of this announcement turned madame giddy. "How did you
+know? Mine did not leave half an hour ago; there isn't another French
+cook within five miles; it is unbelievable."
+
+"It is Providence." Patsy cast her eyes devoutly heavenward.
+
+"You have references--"
+
+"References!" Patsy shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "What
+would madame do with references? She cannot eat them; she cannot feed
+them to her guests. I can cook. Is that not sufficient?"
+
+"But--you do not think--It is impossible that I ever employ a servant
+without references. And you--you look like anything in the world but
+a French cook."
+
+"Madame is not so foolish as to find fault with the ways of
+Providence, or judge one by one's clothes? Who knows--at this moment
+it may be _a la mode_ in Paris for cooks to wear sailor blouses.
+Besides, madame is mistaken; I am not a servant. I am an artist--a
+culinary artist."
+
+"You can cook, truly?"
+
+"But yes, madame!"
+
+"Excellent sauces?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_--Bechamel--Hollandaise--chaud-froid--maitre
+d'hotel--Espagnole--Bearnaise--" Patsy completed the list with an
+ecstatic kiss blown into the air.
+
+Madame sighed and spoke in English: "It is unbelievable--absurd. I
+shouldn't trust my own eyes or palate if I sat down to-night to the
+most remarkable dinner in the world; but one must feed one's guests."
+She looked Patsy over again. "Your trunk?"
+
+"Trunk? Is it toilettes or sauces madame wishes me to make for her
+guests? _Ma foi!_ Trunks--references--one is as unimportant as the
+other. Is it not enough for the present if I cook for madame?
+Afterward--" She ended with the all-expressive shrug.
+
+Evidently madame conceded the point, for without further comment she
+led the way to the kitchen and presented the bill of fare for dinner.
+
+"'For twelve,'" read Patsy. "And to-morrow is Sunday. Ah, Providence
+is good to madame, _mais-oui?_"
+
+But madame's thoughts were on more practical matters. "Your wages?"
+
+"One hundred francs a week, and the kitchen to myself. I, too, have a
+temper, madame." Patsy gave a quick toss to her head, while her eyes
+snapped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night the week-end guests at Quality House sat over their
+coffee, volubly commenting on the rare excellence of their dinner and
+the good fortune of their hostess in her possession of such a cook.
+Madame kept her own counsel and blessed Providence; but she did not
+allow that good fortune to escape with her better judgment--or
+anything else. She ordered the butler, before retiring, to count the
+silver and lock it in her dressing-room; this was to be done every
+night--as long as the new cook remained.
+
+And the new cook? Her work despatched, and her kitchen to herself,
+she was free to get dinner for one more of madame's guests.
+
+"Faith! he'd die of a black fit if he ever knew he was a guest of
+Quality House--and she'd die of another if she found out whom she
+was entertaining. But, glory be to Peter! what neither of them knows
+won't hurt them." And Patsy, unobserved, opened the back door and
+retraced the road to the deserted stable with a full basket and a
+glad heart.
+
+She found the tinker under some trees at the back, smoking a
+disreputable cuddy pipe with a worse accompaniment of tobacco. When
+he saw her he removed it apologetically.
+
+"It smells horrible, I know. I found it, forgotten, on a ledge of the
+stable, but it keeps a chap from remembering that he is hungry."
+
+"Poor lad!" Patsy knelt on the ground beside him and opened her
+basket. "Put your nose into that, just. 'Tis a nine-course dinner and
+every bit of the best. Faith! 'tis lucky I was found on a Brittany
+rose-bush instead of one in Heidelberg, Birmingham, or Philadelphia;
+and if ye can't be born with gold in your mouth the next best thing
+is a mixing-spoon."
+
+"Meaning?" queried the tinker.
+
+"Meaning--that there's many a poor soul who goes hungry through life
+because she is wanting the knowledge of how to mix what's already
+under her nose."
+
+The tinker looked suspiciously from the contents of the basket to
+Patsy, kneeling beside it, and he dropped into a shameless mimicry of
+her brogue. "Aye, but how did she come by--what's under her nose?
+Here's a dinner for a king's son."
+
+"Well, I'll be letting ye play the king's son instead of the fool
+to-night, just, if ye'll give over asking any more questions and
+eat."
+
+"But"--he sniffed the plate she had handed him with added
+suspicion--"roast duck and sherry sauce! Honest, now--have ye been
+begging?"
+
+"No--nor stealing--nor, by the same token, have I murdered any one to
+get the dinner from him." There was fine sarcasm in her voice as she
+returned the tinker's searching look.
+
+"Then where did it come from? I'll not eat a mouthful until I get an
+honest answer." The tinker put the plate down beside him and folded
+his arms.
+
+Patsy snorted with exasperation. "Was I ever saying ye could play the
+king's son? Faith! ye'll never play anything but the fool--first and
+last." Her voice suddenly took on a more coaxing tone; she was
+thinking of that good dinner growing cold--spoiled by the man's
+ridiculous curiosity. "I'll tell ye what--if ye'll agree to begin
+eating, I'll agree to begin telling ye about it--and we'll both agree
+not to stop till we get to the end. But Holy Saint Martin! who ever
+heard of a man before letting his conscience in ahead of his hunger!"
+
+The bargain was made; and while the tinker devoured one plateful
+after another with a ravenous haste that almost discredited his
+previous restraint, Patsy spun a fanciful tale of having found a
+cluricaun under a quicken-tree. With great elaboration and seeming
+regard for the truth, she explained his magical qualities, and
+how--if you were clever enough to possess yourself of his cap--you
+could get almost anything from him.
+
+"I held his cap firmly with the one hand and him by the scruff of the
+neck with the other; and says I to him, 'Little man, ye'll not be
+getting this back till ye've fetched me a dinner fit for a tinker.'
+'Well, and good,' says he, 'but ye can't find that this side of the
+King's Hotel, Dublin; and that will take time.' 'Take the time,' says
+I, 'but get the dinner.' And from that minute till the present I've
+been waiting under that quicken-tree for him to make the trip there
+and back."
+
+Patsy finished, and the two of them smiled at each other with rare
+good humor out under the June stars. Only the tinker's smile was
+skeptical.
+
+"So--ye are not believing me--" Patsy shammed a solemn, grieved look.
+"Well--I'll forgive ye this time if ye'll agree that the dinner was
+good, for I'd hate like the devil to be giving the wee man back his
+cap for anything but the best."
+
+With laggard grace the tinker stretched his hands over the now empty
+basket and gripped Patsy's. "Lass, lass--what are you thinking of me?
+Faith! my manners are more ragged than my clothes--and I'm not fit to
+be a--tinker. The dinner was the best I ever ate, and--bless ye and
+the cluricaun!"
+
+Patsy cooked for three days at Quality House, that the tinker might
+feast night and morning to his heart's content while his ankle slowly
+mended. But he still persisted questioning concerning his food--where
+and how Patsy had come by it; she still maintained as persistent a
+silence.
+
+"I've come by it honestly, and 'tis no charity fare," was the most
+she would say, adding by way of flavor: "For a sorry tinker ye are
+the proudest I ever saw. Did ye ever know another, now, who wanted a
+written certificate of moral character along with every morsel he
+ate?"
+
+According to wage agreement she had the kitchen to herself; no one
+entered except on matters of necessity; no one lingered after her
+work was despatched. Madame came twice daily to confer with Patsy on
+intricacies of gestation, while she beamed upon her as a probationed
+soul might look upon the keeper of the keys of Paradise. But the days
+held more for Patsy than sauces and entrees and pastries; they held
+gossip as well. Soupcons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in
+through open window and swinging door--straight from the dining-room
+and my lady's chamber. Most of it passed her ears, unheeded; it was
+but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and
+baking--until news came at last that concerned herself--gossip of the
+Burgemans, father and son.
+
+The butler and the parlor maid were cleaning the silver in the
+pantry--and the slide was raised. As transmitters of gossip they were
+more than usually concerned, for had not the butler at one time
+served in the house of Burgeman, and the maid dusted next door?
+Therefore every item of news was well ripened before it dropped from
+either tongue, and Patsy gathered them in with eager ears.
+
+The master of Quality House happened to be a director of that bank on
+which the Burgeman check of ten thousand had been drawn. It had been
+the largest check drawn to cash presented at the bank; and the teller
+had confessed to the directors that he would never have paid over the
+money to any one except the old man's son. In fact, he had been so
+much concerned over it afterward that he had called up the Burgeman
+office, and had been much relieved to have the assurance of the
+secretary that the check was certified and perfectly correct. Not a
+second thought would have been given to the matter had not the
+secretary's resignation been made public the next day--the day Billy
+Burgeman disappeared.
+
+Patsy's ears fairly bristled with interest. "That's news, if it is
+gossip. Where is the secretary now? And which of them has the ten
+thousand?"
+
+The director had touched on the subject of the check the next day
+when business had demanded his presence at the Burgeman home. The
+result had been distinctly baffling. Not that the director could put
+his finger on any one suspicious point in the behavior of Burgeman,
+senior; but it left him with the distinct impression that the father
+was shielding the son.
+
+"Aye, that's what Billy said his father would do--shield him out of
+pride." Patsy dusted the flour from her arms and stood motionless,
+thinking.
+
+Burgeman, senior, had offered only one remark to the director, given
+cynically with a nervous jerking of the shoulders and twitching of
+the hands: "He was needing pocket-money, a small sum to keep him in
+shoe-laces and collar-buttons, I dare say. That's the way rich men's
+sons keep their fathers' incomes from getting too cumbersome."
+
+Burgeman, senior, had been ill then--confined to his room; but the
+next day his condition had become alarming. He was now dying at his
+home in Arden and his son could not be found. These last two
+statements were not merely gossip, but facts.
+
+Patsy listened impatiently to the parlor maid arguing the matter of
+Billy's guilt with the butler. Their work was finished, and they were
+passing through the kitchen on their way to the servants' hall.
+
+"Of course he took it"--the maid's tone was positive--"those rich
+men's sons always are a bad lot."
+
+"'E didn't take it, then. 'Is father's playin' some mean game on
+'im--that's what. Hi worked five months hin that 'ouse an' Hi'd as
+lief work for the devil!" And the butler pounded his fist for
+emphasis.
+
+It took all Patsy's self-control to refrain from launching into the
+argument herself, and that in the Irish tongue. She saved herself,
+however, by resorting to that temper of which she had boasted, and
+hurled at the two a torrent of words which sounded to them like the
+most horrible pagan blasphemy, and from which they fled in genuine
+horror. In reality it was the names of all the places in France that
+Patsy could recall with rapidity.
+
+When the kitchen was empty once more Patsy systematically gathered
+together all that she knew and all that she had heard of Billy
+Burgeman, and weighed it against the bare possible chance she might
+have of helping him should she continue her quest. And in the end she
+made her decision unwaveringly.
+
+"Troth! a conscience is a poor bit of property entirely," she sighed,
+as she stood the pate-shells on the ledge of the range to dry. "It
+drives ye after a man ye don't care a ha'penny about, and it drives
+ye from the one that ye do. Bad luck to it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Patsy sat under the trees with the tinker while he ate his
+supper. A half-grown moon lighted the feast for them, for Patsy took
+an occasional mouthful at the tinker's insistence that dining alone
+was a miserably unsociable affair.
+
+"To watch ye eat that pate de fois gras a body would think ye had
+been reared on them. Honest, now, have ye ever tasted one before in
+your life?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Then--ye have sat at rich men's tables?"
+
+"Or perhaps I have begged at rich men's doors. Maybe that is how I
+came to have a distaste for their--charity."
+
+"Who are ye? Ye know I'd give the full of my empty pockets to know
+who ye are, and what started ye tramping the road--in rags."
+
+The tinker considered a moment. "Perhaps I took the road because I
+believed it led to the only place I cared to find. Perhaps I lost the
+way to it, as you lost yours to Arden, and in the losing I
+found--something else. Perhaps--perhaps--oh, perhaps a hundred
+things; but I'll make another bargain with you. I'll tell you all
+about it when we reach Arden, if you'll tell me the name of the lad
+you came to find."
+
+"I'll do more than that--I'll bring ye together and let ye help mend
+him," and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain.
+
+They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted
+down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten
+his hunger.
+
+"Well?" queried Patsy at last. "A ha'penny for them."
+
+"I'm thinking the same old thoughts I've thought a hundred times
+already--since that first day: What makes you so different from
+everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your
+gospel of kindness--on your lips and in your hands?"
+
+"Would ye really like to know?" Patsy's fingers stole through the
+grass about them. "Faith! the world's not so soft and green as this
+under every one's feet. Ye see 'twas by a thorn I was found hanging
+to that Killarney rose-bush in Brittany, and I've always remembered
+the feeling of it."
+
+"I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging
+memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and
+letting the rest of the world hug theirs."
+
+"I don't believe it!" Patsy shook her head fiercely. "What's the use
+of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if
+it can't put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first
+tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn't it
+the best thing in the world?"
+
+"Is it? Can it cure--gold?"
+
+"And why not? If every man had more kindness than he had gold, would
+neighbor ever have to fear neighbor or childther go hungry for love?"
+The tinker did not answer, and Patsy went on with a deepening
+intensity: "I'll tell ye a tale--a foolish tale that keeps repeating
+itself over and over in my memory like the tick-tick-tick of a clock.
+Ye know that the Jesuit Fathers say--give them the care of a child
+till he's ten and nothing afterward matters. Well, it's true; a child
+can feel all the sweetness or bitterness, hunger or plenty, that life
+holds before he is that age even."
+
+Patsy stopped. A veery was singing in the woods close by, and she
+listened for a moment. "Hearken to that bird, now. A good-for-naught
+lad may have stolen his nest, or a cat filched his young, or his sons
+and daughters flown away and left him; but he'll sing, for all that.
+'Tis a pity the rest of us can't do as well."
+
+"Yes," agreed the tinker, "but the story--"
+
+"Aye, the story. It begins with a wee white cottage in Brittany,
+fronted by roses and backed by great cliffs and the open sea." Patsy
+clasped her hands about her knees, while her eyes left the shadow of
+the trees and traveled to the open where the moonlight spread silvery
+clear and unbroken. And the tinker, watching, knew that her eyes were
+seeing the things of which she was telling. "A wee white cottage--the
+roses and the cliffs," repeated Patsy, "and a great, grim, silent
+figure of a man sitting there idle all day, watching a little lass at
+her play. Just the man and the child. And the trouble in his mind
+that had kept the man silent and idle was an old, old trouble--old as
+the peopled world itself.
+
+"Long before, he had married a woman who cared for two things--love
+and gold; and he had but the one to give her. She had been a great
+actress, a favorite at the Comedie Francaise; but she left her work
+and all the applause and adulation for him, an expatriated Irishman
+with naught but a great love, because she thought she cared for love
+more. They had been wonderfully happy at first; he wrote beautiful
+verses about her--and his beloved motherland, and she said them for
+him in that wonderful singing voice of hers that had made her the
+idol of half of France. And she had made a game of their poverty in
+the wee white cottage with the roses--until her child was born and
+poverty could no longer be played at. Then work became drudgery, and
+love naught. The woman went back to her theater--and another man, a
+man who had gold a-plenty. And the child grew up playing alone beside
+the silent, grim Irishman.
+
+"Then one day the child played with no one by to watch her; the man
+had walked over the cliff and forgot ever to come back. Aye, and the
+child played on till dark came and she fell asleep--there on the
+door-sill, under the roses. 'Twas a neighbor, passing, that found
+her, and carried her home to put to bed with her own children. After
+that the child was taken away to a convent, and the rich children
+called her '_la pauvre petite_,' shared their saints'-days' gifts
+with her, and bought her candles that she might make a _novena_ to
+bring her father back again. But 'twas her mother it brought
+instead."
+
+Patsy stopped again to listen to the veery; he was not singing alone
+now, and she smiled wistfully. "See! he's found a friend, a comrade
+to sing with him. That's grand!" Then she went back to the story:
+
+"The child was taken from the convent in the night and by somber-clad
+servants who seemed in a great hurry. She was brought a long way to a
+chateau, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the south of France;
+and a small, shrivel-faced man in royal clothes met her at the door
+and carried her up great marble stairs to a chamber lighted by two
+tall candles, just. They stopped on the threshold for a breath, and
+the child saw that a woman was lying in the canopied bed--a very,
+very beautiful woman. To the child she seemed some goddess--or saint.
+
+"'Here is the child,' said the man; and the woman answered: 'Alone,
+Rene. Remember you promised--alone.'
+
+"After that the man left them together--the dying woman and her
+child. Ah!--how can I be telling you the way she fondled and caressed
+her! How starved were the lips that touched the child's hair, cheeks,
+and eyelids! And when her strength failed she drew the child into her
+tired arms and whispered fragments of prayers, haunting memories,
+pitiful regrets. Of all the things she said the child remembered but
+one: 'Gold buys plenty for the body, but nothing for the
+heart--nothing--nothing!'
+
+"And that kept repeating itself over and over in the child's mind.
+She remembered it all through the night after they had taken her away
+from those lifeless arms and she lay awake alone in a terrifying,
+dark room; she remembered it all through the long day when she sat
+beside the gorgeous catafalque that held her mother, and watched the
+tall candles in the dim chapel burn lower and lower and lower. And
+that was why she refused to stay afterward--and be taken care of by
+the shrivel-faced man in that oldest and most beautiful chateau.
+Instead she slipped out early one morning, before any one was awake
+to see and mark the way she went. It is unbelievable, sometimes, how
+children who have the will to do it can lose themselves. And so this
+child--alone--went out into the world, empty-handed, seeking life."
+
+"But did she go empty-handed?" asked the tinker.
+
+"Aye, but not empty-hearted, thank God!"
+
+"And wherever the child went, she carried with her that hatred of
+gold," mused the tinker.
+
+"Aye; why not? She had learned how pitifully little it was worth,
+when all's said and done. 'Twas her father's name she heard last on
+her mother's lips, and it was their child she prayed for with her
+dying breath." Patsy sprang to her feet. "Do ye see--the moon will be
+beating me to bed, and 'twas a poor tale, after all. How is your
+foot?"
+
+"Better--much better."
+
+"Would ye be able to travel on it to-morrow?"
+
+The tinker shook his head. "The day after, perhaps."
+
+"Well, keep on coaxing it. Good night." And she had picked up her
+basket and was gone before the tinker could stumble to his feet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the tinker woke the next morning the basket stood just inside
+the stable door, linked through the pilgrim's staff. On investigation
+it proved to contain his breakfast and an envelope, and the envelope
+contained a ten-dollar bill and a letter, which read:
+
+     DEAR LAD,--I'll be well on the road when you get this; and
+     with a tongue in my head and luck at my heels, please God,
+     I'll reach Arden this time. You need not be afraid to use
+     the money--or too proud, either. It was honestly earned and
+     the charity of no one; you can take it as a loan or a
+     gift--whichever you choose. Anyhow, it will bring you after
+     me faster--which was your own promise.
+
+                    Yours in advance,
+
+                         P. O'CONNELL
+
+Surprise, disappointment, indignation, amusement, all battled for the
+upper hand; but it was a very different emotion from any of these
+which finally mastered the tinker. He smoothed the bill very tenderly
+between his hands before he returned it to the envelope; but he did
+something more than smooth the envelope.
+
+And meanwhile Patsy tramped the road to Arden.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A MESSAGE AND A MAP
+
+
+This time there was no mistaking the right road; it ran straight past
+Quality House to Arden--unbroken but for graveled driveways leading
+into private estates. Patsy traveled it at a snail's pace. Now that
+Arden had become a definitely unavoidable goal, she was more loath to
+reach it than she had been on any of the seven days since the
+beginning of her quest. However the quest ended--whether she found
+Billy Burgeman or not, or whether there was any need now of finding
+him--this much she knew: for her the road ended at Arden. What lay
+beyond she neither tried nor cared to prophesy. Was it not enough
+that her days of vagabondage would be over--along with the company of
+tinkers and such like? There might be an answer awaiting her to the
+letter sent from Lebanon to George Travis; in that case she could in
+all probability count on some dependable income for the rest of the
+summer. Otherwise--there were her wits. The very thought of them
+wrung a pitiful little groan from Patsy.
+
+"Faith! I've been overworking Dan's legacy long enough, I'm thinking.
+Poor wee things! They're needing rest and nourishment for a while,"
+and she patted her forehead sympathetically.
+
+Of one thing she was certain--if her wits must still serve her, they
+should do so within the confines of some respectable community; in
+other words, she would settle down and work at something that would
+provide her with bed and board until the fall bookings began. And,
+the road and the tinker would become as a dream, fading with the
+summer into a sweet, illusive memory--and a photograph. Patsy felt in
+the pocket of her Norfolk for the latter with a sudden eagerness. It
+had been forgotten since she had found the tinker himself; but, now
+that the road was lengthening between them again, it brought her a
+surprising amount of comfort.
+
+"There are three things I shall have to be asking him--if he ever
+fetches up in Arden, himself," mused Patsy as she loitered along.
+"And, what's more, this time I'll be getting an answer to every one
+of them or I'm no relation of Dan's. First, I'll know the fate of the
+brown dress; he hadn't a rag of it about him--that's certain. Next,
+there's that breakfast with the lady's-slippers. How did he come by
+it? And, last of all, how ever did this picture come on the
+mantel-shelf of a closed cottage where he knew the way of breaking in
+and what clothes would be hanging in the chamber closets? 'Tis all
+too great a mystery--"
+
+"Why, Miss O'Connell--what luck!"
+
+Patsy had been so deep in her musing that a horse and rider had come
+upon her unnoticed. She turned quickly to see the rider dismounting
+just back of her; it was Gregory Jessup.
+
+"The top o' the morning to ye!" She broke into a glad laugh, blessing
+that luck, herself, which had broken into her disquieting thoughts
+and provided at least fair company and some news--perhaps. She held
+out her hand in hearty welcome. "Are ye 'up so early or down so
+late'?"
+
+"I might ask that, myself. Is it the habit of celebrated Irish
+actresses to tramp miles between sun-up and breakfast?"
+
+"'Tis a habit more likely to fasten itself on French cooks, I'm
+thinking," and Patsy smiled.
+
+"Then how is a man to account for you?"
+
+"He'd best not try; I'm a mortial poor person to account for. Maybe
+I'm up early--getting my lines for the next act."
+
+"Of course. What a stupid duffer I am! You must find us plain,
+plodding Americans horribly short-witted sometimes. Don't you?"
+
+Patsy shook a contradiction. "It's your turn, now. What fetched ye
+abroad at this hour?"
+
+Gregory Jessup slipped his arm through the horse's bridle and fell
+into step with her. "Principally because I like the early morning
+better than any other part of the day; it's fresh and sweet and
+unspoiled--like some Irish actresses. There--please don't mind my
+crude attempt at poetic--simile," for Patsy's eyes had snapped
+dangerously. "If you only knew how rarely poetry or compliments ever
+came to roost on this dry tongue, you really wouldn't want to
+discourage them when it does happen. Besides, there was another
+reason for my being up--a downright foolish reason."
+
+Gregory Jessup accompanied the remark with a downright foolish smile,
+and then lapsed into silence. In this fashion they walked to the bend
+of the road where another graveled driveway branched forth; and here
+the horse stopped of his own accord and whinnied.
+
+"This is the Dempsy Carters' place--where I'm stopping," Gregory
+explained.
+
+"Aye, but the other reason?" Patsy reminded him, her eyes friendly
+once more.
+
+"Oh--the other reason; I told you it was a foolish one." He stood
+rubbing his horse's nose and looking over the road they had come for
+some seconds before he finally confessed to it. "It's Billy, you see.
+Somehow it occurred to me that if he should be in trouble and at the
+same time knowing his father was sick--dying--he might be hanging
+around somewhere near here--uncertain just what to do--and not
+wanting any one to see him. In that case, the best time to run across
+him would be early morning before the rest of the people were awake
+and up. Don't you think so?"
+
+"It sounds more sensible than foolish; but I don't think ye'll ever
+find him that way. If he was clever enough to let the earth swallow
+him up, he's clever enough to keep swallowed. There's but one way to
+reach him--and it's been in my mind since yester-eve."
+
+A look of surprise came into Gregory Jessup's face. "Why, Miss
+O'Connell! I had no idea what I said that day would fasten Billy on
+your mind like this. It's awfully good of you; and he's a perfect
+stranger--"
+
+Patsy broke in with a whimsical chuckle. "Aye, I've grown overpartial
+to strangers of late; but ye hearken to me. Ye'll have to leave a
+sign by the roadside for him--if ye want to reach him. Otherwise
+he'll see ye first and be gone before ever ye know he's about."
+
+"What kind of a sign?"
+
+"Faith! I'm not sure of that yet--myself. It must be something that
+will put trust back in a lad and tell him to come home."
+
+"And where would you put it?"
+
+"Where? On the roadside, just, anywhere along the road he's used to
+tramping."
+
+Gregory Jessup's face lost its puzzled frown and became suddenly
+illumined with an inspiration. "I know! By Hec! I've got it! There's
+that path that runs down from the Burgeman estate to our old cottage.
+It was a short cut for us kids, and we were almost the only ones to
+use it. Billy would be far more likely to take that than the
+highroad--and it leads to the Burgeman farm, too, run by an old
+couple that simply adore Billy. He might go there when he wouldn't go
+anywhere else. That's the place for a message. But what message?"
+
+"I know!" Patsy clapped her hands. "Have ye a scrap of paper
+anywheres about ye--and a pencil?"
+
+Hunting through the pockets of his riding-clothes, Gregory Jessup
+discovered a business letter, the back of which provided ample
+writing space, and the stub of a red-ink pencil. "We use 'em in the
+drafting-room," he explained. "If these will do--here's a desk," and
+he raised the end of his saddle, supporting it with a large expanse
+of palm.
+
+Patsy accepted them all with a gracious little nod, and, spreading
+the paper on the improvised desk, she wrote quickly:
+
+     "If it do come to pass
+     That any man turn ass,"
+     Thinking the world is blind
+     And trust forsworn mankind,
+       "Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame":
+     Here shall he find
+     Both trust and peace of mind,
+     An he but leave all foolishness behind.
+
+"With apologies to Willie Shakespeare," Patsy chuckled again as she
+returned paper and pencil to their owner. "Ye put it somewhere he'd
+be likely to look--furninst something that would naturally take his
+notice."
+
+"I know just the spot--and they're in blossom now, too. I'll fasten
+it to a rock, there, wedge it in the cracks. Billy won't miss it if
+he comes within yards of the place." He grasped Patsy's hand with
+growing fervor that gave promise of developing suddenly into almost
+anything. "You're a brick, Miss O'Connell--a solid gold brick of a
+girl, and I wish--"
+
+"Take care!" warned Patsy. "Ye're not improving as fast in your
+compliments as ye might--and there's no poetry in gold--for me."
+
+Gregory Jessup looked puzzled, but his fervor did not abate one whit.
+"I want you to promise me if you ever need a friend--if there is
+anything I can ever do--"
+
+"Ye can," interrupted Patsy, "and ye can do it now. Take that
+riding-crop of yours and draw me a map in the dust there of the
+country hereabouts--ye can make a cross for Arden.... That's grand.
+Now where would ye put Brambleside Inn? And is it seven miles from
+there to Arden?"
+
+Gregory nodded an affirmative while he considered Patsy with grave
+perplexity. Patsy saw it, and smiled reassuringly. "'Tis all right.
+I've always had a great interest entirely to know the geography of
+every new country--and I haven't the wits to discover it for myself.
+Now where would ye put the cross-roads and the Catholic church? And
+where would Lebanon be? Aye--Did ye ever see an old tabby chasing her
+tail? Faith! 'tis a very intelligent spectacle, I'm thinking. Now
+where might ye put the cross-roads where ye picked me up with the
+Dempsy Carters?... And Dansville?... and the railroad bridge? ... and
+the golf links, back yonder?"
+
+She stood for many minutes, studying the rough chart in the dust at
+her feet. The connecting lines of roads between the places named made
+fully a hundred and twenty degrees of a circle about the cross
+marking Arden. And as chance would have it, every one of the
+encircling towns measured approximately seven miles from the central
+cross. Patsy smiled, and the smile grew to a chuckle--and the chuckle
+to a long, rippling laugh. Patsy was forced to hold her sides with
+the ache of it.
+
+"I know ye think I'm crazy--but 'tis the rarest bit of humor this
+side of Ireland. Willie Shakespeare himself would steal it if he
+could to put in one of his comedies. There is just one thing I'd like
+to be knowing--how much of it was chance, and how much was the tricks
+of a tinker?"
+
+"I don't think I understand," mumbled Gregory Jessup.
+
+"Of course ye don't," agreed Patsy. "I don't, myself. But there's one
+thing more I'll be telling ye--if ye'll swear never to let it pass
+your lips?"
+
+Patsy paused for dramatic effect while Gregory Jessup bound himself
+twice over to secrecy. "Well," she said, at length, "'tis this: If I
+had the road to travel again I'd pray to Saint Brendan to keep my
+feet fast to the wrong turn. That's what!"
+
+Patsy left him, still looking after her in a puzzled fashion; and
+with quickening steps she passed out of sight.
+
+But once again did she stop; and again it was by a graveled driveway.
+She was deep in green memories when a figure in nurse's uniform
+coming down the drive caught her attention. She was immediately
+reminded of two facts: that the Burgeman estate was in Arden, and
+that Burgeman senior was dying. Impulsively she turned toward the
+nurse.
+
+"Is Mr. Burgeman any better this morning?"
+
+"We hardly expect that." The nurse's tone was cordial but
+professionally cautious.
+
+"I know"--Patsy nodded wisely, as if she had been following the case
+professionally herself--"but there is often a last rallying of
+strength. Isn't there?"
+
+"Sometimes. I hardly think there will be anything very lasting in Mr.
+Burgeman's case. There are moments, now, when his strength and will
+are remarkably vigorous--any other man would be in his bed."
+
+"Oh! Then he is--up?"
+
+"He's taken about on a wheeled chair or cot. He is too restless to
+stay in any place very long. He seems more contented outdoors, where
+he can watch--" She broke off abruptly. "Lovely morning--isn't it?
+Good-by."
+
+She turned about and went up the drive again. Patsy watched her go, a
+strange, brooding look in her eyes. "So--he likes to be out of doors
+best--where he can be watching. And if a body chanced to trespass
+that way--she might come upon him, sudden like, and stay long enough
+to set him a-thinking. Would it be too late, now, I wonder?"
+
+She resumed her way--and her memories. She passed a half-dozen more
+driveways and she climbed a hill; and when she came to the top she
+found herself looking down on a thickly wooded hamlet. Spires and
+gabled roofs broke the foliage here and there, and on the rising
+slope beyond towered a veritable forest. Patsy stood on the brink of
+the hill and gazed down long and thoughtfully; at last she flung out
+her arms in an impetuous gesture of confirmation, while the old,
+whimsical smile crept into her lips.
+
+"'Aye, now am I in Arden, the more fool I; when I was at home, I was
+in a better place--but travelers must be content.'" And taking a firm
+grip of her memories, her wits, and her courage, she went down the
+hill.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+ENTER KING MIDAS
+
+
+When Patsy at last reached Arden she went direct to the post-office
+and was there confronted by a huge poster occupying an entire wall:
+
+               THE SYLVAN PLAYERS
+
+     Under the Management of Geo. Travis
+
+     Presenting Wm. Shakespeare's Comedy
+
+               "AS YOU LIKE IT"
+
+ In the Forest of Arden, on the Estate of Peterson-Jones, Esq.
+
+The date given was Wednesday, the day following; and the cast
+registered her name opposite Rosalind.
+
+"So that's the answer to the letter I wrote, and a grand answer it
+is. And that's the meaning of Janet Payne's remarks, and I never
+guessed it." She heaved the faintest wisp of a sigh--it might have
+been pleasure; it might have been a twinge of pain. "And I'm to be
+playing the Duke's daughter, after all, at the end of the road."
+
+She went to the general delivery and asked for mail. The clerk
+responded with three letters; Patsy almost whistled under her breath.
+Retiring to a corner, she looked them over and opened first the one
+from George Travis:
+
+     DEAR IRISH PATSY,--You are a lucky beggar, and so am I. Here
+     comes the news of Miriam St. Regis's illness and the
+     canceling of all of her summer engagements in the same mail
+     as your letter.
+
+     Just think of it! Here you are actually in Arden all ready
+     for me to pick up and put in Miriam's place without having
+     to budge from my desk. The Sylvan Players open with "As You
+     Like It." If the critics like it--and you--as well as I
+     think they will, I'll book you straight through the summer.
+     Felton's managing for me, so please report to him on Monday
+     when he gets there. I may run down myself for a glimpse of
+     your work.
+
+                    Yours,
+                         G. TRAVIS.
+
+     P. S. More good luck. We are just in time to get your name
+     on the posters; and unless my memory greatly deceives me,
+     you will be able to walk right into all of Miriam's
+     costumes.
+
+"Aye, they'll fit," agreed Patsy, with a chuckle. The second letter
+was from Felton--dated Monday. He was worried over her continued
+absence. He had not found her registered at either of the two
+hotels, and the postal clerk reported her mail uncalled for. Would
+she come to the Hillcrest Hotel at once. The third was from Janet
+Payne, expressing her grief over Joseph's death, and their
+disappointment at finding her gone the next morning when they motored
+over to take her to Arden. They were all looking forward to seeing
+her play on Wednesday.
+
+Patsy returned the letters to their envelopes and marveled that her
+new-found prosperity should affect her so drearily. Why was she not
+elated, transported with the surprise and the sudden promise of
+success? She was free to go now to a good hotel and sign for a room
+and three regular meals a day. She could wire at once to Miss Gibbs,
+of the select boarding-house, and have her trunk down in twenty-four
+hours. In very truth, her days of vagabondage were over, yet the fact
+brought her no happiness.
+
+She hunted Felton up at the hotel and explained her absence: "Just a
+week-end at one of the fashionable places. No, not exactly
+professional. No, not social either. You might call it--providential,
+like this."
+
+The morning was spent meeting her fellow-players--going over the
+text, trying on the St. Regis costumes, adjourning at last to the
+estate of Peterson-Jones.
+
+Until the middle of the afternoon they were busy with rehearsals: the
+mental tabulating of new stage business, the adapting of strange
+stage property, the accustoming of one's feet to tread gracefully
+over roots and tangling vines and slippery patches of pine needles
+instead of a good stage flooring. And through all this maze Patsy's
+mind played truant. A score of times it raced off back to the road
+again, to wait between a stretch of woodland and a grove of giant
+pines for the coming of a grotesque, vagabond figure in rags.
+
+"Come, come, Miss O'Connell; what's the matter?" Felton's usual
+patience snapped under the strain of her persistent wit-wandering.
+"I've had to tell you to change that entrance three times."
+
+"Aye--and what is the matter?" Patsy repeated the question
+remorsefully. "Maybe I've acquired the habit of taking the wrong
+entrance. What can you expect from any one taking seven days to go
+seven miles. I'm dreadfully sorry. If you'll only let me off this
+time I promise to remember to-morrow; I promise!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day had been growing steadily hotter and more sultry. By five
+o'clock every one who was doing anything, and could stop doing it,
+went slothfully about looking for cool spots and cooler drinks.
+Burgeman senior, alone with his servants on the largest estate in
+Arden, ordered one of the nurses to wheel him to the border of his
+own private lake--a place where breezes blew if there were any
+about--and leave him there alone until Fitzpatrick, his lawyer, came
+from town. And there he was sitting, his eyes on nothing at all, when
+Patsy scrambled up the bank of the lake and dropped breathless under
+a tree--not three feet from him.
+
+"Merciful Saint Patrick! I never saw you! Maybe I'm trespassing,
+now?"
+
+"You are," agreed Burgeman senior in a colorless voice. "But I hardly
+think any one will put you off the grounds--at least until you have
+caught your breath."
+
+"Thank you. Maybe the grounds are yours, now?" she questioned again.
+
+The sick man signified they were by a slight nod.
+
+"Well, 'tis the prettiest place hereabouts." Patsy offered the
+information as if she had made the discovery herself and was
+generously sharing it with him. "I'm a stranger; and when I saw yon
+bit of cool, gray water, and the pines clustering round, and the wee
+green faery isle in the midst--with the bridge holding onto it to
+keep it from disappearing entirely--and the sand so white, and the
+lawns so green--why, it looked like a Japanese garden set in a great
+sedge bowl. Do you wonder I had to come closer and see it better?"
+
+Burgeman said nothing; but the ghost of a feeling showed, the greed
+of possession.
+
+"And it all belongs to you. You bought it all--the lake and the woods
+and the lawns." It was not a question, but a statement.
+
+"I own three miles in every direction."
+
+"Except that one." Patsy smiled as she pointed a finger upward. "Did
+you ever think how generous the blessed Lord is to lend a bit of His
+sky to put over the land men buy and fence in and call 'private
+property'? It's odd how a body can think he owns something because he
+has paid money for it; and yet the things that make it worth the
+owning he hasn't paid for at all."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Would you think much of this place if you couldn't be looking yonder
+and watching the clouds scud by, all turning to pink and flame color
+and purple as the sun gathers them in? What would you do if no wild
+flowers grew for you, or the birds forgot you in the spring and built
+their nests and sang for your neighbor instead? And can you hire the
+sun to shine by the day, or order the rain by the hogshead?"
+
+Burgeman senior was contemplating her with genuine amazement. "I do
+not believe I have ever heard any one put forth such extraordinary
+theories before. May I ask if you are a socialist?"
+
+"Bless you, no! I am a very ordinary human being, just; principally
+human."
+
+"Do you know who I am?"
+
+For an instant Patsy looked at him without speaking; then she
+answered, slowly: "You have told me, haven't you? You are the master
+of the place, and you look a mortal lonely one."
+
+"I--am." The words seemed to slip from his lips without his being at
+all conscious of having spoken.
+
+"And the money couldn't keep it from you." There was no mockery in
+her tone. "'Tis pitifully few comforts you can buy in life, when
+all's said and done."
+
+"Comforts!" The sick man's eyes grew sharp, attacking, with a force
+that had not been his for days. "You are talking now like a fool.
+Money is the only thing that can buy comforts. What comforts have the
+poor?"
+
+"Are you meaning butlers and limousines, electric vibrators and
+mud-baths? Those are only cures for the bodily necessities and ills
+that money brings on a man: the over-feeding and the over-drinking
+and the--under-living. But what comforts would they bring to a
+troubled mind and a pinched heart? Tell me that!"
+
+"So! You would prefer to be poor--more pastorally poetic?" Burgeman
+sneered.
+
+"More comfortable," corrected Patsy. "Mind you, I'm not meaning
+starved, ground-under-the-heel poverty, the kind that breeds
+anarchists and criminals. God pity them, too! I mean the man who is
+still too poor to reckon his worth to a community in mere money, who,
+instead, doles kindness and service to his neighbors. Did you ever
+see a man richer than the one who comes home at day's end, after
+eight hours of good, clean work, and finds the wife and children
+watching for him, happy-eyed and laughing?"
+
+The sick man stirred uneasily. "Well--can't a rich man find the same
+happiness?"
+
+"Aye, he can; but does he? Does he even want it? Count up the rich
+men you know, and how many are there--like that?" No answer being
+given, Patsy continued: "Take the richest man--the very richest man
+in all this country--do you suppose in all his life he ever saw his
+own lad watching for him to come home?"
+
+"What do you know about the richest man--and his son?" The sick man
+had for a moment become again a fiercely bitter, fighting force, a
+power given to sweeping what it willed before it. He sat with hands
+clenched, his eyes burning into the girl's on the ground beside him.
+"I know what the world says."
+
+"The world lies; it has always lied."
+
+"You are wrong. It is a tongue here and a tongue there that bears
+false witness; but the world passes on the truth; it has to."
+
+"You forget"--Burgeman senior spoke with difficulty--"it is the rich
+who bear the burdens of the world's cares and troubles, and what do
+they get for it? The hatred of every one else, even their sons! Every
+one hates and envies the man richer and more powerful than himself;
+the more he has the more he is feared. He lives friendless; he
+dies--lonely."
+
+Patsy rose to her knees and knelt there, shaking her fist--a
+composite picture of supplicating Justice and accusing Truth. She had
+forgotten that the man before her was sick--dying; that he must have
+suffered terribly in spirit as well as body; and that her words were
+so many barbed shafts striking at his soul. She remembered nothing
+save the thing against which she was fighting: the hard, merciless
+possession of money and the arrogant boast of it.
+
+"And you forget that the burden of trouble which the brave rich bear
+so nobly are troubles they've put into the world themselves. They
+hoard their money to buy power; and then they use that power to get
+more money. And so the chain grows--money and power, money and power!
+I heard of a rich man once who turned a terrible fever loose all over
+the land because he bribed the health inspectors not to close down
+his factories. And after death had swept his books clean he gave
+large sums of money to stamp out the epidemic in the near-by towns.
+Faith! that was grand--the bearing of that trouble! And why are the
+rich hated? Why do they live friendless and die lonely? Not because
+they hold money, not because they give it away or help others with
+it. No! But because they use it to crush others, to rob those who
+have less than they have, to turn their power into a curse. That's
+the why!"
+
+Patsy, the fanatic, turned suddenly into Patsy, the human, again. The
+fist that had been beating the air under his nose dropped and spread
+itself tenderly on the sick man's knee. "But I'm sorry you're lonely.
+If there was anything you wanted--that you couldn't buy and I could
+earn for you--I would get it gladly."
+
+"I believe you would," and the confession surprised the man himself
+more than it did Patsy. "Who are you?" he asked at last.
+
+"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside--a lass with no home,
+no kin, and that for a fortune," and she flung out her two empty
+hands, palm uppermost, and laughed.
+
+"And you are audacious enough to think you are richer than I." This
+time there was no sneer in his voice, only an amused toleration.
+
+"I am," said Patsy, simply.
+
+"You have youth and health," he conceded, grudgingly.
+
+"Aye, and trust in other folks; that's a fearfully rich possession."
+
+"It is. I might exchange with you--all this," and his hand swept
+encompassingly over his great estate, "for that last--trust in other
+folks--in one's own folks!"
+
+"Maybe I'd give it to you for nothing--a little of it at any rate.
+See, you trust me; and here's--trust in your son." Patsy's voice
+dropped to a whisper; she leaned forward and opened one of the sick
+man's hands, then folded the fingers tightly over something that
+appeared to be invisible--and precious. "Now, you believe in him, no
+matter what he's done; you believe he wouldn't wrong you or himself
+by doing anything base; you believe that he is coming back to you--to
+break the loneliness, and that he'll find a poor, plain man for a
+father, waiting him. Don't you remember the prodigal lad--how his
+father saw him a long way off and went to meet him? Well, you can
+meet him with a long-distance trust--understanding. And there's one
+thing more; don't you be so blind or so foolish as to crush him with
+the weight of 'all this.' Mind, he has the right to the making of his
+own life--for a bit at least; and it's your privilege to give him
+that right--somehow. You've still a chance to keep him from wanting
+to pitch your money for quoits off the Battery."
+
+Patsy sprang to her feet; but Burgeman senior had reached forward
+quickly and caught her skirt, holding it in a marvelously firm grip.
+"Then you do know who I am; you've known it all along."
+
+"I know you're the master of all this, and your lad is the Rich Man's
+Son; that's all."
+
+"And you think--you think I have no right to leave my son the
+inheritance I have worked and saved for him."
+
+"I think you have no right to leave him your--greed. 'Tis a mortal
+poor inheritance for any lad."
+
+"Your vocabulary is rather blunt." Burgeman smiled faintly. "But it
+is very refreshing. It is a long time since naked truth and I met
+face to face."
+
+"But will it do you any good--or is it too late?" Patsy eyed him
+contemplatively.
+
+"Too late for what?"
+
+"Too late for the inheritance--too late to give it away somewhere
+else--or loan it for a few years till the lad had a chance to find
+out if he could make some decent use of it himself. There's many ways
+of doing it; I have thought of a few this last half-hour. You might
+loan it to the President to buy up some of the railroads for the
+government--or to purchase the coal or oil supply; or you might offer
+it as a prize to the country that will stop fighting first; or it
+might buy clean politics into some of the cities--or endow a
+university." She laughed. "It's odd, isn't it, how a body without a
+cent to her name can dispose of a few score millions--in less
+minutes?"
+
+"If you please, sir." A motionless, impersonal figure in livery stood
+at a respectful distance behind the wheel-chair. Neither of them had
+been conscious of his presence.
+
+"Well, Parsons?"
+
+"Mr. Billy, sir, has come back, sir. He and Mr. Fitzpatrick came
+together. Shall I bring them out here or wheel you inside, sir?"
+
+"Inside!" Burgeman senior almost shouted it. Then he turned to Patsy
+and there was more than mere curiosity in his voice: "Who are you?"
+
+"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside," she repeated,
+wistfully. And then she added in her own Donegal: "But don't ye let
+the lagging count for naught. Promise me that!"
+
+The sick man turned his head for a last look at her. "Such a simple
+promise--to throw away the fruits of a lifetime!" Bitterness was in
+his voice again, but Patsy caught the muttering under his breath. "I
+might think about the boy, though, if the Lord granted me time."
+
+"Amen!" whispered Patsy.
+
+She scrambled down the bank the way she had come. For a moment she
+stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its
+mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and
+spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind
+no mark where they had been.
+
+"Yonder's the way with the going and coming of most of us, a little
+ripple and naught else--unless it is one more stone at the bottom."
+She heaved a sigh. "Well, the quest is over, and I've never laid eyes
+on the lad once. But it's ended well, I'm thinking; aye, it's ended
+right for him."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+ARDEN
+
+
+Summer must have made one day in June purposely as a setting
+for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave,
+and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people
+look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene;
+a Forest of Arden, built by the greatest scenic artist since the
+world began. Birds flew about the trees and sang--whenever the
+orchestra permitted; a rabbit or two scuttled out from under
+rhododendron-bushes and skipped in shy ingenue fashion across the
+stage; while overhead a blue, windless sky spread radiance about
+players and audience alike.
+
+Shorn of so much of the theatricalism of ordinary stage performances,
+there was reality and charm about this that warmed the spectators
+into frequent bursts of spontaneous enthusiasm which were as draughts
+of elixir to the players. Those who were playing creditably played
+well; those who were playing well excelled themselves, and Patsy
+outplayed them all.
+
+She lived every minute of the three hours that spanned the throwing
+of Charles, the wrestler, and her promise "to make all this matter
+even." There was no touch of coarseness in her rollicking laughter,
+no hoydenish swagger in her masquerading; it was all subtly,
+irresistibly feminine. And George Travis, watching from the obscurity
+of a back seat, pounded his knee with triumph and swore he would make
+her the greatest Shakespearean actress of the day.
+
+As Hymen sang her parting song, Patsy scanned the sea of faces beyond
+the bank of juniper which served instead of footlights. Already she
+had picked out Travis, Janet Payne and her party, the people from
+Quality House, who still gaped at her, unbelieving, and young
+Peterson-Jones, looking more melancholy, myopic, and poetical than
+before. But the one face she hoped to find was missing, even among
+the stragglers at the back; and it took all her self-control to keep
+disappointment and an odd, hurt feeling out of her voice as she gave
+the epilogue.
+
+On the way to her tent--a half-score of them were used as
+dressing-rooms behind the stage--George Travis overtook her. "It's
+all right, girl. You've made a bigger hit than even I expected. I'm
+going to try you out in--"
+
+Patsy cut him short. "You sat at the back. Did you see a vagabond lad
+hanging around anywhere--with a limp to him?"
+
+The manager looked at her with amused toleration. "Does a mere man
+happen to be of more consequence this minute than your success? Oh, I
+say, that's not like you, Irish Patsy!"
+
+She crimsoned, and the manager teased no more. "We play Greyfriars
+to-morrow and back to Brambleside the day after; and I've made up my
+mind to try you out there in Juliet. If you can handle tragedy as you
+can comedy, I'll star you next winter on Broadway. Oh, your future's
+very nearly made, you lucky girl!"
+
+But Patsy, slipping into her tent, hardly heard the last. If they
+played Greyfriars the next day, that meant they would leave Arden on
+the first train after they were packed; and that meant she was
+passing once and for all beyond tramping reach of the tinker. There
+was a dull ache at her heart which she attempted neither to explain
+nor to analyze; it was there--that was enough. With impatient fingers
+she tore off Rosalind's wedding finery and attacked her make-up. Then
+she lingered over her dressing, hoping to avoid the rest of the
+company and any congratulatory friends who might happen to be
+browsing around. She wanted to be alone with her memories--to have
+and to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and
+far away.
+
+A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne's voice
+broke into her reverie: "Can't we see you, please, for just a moment?
+We'll solemnly promise not to stay long."
+
+Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into
+her greeting.
+
+"It was simply ripping!" chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a
+hand.
+
+Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. "It was the best,
+the very best I've ever seen you or any one else play it. For the
+first time Rosalind seemed a real girl."
+
+But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others:
+"Have you heard, Miss O'Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy
+was with him. He's come home."
+
+"Faith! then there's some virtue in signs, after all."
+
+A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. "I'm glad
+for you--I'm glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see
+him?"
+
+"For a few minutes. There wasn't time to say much; but he looked like
+a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a good
+talk together for the first time in their lives--said it had given
+him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I
+wanted to tell you, so you wouldn't have him on your mind any
+longer."
+
+She smiled retrospectively. "Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly
+twenty-four hours ago."
+
+Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her
+chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers,
+still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she
+went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.
+
+The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the
+tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of
+the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of
+Orlando's poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since
+forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it--once, twice,
+three times:
+
+     Where twin oaks rustle in the wind,
+     There waits a lad for Rosalind.
+     If still she be so wond'rous kind,
+     Perchance she'll ease the fretted mind
+     That naught can cure--but Rosalind.
+
+With a glad little cry she crumpled the paper in her hand and fled,
+straight as a throstle to its mate, to the giant twin oaks which
+were landmarks in the forest. Her eyes were a-search for a vagabond
+figure in rags; it was small wonder, therefore, that they refused to
+acknowledge the man in his well-cut suit of gray who was leaning
+partly against the hole of a tree and partly on a pilgrim staff. She
+stood and stared and gave no sign of greeting.
+
+"Well, so the Duke's daughter found her rhyme?"
+
+"I'm not knowing whether I'll own ye or not. Sure, ye've no longer
+the look of an honest tinker; and maybe we'd best part company
+now--before we meet at all."
+
+But the tinker had her firmly by both hands. "That's too late now. I
+would have come in rags if there'd been anything left of them, but
+they are the only things I intend to part company with. And do you
+know"--he gripped her hands tighter--"I met an acquaintance as I came
+this way who told me, with eyes nearly popping out of his head, that
+the wonderful little person who had played herself straight into
+hundreds of hearts had actually been his cook for three days. Oh,
+lass! lass! how could you do it!"
+
+"Troth! God made me a better cook than actress. Ye wouldn't want me
+to be slighting His handiwork entirely, would ye?"
+
+The tinker shook his head at her. "Do you know what I wanted to say
+to every one of those people who had been watching you? I wanted to
+say: 'You think she is a wonderful actress; she is more than that.
+She is a rare, sweet, true woman, better and finer than any play she
+may act in or any part she may play in it. I, the tinker, have
+discovered this; and I know her better than does any one else in the
+whole world.'"
+
+"Is that so?" A teasing touch of irony crept into Patsy's voice.
+"'Tis a pity, now, the manager couldn't be hearing ye; he might give
+ye a chance to understudy Orlando."
+
+"And you think I'd be content to understudy any one! Why, I'm going
+to pitch Orlando straight out of the Forest of Arden; I'm going to
+pull Willie Shakespeare out of his grave and make him rewrite the
+whole play--putting a tinker in the leading role."
+
+"And is it a tragedy ye would have him make it?"
+
+"Would it be a tragedy to take a tinker 'for better--for worse'?"
+
+"Faith! that would depend on the tinker."
+
+"Oh-ho, so it's up to the tinker, is it? Well, the tinker will prove
+it otherwise; he will guarantee to keep the play running pure comedy
+to the end. So that settles it, Miss Patricia O'Connell--alias
+Rosalind, alias the cook--alias Patsy--the best little comrade a
+lonely man ever found. I am going to marry you the day after
+to-morrow, right here in Arden."
+
+Patsy looked at him long and thoughtfully from under the beguiling
+shadow of the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet. "'Tis a shame,
+just, to discourage anything so brave as a self-made--tinker. But
+I'll not be here the day after to-morrow. And what's more, a man is a
+fool to marry any woman because he's lonely and she can cook."
+
+The tinker's eyes twinkled. "I don't know. A man might marry for
+worse reasons." Then he grew suddenly sober and his eyes looked deep
+into hers. "But you know and I know that that is not my reason for
+wanting you, or yours for taking me."
+
+"I didn't say I would take ye." This time it was Patsy's eyes that
+twinkled. "Do ye think it would be so easy to give up my career--the
+big success I've hoped and worked and waited for--just--just for a
+tinker? I'd be a fool to think of it." She was smiling inwardly at
+her own power of speech, which made what she held as naught sound of
+such immeasurable consequence.
+
+But the tinker smiled outwardly. "Where did you say you were going to
+be the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"That's another thing I did not say. If ye are going to marry me 'tis
+your business to find me." She freed her hands and started off
+without a backward glance at him.
+
+"Patsy, Patsy!" he called after her, "wouldn't you like to know the
+name of the man you're going to marry?"
+
+She turned and faced him. Framed in the soft, green fringe of the
+trees, she seemed to him the very embodiment of young summer--the
+free, untrammeled spirit of Arden. Ever since the first he had been
+growing more and more conscious of what she was: a nature vital,
+beautiful, tender, untouched by the searing things of life--trusting
+and worthy of trust; but it was not until this moment that he
+realized the future promise of her. And the realization swept all his
+smoldering love aflame into his eyes and lips. His arms went out to
+her in a sudden, passionate appeal.
+
+"Patsy--Patsy! Would the name make any difference?"
+
+"Why should it?" she cried, with saucy coquetry. "I'm marrying the
+man and not his name. If I can stand the one, I can put up with the
+other, I'm thinking. Anyhow, 'twill be on the marriage license the
+day after to-morrow, and that's time enough."
+
+"Do you really mean you would marry a man, not knowing his name or
+anything about his family--or his income--or--"
+
+"That's the civilized way, isn't it?--to find out about those things
+first; and afterward it's time enough when you're married to get
+acquainted with your man. But that's not the way that leads off the
+road to Arden--and it's not my way. I know my man now--God bless
+him." And away she ran through the trees and out of sight.
+
+The tinker watched the trees and underbrush swing into place,
+covering her exit. So tense and motionless he stood, one might have
+suspected him of trying to conjure her back again by the simple magic
+of heart and will. It turned out a disappointing piece of conjuring,
+however; the green parted again, but not to redisclose Patsy. A man,
+instead, walked into the open, toward the giant oaks, and one glimpse
+of him swept the tinker's memory back to a certain afternoon and a
+cross-roads. He could see himself sitting propped up by the
+sign-post, watching the door of a little white church, while down the
+road clattered a sorrel mare and a runabout. And the man that
+drove--the man who was trailing Patsy--was the man that came toward
+him now, looking for--some one.
+
+"You haven't seen--" he began, but the tinker interrupted him:
+
+"Guess not. I've been watching the company break up. Rather
+interesting to any one not used to that sort of thing--don't you
+think?"
+
+The man eyed him narrowly; then cautiously he dropped into an
+attitude of exaggerated indifference. "It sure is--young feller. Now
+you hain't been watchin' that there leadin' lady more particularly,
+have you? I sort o' cal'ate she might have a takin' way with the
+fellers," and he prodded the tinker with a jocular thumb.
+
+The tinker responded promptly with a foolish grin. "Maybe I
+have; but the luck was dead against me. Guess she had a lot of
+friends with her. I saw them carry her off in triumph in a big
+touring-car--probably they'll dine her at the country club."
+
+The man did not wait for further exchange of pleasantries. He took
+the direction the tinker indicated, and the tinker watched him go
+with a suppressed chuckle.
+
+"History positively stutters sometimes. Now if that property-man knew
+what he was talking about the company will be safe out of Arden
+before a runabout could make the country club and back." But the
+tinker's mirth was of short duration. With a shout of derision, he
+slapped the pocket of his trousers viciously.
+
+"What a confounded fool I am! Why in the name of reason didn't I
+give them to him and stop this sleuth business before it really gets
+her into trouble? Of all the idiotic--senseless--" and, leaning on
+the pilgrim staff, he slowly hobbled in the same direction he had
+given the man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One last piece of news concerning Billy Burgeman came to Patsy before
+she left Arden that afternoon. Gregory Jessup was at the station to
+see her off, and he took her aside for the few minutes before the
+train arrived.
+
+"I tried to get Billy to join me--knew it would do him good to meet
+you; but he wouldn't budge. I rather think he's still a trifle sore
+on girls. Nothing personal, you understand?"
+
+Patsy certainly did--far better than his friend knew. In her heart
+she was trying her best to be interested and grateful to the Rich
+Man's Son for his unconscious part in her happiness. Had it not been
+for him there would have been no quest, no road; and without the road
+there would have been no tinker; and without the tinker, no
+happiness. It was none the less hard to be interested, however, now
+that her mind had given over the lonely occupation of contemplating
+memories for that most magical of all mental crafts--future-building.
+She jerked up her attention sharply as Gregory Jessup began speaking
+again.
+
+"Billy told me just before I came down why he had gone away; and I
+wanted to tell you. I don't know how much you know about the old
+man's reputation, but he was credited with being the hardest master
+with his men that you could find either side of the water. In the
+beginning he made his money by screwing down the wages and unscrewing
+the labor--and no sentiment. That was his slogan. Whether he kept it
+up from habit or pure cussedness I can't tell, but that's the real
+reason Billy would never go into his father's business--he couldn't
+stand his meanness. The old man's secretary forged a check for ten
+thousand; Billy caught him and cashed it himself--to save the man. He
+shouldered the guilt so his father wouldn't suspect the man and hound
+him."
+
+"I know," said Patsy, forgetting that she was supposed to know
+nothing. "But why in the name of all the saints did the secretary
+want to forge a check?"
+
+"Why does any one forge? He needs money. When Billy caught him the
+old fellow went all to pieces and told a pretty tough story. You see,
+he'd been Burgeman's secretary for almost twenty years, given him the
+best years of his life--slaved for him--lied for him--made money for
+him. Billy said his father regarded him as an excellent piece of
+office machinery, and treated him as if he were nothing more. The
+poor chap had always had hard luck; a delicate wife, three or four
+children who were eternally having or needing something, and poor
+relations demanding help he couldn't refuse. Between doctors' bills
+and clothing--and the relatives--he had no chance to save. At last he
+broke down, and the doctor told him it was an outdoor life, with
+absolute freedom from the strain of serving a man like Burgeman--or
+the undertaker for him. So he went to Burgeman, asked him to loan him
+the money to invest in a fruit-farm, and let him pay it off as fast
+as he could."
+
+"Well?" Patsy was interested at last.
+
+"Well, the old man turned him down--shouted his 'no sentiment' slogan
+at him, and shrugged his shoulders at what the doctor said. He told
+him, flat, that a man who hadn't saved a cent in twenty years
+couldn't in twenty years more; and he only put money into investments
+that paid. The poor chap went away, frantic, worked himself into
+thinking he was entitled to that last chance; and when Billy heard
+the story he thought so, too. In the end, Billy cashed the check,
+gave the secretary the money, and they both cleared out. He knew, if
+his father ever suspected the truth, he would have the poor chap
+followed and dragged back to pay the full penalty of the law--he and
+all his family with him."
+
+Patsy smiled whimsically. "It sounds so simple and believable when
+you have it explained; but it would have been rather nice, now, if
+Billy Burgeman could have known that one person believed in him from
+the beginning without an explanation."
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"Faith! how should I know? I was supposing, just."
+
+But as Patsy climbed onto the train she muttered under her breath:
+"We come out even, I'm thinking. If he's missed knowing that, I've
+missed knowing a fine lad."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE ROAD BEGINS ALL OVER AGAIN
+
+
+On the second day following Patsy played Juliet at Brambleside, and
+more than satisfied George Travis. While his mind was racing ahead,
+planning her particular stardom on Broadway, and her mind was
+pestering her with its fears and uncertainties into a state of
+"private prostration," the manager of the Brambleside Inn was
+telephoning the Green County sheriff to come at once--he had found
+the girl.
+
+So it came about at the final dropping of the curtain, as Patsy was
+climbing down from her bier, that four eagerly determined men
+confronted her, each plainly wishful to be the first to gain her
+attention.
+
+"Well," said the tinker, pointedly, "are you ready?"
+
+"It's all settled." Travis was jubilant. "You'll play Broadway for
+six months next winter--or I'm no manager."
+
+It was the manager of the Brambleside Inn and the Green County
+sheriff, however, who gave the greatest dramatic effect. They placed
+themselves adroitly on either side of Patsy and announced together:
+"You're under arrest!"
+
+"Holy Saint Patrick!" Patsy hardly knew whether to be amused or
+angry. With the actual coming of the tinker, and the laying of her
+fears, her mind seemed strangely limp and inadequate. Her lips
+quivered even as they smiled. "Maybe I had best go back to my bier;
+you couldn't arrest a dead Capulet."
+
+But George Travis swept her aside; he saw nothing amusing in the
+situation. "What do you mean by insulting Miss O'Connell and myself
+by such a performance? Why should she be under arrest--for being one
+of the best Shakespearean actresses we've had in this country for
+many a long, barren year?"
+
+"No! For stealing two thousand dollars' worth of diamonds from a
+guest in this hotel the night she palmed herself off as Miss St.
+Regis!" The manager of the Inn bit off his words as if he thoroughly
+enjoyed their flavor.
+
+"But she never was here," shouted Travis.
+
+"Yes, I was," contradicted Patsy.
+
+"And she sneaked off in the morning with the jewels," growled the
+manager.
+
+"And I trailed over the country for four days, trying to find the
+girl in a brown suit that he'd described--said she was on her way to
+Arden. I'd give a doggoned big cigar to know where you was all that
+time." And there was something akin to admiration in the sheriff's
+expression.
+
+But Patsy did not see. She was looking hard at the tinker, with an
+odd little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
+
+The tinker smiled back, while he reached deep into his trousers
+pocket and brought out a small package which he presented to the
+sheriff. "Are those what you are looking for?"
+
+They were five unset diamonds.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged! Did she give them to you?" The manager of the
+Inn looked suspiciously from the tinker to Patsy.
+
+"No; she didn't know I had them--didn't even know they existed and
+that she was being trailed as a suspected thief. Why, what's the
+matter?" For Patsy had suddenly grown white and her lips were
+trembling past control.
+
+"Naught--naught they could understand. But I'm finding out there was
+more than one quest on the road to Arden, more than one soul who
+fared forth to help another in trouble. And my heart is breaking,
+just, with the memory of it." And Patsy sank back on the bier and
+covered her face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" whispered a distressed tinker.
+
+"Don't ask--now--here. Sometime I'll be telling ye."
+
+"Well"--the sheriff thumbed the armholes of his vest in a
+business-like manner--"I cal'ate we've waited about long enough,
+young man; supposin' you explain how you come to have those stones in
+your possession; and why you lied to me about her and sent me hiking
+off to that country club--when you knew durned well where she was."
+
+The tinker laughed in spite of himself. "Certainly; it's very simple.
+I found these, in a suit of rags which I saw on a tramp the morning
+you lost the diamonds--and Miss O'Connell. I liked the rags so well
+that I paid the tramp to change clothes with me; he took mine and
+gave me his, along with a knockout blow for good measure."
+
+The manager of the Inn interrupted with an exclamation of surprise:
+"So! You were the young fellow they picked up senseless by the
+stables that morning. When the grooms saw the other man running, they
+made out it was you who had struck him first."
+
+"Wish I had. But I squared it off with him a few days later," the
+tinker chuckled. "At the time I couldn't make out why he struck me
+except to get the rest of the money I had; but of course he wanted
+to get the stones he'd sewed up in these rags and forgotten. I began
+to suspect something when I found you trailing Miss O'Connell."
+
+"See here, young man, and wasn't you the feller that put me on the
+wrong road twice?" The sheriff laid a hand of the law suggestively
+against his chest.
+
+The tinker chuckled again. "I certainly was. It would have been
+pretty discouraging for Miss O'Connell if you'd found her before we
+had the defense ready; and it would have been awkward for you--to
+have to take a lady in custody."
+
+"I cal'ate that's about right." And the sheriff relaxed into a grin.
+Suddenly he turned to the manager of the Inn and pounded his palm
+with his fist. "By Jupiter! I betcher that there tramp is the feller
+that's been cleanin' up these parts for the past two years. Hangs
+round as a tramp at back doors and stables, and picks up what
+information he needs to break into the house easy. Never hitched him
+up in my mind to the thefts afore--but I cal'ate it's the one
+man--and he's it."
+
+"Guess you're right," the tinker agreed. "Last Saturday, when I came
+upon him again--in an automobile--still in my clothes, we had a final
+fight for the possession of the rags, which I still wore, and the--"
+But he never finished.
+
+Patsy had sprung to her feet and was looking at him, bewilderment,
+accusation, almost fright, showing through her tears. "Your
+clothes--your clothes! You wore a--Then you are--"
+
+"Hush!" said the tinker. He turned to the others. "I think that is
+all, gentlemen. I searched the rags after I had finished my score
+with the thief and found the stones. I brought them over this
+afternoon to return to their rightful owner. I might have returned
+them that day after the play--but I forgot until the sheriff had
+gone. You are entirely welcome. Good afternoon!" He dismissed them
+promptly, but courteously, as if the stage had been his own
+drawing-room and the two had suddenly expressed a desire to take
+their leave.
+
+At the wings he left them and came back direct to George Travis.
+"There is more thieving to be done this afternoon, and I am going to
+do it. I am going to steal your future star, right from under your
+nose; and I shall never return her."
+
+"What do you mean?" Travis stared at him blankly.
+
+"Just what I say; Miss O'Connell and I are to be married this
+afternoon in Arden."
+
+"That's simply out of the--"
+
+Patsy, who had found her tongue at last, laid a coaxing hand on
+Travis's arm. "No, it isn't. I wired Miriam yesterday--to see if she
+was really as sick as you thought. She was sick; but she's ever so
+much better and her nerves are not going to be nearly as troublesome
+as she feared. She's quite willing to come back and take her old
+place, and she'll be well enough next week." Patsy's voice had become
+vibrant with feeling. "Now don't ye be hard-hearted and think I'm
+ungrateful. We've all been playing in a bigger comedy than Willie
+Shakespeare ever wrote; and, sure, we've got to be playing it out to
+the end as it was meant to be."
+
+"And you mean to give up your career, your big chance of success?"
+Travis still looked incredulous. "Don't you realize you'll be
+famous--famous and rich!" he emphasized the last word unduly.
+
+It set Patsy's eyes to blazing. "Aye, I'd no longer be like Granny
+Donoghue's lean pig, hungry for scrapings. Well, I'd rather be hungry
+for scrapings than starving for love. I knew one woman who threw away
+love to be famous and rich, and I watched her die. Thank God she's
+kept my feet from that road! Sure, I wouldn't be rich--" She choked
+suddenly and looked helplessly at the tinker.
+
+"Neither would I." And he spoke with a solemn conviction.
+
+In the end Travis gave in. He took his disappointment and his loss
+like the true gentleman he was, and sent them away with his blessing,
+mixed with an honest twinge of self-pity. It was not, however, until
+Patsy turned to wave him a last farewell and smile a last grateful
+smile from under the white chiffon, corn-flower sunbonnet that he
+remembered that convention had been slighted.
+
+"Wait a minute," he said, running after them. "If I am not mistaken I
+have not had the pleasure of meeting your--future husband; perhaps
+you'll introduce us--"
+
+For once in her life Patsy looked fairly aghast, and Travis repeated,
+patiently, "His name, Irish Patsy--I want to know his name."
+
+The tinker might have helped her out, but he chose otherwise. He kept
+silent, his eyes on Patsy's as if he would read her answer there
+before she spoke it to Travis.
+
+"Well," she said at last, slowly, "maybe I'm not sure of it
+myself--except--I'm knowing it must be a good tinker name." And then
+laughter danced all over her face. "I'll tell ye; ye can be reading
+it to-morrow--in the papers." Whereupon she slipped her arm through
+the tinker's, and he led her away.
+
+And so it came to pass that once more Patsy and the tinker found
+themselves tramping the road to Arden; only this time it was down the
+straight road marked, "Seven Miles," and it was early evening instead
+of morning.
+
+"Do ye think we'll reach it now?" inquired Patsy.
+
+"We have reached it already; we're just going back."
+
+"And what happened to the brown dress?"
+
+"I burned it that night in the cottage--to fool the sheriff."
+
+"And I thought that night it was me ye had tricked--just for the whim
+of it. Did ye know who I was--by chance?"
+
+"Of course I knew. I had seen you with the Irish Players many, many
+times, and I knew you the very moment your voice came over the road
+to me--wishing me 'a brave day.'" The tinker's eyes deepened with
+tenderness. "Do you think for a moment if I hadn't known something
+about you--and wasn't hungering to know more--that I would have
+schemed and cheated to keep your comradeship?"
+
+"Ye might tell me, then, how ye came to know about the cottage--and
+how your picture ever climbed to the mantel-shelf?"
+
+"You know--I meant to burn that along with the dress--and I forgot.
+What did you think when you discovered it?"
+
+"Faith! I thought it was the picture of the truest gentleman God had
+ever made--and I fetched it along with me--for company."
+
+The tinker threw back his head and laughed as of old. "What will poor
+old Greg say when he finds it gone? Oh, I know how you almost stole
+his faithful old heart by being so pitying of his friend--and how you
+made the sign for him to follow--"
+
+"Aye," agreed Patsy, "but what of the cottage?"
+
+"That belongs to Greg's father; he and the girls are West this
+summer, so the cottage was closed."
+
+"And the breakfast with the throstles and the lady's-slippers?"
+
+The tinker laid his finger over her lips. "Please, sweetheart--don't
+try to steal away all the magic and the poetry from our road. You
+will leave it very barren if you do--'I'm thinking.'"
+
+Silence held their tongues until curiosity again loosened Patsy's.
+"And what started ye on the road in rags? Ye have never really
+answered that."
+
+"I have never honestly wanted to; it is not a pleasant answer." He
+drew Patsy closer, and his hands closed over hers. "Promise you will
+never think of it again, that you and I will forget that part of the
+road--after to-day?"
+
+Patsy nodded.
+
+"I borrowed the rags so that it would take a pretty smart coroner to
+identify the person in it after the train had passed under the
+suspension-bridge from which he fell--by accident. Don't shudder,
+dear. Was it so terrible--that wish to get away from a world that
+held nothing, not even some one to grieve? Remember, when I started
+there wasn't a soul who believed in me, who would care much one way
+or another--unless, perhaps, poor old Greg."
+
+"Would ye mind letting me look at the marriage license? I'd like to
+be seeing it written down."
+
+The tinker produced it, and she read "William Burgeman." Then she
+added, with a stubborn shake of the head, "Mind, though, I'll not be
+rich."
+
+"You will not have to be. Father has left me absolutely nothing for
+ten years; after that I can inherit his money or not, as we choose.
+It's a glorious arrangement. The money is all disposed of to good
+civic purpose, if we refuse. I am very glad it's settled that way;
+for I'm afraid I would never have had the heart to come to you, dear,
+dragging all those millions after me."
+
+"Then it is a free, open road for the both of us; and, please Heaven!
+we'll never misuse it." She laughed joyously; some day she would tell
+him of her meeting with his father; life was too full now for that.
+
+The tinker fell into his old swinging stride that Patsy had found so
+hard to keep pace with; and silence again held their tongues.
+
+"Do you think we shall find the castle with a window for every day in
+the year?" the tinker asked at last.
+
+"Aye. Why not? And we'll be as happy as I can tell ye, and twice as
+happy as ye can tell me. Doesn't every lad and lass find it anew for
+themselves when they take to the long road with naught but love and
+trust in their hearts--and their hands together? They may find it
+when they're young--they may not find it till they're old--but it
+will be there, ever beckoning them on--with the purple hills rising
+toward it. And there's a miracle in the castle that I've never told
+ye: no matter how old and how worn and how stooped the lad and his
+lass may have grown, there he sees her only fresh and fair and she
+sees him only brave and straight and strong."
+
+She stopped and faced him, her hands slipping out of his and creeping
+up to his shoulders and about his neck. "Dear lad--promise me one
+thing!--promise me we shall never forget the road! No matter how
+snugly we may be housed, or how close comfort and happiness sit at
+our hearthside--we'll be faring forth just once in so often--to touch
+earth again. And we'll help to keep faith in human nature--aye, and
+simple-hearted kindness alive in the world; and we'll make our
+friends by reason of that and not because of the gold we may or may
+not be having."
+
+"And do you still think kindness is the greatest thing in the world?"
+
+"No. There is one thing better; but kindness tramps mortal close at
+its heels." Patsy's hands slipped from his shoulders; she clasped
+them together in sudden intensity. "Haven't ye any curiosity at all
+to know what fetched me after ye?"
+
+"Yes. But there is to-morrow--and all the days after--to tell me."
+
+"No, there is just to-day. The telling of it is the only wedding-gift
+I have for ye, dear lad. I was with Marjorie Schuyler in the den that
+day you came to her and told her."
+
+"You heard everything?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"And you came, believing in me, after all?"
+
+"I came to show you there was one person in the world who trusted
+you, who would trust you across the world and back again. That's all
+the wedding-gift I have for ye, dear, barring love."
+
+And then and there--in the open road, still a good three miles from
+the Arden church--the tinker gathered her close in the embrace he had
+kept for her so long.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise,
+every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and
+intent.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN***
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