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.