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.