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.