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.