o mop his face
vigorously with a great red handkerchief. Dickey waited several minutes
for the old man to speak; but the Itinerant Tinker only regarded him
solemnly. He did not even smile.

"It's very warm work, sir," ventured Dickey, at last, "carrying all that
stuff--isn't it?"

"Stuff?" returned the Itinerant Tinker, in a very mild, but unmistakably
hurt tone of voice.

"Well--" Dickey hesitated timidly.

"_Don't_ call them stuff, please," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "call
them necessary commodities."

"But whatever one _does_ call them," Dickey persisted, "they still make
you warm to carry them all about, don't they?"

The Itinerant Tinker nodded his head and sighed again.

Again Dickey waited for a considerable space of time. But the old man
would have been perfectly content to sit there for ever, Dickey thought,
without speaking. "I _do_ wish he would talk," said he to himself.
"It's awfully annoying to have him sit there and look at one without
saying a word."

"What do you mend, sir?" Dickey inquired at last.

"I tried once," sighed the Itinerant Tinker, sadly, "to mend the break
of day. It took me twenty-seven hours and eleven minutes to fix it, and
it broke every twenty-four. At that rate how long would it take to patch
them all together?"

Another distressing silence.

"Have you figured _that_ out?" whispered the Itinerant Tinker at length.

"I haven't tried," Dickey admitted.

"_I_ tried once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and
gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after
another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with
the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was
forced to abandon _that_ too."

"In which direction were you going when I met you?" Dickey asked.

The Itinerant Tinker pointed ahead of him along the path and mopped his
bald head.

"But where?" insisted Dickey.

"To the Crypt. I was going to the Crypt," murmured the Itinerant Tinker,
"to see whether I couldn't get some umbrellas to mend."

"But they don't need umbrellas in the Crypt, do they?" Dickey asked,
surprised.

"No, they don't," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "and _that's_ the reason
I'm going there."

"If you don't mind," said Dickey, "I should like to go with you."

Without a word of reply the Itinerant Tinker rose slowly and painfully
to his feet, rearranged on his back the merchandise he had laid aside,
and started