e put a price upon it, for it was I who
fashioned it into this shape. It will hold three gallons and a half from
now until the time that swallows wear shoes. But for all that I will
part with it, because I am poor and hungry and have a delicate wife. It
breaks my heart to say it, but pay into my hands two shillings and it is
yours. Pay quickly or I may repent. It galls me to part with it; in your
charity pay quickly and begone."

"I will not. I will give you one-and-six."

"Assassin! You stab me. What a mind you have! Look at the greed of your
eyes; they would devour the grass of the fields from this place up to
the Devil's Bit. You would lock up the air and sell it in gasping
breaths. You are disgusting. But give me the one-and-six and to Connacht
with you! I am damning my soul standing beside you and your cart,
smelling its contents. How can a man talk with the smell of fat bacon
going between him and the wind? One-and-six and the dew that fell at the
making hardly dry upon my hands yet. Farewell, a long farewell, my
Shining One; we may never meet again."

The shawl of Mac-an-Ward's wife had been blowing around the near-by
corner while this discussion had been in progress. It flapped against
the wall in the wind like a loose sail in the rigging. The head of the
woman herself came gradually into view, one eye spying around the
masonry, half-closing as it measured the comfortable proportions of
Festus Clasby seated upon his cart. As the one-and-six was counted out
penny by penny into the palm of the brown hand of the Son of the Bard,
the figure of his wife floated out on the open road, tossing and tacking
and undecided in its direction to the eye of those who understood not
the language of gestures and motions. By a series of giddy evolutions
she arrived at the cart as the last of the coppers was counted out.

"I have parted with my inheritance," said Mac-an-Ward. "I have sold my
soul and the angels have folded their wings, weeping."

"In other words, I have bought a tin can," said Festus Clasby, and his
frame and the entire cart shook with his chuckling.

The tinker's wife chuckled with him in harmony. Then she reached out her
hand with a gesture that claimed a sympathetic examination of the
purchase. Festus Clasby hesitated, looking into the eyes of the woman.
Was she to be trusted? Her eyes were clear, grey, and open, almost
babyish in their rounded innocence. Festus Clasby handed her the tin
can, and she exami