own at a picture of the tinker, in white
flannels, with head thrown back and laughing.

IX

PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION

With the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house
suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a
quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left
spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in
the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation,
three meals--a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she
was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch
when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at
her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room
after room she searched, closet after closet.

In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she
passed them slowly--so slowly that her hands brushed them with a
friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she
returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had
left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and
consequently told no tales.

"'Tis plain enough what's happened," she said, soberly, to the
sparrows who were skirmishing for crumbs. "Just as I said, he was
fearsome of those constables, after all, and he's escaped in my
clothes!"

The picture of the tinker's bulk trying to disguise itself behind
anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible
for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter
which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like
fog before a clearing wind.

"Anyhow, if he hasn't worn them he's fetched them away as a wee
souvenir of an O'Connell; and if I'm to reach Arden in any degree of
decency 'twill have to be in stolen clothes."

But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her
promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected
state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So
she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white "middy" suit and a
dark-blue "Norfolk." The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a
sigh, for a woman's a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has
not a marked preference for the more becoming frock?

Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and
put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced
over the broken window by the r