squatters' rights on every bit of shaded pasture, or
sunlit glade, or singing brook her heart rejoiced in. In other words,
everything outside of walls and fences belonged to her by virtue of
her vagabondage; and she had often found herself pitying the narrow
folk who possessed only what their deeds or titles allotted to them.

And yet never in Patsy's life had she felt quite so sure about it as
she did this morning, probably because she had never before set forth
on a self-appointed adventure so heedless of means and consequences.

"Sure, there are enough wise people in the world," she mused as she
tramped along; "it needs a few foolish ones to keep things happening.
And could a foolish adventuring body be bound for a better place than
Arden!"

She rounded a bend in the road and came upon a stretch of old stump
fencing. From one of the stumps appeared to be hanging a grotesque
figure of some remarkable cut; it looked both ancient and romantic,
sharply silhouetted against the iridescence of the dawn.

Patsy eyed it curiously. "It comes natural for me to be partial to
anything hanging to a thorn, or a stump; but--barring that--it still
looks interesting."

As she came abreast it she saw it was not hanging, however. It was
perched on a lower prong of a root and it was a man, clothed in the
most absolute garment of rags Patsy had ever seen off the legitimate
stage.

"From an artistic standpoint they are perfect," was Patsy's mental
tribute. "Wouldn't Willie Fay give his Sunday dinner if he could
gather him in as he is, just--to play the tinker! Faith! those rags
are so real I wager he keeps them together only by the grace of God."

As she stopped in front of the figure he turned his head slowly and
gazed at her with an expression as far away and bewildered as a lost
baby's.

In the half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural--a strange
spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth.
This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic
blood tingling and her eyes a-sparkling.

"He looks as half-witted as those back in the Old Country who have
the second sight and see the faeries. Aye, and he's as young and
handsome as a king's son. Poor lad!" And then she called aloud, "'Tis
a brave day, this."

"Hmm!" was the response, rendered impartially.

Patsy's alert eyes spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at
the man's feet and they set a-dancing. "Then ye _are_ a