Seven Miles to Arden Part 6

The tinker stopped, put down his kit, and hunted about in his rags where the pocket places might be; but all he drew forth were his two empty hands. He looked down the stretch of road they had come with an odd twist to his mouth, then he burst forth into another laugh.

"Have ye been playing the pigeon, and some one plucked ye?" she asked, and went on without waiting for his answer. "Never mind! We'll sharpen up our wits afresh and earn a breakfast. Are ye handy at tinkering, now?"

"You bet I am!" said the tinker. It was the longest speech he had made.

At the next farm Patsy turned in, with a warning to the tinker to do as he was told and to hold his tongue. It was a thoroughly well-kept-looking farm, and she picked out what she decided must be the side door, and knocked. A kindly-faced, middle-aged woman opened it, and Patsy smiled with the good promise of her looks.

"We are two--down on our luck, and strangers hereabouts. Have ye got any tinkering jobs for my man there? He's a bit odd and says little; but he can solder a broken pot or mend a machine with the best. And we'll take out our pay in a good, hearty meal."

"There be a pile of dishes in the pantry I've put by till we was goin' to town--handles off and holes in the bottom. He can mend them out on the stoop, if he likes. I've got to help with berry-pickin'; we're short-handed this season."

"Are ye, just? Then I'm thinking I'll come in handy." Patsy smiled her smile of winning comradeship as she stooped and picked up a tray of empty berry-boxes that stood by the door; while the woman's smile deepened with honest appreciation.

"My! but you are willing folks; they're sometimes scarce 'round here."

"Faith, we're hungry folks--so ye best set us quickly to work."

They left the tinker on the stoop, surrounded by a heterogeneous collection of household goods. Patsy cast an anxious backward glance at him, but saw that he was rolling up the rags that served for sleeves, thereby baring a pair of brawny, capable-looking arms, while he spread his tools before him after the manner of a man who knows his business.

"Fine!" commented Patsy, with an inner satisfaction. "He may be foolish, but I bet he can tinker."

They picked berries for an hour or more, and then Patsy turned too and helped the woman get dinner. They bustled about in silence to the accompanying pounding and sc.r.a.ping of the tinker, who worked unceasingly. When they sat down to dinner at last there was a tableful--the woman and her husband, Patsy, the tinker, and the "hands," and before them was spread the very best the farm could give. It was as if the woman wished to pay their free-will gift of service with her unstinted bounty.

"We always ask a blessin'," said the farmer, simply, folding his hands on the table, about to begin. Then he looked at Patsy, and, with that natural courtesy that is common to the true man of the soil, he added, "We'd be pleased if you'd ask it."

Patsy bowed her head. A little whimsical smile crept to her lips, but her voice rang deep with feeling: "For food and fellowship, good Lord, we thank Thee. Amen!" And she added under her breath, "And take a good grip of the Rich Man's son till we get him."

The late afternoon found them back on the road once more. They parted from the farmer and his wife as friend parts with friend. The woman slipped a bundle of food--bread, cheese, and meat left from the dinner, with a box of berries--into Patsy's hand, while the man gave the tinker a half-dollar and wished him luck.

Patsy thanked them for both; but it was not until they were well out of earshot that she spoke to the tinker: "They are good folk, but they'd never understand in a thousand years how we came to be traveling along together. What folks don't know can't hurt them, and 'tis often easier holding your tongue than trying to explain what will never get through another's brain. Now put that lunch into your kit; it may come in handy--who knows? And G.o.d's blessing on all kind hearts!"

Whereupon the tinker nodded solemnly.

They had tramped for a mile or more when they came to a cross-roads marked by a little white church. From the moment they sighted it Patsy's feet began to lag; and by the time they reached the crossing of the ways she had stopped altogether and was gazing up at the little gold cross with an odd expression of whimsical earnestness.

"Do ye know," she said, slowly, clasping the hands long shorn of the vagabond gloves--"do ye know I've told so many lies these last two days I think I'll bide yonder for a bit, and see can Saint Anthony lift the sins from me. 'Twould make the rest o' the road less burdensome--don't ye think?"

The tinker looked uncomfortably confused, as though this sudden question of ethics or religion was too much for his scattered wits.

He dug the toe of his boot in the gravel of the church path and removed his cap to aid the labor of his thinking. "Maybe--" he agreed at last. "An' will I be waitin' for you--or keepin' on?"

"Ye'll wait, of course," commanded Patsy.

She had barely disappeared through the little white door, and the tinker thrown himself down with his back to the sign-post which marked the roads, when a sorrel mare and a runabout came racing down the road over which they had just come. There were two men in the runabout, both of them tense and alert, their heads craned far in advance of the rest of them, their eyes scanning the diverging roads.

"I cal'ate she's gone that way." The driver swung the whip, indicating the road that ran south.

"Wall--I cal'ate so, too," agreed the other. "But then again--she mightn't."

They reined in and discovered the tinker. "Some one pa.s.sed this way sence you been settin' there?" they inquired almost in unison.

"I don't know"--the tinker's fingers pa.s.sed hurriedly across his eyes and forehead, by way of seeking misplaced wits--"some one might be almost any one," he smiled, cheerfully.

"Look here, young feller, if you're tryin' to be smart--" the driver began, angrily; but his companion silenced him with a nudge and a finger tapped significantly on the crown of his hat. He moderated his tone:

"We're after a girl in a brown suit and hat--undersized girl. She was asking the way to Arden. Seen any one of that description?"

"What do you want with her?"

"Never mind," growled the first man.

But the second volunteered meager information, "She's a suspect.

Stayed last night in the Inn and this morning a couple of thousand dollars' worth of diamonds is missin'; that's what we want her for."

The tinker brightened perceptibly. "Guess she went by in a wagon half an hour ago--that way. I think I saw her," and as the men turned southward down the road marked Arden he called after them, "Better hurry, if you want to catch her; the wagon was going at a right smart pace."

He waited for their backs to be turned and for the crack of the whip that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight behind a neighboring stone wall.

The dust from departing wheels still filled the air when Patsy stepped out of the cross-roads church, peacefully radiant, and found the tinker sitting quietly with his back against the post.

"So ye are still here. I thought ye might have grown tired of my company, after all, and gone on." Patsy laughed happily. "Now do ye know which road goes to Arden?"

"Sure," and the tinker joined in her laugh, while he pointed to the straight road ahead, the road that ran west, at right angles to the one the runabout had taken.

"Come on, then," said Patsy; "we ought to be there by sundown." She stopped and looked him over for the s.p.a.ce of a second. "Ye are improving wonderfully. Mind! ye mustn't be getting too keen-witted or we'll have to be parting company."

"Why?"

"That's the why!" And with this satisfactory explanation she led the way down the road the tinker had pointed.

VI

AT DAY'S END

Their road went the way of the setting sun, and Patsy and the tinker traveled it leisurely--after the fashion of those born to the road, who find their joy in the wandering, not in the making of a distance or the reaching of a destination. Since they had left the cross-roads church behind Patsy had marked the tinker casting furtive glances along the way they had come; and each time she marked, as well, the flash of a smile that lightened his face for an instant when he saw that the road still remained empty of aught but themselves.

"It's odd," she mused; "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet--and yet his wits have him pestered about something that lies back of him."

Once it was otherwise. There was a rising of dust showing on one of the hills they had climbed a good half-hour before. When the tinker saw it he reached of a sudden for Patsy's hand while he pointed excitedly beyond pasture bars ahead to a brownish field that lay some distance from the road.

"See, la.s.s, that's sorrel. If you'll break the road along with me I'll show you where wild strawberries grow, lots of 'em!"