“Bad luck to the thieves, then,” cried the Mother. “The back of my hand to them! Sure, I saw a rough, scraggly man with a beard on him like a rick of hay, come along this very afternoon, and I up the road talking with Mrs Maguire! I never thought he’d make that bold, to carry off geese in the broad light of day! And me saving them against Christmastime, too!”
“Wait till I get that fellow where beating is cheap, and I’ll take the change out of him!” said the Father.
Eileen began to cry and Larry’s lip trembled.
“Come here now, you poor dears,” their Mother said. “Sit down on the two creepeens by the fire, and have a bite to eat before you go to bed. Indeed, you must be starved entirely, with the running, and the fright, and all. I’ll give you a drink of cold milk, warmed up with a sup of hot water through it, and a bit of bread, to comfort your stomachs.”
While the Twins ate the bread and drank the milk, their Father and Mother talked about the Tinkers. “Sure, they are as a
frost in spring, and a blight in harvest,” said Mrs McQueen. “I wonder wherever they got the badness in them the way they have.”
“I’ve heard said it was a Tinker that led Saint Patrick astray when he was in Ireland,” said Mr McQueen. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the tale is that he was brought here a slave, and that it would take a hundred pounds to buy his freedom. One day, when he was minding the sheep on the hills, he found a lump of silver, and he met a Tinker and asked him the value of it.
“‘Wirra,’ says the Tinker, ‘’tis naught but a bit of solder. Give it to me!’ But Saint Patrick took it to a smith instead, and the smith told him the truth about it, and Saint Patrick put a curse on the Tinkers, that every man’s face should be against them, and that they should get no rest at all but to follow the road.”
“Some say they do be walking the world forever,” said Mrs McQueen, “and I never in my life met any one that had seen a Tinker’s funeral.”