"Maybe I have, Donald."
I handed him a sixpence.
"Thank ye. I'm never wrong in the readin' o' face character."
As I made to go from him, he started off again.
"You don't happen to be a married man, wi' a wife and bairns?" he asked.
"No, Donald. Thank goodness! What made you ask that?"
"Oh! I thought maybe you were and that was the way you liked the words o' my bit song."
I left the tinker finishing his belated breakfast and hurried down the road toward the village.
The sun was getting high in the heavens, birds were singing and the spring workers were busy in the fields. I took the side track down the rough pathway leading to Modley Farm.
My good friend, big, brawny, bluff Tom Tanner,—who was standing under the porch,—hailed me from a distance, with his usual merry shout.