“After that the man left them together—the dying woman and her child. Ah!—how can I be telling you the way she fondled and caressed her! How starved were the lips that touched the child’s hair, cheeks, and eyelids! And when her strength failed she drew the child into her tired arms and whispered fragments of prayers, haunting memories, pitiful regrets. Of all the things she said the child remembered but one: ‘Gold buys plenty for the body, but nothing for the heart—nothing—nothing!’
“And that kept repeating itself over and over in the child’s mind. She remembered it all through the night after they had taken her away from those lifeless arms and she lay awake alone in a terrifying, dark room; she remembered it all through the long day when she sat beside the gorgeous catafalque that held her mother, and watched the tall candles in the dim chapel burn lower and lower and lower. And that was why she refused to stay afterward—and be taken care of by the shrivel-faced man in that oldest and most beautiful château. Instead she slipped out early one morning, before any one was awake to see and mark the way she went. It is unbelievable, sometimes, how children who have the will to do it can lose themselves. And so this child—alone—went out into the world, empty-handed, seeking life.”
“But did she go empty-handed?” asked the tinker.
“Aye, but not empty-hearted, thank God!”
“And wherever the child went, she carried with her that hatred of gold,” mused the tinker.
“Aye; why not? She had learned how pitifully little it was worth, when all’s said and done. ’Twas her father’s name she heard last on her mother’s lips, and it was their child she prayed for with her dying breath.” Patsy sprang to her feet. “Do ye see—the moon will be beating me to bed, and ’twas a poor tale, after all. How is your foot?”
“Better—much better.”
“Would ye be able to travel on it to-morrow?”
The tinker shook his head. “The day after, perhaps.”
“Well, keep on coaxing it. Good night.” And she had picked up her basket and was gone before the tinker could stumble to his feet.