“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 passed this way sence you been settin’ there?” they inquired almost in unison.
“I don’t know”—the tinker’s fingers passed 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: