“And who in the name of reason was the man in the car?”
“That’s what I’d like to know; the unmitigated nerve of him!” he finished to himself. His chin set itself squarely; his face had grown as white as Patsy’s had been and his eyes became doggedly determined. “If it isn’t a piece of impertinence, I’d like to ask how you happened to be with him, that way?”
Patsy flushed. “I’m thinking ye’ve earned the right to an answer. I took him for the lad I was looking for. I thought the place was Arden, and—and the clothes were the same.”
“The clothes!” the tinker repeated it in the same bewildered way that had been his when Patsy first found him; then he turned and grasped Patsy’s shoulders with a sudden, inexplicable intensity. “What’s the name of the lad—the lad you’re after?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Patsy, slowly, “if you’ll tell me what you did with my brown clothes that morning before you left.”
And the answer to both questions was a blank, baffling stare.