on his shoulder.

"What ho, boy!" said he, shivering. "'I'll follow thee a month,
devise with thee where thou shalt rest, that thou may'st hear of
us, an' we o' thee.' What o' thy people an' the filly?"

"All well," said Trove, who was delighted to see the clock tinker,
of whom he had thought often. "And what of you?"

"Like an old clock, sor--a weak spring an' a bit slow. But, praise
God! I've yet a merry gong in me. An' what think you, sor, I've
travelled sixty miles an' tinkered forty clocks in the week gone."

"I think you yourself will need tinkering."

"Ah, but I thank the good God, here is me home," the old man
remarked wearily.

"I'm going to school here," said Trove, "and hope I may see you
often."

"Indeed, boy, we'll have many a blessed hour," said the tinker.
"Come to me shop; we'll talk, meditate, explore, an' I'll see what
o'clock it is in thy country."

They were now in the village, and, halfway down its main
thoroughfare, went up a street of gloom and narrowness between
dingy workshops. At one of them, shaky, and gray with the stain of
years, they halted. The two lower windows in front were dim with
dirt and cobwebs. A board above them was the rude sign of Sam
Bassett, carpenter. On the side of the old shop was a flight of
sagging, rickety stairs. At the height of a man's head an old
brass dial was nailed to the gray boards. Roughly lettered in
lampblack beneath it were the words, "Clocks Mended." They climbed
the shaky stairs to a landing, supported by long braces, and
whereon was a broad door, with latch and keyhole in its weathered
timber.

"All bow at this door," said the old tinker, as he put his long
iron key in the lock. "It's respect for their own heads, not for
mine," he continued, his hand on the eaves that overhung below the
level of the door-top.

They entered a loft, open to the peak and shingles, with a window
in each end. Clocks, dials, pendulums, and tiny cog-wheels of wood
and brass were on a long bench by the street window. Thereon,
also, were a vice and tools. The room was cleanly, with a crude
homelikeness about it. Chromos and illustrated papers had been
pasted on the rough, board walls.

"On me life, it is cold," said the tinker, opening a small stove
and beginning to whittle shavings, "'Cold as a dead man's nose.'
Be seated, an' try--try to be happy."

There was an old rocker and two small chairs in the room.

"I do not feel the cold," said T