road light of day! And me saving them against
Christmastime, too!"

"Wait till I get that fellow where beating is cheap, and I'll take the
change out of him!" said the Father.

Eileen began to cry and Larry's lip trembled.

"Come here now, you poor dears," their Mother said. "Sit down on the
two creepeens by the fire, and have a bite to eat before you go to bed.
Indeed, you must be starved entirely, with the running, and the fright,
and all. I'll give you a drink of cold milk, warmed up with a sup of
hot water through it, and a bit of bread, to comfort your stomachs."

While the Twins ate the bread and drank the milk, their Father and
Mother talked about the Tinkers. "Sure, they are as a frost in spring,
and a blight in harvest," said Mrs McQueen. "I wonder wherever they
got the badness in them the way they have."

"I've heard said it was a Tinker that led Saint Patrick astray when he
was in Ireland," said Mr McQueen. "I don't know if it's true or not,
but the tale is that he was brought here a slave, and that it would take
a hundred pounds to buy his freedom. One day, when he was minding the
sheep on the hills, he found a lump of silver, and he met a Tinker and
asked him the value of it.

"`Wirra,' says the Tinker, `'tis naught but a bit of solder. Give it to
me!' But Saint Patrick took it to a smith instead, and the smith told
him the truth about it, and Saint Patrick put a curse on the Tinkers,
that every man's face should be against them, and that they should get
no rest at all but to follow the road."

"Some say they do be walking the world forever," said Mrs McQueen, "and
I never in my life met any one that had seen a Tinker's funeral."

"There'll maybe be one if I catch the Tinker that stole the geese!" Mr
McQueen said grimly.

Mrs McQueen laughed. "It's the fierce one you are to talk," she said,
"and you that good-natured when you're angry that you'd scare not even a
fly! Come along now to bed with you," she added to the Twins. "There
you sit with your eyes dropping out of your heads with sleep."

She helped them undress and popped them into their beds in the next
room; then she barred the door, put out the candle, covered the coals in
the fireplace, and went to bed in the room on the other side of the
kitchen. Last of all, Mr McQueen knocked the ashes from his pipe
against the chimney-piece, and soon everything was quiet in their
cottage, and in the whole village of Ballymora where they