ye can't make the best
of. But mind one thing, Master Touchstone! Ye'll find the right road
to Arden this time or ye and the duke's daughter will part
company--for all Willie Shakespeare wrote it otherwise."

He nodded. "We can ask the way 's we go. But first we'll be gettin'
the lady's-slippers and some breakfast. You'll see--I'll find them
both for you, lass"; and he set off with his swinging stride straight
across country, wagging his head wisely. Patsy fell in behind him,
and the road was soon out of sight and earshot.

* * * * *

It was just about this time that the storekeeper at Lebanon got the
Green County sheriff on the 'phone, and squared his conscience. "I
cal'ate she's the guilty party," were his closing remarks. "She'd
never ha' lighted out o' this 'ere town afore Christian folks were
out o' bed ef she hadn't had somethin' takin' her. And what's more,
she's keepin' bad company."

And so it came about that all the time the sorrel mare was being
harnessed into the runabout the tinker was leading Patsy farther
afield. And so it came to pass that when the mare's heels were
raising the dust on the road between Lebanon and Arden, they were
following a forest brook, deeper and deeper, into the woods.

They found it the most cheery, neighborly, and comfortable kind of a
brook, the quiet and well-contained sort that one could step at will
from bank to bank, and see with half an eye what a prime favorite it
was among its neighbors. Patsy and the tinker marked how close things
huddled to it, even creeping on to cover stones and gravel stretches;
there were moss and ferns and little, clinging things, like
baby's-breath and linnea. The major part of the bird population was
bathing in the sunnier pools, soberly or with wild hilarity,
according to disposition.

The tinker knew them all, calling to them in friendly fashion, at
which they always answered back. Patsy listened silently, wrapped in
the delight and beauty of it. On went the brook--dancing here in a
broken patch of sunshine--quieting there between the banks of
rock-fern and columbine, to better paint their prettiness; and all
the while singing one farther and farther into the woods. She was
just wondering if there could be anything lovelier than this when the
tinker stopped, still and tense as a pointer. She craned her head and
looked beyond him--looked to where the woods broke, leaving for a few
feet a thinly shaded growth