evidence
of a fire within, spurred Patsy's lagging steps. But in response to
their knocking, the door was opened just wide enough to frame the
narrow face of a timid-eyed, nervous woman who bade them be gone even
before they had gathered breath enough to ask for shelter.

"Faith, 'tis a reminder that we are no longer living three hundred
years ago," Patsy murmured between tightening lips. "How long in, do
ye think, the fashion has been--to shut doors on poor wanderers?"

At the next house, a half-mile beyond, they fared no better. The
woman's voice was curter, and the uninviting muzzle of a bull-terrier
was thrust out between the door and the woman's skirts. As they
turned away Patsy's teeth were chattering; the chill and wet had
crept into her bones and blood, turning her lips blue and her cheeks
ashen; even the cutting wind failed to color them.

"Curse them!" muttered the tinker, fiercely. "If I only had a coat to
put around you--anything to break the wind. Curse them warm and dry
inside there!" and he shook his fist at the forbidden door.

Patsy tried to smile, but failed. "Faith! I haven't the breath to
curse them; but God pity them, that's all."

Before she had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang
it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll
have you by a crackling good fire if I have to steal the wood."

He hurried her along--somewhere. Weariness and bodily depression
closed her eyes; and she let him lead her--whither she neither
wondered nor cared. Time and distance ceased to exist for her; she
stumbled along, conscious of but two things--a fear that she would be
ill again with no one to tend her, and a gigantic craving for
heat--heat!

When she opened her eyes again they had stopped and were standing
under a shuttered window at what appeared to be the back of a summer
cottage; the tinker was prying a rock out of the mud at their feet.
In a most business-like manner he used it to smash the fastening of
the shutters, and, when these were removed, to break the small,
leaded pane of glass nearest the window-fastening. It was only a
matter of seconds then before the window was opened and Patsy boosted
over the sill into the kitchen beyond.

"Ye'd best stand me in the sink and wring me out, or I'll flood the
house," Patsy managed to gasp. "I'd do it myself, but I know, if I
once let go of my hands, I'll shake to death."

The tinker followed her advice, working the wa