unaway tinker, she turned the knob of
the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold.
It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no
lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf.
With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed
the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen
Norfolk.

"Sure, he promised his company to Arden," she said, by way of
stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and
this time she closed the door behind her.

The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate
where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was
no way of Patsy's telling from what direction she had come or where
Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun
wrathfully. "I'll be bound you're in league with the tinker; 'tis all
a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me
just seven miles from it. That's a grand number--seven."

A glint of white on the grass caught her eye; she stooped and found
it to be a diminutive quill feather dropped by some passing pigeon.
It lay across her palm for a second, and then--the whim taking
her--she shot it exultantly into the air. Where it fell she marked
the way it pointed, and that was the road she took.

It was beginning to seem years ago since she had sat in Marjorie
Schuyler's den listening to Billy Burgeman's confession of a crime
for which he had not sounded in the least responsible. That was on
Tuesday. It was now Friday--three days--seventy-two hours later. She
preferred to think of it in terms of hours--it measured the time
proportionally nearer to the actual feeling of it. Strangely enough,
it seemed half a lifetime instead of half a week, and Patsy could not
fathom the why of it. But what puzzled her more was the present
condition of Billy Burgeman, himself. As far as she was concerned he
had suddenly ceased to exist, and she was pursuing a Balmacaan coat
and plush hat that were quite tenantless; or--at most--they were
supported by the very haziest suggestion of a personality. The harder
she struggled to make a flesh-and-blood man therefrom the more
persistently did it elude her--slipping through her mental grasp like
so much quicksilver. She tried her best to picture him doing
something, feeling something--the simplest human emotion--and the
result was an absolute blank.

And all the while