r
sink, exhausted, on the bedded hay, while she pulled down a forgotten
horse-blanket from a near-by peg to throw over him; then she turned
in a business-like manner back to the door.

"Are you going to Arden?" came the faint voice of the tinker after
her.

"I might--and then again--I mightn't. Was there any word ye might
want me to fetch ahead for ye?"

"No; only--perhaps--would you think a chap too everlastingly
impertinent to ask you to wait there for him--until he caught up with
you?"

"I might--and then again--I mightn't." At the door she stopped, and
for the second time considered her hands speculatively. "It wouldn't
inconvenience your feelings any to take charity from me, would it,
seeing I'm as poor as yourself and have dragged ye into this common,
tuppenny brawl by my own foolishness?"

"You didn't drag me in; I had one foot in already."

"I thought so," Patsy nodded, approvingly; her conviction had been
correct, then. "And the charity?"

"Yes, I'd take it from you." The tinker rolled over with a little
moan composed of physical pain and mental discomfort. But in another
moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as
she disappeared through the door. "Remember--no help from the
quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming
around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of
assistance to a--beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you
bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down about me.
Remember!"

"Aye," she called back; "I'll be remembering."

* * * * *

She reached the road again; and for the manyeth time since she left
the women's free ward of the City Hospital she marshaled all the
O'Connell wits. But even the best of wits require opportunity, and to
Patsy the immediate outlook seemed barren of such.

"There's naught to do but keep going till something turns up," she
said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter.
She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned
house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of
thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a
cross-road. She looked to the right--it was empty. She looked to the
left--and behold there was "Opportunity," large, florid, and
agitated, coming directly toward her from one of the tile-roofed
houses, and puffing audibly under the combined weight of he