else. Perhaps--perhaps--oh, perhaps a hundred
things; but I'll make another bargain with you. I'll tell you all
about it when we reach Arden, if you'll tell me the name of the lad
you came to find."

"I'll do more than that--I'll bring ye together and let ye help mend
him," and she stretched forth her hand to clinch the bargain.

They sat in silence under the spattering of moonlight that sifted
down through the branches; for the moment the tinker had forgotten
his hunger.

"Well?" queried Patsy at last. "A ha'penny for them."

"I'm thinking the same old thoughts I've thought a hundred times
already--since that first day: What makes you so different from
everybody else? What ever sent you out into the world with your
gospel of kindness--on your lips and in your hands?"

"Would ye really like to know?" Patsy's fingers stole through the
grass about them. "Faith! the world's not so soft and green as this
under every one's feet. Ye see 'twas by a thorn I was found hanging
to that Killarney rose-bush in Brittany, and I've always remembered
the feeling of it."

"I always suspected that the people who fell heir to stinging
memories generally went through life hugging their own troubles, and
letting the rest of the world hug theirs."

"I don't believe it!" Patsy shook her head fiercely. "What's the use
of all the pain and sorrow and trouble scattered about everywhere if
it can't put a cure for others into the hands of those who have first
tasted it? And what better cure can ye find than kindness; isn't it
the best thing in the world?"

"Is it? Can it cure--gold?"

"And why not? If every man had more kindness than he had gold, would
neighbor ever have to fear neighbor or childther go hungry for love?"
The tinker did not answer, and Patsy went on with a deepening
intensity: "I'll tell ye a tale--a foolish tale that keeps repeating
itself over and over in my memory like the tick-tick-tick of a clock.
Ye know that the Jesuit Fathers say--give them the care of a child
till he's ten and nothing afterward matters. Well, it's true; a child
can feel all the sweetness or bitterness, hunger or plenty, that life
holds before he is that age even."

Patsy stopped. A veery was singing in the woods close by, and she
listened for a moment. "Hearken to that bird, now. A good-for-naught
lad may have stolen his nest, or a cat filched his young, or his sons
and daughters flown away and left him; but he'll sing, for all that.
'Tis a pit