you to promise me if you ever need a friend--if there is
anything I can ever do--"

"Ye can," interrupted Patsy, "and ye can do it now. Take that
riding-crop of yours and draw me a map in the dust there of the
country hereabouts--ye can make a cross for Arden.... That's grand.
Now where would ye put Brambleside Inn? And is it seven miles from
there to Arden?"

Gregory nodded an affirmative while he considered Patsy with grave
perplexity. Patsy saw it, and smiled reassuringly. "'Tis all right.
I've always had a great interest entirely to know the geography of
every new country--and I haven't the wits to discover it for myself.
Now where would ye put the cross-roads and the Catholic church? And
where would Lebanon be? Aye--Did ye ever see an old tabby chasing her
tail? Faith! 'tis a very intelligent spectacle, I'm thinking. Now
where might ye put the cross-roads where ye picked me up with the
Dempsy Carters?... And Dansville?... and the railroad bridge? ... and
the golf links, back yonder?"

She stood for many minutes, studying the rough chart in the dust at
her feet. The connecting lines of roads between the places named made
fully a hundred and twenty degrees of a circle about the cross
marking Arden. And as chance would have it, every one of the
encircling towns measured approximately seven miles from the central
cross. Patsy smiled, and the smile grew to a chuckle--and the chuckle
to a long, rippling laugh. Patsy was forced to hold her sides with
the ache of it.

"I know ye think I'm crazy--but 'tis the rarest bit of humor this
side of Ireland. Willie Shakespeare himself would steal it if he
could to put in one of his comedies. There is just one thing I'd like
to be knowing--how much of it was chance, and how much was the tricks
of a tinker?"

"I don't think I understand," mumbled Gregory Jessup.

"Of course ye don't," agreed Patsy. "I don't, myself. But there's one
thing more I'll be telling ye--if ye'll swear never to let it pass
your lips?"

Patsy paused for dramatic effect while Gregory Jessup bound himself
twice over to secrecy. "Well," she said, at length, "'tis this: If I
had the road to travel again I'd pray to Saint Brendan to keep my
feet fast to the wrong turn. That's what!"

Patsy left him, still looking after her in a puzzled fashion; and
with quickening steps she passed out of sight.

But once again did she stop; and again it was by a graveled driveway.
She was deep in green memories when a