"I burned it that night in the cottage--to fool the sheriff." "And I thought that night it was me ye had tricked--just for the whim of it. Did ye know who I was--by chance?" "Of course I knew. I had seen you with the Irish Players many, many times, and I knew you the very moment your voice came over the road to me--wishing me 'a brave day.'" The tinker's eyes deepened with tenderness. "Do you think for a moment if I hadn't known something about you--and wasn't hungering to know more--that I would have schemed and cheated to keep your comradeship?" "Ye might tell me, then, how ye came to know about the cottage--and how your picture ever climbed to the mantel-shelf?" "You know--I meant to burn that along with the dress--and I forgot. What did you think when you discovered it?" "Faith! I thought it was the picture of the truest gentleman God had ever made--and I fetched it along with me--for company." The tinker threw back his head and laughed as of old. "What will poor old Greg say when he finds it gone? Oh, I know how you almost stole his faithful old heart by being so pitying of his friend--and how you made the sign for him to follow--" "Aye," agreed Patsy, "but what of the cottage?" "That belongs to Greg's father; he and the girls are West this summer, so the cottage was closed." "And the breakfast with the throstles and the lady's-slippers?" The tinker laid his finger over her lips. "Please, sweetheart--don't try to steal away all the magic and the poetry from our road. You will leave it very barren if you do--'I'm thinking.'" Silence held their tongues until curiosity again loosened Patsy's. "And what started ye on the road in rags? Ye have never really answered that." "I have never honestly wanted to; it is not a pleasant answer." He drew Patsy closer, and his hands closed over hers. "Promise you will never think of it again, that you and I will forget that part of the road--after to-day?" Patsy nodded. "I borrowed the rags so that it would take a pretty smart coroner to identify the person in it after the train had passed under the suspension-bridge from which he fell--by accident. Don't shudder, dear. Was it so terrible--that wish to get away from a world that held nothing, not even some one to grieve? Remember, when I started there wasn't a soul who believed in me, who would care much one way or another--unless, perhaps, poor old Greg." "Would ye mind letting me look at the marriage license? I'd like to be seeing it written down." The tinker produced it, and she read "William Burgeman." Then she added, with a stubborn shake of the head, "Mind, though, I'll not be rich."