A feeling of unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post--for all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel more deserted--more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind, impersonal disaster. When it was a matter of deliberate, intentional human motives--it became well-nigh unbearable. Had the tinker gone to be rid of her company and her temper? Had he decided that the road was a better place without her? Maybe he had taken the matter of the other lad too seriously--and, thinking them sweethearts, had counted himself an undesired third, and betaken himself out of their ways. Or--maybe--he was fearsome of constables--and had hurried away to cover his trail and leave her safe. "Maybe a hundred things," moaned Patsy, disconsolately; "maybe 'tis all a dream and there's no road and no quest and no Rich Man's son and no tinker, and no anything. Maybe--I'll be waking up in another minute and finding myself back in the hospital with the delirium still on me." She closed her eyes, rubbed them hard with two mandatory fists, then opened them to test the truth of her last remark; and it happened that the first object they fell on was a photograph in a carved wooden frame on the mantel-shelf in the room across the hall. It was plainly visible from where Patsy stood by the stairs--it was also plainly familiar. With a run Patsy was over there in an instant, the photograph in her hands. "Holy Saint Patrick, 'tis witchcraft!" she cried under her breath. "How in the name of devils--or saints--did he ever get this taken, developed, printed, and framed--between the middle of last night and the beginning of this morning!" For Patsy was looking down at a picture of the tinker, in white flannels, with head thrown back and laughing. IX PATSY ACQUIRES SOME INFORMATION With the realization that the tinker was gone, the empty house suddenly became oppressive. Patsy put down the photograph with a quick little sigh, and hunted up the breakfast-tray he had left spread and ready for her, carrying it out to the back porch. There in the open and the sunshine she ate, according to her own tabulation, three meals--a left-over supper, a breakfast, and the lunch which she was more than likely to miss later, She was in the midst of the lunch when an idea scuttled out of her inner consciousness and pulled at her immediate attention. She rose hurriedly and went inside. Room after room she searched, closet after closet.