In one she came upon a suit of familiar white flannels; and she passed them slowly--so slowly that her hands brushed them with a friendly little greeting. But the search was a barren one, and she returned to the porch as empty-handed and as mystified as she had left it; the heap of ashes on the hearth held no meaning for her, and consequently told no tales. "'Tis plain enough what's happened," she said, soberly, to the sparrows who were skirmishing for crumbs. "Just as I said, he was fearsome of those constables, after all, and he's escaped in my clothes!" The picture of the tinker's bulk trying to disguise itself behind anything so scanty as her shrunken garments proved too irresistible for her sense of humor; she burst into peal after peal of laughter which left her weak and wet-eyed and dispelled her loneliness like fog before a clearing wind. "Anyhow, if he hasn't worn them he's fetched them away as a wee souvenir of an O'Connell; and if I'm to reach Arden in any degree of decency 'twill have to be in stolen clothes." But she did not go in the blue frock; the realization came to her promptly that that was no attire for the road and an unprotected state; she must go with dull plumage and no beguiling feathers. So she searched again, and came upon a blue-and-white "middy" suit and a dark-blue "Norfolk." The exchange brought forth the veriest wisp of a sigh, for a woman's a woman, on the road or off it; and what one has not a marked preference for the more becoming frock? Patsy proved herself a most lawful housebreaker. She tidied up and put away everything; and the shutter having already been replaced over the broken window by the runaway tinker, she turned the knob of the Yale lock on the front door and put one foot over the threshold. It was back again in an instant, however; and this time it was no lawful Patsy that flew back through the hall to the mantel-shelf. With the deftness and celerity of a true housebreaker she de-framed the tinker and stuffed the photograph in the pocket of her stolen Norfolk. "Sure, he promised his company to Arden," she said, by way of stilling her conscience. Then she crossed the threshold again; and this time she closed the door behind her. The sun was inconsiderately overhead. There was nothing to indicate where it had risen or whither it intended to set; therefore there was no way of Patsy's telling from what direction she had come or where Arden was most likely to be found. She shook her fist at the sun wrathfully. "I'll be bound you're in league with the tinker; 'tis all a conspiracy to keep me from ever making Arden, or else to keep me just seven miles from it. That's a grand number--seven."