The house was strangely quiet. Patsy stopped frequently in her playmaking to listen for some sounds of human occupancy other than her own, but there was none.
"Poor lad! Maybe I killed him last night when I kicked the tea-things down the stairs after him; or, most likely, the O'Connell temper has him stiffened out with fear so he daren't move hand or foot."
A moment later she came down the stairs humming, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind," her eyes dancing riotously.
Now, by all rights, dramatic or otherwise, the tinker should have been on hand, waiting her entrance. But tinker there was none; nothing but emptiness--and a breakfast-tray, spread and ready for her in the pantry.
Curiosity, uneasiness mastered her pride and she called--once--twice--several times. But there came no answering sound save the quickening of her own heart-beats under the pressure of her held breath.
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.