Away off in front, and coming toward them along the same path, appeared
a singularly misshapen figure. As they came nearer, Dickey saw that it
was an old man carrying on his back, at each side and in front of him,
some part or piece of almost every imaginable thing. Umbrellas, chair
bottoms, panes of glass, knives, forks, pans, dusters, tubs, spoons and
stove-lids, graters and grind-stones, saws and samovars,--"Almost
everything one could possibly think of," said Dickey to himself.
The moment that the Fantasm caught sight of the strange figure he
stopped, and Dickey noticed that his face, which was tucked securely
under his left arm, turned quite pale.
"Gracious me!" he exclaimed in a thoroughly frightened way. "There's the
Itinerant Tinker again! Now," he added hastily and dolefully, "I shall
have to leave you and run for it."
"Why, you're surely not afraid of _him_!" Dickey exclaimed
incredulously. Dickey was really surprised, for the old man, so far as
he could judge from that distance, wore an extremely mild and kindly
look. "Why do you have to run?" he asked.
"Why? _Why?_" the Fantasm fairly shouted. "I told you a moment ago that
he was the _Itinerant Tinker_! He tries to mend every broken and
unbroken thing in Fantasma Land! Every time he catches me," went on the
Fantasm, as he edged cautiously away, "he tries to glue on my head. It's
very annoying--and, besides, it hurts! Good-by, Dickey!" he called, and
disappeared forthwith into the bushes.
"Isn't he a droll person?" thought Dickey. "He never stops with me more
than ten minutes at a time but what he either loses his head or runs
away."
By that time the Itinerant Tinker had come up to where Dickey stood. He
sat wearily down on a boulder by the wayside, removed some of the
heavier merchandise from off his back, and proceeded to mop his face
vigorously with a great red handkerchief. Dickey waited several minutes
for the old man to speak; but the Itinerant Tinker only regarded him
solemnly. He did not even smile.
"It's very warm work, sir," ventured Dickey, at last, "carrying all that
stuff--isn't it?"
"Stuff?" returned the Itinerant Tinker, in a very mild, but unmistakably
hurt tone of voice.
"Well--" Dickey hesitated timidly.
"_Don't_ call them stuff, please," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "call
them necessary commodities."
"But whatever one _does_ call them," Dickey persisted, "they still make
you warm to carry them all about, don't they?"
The Itinerant Tinker nodded his head and sighed again.
Again Dickey waited for a considerable space of time. But the old man
would have been perfectly content to sit there for ever, Dickey thought,
without speaking. "I _do_ wish he would talk," said he to himself.
"It's awfully annoying to have him sit there and look at one without
saying a word."
"What do you mend, sir?" Dickey inquired at last.
"I tried once," sighed the Itinerant Tinker, sadly, "to mend the break
of day. It took me twenty-seven hours and eleven minutes to fix it, and
it broke every twenty-four. At that rate how long would it take to patch
them all together?"
Another distressing silence.
"Have you figured _that_ out?" whispered the Itinerant Tinker at length.
"I haven't tried," Dickey admitted.
"_I_ tried once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and
gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after
another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with
the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was
forced to abandon _that_ too."
"In which direction were you going when I met you?" Dickey asked.
The Itinerant Tinker pointed ahead of him along the path and mopped his
bald head.
"But where?" insisted Dickey.
"To the Crypt. I was going to the Crypt," murmured the Itinerant Tinker,
"to see whether I couldn't get some umbrellas to mend."
"But they don't need umbrellas in the Crypt, do they?" Dickey asked,
surprised.
"No, they don't," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "and _that's_ the reason
I'm going there."
"If you don't mind," said Dickey, "I should like to go with you."
Without a word of reply the Itinerant Tinker rose slowly and painfully
to his feet, rearranged on his back the merchandise he had laid aside,
and started off up the hill, with Dickey following closely at his heels.
"I tried to mend the Great Dipper once," resumed the Itinerant Tinker,
at length. "I only succeeded, however, in crooking the handle; but it
looks better that way, I think."
"How did you manage to reach it?" asked Dickey, a little doubtfully.
"I climbed up the Milky Way," replied the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "In
order to reach it after I got there, I was obliged to stand on the horn
of the moon. It was a very perilous undertaking."
Dickey couldn't believe quite all that the Itinerant Tinker was telling
him. But his mild and gentle eyes wore such a serious expression that he
very much disliked to doubt the old man's word.
"Speaking of the moon," went on the Itinerant Tinker after a while, "I
tried once to make her stand up--after she had set, you know. It proved
a thankless task. She treated me very rudely, indeed. By the by, have
you seen the Flighty-wight?"
"No, sir; I have not," replied Dickey.
"_He's_ always jumping at conclusions, you know. I jumped at a
conclusion once, fell into disgrace, and was very much cut up over it. I
tried to patch _him_ up and he called me an old meddler! You haven't
heard of such ingratitude before, I fancy?"
"It was very mean of him, I think," said Dickey, sympathetically.
"Oh, _that's_ nothing," pursued the Itinerant Tinker, in a melancholy
tone. "That's _nothing_! I once attempted to solder a new tip on the
Wizard's wand. He turned me into a rabbit, _he_ did."
"Whatever did you do then?" asked Dickey.
"I protested, of course. He merely said that he was only making game of
me. But if there's any one thing that I can do better than another,"
went on the Itinerant Tinker, after another embarrassing pause, "it's
piecing together a split infinitive. Would you like me to show you how
it's done?"
"Indeed, I should," Dickey eagerly answered; "very much, indeed."
"Very well, then. Just give me time to set down these necessary
commodities, and I'll show you exactly the manner in which it's done and
undone."
After he had rid himself of his awkward burden, the Itinerant Tinker
carefully selected a saw from his kit of tools.
"Is that a log over there?" he asked, pointing toward a mound of earth.
"I'm a trifle nearsighted, you know."
"No," Dickey replied. "But there's one off there, just to the other
side. A big one, too."
"The identical thing," said the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked
over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth
end.
"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled
his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word LOVE in
the infinitive mood."
"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I
think."
Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned
the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, TO
LOVE. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word DEARLY on
the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words TO
and LOVE. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: TO DEARLY
LOVE.
"There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at
arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what
I call a fine bit of ingenuity!"
"So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked.
"Why, you _stupid_ boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you
just this minute see me split it?"
"Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly.
"Then, if I _split_ it, what else _could_ it be but a split infinitive,
I'd like to know?"
"Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood
called an _infinitive_ before."
"Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of
merchandise. "How you _do_ weary me!"
He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it
admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite
nervous.
"Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?"
Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by
asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man.
"There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He
actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it--I knew it!"
"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.
"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll
take me hours and hours to glue _that_ together. But first," he went on,
after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split
infinitive can be mended."
Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and,
after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them
carefully and neatly together.
"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "_that's_ the proper way to bring
together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your
infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and _he'll_
straighten 'em out for you."
"Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his
merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?"
"I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey,
doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy."
"Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the
story of the