IT WAS EARLY MORNING when the tinker appeared upon the bridge, coming from the woods with a sprightly hop like a stage dwarf after the main company has departed. He peered both up and down the road. Satisfied, he left the bridge and took the path along the river, going bowbacked among the rushes with his curious magelike agility. The sun was well up and the bracken along the shore steamed in the rising warmth. The tinker hummed a little air to himself as he went.

When he came to the branch where it joined the river he cast about for a crossing, coming finally to a narrows a short distance upstream. When he came back into the river path on the far side the tracks he followed had ceased.

Whoa now, he said. Which way we a-goin here?

He recrossed the creek and picked up the man’s trace in a furrow of crushed ferns that led into the woods. Ah, he said. We a-takin to the deep pineys.

He lost the tracks more than once going up the branch but he paid that no mind. He was watching for tracks coming from the other way and he could find none. After he had gone a mile or so he ran out of any kind of track at all. He circled and returned, finding nothing. Finally he crossed the branch and went down the far side and very soon he came upon the tracks again. He followed them into a small clearing and here they ceased. He looked about him. It appeared to be the same place in which the tracks coming up the near side had vanished. As if their maker had met in this forest some dark other self in chemistry with whom he had been fused traceless from the earth. Than he heard the child cry. He turned, small grin among his wire whiskers. He found it at the far end of the clearing in a cup of moss, naked and crying no louder than a kitten.

Well well, he said, kneeling, you a mouthy chap if ye are a poor’n. He poked a finger at it as one might a tomato or a melon. Little woodsy colt ain’t ye? Looks like somebody meant for ye to stay in the woods.

He folded the towel about it and picked it up and holding it against the bib of his overalls with one arm began his way down the creek again.

When he reached the bridge and the road he had not been gone two hours. The child blinked mindlessly at the high sun. The tinker entered the woods on the other side of the road where he had hidden the cart and searched among his goods until he came up with some cheap gingham in which to wrap the child. It drooped into sleep against his thin chest, its face mauve and wrinkled as though beset already with some anguish or worry. He placed it between some sacks in the floor of the cart and regarded it.

Well, he said, you alive if ye ain’t kickin. He stooped and took up the tongues of the cart and set off through the woods, into the road, the wending trackless corridor down which echoed the clatter of his wagon and the endless tympanic collision of his wares.

He did not stop when he reached the store. He turned left onto the state road, going north now, moving with the same tireless pace. The child had not cried and he had not looked at it. Late in the afternoon he stopped to eat and it did cry, a thin and labored squall as he bent above it, his mouth slow and ruminative, chewing, dry cornbread collecting in his beard and sifting down upon the child. Tell em about it, he said.

When the sun had gone he went on in darkness, the child quiet again as if motion were specific against anything that ailed it. The moon came up and grew small and the road before him went white as salt. He jangled on through an iceblue light in his amulet of sound.

Before midnight he entered a town. Past a mill where a wheel rumbled drunkenly under its race and water fell with a windy slash. Past stores and shops, dark clustered houses, heralded and attended by the outcry of dogs down the empty streets and on again into the patched farmland. Another mile and he came to a wagon drive and a house a short way from the road that sat likewise in darkness. He pulled up before the door and lowered the cart to the ground. Halloo there, he called.

He waited. After a while light appeared very faint and yellow among the weather-riven slats and a woman’s voice said: Who’s out there?

Me, said the tinker.

Come in, she said, swinging open the door and standing there in a rough shift with a tallow candle in one hand.

He stamped his boots ceremonially once each on the sill and entered. Howdy, he said.

Late hours for a old man ain’t it? she said.

It’s late hours for a young one. I need me a nurse woman.

I’ve never questioned that.

No … here, don’t shut the door. It’s for this here youngern.

What youngern.

One I got in the cart. Bring that candle here.

She followed him out suspiciously and peered past his shoulder down into the cart where the child lay sleeping.

Looky here, he said.

They Lord God.

Here, let me fetch him out.

You take this candle, she said. I’ll fetch him out.

It came awake with a thin yowl. She gathered it up and they went into the house and stretched it out on the crude board table, hovering above it nervously. Lord, she said, it ain’t but just borned.

I know it, he said.

Where all did it come from?

I found it in the woods, he said. It’d been thowed away and I found it.

This poor thing needs fed.

I know it, he said. Is they ary nurse about here?

She was biting the backs of her knuckles. Mrs Laird, she said. She’s just got her a new chap.

You reckon she’ll take it?

She ain’t got nary choice. Here, he needs better wrapped. Mind him a minute while I get some things and we’ll go.

Where does she live at?

Just up the road. You mind him a minute.

Setting forth in the faint moonlight, the tinker now at her elbow and her carrying the child wrapped completely from sight, they appeared furtive, clandestine, stepping softly and soft their voices over the sandy road in shadows so foreshortened they seemed sprung and frenzied with a violence in which their creators moved with dreamy disconcern.