and then a chorus of men's voices
These young men who worked in the mill and brought their logs down the river, which was our old friend the Merry-Tongue, lived in very comfortable log houses which could be occupied summer or winter. Consequently some of them were quite nicely furnished.
To my amusement, didn't I see my acquaintance, Black-Paws, the raccoon, just waking from a sound sleep under a bed in one of these log cabins.
"So this is where you go when you disappear from the Devering Farm," I said.
He looked me all over with his little cunning eyes. "Sometimes," he said. "I have many homes—they have a good cook in this camp," and approaching a quite nice looking bed he pulled back the covers and showed me a lump of orange layer cake under the pillow.
I couldn't help laughing as he tucked it back and patted it with his paws. "Whose bed is it?" I asked.
"Cyril Green's—he's first violin."
"You're quite a musical animal, I suppose," I said.
"If music isn't too near, I am," he remarked. "Excuse me, I must go wash this piece of beef," and didn't he drag some steak from under a sofa cushion, and run to the river with it.
Then my master and his uncle came along, bringing the whole bunch of young men with them. They were knocking off work to go down to the Deverings' and have a good time.
It was Mr. Devering's mill, so he could do as he liked.
"Play must be played," he said earnestly to a red-haired young giant who seemed to be boss, and who looked doubtful about quitting work before five. "Aren't you old enough yet, Cyril, to know that Jack gets to be a very dull boy indeed if his mind is always on dollars and cents? Go dress up a bit, and put your fiddle under your arm."
"Is that your friend?" I asked Black-Paws, whose dark hands were glistening with water.
"Yes—he's a dandy. Temper sweet as maple sugar. Other chaps stone me if I hide my little treasures in their cabins."
I walked over to Mr. Green and he looked me up and down admiringly, and stood watching me as Dallas got on my back and asked his uncle's permission to hurry home.
Our lad was so excited about his mother that he wished to be alone to think over what his uncle had said.
There was some mystery here which he did not quite understand.
Oh! how I longed to tell him that he would really see his beloved mother in the flesh, but alas! though I loved him so dearly and could communicate some of my feelings to him, this was one thing that he would have to find out for himself.
All the way home he was singing, so I knew what thoughts were passing through his mind. The longing for his mother amounted to a passion. His childhood had been so repressed that now with the prospect of his mother's presence either in the body or out of it, and normal life with his father outside a city, he acted like a boy that had a joyous fountain of delight springing up inside him.
He took a song all these backwoodsmen sang about, "Over the Mountain," and changed it to suit his purpose.
Instead of a traveller on horseback, he was a boy on ponyback, and he was looking for his mother, stolen by wicked fairies.
I think he really knew at this time that his mother was not dead, but for the life of me I could not be sure of it.
Children are pretty clever at concealing their inner thoughts, and though I am reckoned a pretty wise pony, I never have fully understood all the workings of this young master's picturesque mind.
I loved him, though. That was enough for me, and I listened with deep pleasure to his gay singing until we reached the Farm. Arriving there, he jumped off my back and went soberly up to the veranda, where Big Chief was having a meeting of the Calf and Pig Club, composed of neighbourhood boys and girls.
After they went away, there was a very jolly big supper party and later on some quaint folk dances on the lawn.
Then they had a bear dance. Mr. Devering and Mr. Macdonald dressed up in bearskins and frolicked about the grass in the electric light.
They were very amusing as Mother and Father Bear, but when my young master came on as a saucy cub who would not mind his parents, the fun became so fast and furious between the big bears and the little one that everybody shrieked with laughter.
Occasionally little bear cub glanced at the wrist watch on his paw and I knew that even in the midst of his gambolling he was keeping an eye on the time. He wished to be early to bed in order to be early to rise.
Finally, when the dancing was over and Mr. Devering proposed that they all go out in a motor-boat to take some cake and ice-cream to old Mrs. Petpeswick up by the head of the lake, Dallas slipped away to bed.
Big Chief caught him by the hand as he went by him.
"Come on, Cousin. It isn't late."
They were both out on the veranda and Dallas' eyes grew dark and mysterious. "I have a quest," he said, "like knights of old. Don't butt in, old boy."
Big Chief nodded and ran after Cassowary and Champ, who were whistling "O Canada" together as they strolled down to the boat.
I watched my young master undressing and hanging his clothes over a chair back as neatly as a girl would do, then he kneeled down beside his bed and afterward hopped into it.
I trotted up to the stable and found a nice sleepy quiet prevailing there until I asked the news of the day, when I got a whole budget from the different animals.
"The Good American has come," announced Attaboy pompously, "the friend of my master's father."
"Indeed!" I said, "I am quite curious to see him."
"He is very good to everybody," Attaboy continued; "he is just like my master's father."
I was rather amused. Attaboy had been very nice to me ever since I stopped Big Chief from running away. He was so stubborn, however, that he always said Big Chief, being such a wonderful boy, would have come home without my interference.
"The Good American's wife and children arrived, too," said David Wales, the Welsh pony.
"And servants and guests," continued the Exmoor.
"You should have seen them driving in from the Lake of Bays," said Attaboy, "motor cars and waggons piled high with luggage."
"They are very late this year," said Attaboy. "I hear there was a wedding in the family that delayed them."
I pricked up my ears when I heard the word guests. Was it possible that Dallas' mother was among them? Probably she was and that would explain Mr. Devering's eagerness to get the trail between the two houses in good condition before his American friends arrived.
Well! We ponies would see what we would see, and I listened sleepily to Apache Girl, who always had a talk with me now before I sank down on my straw bed.
She rarely lay down. She said she was afraid of mice getting up her nostrils, but I told her it was the wild blood in her. When horses roam in bands about a country they must be always on the alert against enemies who would creep on them.
Oh! what queer stories she used to tell me—queer uncanny stories of Spaniards and Americans that had been passed down to her by her ancestors.
I was delighted that she had thawed toward me, but finally nodded until I fell asleep just as a wild Inca chief with a spear in his hand was rushing at a Spaniard.
In my dreams the Inca spared the Spaniard, so I was quite relieved.
It seemed to me only five minutes before I heard someone whistling, "Early one morning and while the dew was shining," and there was my young master brushed and dressed and biting deep into a huge slice of bread and butter with yellow sugar on it, a dainty that the children often got from Bingi.
"Come on, Pony Boy, my dearest joy," he said, giving me a generous piece of his bread. "The quest is on."
I stepped out beside him. I shall never forget that particular early morning. I had never before seen the lake so lovely.
My young master, too, was admiring it. "Isn't that water exquisite, my Pony Prince?" he said. "Just like a dreamy big emerald set in a forest of green. Upon my word, when I got down to it in my bathing suit it was so beautiful that I could not go in. I turned back. I didn't feel I was a good enough boy."
This pleased me very much. What fine feeling for a lad!
"Now, Prince Fetlar," he went on, "I'm sorry that on this first morning of our search we have to turn our backs on the lake, but so it must be. Mothers first, lakes second. Here we go up Deer Trail," and he sprang in his own graceful way to my back.
He rode me until we got to the romantic sugaring-off place in a belt of maple bush.
Then he jumped off, looked reflectively at the enormous black pot hanging on the crane in the stone fire place and said, "Big Chief says I must be sure to come here next spring when they tap the trees. I should love to see the sap running. He has a hundred trees of his own and maple syrup is going to be marketed at five dollars a gallon."
I was very much amused. My young master was getting to be quite a little man of business.
Suddenly he turned to me, "What is sweeter than maple syrup, Fetlar?"
Of course I could do nothing but neigh excitedly, and he exclaimed, "Mothers! Come on, let's find mine," and he dashed down a steep side trail leading to the Merry Tongue River.
I followed him, picking my way carefully over soggy mats of dead leaves and round by enormous rocks and fallen trees. Oh! the firewood going to waste in this forest.
Something made me put my head down whenever we came to damp and marshy ground. I didn't know why I did it, but Dallas exclaimed when he turned round and saw me, "That's a Shetland trick. Your little ancestors used to smell out, or perhaps I should say feel, the safe places when they went to the peat bogs with the crofters to get fuel."
This was very interesting. How glad I was that my young master had brains and that he had become such an expert young woodsman, for without being able to see far ahead on account of the dense growth of trees he just seemed to choose easily the best way to get round obstacles.
There was a trail here, but so faint that we kept losing it. Nothing daunted the boy, and when he could not get on with two feet he fell on his hands and, imitating me, scrambled over steep rock faces where he would often pull up by the roots some young baby tree he was clinging to.
As he fell backward or sideways his concern was more for the uprooted thing than himself.
"I've killed it," he would say, "and it probably loves its home."
Then, if not too badly damaged, he would re-plant it, and by these delays our progress was rather slow.
Just before we got to the brawling little river that my master loved because it talked so sociably to its big brown stones as it dashed over them, we came to Poor Dog's Pool, so named on account of a favourite setter of the Devering children who had once fallen in there in a fit and drowned.
"The setter is happy now," said Dallas as he looked thoughtfully into the depths of the velvety pool set in its bed of ferns. "He will never drown again, and he is waiting for the children."
Then he repeated to me in his sweet ringing voice a favourite poem of his cousins' written by a young Irish-Canadian friend of theirs called Norah Holland.[1]
When he finished the poem, I rubbed affectionately against the dark blue figure standing so straight and handsome in the depths of this green wood. With a boy's extravagance he had put on his very best suit of clothes to come and look for his mother, and a sad mess it was in.
I was pleased that he had taken the trouble to recite to me, and he knew it, but in the midst of a remark to me he began to yawn sleepily.
"Prince Fetlar," he said, "I'm going to have forty winks. I scarcely slept a bit last night," and he stepped back among the old pines that had watched the pool and its dark doings for many a year.
It was said to be bottomless, and when my master lay down to sleep he chose a nice fragrant bed of pine needles at the foot of a moss-grown boulder and at a safe distance from the treacherous waters of the pool.
"Watch a few minutes, Prince," he said, "it will only be a cat nap."
"Bless him," I said to myself, "he's safe for a couple of hours," and I, not feeling at all sleepy, placed myself in a bed of brakes behind him and stood stock still planning to see what I could see.
As long as we had been moving we saw nothing but the still life of the woods. The breaking of branches and the sound of my master's voice had kept every shy wild thing from us. They were not afraid that we would kill them, for Mr. Devering and the Good American allowed no shooting on their timber limits. They were just naturally averse to the near presence of human beings, but I knew they were all peeping at us as we went by.
As soon as my young master fell asleep some timid wood birds who haunted this pool began to talk to each other about the abundance of food this year and the easiness of the task of bringing up young ones.
Then a funny young Canadian bear came by, pad-padding along and stopping a few feet from me to sit down and leisurely scratch his ear. However, he caught our odour and away he went, he, too, looking for home and mother.
While I stood thinking what a lovely and pleasant thing it was that my young master and I, too, had no fear of these wild creatures about us now that we knew there was not one of them that would do us harm, I bent my head to rub off some little ants that were wandering about my fetlocks. There, almost nestling against my pastern, was a hen partridge, or perhaps I should say grouse.
She looked up at me with a bright and trusting eye, but decided she had better move along now that she was discovered. However, she made no haste about it and reminded me of some tame partridges in Maine whose backs a master I had then used to tickle with his fishing rod.
"Oh! how wild things would love man if he would not hunt them," and just as I was saying this to myself I lifted up my eyes and there at a little distance stood a beautiful white ghost among the pines.
"Good morning, comely one," I said when the White Phantom came gracefully near. "Pardon me for not going to meet you. My master sleeps and I am on guard."
"I know it," she said prettily. "A little chickadee told me. If he had been awake I would not have come near."
"But he never hurts anything," I said.
"I know that, but I seek no human beings except my two loved masters. I have seen quite nice boys and men jump at wild things even when they did not shoot. They like to see us run."
"They do not know what timid hearts you wild things have," I said consolingly.
"You creatures called domestic know nothing of the fears of untamed creatures," she said. "Our lives are one long misery if thoughtless human beings control us."
"That is very sad," I replied.
"But not too sad," she went on, "for the Good Highlander tells us that we have another life, and such a long one that this life is only a dream compared with it. In that other life we shall be perfectly happy, for no one will hunt us."
"So you, too, know the Good Highlander," I exclaimed joyfully.
"Quite well, and he is so clear to me that the other animals tell me I must soon be going to join his band of happy creatures."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"That all the animals that ever lived in these woods are here still, though we do not see them."
"Can that be possible! Is this wonderful forest to be your deer heaven, lovely doe?"
"I hope so. I should like to keep near my masters and I feel that I will, for that wolf cub with the Highlander is one who once lived back of the mountain."
"You recognise him?"
"Yes, for he hunted me cruelly. He was with his mother, the fiercest old wolf witch of this district. It was one day on the ice. I was crossing the lake to go home. Something told me they were coming. I was as fleet as the wind in those days, but they swept close to me, one on each side. I felt their hot breath——"
She paused an instant and I shuddered. I could see her in my mind's eye bounding up the frozen lake in her graceful manner, her heart pounding, her strength failing, the two fierce creatures about to leap on her and tear her to pieces.
"Do you know," she said quietly, "that just when I was about to sink to the ice something very strange happened."
"What was it?" I asked eagerly.
"It was the first time I saw the Highlander," she replied, "and then he was only the faintest mistiest shape to me, but he was there. He floated by me and the wolves fell dead."
"Had he killed them?" I asked.
"I do not know. My master suddenly appeared skating round the bend of the river, his gun on his shoulder. The Highlander was not there when he arrived and my master bent over the wolves' bodies, then lifted his puzzled face to me as I struggled toward home at a little distance from them."
"'But it is astonishing!' he said. Then later he skinned the wolves, but that young one who is with the Good Highlander when he haunts these woods is the wicked cub who hunted me with his mother."
"But he is a good cub now," I said.
"He has a heart of gold," she replied. "I have seen him beside a dying fawn."
"I'm puzzled," I said. "Wolves have to get their living in this world. Yet we blame them for killing creatures who wish to live. However, there's one thing sure, lovely Phantom—when we animals die many things will be explained that we do not understand now."
"Sometimes when I am very frightened I wish to go to the Good Highlander and live that life where I shall be as bold as a wolf," she replied dreamily, "and that reminds me—I have sought you out to-day to thank you for what you did that afternoon the poachers shot me."
"Oh! Phantom," I said, "I could not bear to see you die."
"I was quite willing," she said dreamily. "I seemed to be drifting into a safe, soft black forest, but when you said my masters would be grieved I gladly came back."
"And you, dear one," I said, "be careful. Do not roam far from home in future. You court danger when you do so."
"I know it," she said, lowering her snowy head among the pines to touch something at her feet, "but I have a guard now."
"Who is it?" I asked.
"The good Ravaud, the warden's hound. Our master has told him to accompany me wherever I go. He is getting another dog to go on government trips."
"Hello! old fellow," I said, "come out here and speak to me. You were very short the first day I saw you."
The long-eared hound came out from behind the doe, curling his lip in a dog smile.
"Duty first, Pony friend," he said. "That doe has been a sister to me. How could I speak to a stranger when I thought she lay dying?"
"You were quite right," I said. "Now you just keep your eye on her, for she doesn't seem to mind a bit the idea of stepping out of this old world, which is after all a pleasant place."
"Right you are," said Ravaud in his deep hollow voice, and he looked at her anxiously. Then he added, "She has quite a good appetite."
I burst out laughing. I could not help it and the offended doe turned to leave me.
"Beautiful one," I said, "I am delighted to hear that your appetite matches your perfect body, and now before you go please let me say something to you."
"Certainly, Pony friend," she replied, turning her mild eyes on me.
"It is about something a toad told me," I said, "old Hoppy Go-Slow. I suppose you don't know him."
"I don't care for reptiles," she said a little ungraciously, "nor any creature who can live either on land or in the water. They seem unnatural to me, and I have no acquaintances among them."
"Now, graceful one," I said cautiously and admiringly, "I see you are sensitive, but please do not be offended with me. I just wish to ask you why you jump on snakes and destroy them."
She shuddered. "I can not tell. I hate them. Do you think I am wrong?"
"Snakes do much good to the farmer," I said. "Don't you know that they eat insect pests that are injurious to plant life?"
"I have heard that," she replied carelessly. "It did not impress me."
"A snake loves to live," I went on. "Why kill him?"
"Do they suffer?" she asked in a horrified tone. "Do they feel as I do when the hunters drive me through the bush?"
"Probably they do not suffer as much as you do, for you kill quickly, but they do suffer and flee from you, for they have complained to the toads about you."
"I have always stamped on them," she said. "I have cut them to pieces with the sharp hoofs of my fore-feet, little Pony. It did not take long."
"Ah! well, lovely one, in future leave in peace all the harmless green and brown gliding things. Kill only rattlesnakes."
"I will kill none at all," she said with sudden heat. "I see that life is sweet even to snakes."
I was about to tell her that it is necessary sometimes to kill quickly and mercifully lest we should have too much animal life on the earth, then I thought I would only mix her up, so I forbore.
"Before I go, Pony Prince," she said, "I must tell you that your boy's mother is in the wood."
"Is she?" I said eagerly. "What is she like?"
The White Phantom spoke in a mysterious voice. "She is slender and youthful looking. Her dress is the color of green leaves and she has a veil wound round her head. Alas! she is beautiful."
"Why alas!" I asked.
"Because all things beautiful are hunted. They have no peace. I wish I had been born very, very ugly and warty like a toad. It is fatiguing to be so sought after."
"I never thought of that before," I said, "but I suppose it is true. Where is the boy's mother now?"
"Down by the river, but she is coming this way. She is slipping behind the tree trunks. She is hoping to see her son before he sees her."
"I dread the shock for him," I said, anxiously gazing toward the sleeping boy.
"The shock will not hurt him, Prince Pony, for it will be all joy. Her shock will be partly pain."
"But, but," I stammered, "she is his mother—he is her son."
"They have lived apart, Pony. She allowed her old aunt to coax her away from her boy."
"How do you know all this?" I asked wonderingly.
"Creatures of the wildwood are not shut off from knowledge of human beings. Birds of the air carry news, and do I not go into the house and eat bread from my master's table? Then your boy's uncle loves my master and often they sit by the river for hours talking of things that are in their minds while I am hidden in the willows nearby."
"I didn't think the warden was a talker," I said.
"Dentais does not talk to the world, but only to his friend Mr. Devering, who once saved his life in a bad storm on a distant lake."
"Stop one instant," I said. "Is the beautiful lady staying with the Good Americans?"
"Yes—she is a child of the forest like her brother. They met last night in the shack by the river and he told her of her boy. She is weary of cities where she lost her lovely voice."
"Is her voice gone?" I asked in dismay.
"Yes, the cruel war hunted her as the poachers hunted me. She wore her life out over the wounded and her voice was frightened away. Then she ran to her husband."
"White Phantom!" I exclaimed, "what are you telling me? Is the boy's father also in this wood?"
"Husband and wife are always together now," said the doe gently. "She would be afraid without him. Now she is coming—the beautiful lady. Don't you hear the trees whispering? They are pleased that her gown is the same color as theirs, and they call her the Green Lady. Take good care of yourself, Pony friend, and run often round the lake to see me. For your sake I will kill no more snakes," and she glided away accompanied by a faint rustling that meant the close following of the faithful hound Ravaud.
[1] Quoted by permission of the publishers, J. M. Dent & Sons, Toronto.
I stood stock still, scarcely daring to breathe. This was great news—that my boy would soon have both his parents—and there they were coming softly among the brakes that held out green inviting arms toward them.
The man was tall and slightly stooping, the woman much shorter and very slight. There was something about her that moved me strangely, though I could not see her face on account of the long veil wrapped about her head. Her figure was charming and the way in which she lifted her pretty hunting boots and put them down so as not to crush the brakes reminded me of her boy's care for every living thing.
She was all in green, as the doe had said. Even her dainty boots were green and a green stone flashed on the white hand clasping the veil.
What a picturesque lovely mother! I should have been sorry for the boy if his mother had not been a thoroughbred.
The man was not picturesque, but he was interesting. He was rather thin and careworn and had a crease in his forehead as if he were always puzzling over some difficult question.
"Fatigued in his chase for the dollar and old before his time," as Mr. Devering said.
He was a brown man—clothes, hair, skin—though his skin was not the deep brown of Mr. Devering's, but rather a pale tan laid on over white, showing he had only been living the out-door life for a short time.
His teeth were big and strong and very white I saw, when he smiled to encourage his wife, who was holding back at sight of me.
"Ranna," he said, staring at her through his spectacles and holding out a hand to her, "you are surely not afraid of your brother's gift to your boy. What a superb pony! I see that, though my eyes are semi-blind to horseflesh."
The lady came forward holding tightly to his hand, her eager eyes going beyond me to the place where her boy lay.
Now I could see her face, for she was holding her veil aside. She was like the boy. Her eyes were of that strange pale hue that yet somehow warmed one's heart.
All my naughty feelings toward her died away. I had been annoyed with this runaway mother and jealous of her. Now that I saw her so timid and clinging and with that wonderful look in her eyes that makes a pony follow a human being to death if necessary, I was on her side. I did not care so much about the man. I suspected that if he had been one to hold the reins firmly the beautiful lady would never have run away.
I made a gentle nickering sound and stepped toward her. Oh! what a flashing smile she gave me. It lighted up her rather sad face, and stretching out one little hand, she said in sweet husky tones, "Pretty creature!"
I touched her hand. Poor lady! What a thousand pities that she had lost her lovely voice.
She had forgotten me. Like one petrified, she stood gazing at the sleeping boy, who was certainly a picture as he lay on his fragrant couch, a smile on his lips, his arms crossed over his head, his face brown and handsome, for he had long ago lost the pallor that he had brought from his city home.
"Douglas!" she said, "Douglas!" and her tone was almost terrified.
Her husband was right beside her. "Compose yourself, Ranna. What is it?"
"He is so immense," she whispered. "My tiny baby is gone."
Her husband showed his big white teeth in a most amused smile. "What did you expect? You forget that twelve years have passed since you saw him—and you have seen his photographs. Why are you surprised?"
"I forgot," she said, and her head sank on her breast, "but hush! he is speaking."
Her lips parted, she leaned forward, her head on one side so that one of her delicate ears would be nearer the boy's lips.
Then she sank back into her husband's arms, and burst into tears. Most unfortunately our dear lad that I could have told her, if I had been able to speak, was in this wood solely on the mother quest, had in his dreams called out the name of the old servant who had been a mother to him when this young thing had run away.
"Margie!" he had said quite clearly. "Margie! I want you."
Poor little woman! Her husband could not comfort her.
"He prefers my understudy," she said mournfully, and she wrapped her veil round her head.
Her husband made a gesture of despair. "Ranna, I wish you were not such a sensitive plant. Your brother has told you that the boy will be wild with delight when he sees you."
I was sorry for the lovely suffering woman, who reminded me of the White Phantom, and going very, very cautiously toward her I tried to look my sympathy.
"Pony," she whispered huskily, "Pony with the deep brown eyes, 'The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted, they have torn me and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.'"
"He is waking," said her husband suddenly.
She looked at the boy in a startled fashion, then she bent over him, kissed him quickly and lightly, and slipped back behind the huge tree looking down on his slumbers.
The man appearing more puzzled than ever, peered at the boy through his glasses, and taking off his cap threw it on the ground, and anxiously pushed back the wave of brown hair on his forehead.
A light wind rustled through the wood, bringing on its wings the urgent call of a bird for its mate.
Our boy woke up slowly, still muttering something about "Margie," and blinked at his father with sleepy eyes.
Finally he sprang to his feet with a joyful cry and threw himself on his father's neck.
"Oh! Where did you come from? How well you look!—Are you quite strong again?—Where are John and Margie?"
Mr. Duff was a very happy man. He beamed on his boy and said enjoyably, "One question at a time and don't break my glasses, you young bear. What a hug!"
"It's a three months' hug," said Dallas. "Oh! where are you staying, Father, and how did you get to Poor Dog's Pool? Did you follow me? Oh! I believe you are at the Good American's and came here by the Merry-Tongue river trail."
Mr. Duff nodded. "I came in with him yesterday."
"And have you seen Uncle Jim, and surely you are going to stay with us, or am I going with you?"
The tall man blushed a bit under his tan, and taking off his spectacles he began to rub them nervously with his handkerchief.
"Son," he said, squinting up his eyes as if the light hurt him, "we've got to have a talk."
"And you hate talking," said Dallas. "Never mind, Father, I'll find out from Uncle Jim."
"No, son," said Mr. Duff, putting on his glasses again, "I've left too many explanations to Uncle Jim. I'm going to take one load off his shoulders."
"He's a wonder, isn't he," said our boy enthusiastically. "I wish I'd known him sooner."
Mr. Duff twisted his lips as if he were taking some medicine, then he said in quite a nice manly way, "It's a painful thing for a father to have to ask a son's pardon, but I've got to do it."
"For what, Father, dear Father?" said my generous-hearted master. "If you ever did anything wrong, I've forgotten it. I've not been a perfect boy myself. Many little tempers I've had that you didn't know anything about."
Mr. Duff leaned against the old lichen-covered boulder and laying one hand on it said, "Old rock, I confess to you, since my boy won't let me confess to him, that I've been forty-five years in the world learning how not to live."
"And you, too, love 'rocks and rills and wooded hills,'" exclaimed the boy in delight.
"I have always loved them," said the man. "The root of all evil does not flourish in Dame Nature's garden."
"Father! You're not mean, you're generous. You hadn't as much money as you wanted. You had to work for it."
"I wanted to make as much as your mother had. I was proud and foolish."
Dallas, who had been leaning up against his father, now broke away, and began to pace up and down the springy ground swinging his hands in eager boy fashion.
"My mother! My mother!" he cried. "Now at last we can talk about her. You must tell me everything. She is near me. I feel it. How shall I see her? Quick, please, tell me. Uncle Jim nearly drove me crazy."
Mr. Duff became scarlet. "You will soon, very soon, see your mother," he said in a low voice.
"Don't tell me she is a dream mother or a ghost mother," exclaimed Dallas. "I want a real mother with hands that I can take and hold fast! Of course, my Father, she is quite alive?"
His tone was terribly anxious, and Mr. Duff hastened to say re-assuringly, "Oh! yes, she is alive, very much alive. You will soon see her."
My boy had both hands at his throat now as if he were suffocating with joy. The past was nothing to him. He thought only of the future.
"Where is she?" he breathed in a quick short voice. "Tell me, Father, at once, please."
"Quite near here," said Mr. Duff. "Calm yourself, my son."
Instead of calming himself young Dallas gave a cry. The wind seizing a fold of the green veil had blown it lightly in his face.
The boy sprang to the other side of the tree and we heard his call, "My Mother!—my own Mother!"
Mr. Duff took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, but I stepped the other side of the tree. I wanted to see this little woman's face.
There was nothing to see. She stood with head drooped like a woman who has come to the end of a long, long road and is satisfied.
Her boy's face was hidden in her veil while her arms were round him, and her cheek rested on his head.
From time to time she made little murmuring sounds as she stroked him. They would never be parted again.
Presently she looked up and I saw her eyes shining like diamonds from the sky.
"Douglas!" she said, "Douglas!"
Her husband went to her, and she took his hand. They were together now, these three, and she was the uniting link of the chain.
Now she was triumphant, and with a flash of the Devering humour she exclaimed, "My husband and son, I ask your pardon for my long absence from home duties. They will be resumed at once!"
Mr. Duff's embarrassment fell from him and he began to laugh in a most relieved way. The thought of this meeting had evidently been a terrible strain on him—but why would not Dallas lift his head? He could not stand through life clasping his mother in that frantic fashion.
I had it—my boy was shy, and he was also in terror that if he released his hold this lovely vision would melt away.
Finally his mother gently pushed back his head. "My darling—are you ashamed of me?"
"Ashamed!" said the boy. "Oh, Mother!" then his eye fell on me. With his pony he was at home, and springing to me and blushing furiously he cried, "Fetlar, she's come—my beautiful mother has come. I don't know what I feel like——"
"But I do," said Mrs. Duff softly. "You are like a young tree that someone has seized by its stem and twisted round in the soil. You were facing the cold north, now you are toward the sunny south, and your roots will grow so deep that no one will ever be able to twist you again."
The boy turned to me again. "But, Fetlar, my mother does not know that one of my roots is crooked."
How the beautiful lady laughed. "Face me, my child," she said. "I know all about the little stories, but we shall cure all that. Now to find this wonderful uncle who has done so much for us all. Do not be afraid of me, my child."
Dallas took her by her finger tips and edged toward me.
I knew what he wished and backed up carefully.
Then stretching out his arms he assisted his young mother to my back.
The boy had taken off his coat and thrown it over me for a saddle cloth. At first I went very slowly, but I soon found that Mrs. Duff was an expert horse-woman. Riding without a saddle did not trouble her at all.
Her husband walked beside her, and Dallas led me. For a time the man, in his intense relief that this meeting had turned out so well, said nothing, but when the rough part of the trail was over he remarked, "You two look like brother and sister."
We were not going home by the way we had come. That trail would have been too hard on Mrs. Duff. Dallas was taking us along an old wood road by the Merry-Tongue, and at first he did not hear what his father had said, for the brawling noisy river was talking so much louder.
So Mr. Duff repeated his remark and then Dallas turned his head.
"Oh! parents—if you only knew how delicious it is to have your own family," then seeing tears springing to his mother's eyes he added quickly, "I do hope you'll both have good appetites for dinner. We get scrumptious things to eat here."
Both parents smiled, and Mrs. Duff said in a low voice, "I feel hungry for the first time in weeks."
Dallas in his joy broke into song. I felt that he did not just yet know how to handle this delicate young mother, so to keep his tongue out of trouble he gave it something else to do.
He sang her a soothing song about a graceful Virginia deer who got lost in a strange wood and was rescued by a kindly wolf.
His gift for making up stories and singing them on the spur of the moment was wonderful, and it delighted him because it was a new game taught him by the Devering children.
His mother listened most attentively. She was plainly enchanted with his voice, and I thought what a good teacher she would make for him.
When he stopped for lack of breath, Mrs. Duff said, "Who taught you that?"
"No, one," said the boy.
I felt that husband and wife were exchanging looks in the way proud parents do. What a source of common interest this treasure of a boy would be to them.
When we got to the fields back of the farm Dallas said, "If I don't do something to get the jump out of my legs I'll never be able to sit still at dinner—can't I run ahead and proclaim you?"
They both laughed, the man in a hearty natural way, the woman with the low silvery trained laugh of the stage. She wasn't making it, though. I felt that she was really enjoying herself.
They laughed again when their boy took a flying leap over a rail fence, and she said, in her pathetic voice, "Douglas, I should like to walk the rest of the way."
He took her off my back, and when I saw that he knew where the gate was, I too went over the fence, and feeling that they were staring with great interest at me, I dashed after my boy.
He was absolutely yelling at the back door, "Bingi! my mother and father are here," then he raced round the veranda shouting in every window, "My parents are here—Uncle Jim, Aunt Bretta, take notice, also Big Chief, Cassowary, Champ, Sojer, Dovey and little Big Wig. Oh! kids, one and all—I'm just like other boys. I've got a mother exactly like yours."
Joyful yells and cries answered him, and Mrs. Devering herself forgetting her anti-noise laws, put her head out of an upper window and gave a happy hail to the two dear persons coming down the hill.
"Squirrie Sore-Feet!" screamed Dallas to the chipmunk who came out of a hole in a tree, "no one will ever catch me and make me perform in public like poor you—my father wouldn't let them. Birds in the trees, sing with me—my mother is here, is here, is here. Barnyard and stable folk, I'll come up after dinner and give you the good word."
By this time, a gleeful procession of grown-ups and children was hurrying up the hill, Barklo shrieking at their heels, Constancy following him and Baywell limping behind them.
Mr. and Mrs. Devering gave the two parents the warmest greetings, then Mr. Devering took his pale-faced sister on his arm, walked down to the veranda with her and put her in a big rocking-chair.
There she held court, all the children gathering round her, and Bingi and O-Mayo-San bowing respectfully in the distance.
There was nothing painful about the situation, and I saw young Mrs. Duff's anxious expression fade away. Those children and grown persons were not thinking about her family difficulties, so she settled back in her chair and made up her mind to be happy.
Mr. Macdonald, the nice Scotsman, was very much impressed by Mrs. Duff, and when she took her dinner from a tray he was the one who handed all the things to her from the big table where sat the laughing restless crew of children.
The little lady ate scarcely anything, although she had said she was hungry. That is from a pony's point of view. We eat a good deal and eat a good while. It is a very bad thing to hurry any of the horse family with their meals, for we are nervous creatures, and we should never be groomed when we are eating. Who would wash a boy while he was taking his dinner?
Instead of eating, Mrs. Duff kept her wonderful eyes going, going all round the table from one face to another. These were her relatives, and she had no other ones. I saw that she was pleased with the Devering children, but it was to her own boy that her glance came oftenest and lingered longest. The mother spirit had waked up, and when it once wakes in a soul like hers it never goes to sleep again.
As soon as the lively dinner was over, her husband, who was watching her carefully, said, "Ranna, you will rest a while, won't you?"
"Not inside," she said, shaking her brown head with the soft hair wound round and round it, "not inside. I could not breathe. Out here where I can see the children."
"Heigh ho!" said Mr. Devering, who was standing nearby, and catching her up in his arms as if she had been a baby he ran round the house to the north veranda where the wind was not blowing. There he deposited her in a hammock swung outside his office.
"Lie here, my lady," he said, "and I will play you to sleep," and getting his violin he drove everybody away and sitting down beside her sang and played nice northern songs about good bears and little lost cubs, and nice Indians and squaw mothers and happy papooses.
Dallas and the children watching her from a distance, fell upon Mr. Duff and swept him up to the stables.
The man was delighted, but soon he became exhausted in his tour of the farm and said, "Mercy! dear children, I've been having nervous prostration. If you won't despise me too much I'll go lie down."
"There's a very good thpot under the treeths," said little Big Wig kindly.
"If it's quite the same to you," said his uncle, "I think I prefer a bed."
"Then take mine, thir," said Big Wig grandly.
"Or mine," said Big Chief.
"Mine! Mine!" called Sojer and Champ.
"He'll take his son's," said Dallas, stretching up to put his arm in his father's. "It's got dandy fir balsam pillows that will make him go to sleep, but I say, kids, after I put him to bed can't we have a gallop round the lake?"
"You bet," said Big Chief, and the others shouted approbation.
Shaking with silent laughter, the tired man allowed Dallas to tuck him in bed, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him at the window when the merry troop of boys and girls swept by on the backs of their various pets.
I knew what my boy wanted. He was going to tell all the settlement this wonderful news about his mother. He certainly was the hero of this day.
However, first we were to have an adventure.
As we trotted slowly up the market road, for the children all wanted to talk, we saw Guardie and Girlie and the pigs coming down from the sawmill. They were getting home earlier than usual.
Dallas was beginning to shout to them when the animals, who were by this time abreast of the Widow Detover's, made a sudden and peculiar stop. I knew that something had alarmed them.
Then Guardie, after a word to Sir Vet, dashed into the Widow's lane and strange to say he was followed by Girlie.
"Well! I vow," exclaimed Cassowary, "that's something not in my notebook. Big Chief, did you ever see both dogs leave their pigs before and in the middle of the road too?"
"Never!" said Big Chief. "Get on, Attaboy—there's something wrong at the Widow's."
Being two lengths ahead of Attaboy, I didn't propose to let him catch up to me, so I was the first pony to land my rider at the Widow's back door, where the two dogs had disappeared.
It was easy enough to tell what the trouble was. We ponies had smelt it out a few seconds before the children did.
The kitchen was on fire and any backwoods animal knows what that means. Guardie and Girlie had been with the men of the settlement when they fought fires that wished to leap over the wide belt of cleared land that protected the properties on the lake.
Now they were trying to stamp out the flames that were spreading from the Widow's ironing table to the clean clothes hung about the room. They beat the blazing clothes with their paws and rolled on the sparks that fell on the floor.
My young master, who was bursting with a new-found courage to-day, seized one of the rag mats on the floor and sprang to assist the dogs.
Big Chief, with a second heavy mat, was right at his heels, and Cassowary ran in, and turning on the water in the sink threw dish-pans of it on the flames.
The fire was soon out and the two dogs and the children rushed from the smoky room. Their eyes were smarting and they were coughing violently.
Just as they got out in the yard the Widow and Joe Gentles, whom Mr. Devering had got her to take for a hired man, rushed down from the barn, where it seems they had been admiring a Tamworth shoat that Mr. Devering had given to Joe, on condition that he let the Widow feed it.
The Widow screamed like a gull. Her nice clean kitchen! and how had it happened? "My stars and garters!" she exclaimed, "I believe it's that miserable tool, Joe. Didn't you lay your pipe on my ironing table just now?" she shrieked at him.
With hanging head he confessed that he had.
"And might have burnt my house down," she said, "but for these sainted children!" and she went on holding poor Joe up to the scorn of the Deverings, the ponies and the pigs, who by this time had come along sociably to see what had happened.
Joe took his dressing-down like a man, and when at last the Widow stopped for lack of breath, he said humbly, "I'll pay for the damage."
"You'll pay," she cried furiously. "You lazy good-for-nothing fellow. You haven't a red cent to your name, and if you think I'm going to pay you for what you do here you're mightily mistaken. You're only working out your board."
Joe hung his head still lower and my young master stepped forward.
"Mrs. Detover," he said in his polite way, "I have great news for you—my father and mother have arrived. I am going to live with them in a beautiful home something like this. My father says I may buy some pets. Will you sell me your Constancy? I love her and will give her a good home. I am prepared to pay——"
Just here he stepped up to Big Chief and lowered his head to receive a whisper. He hadn't an idea what the lamb would be worth.
"Twenty dollars," said Big Chief in the waiting ear.
"Twenty dollars," repeated Dallas. "Will that be agreeable to you, Madam?"
"Quite so, my dear young lad," said the Widow, beaming like one of the sunflowers in her garden. "You will be a good master to my dear lamb, who did not thrive with me."
"Consthanthy ithn't going to leave my Barklo," cried young Big Wig suddenly. "He loveth her."
There might have been trouble about this question if the excited Widow had not suddenly yelled, "Those sinful pigs—look at them! My garden, oh! my garden. They're ruining it."
She did not know, but I did, that old Sir Vet, really anxious about Guardie and Girlie, had led his whole band of retainers by a short cut through the Widow's garden to the back door.
There was a great scene now of pushing and pulling and driving and calling—children and grown persons, dogs, ponies, and pigs all mixed up together, and above the clamour rose Cassowary's shrill voice, "My angel collies! they are burnt to death."
They weren't burnt to death, but their paws were certainly sore and bleeding, and the hair was scorched all off their backs. They were trying to round up the pigs and get them off the Widow's hollyhocks, Bouncing Bets, sweet Williams and other old-fashioned flowers that she loved, but at every other step they fell down and rose with difficulty.
"Home! home!" cried Cassowary, and leaping on Apache Girl she held out her arm to Dallas, who put Guardie in front of her.
Big Chief took Girlie and we all scurried away from the Widow's to Devering Farm.
Dallas and I, who kept ahead, dashed up to the veranda, notified Mr. Devering, who was still sitting there, and he was in his office all ready to receive the suffering dogs by the time they arrived.
He put up a hand to stop the children's noise. Their aunt had fallen asleep and he did not wish her to be waked up.
After Mr. Devering had treated the burns with some oily substance and bound them up to keep the air out, he said to the children, "Take the collies to the barn cellar. They would be miserable away from the pigs."
Dallas watched with interest the erection of a kind of platform containing comfortable beds for the collies, and where the pigs could look at them but not touch them. Then he said, "What about our ride?"
"Do you suppose we would leave this hero and heroine?" asked Cassowary indignantly.
Big Chief, who always stood up for Dallas now, and who understood him better than Cassowary did, said, "Come on, old boy—I'll go with you," so Attaboy and I, leaving Cassowary and the other children worshipping the dogs, started to go round the lake with our two young masters.
Passing the Widow's house and seeing Mr. and Mrs. Devering talking to her, but not finding out till later that she was having fresh trouble, we trotted on to the head of the lake and to the game warden's house.
Dentais was not at home, and the White Phantom, feeling shy at sight of Attaboy, whom she did not like, hid in the bush.
I whinnied to her, and then we all went down the further side of the lake to the fire warden's.
He was away too, but the object of the ride was accomplished. My young master had worked off some of his high spirits, and now he was wild to be at home and near his wonderful mother.
Mrs. Duff was awake by this time and Dallas, slipping off my back, went to sit down at a little distance from her and embraced her with adoring glances.
She smiled at him but said nothing and I went over to the fountain to get a drink.
When I came back she was asking him to please get her a handkerchief.
Oh! how delighted he was to have a mother to wait on. I followed along the grass by the veranda as he went to his room and fussed about a drawer to get the finest and whitest one he could for her.
He had found a dear gentle mother, but I guessed that he would have to wait on her. She was not active and stirring like Mrs. Devering and evidently had been accustomed to having everything done for her.
While the lad sat with eager eyes bent on the hammock and I stood discreetly among some seringas, I heard a step on the path behind me, and to my surprise saw another little woman, very much the type of Mrs. Duff.
This one was slight and graceful too, but much older than Mrs. Duff. She had a fine face and very grave sad eyes, and she was dressed in a severely plain walking suit.
Who was this? Oh! I knew. It was some guest from the Good American's for she had come down the trail by the Merry-Tongue River.
She paused beside me and gave me a slow thoughtful stare as if recognising my right to some attention, then she went on to the veranda.
Dallas stood up when he saw her and smiled but did not speak. His mother, however, rose up in her hammock with a glad cry of recognition and said in French, "Marie, is it you?"
The stranger went up to her and replied quietly in the same language, "You did not appear for lunch so I walked to see you."
Mrs. Duff, holding her by one hand, said to Dallas, "This is my dear friend Madame de Valkonski."
The boy bowed and offered his seat to this little lady, who sat down and looked at him attentively.
"So this is thy son," she said. "Does he understand French?"
Mrs. Duff blushed and made a helpless gesture. "Alas! I know so little about him. My son, canst thou speak French?"
"Not very well," he said. "I can speak better than I can understand."
"But you must learn to understand," said the lady with a pretty air of authority. "Every boy and girl should know French, especially here in this wonderful Canada. In my country—but do you know what my country is?"
"No, Madame," said my master.
"It is Russia—in that country we all learn French as children. If we speak to our parents in Russian they ask us to repeat the phrase in French."
The boy's face glowed. "Oh! Madame," he said, "if you are Russian will you speak to Bolshy?"
"And who is Bolshy?" asked the lady with an air of interest.
"His real name is Peter Glatzof, and he is a poor man who is very lonely, but he does not understand French."
A soft remark came from the hammock. "My amiable son, your Bolshy did not have a French governess when he was a child. Madame de Valkonski is a princess."
I held my breath, and my young master getting up made the newcomer a low bow. "A real live princess—how stunning! I've always wanted to see one."
She laughed a little queer short laugh. "Then go to Switzerland, young friend. Titles are as common as dust on the roads now that we are driven out of our homes—but tell me more about your Bolshy and tell me in French."
My master was pretty well puzzled, but he managed to give a stammering account of the Russian.
"Ah! this country of Canada is good to foreigners," said the strange lady in a slow way so that the lad might understand her. "It is better than any other country in the world. I have been looking into her laws—and has Madame, your Mother, told you about our experiment in your alluring mountains called Adirondacks?"
"I began," said Mrs. Duff, "but did not finish. Will you continue, Marie, if you please?"
The princess, whose words fell from her lips like pearls, said very evenly and distinctly, "You, though a boy only, know what has been going on in my beloved Russia."
Young Dallas nodded his head.
"Dear big boy," said his mother, "you must not nod, you must speak."
How his face glowed. Now he was like other boys and had his own mother to reprove and correct him.
His manner became quite roguish, and getting up from the stool where he was sitting he made a low bow and said, "Madame, my Mother and Madame the Princess—or perhaps I should say 'your highness'?"
"I beg of you," and the newcomer made a pretty gesture with one of her gloved hands, "'Madame' is quite sufficient."
"I can not read newspapers here very much," Dallas went on, "for we are galloping about all day like happy ponies and fall into our beds at night very tired, but I have heard the grown people say that Russia is in a terrible state."
"Yes, that is true," said Madame de Valkonski. "The populace is building up with one hand and tearing down with the other. If one did not wish to be killed one had to flee. Not only intelligent ones, but many pauper persons go to foreign lands. If they are like the Bolshy you speak of, how can they know what kind of a country they have come to unless someone tells them?—That is what we do, your mother and I. We bring bewildered ones to the mountains, and when they see the wildness and the trees they exclaim, 'A second homeland!' We tell them that they are under a good government. If they obey the laws and work hard they will be happy. We keep agitators away from them, and we take pains to teach them the language of their new home."
"How splendid in you!" said the boy. "I should like to help. May I?" and he turned to his mother.
"Certainly—we can start a junior class for you, but what will you teach?"
He looked puzzled, then his roving eye fell on me. "All about ponies," he said, "and how good it is for boys and girls to live out-of-doors and love trees and animals."
His mother's sweet hoarse laugh rippled out over the veranda. "My son shall be professor of equitation."
"And for ponies shall we have rails from your fences?" asked the princess.
"No," said Mrs. Duff in rather a proud way. "If my son takes a real interest in the children of our immigrants, we shall have real ponies."
I whinnied excitedly and they all looked at me and smiled.
A dreamy expression came over the princess' face and I felt that she knew I understood.
Head of a pony school—— Well! that was something to look forward to, and in my mind's eye I saw ahead of me years of usefulness in working for my country under my master's direction, for how could citizenship be better taught to young foreigners than by the aid of a patriotic pony school?
Dallas' mind was aflame over the possibilities of this scheme. I felt that he was thinking of a life-work for others—a thing that appealed strongly to his generous heart, but he was suddenly brought from the clouds of imagination down to solid practical earth by an anxious remark from his mother.
"Marie, you are missing your tea. Vous avez les yeux fatigués?"
Young Dallas sprang up. "I know what that means, my Mother. The Princess has fatigued eyes. I know how to make tea. Come on, Prince Fetlar."
"So you have a prince here," said Madame de Valkonski, turning to me.
Didn't I step proudly forward, make my best bow, and do a Russian folk dance step that I had learned in New York.
The princess was delighted, and congratulated me most warmly, saying that it was a pleasure to meet so accomplished a pony.
I bowed again and again. It was a perfect delight to me to take something out of my little bag of tricks here, for I was never forced to do anything that I did not wish to. All the Devering family had a horror of the cruelties usually connected with the training of animals in tricks unnatural to them.