It was on the edge of the woods that he came upon two boys,each carrying a rifle,a dead squirrel,and a dead rabbit.The threatened rain of the day before had not materialized,and David had his violin.He had been playing softly when he came upon the boys where the path entered the woods.
"Oh!"At sight of the boys and their burden David gave an involuntary cry,and stopped playing.
The boys,scarcely less surprised at sight of David and his violin,paused and stared frankly.
"It's the tramp kid with his fiddle,"whispered one to the other huskily.
David,his grieved eyes on the motionless little bodies in the boys'hands,shuddered.
"Are they--dead,too?"
The bigger boy nodded self-importantly.
"Sure.We just shot 'em--the squirrels.Ben here trapped the rabbits."He paused,manifestly waiting for the proper awed admiration to come into David's face.
But in David's startled eyes there was no awed admiration,there was only disbelieving horror.
"You mean,you SENT them to the far country?""We--what?"
"Sent them.Made them go yourselves--to the far country?"The younger boy still stared.The older one grinned disagreeably.
"Sure,"he answered with laconic indifference."We sent 'em to the far country,all right.""But--how did you know they WANTED to go?"
"Wanted--Eh?"exploded the big boy.Then he grinned again,still more disagreeably."Well,you see,my dear,we didn't ask 'em,"he gibed.
Real distress came into David's face.
"Then you don't know at all.And maybe they DIDn't want to go.
And if they didn't,how COULD they go singing,as father said?
Father wasn't sent.He WENT.And he went singing.He said he did.But these--How would YOU like to have somebody come along and send YOU to the far country,without even knowing if you wanted to go?"There was no answer.The boys,with a growing fear in their eyes,as at sight of something inexplicable and uncanny,were sidling away;and in a moment they were hurrying down the hill,not,however,without a backward glance or two,of something very like terror.
David,left alone,went on his way with troubled eyes and a thoughtful frown.
David often wore,during those first few days at the Holly farmhouse,a thoughtful face and a troubled frown.There were so many,many things that were different from his mountain home.
Over and over,as those first long days passed,he read his letter until he knew it by heart--and he had need to.Was he not already surrounded by things and people that were strange to him?
And they were so very strange--these people!There were the boys and men who rose at dawn--yet never paused to watch the sun flood the world with light;who stayed in the fields all day--yet never raised their eyes to the big fleecy clouds overhead;who knew birds only as thieves after fruit and grain,and squirrels and rabbits only as creatures to be trapped or shot.The women--they were even more incomprehensible.They spent the long hours behind screened doors and windows,washing the same dishes and sweeping the same floors day after day.They,too,never raised their eyes to the blue sky outside,nor even to the crimson roses that peeped in at the window.They seemed rather to be looking always for dirt,yet not pleased when they found it--especially if it had been tracked in on the heel of a small boy's shoe!
More extraordinary than all this to David,however,was the fact that these people regarded HIM,not themselves,as being strange.
As if it were not the most natural thing in the world to live with one's father in one's home on the mountain-top,and spend one's days trailing through the forest paths,or lying with a book beside some babbling little stream!As if it were not equally natural to take one's violin with one at times,and learn to catch upon the quivering strings the whisper of the winds through the trees!Even in winter,when the clouds themselves came down from the sky and covered the earth with their soft whiteness,--even then the forest was beautiful;and the song of the brook under its icy coat carried a charm and mystery that were quite wanting in the chattering freedom of summer.Surely there was nothing strange in all this,and yet these people seemed to think there was!
