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Freckles

by Gene Stratton-Porter · English · Gutenberg #111 · 462,697 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Freckles

Author: Gene Stratton-Porter


        
Release date: March 8, 2006 [eBook #111]
                Most recently updated: March 6, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/111

Credits: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRECKLES ***

FRECKLES

By Gene Stratton-Porter




  To all good Irishmen in general
  and one CHARLES DARWIN PORTER
  in particular



Characters:


  FRECKLES, a plucky waif who guards the Limberlost timber leases and
  dreams of Angels.

  THE SWAMP ANGEL, in whom Freckles' sweetest dream materializes.

  MCLEAN, a member of a Grand Rapids lumber company, who befriends
  Freckles.

  MRS. DUNCAN, who gives mother-love and a home to Freckles.

  DUNCAN, head teamster of McLean's timber gang.

  THE BIRD WOMAN, who is collecting camera studies of birds for a book.

  LORD AND LADY O'MORE, who come from Ireland in quest of a lost relative.

  THE MAN OF AFFAIRS, brusque of manner, but big of heart.

  WESSNER, a Dutch timber-thief who wants rascality made easy.

  BLACK JACK, a villain to whom thought of repentance comes too late.

  SEARS, camp cook.




Contents:


  I Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

  II Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

  III Wherein a Feather Falls and a Soul Is Born

  IV Wherein Freckles Faces Trouble Bravely and Opens the Way for New
  Experiences

  V Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships

  VI Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight

  VII Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail

  VIII Wherein Freckles Meets a Man of Affairs and Loses Nothing by the
  Encounter

  IX Wherein the Limberlost Falls upon Mrs. Duncan and Freckles Comes to
  the Rescue

  X Wherein Freckles Strives Mightily and the Swamp Angel Rewards Him

  XI Wherein the Butterflies Go on a Spree and Freckles Informs the Bird
  Woman

  XII Wherein Black Jack Captures Freckles and the Angel Captures Jack

  XIII Wherein the Angel Releases Freckles, and the Curse of Black Jack
  Falls upon Her

  XIV Wherein Freckles Nurses a Heartache and Black Jack Drops Out

  XV Wherein Freckles and the Angel Try Taking a Picture, and Little
  Chicken Furnishes the Subject

  XVI Wherein the Angel Locates a Rare Tree and Dines with the Gang

  XVII Wherein Freckles Offers His Life for His Love and Gets a Broken
  Body

  XVIII Wherein Freckles Refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable
  Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it

  XIX Wherein Freckles Finds His Birthright and the Angel Loses Her Heart

  XX Wherein Freckles Returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More Sails for
  Ireland Without Him




CHAPTER I

Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the
Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he
was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to belong somewhere and
to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food and
clothing.

Long before he came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber
Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing of the
horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food. A feeling
of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave. Without
stopping to think, he turned into the newly made road and followed it to
the camp, where the gang was making ready for supper and bed.

The scene was intensely attractive. The thickness of the swamp made a
dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees.
The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired
horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in deep content,
the grain given them. Duncan, the brawny Scotch head-teamster, lovingly
wiped the flanks of his big bays with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he
softly whistled, “O wha will be my dearie, O!” and a cricket beneath
the leaves at his feet accompanied him. The green wood fire hissed and
crackled merrily. Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big
black kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his
testing-fork, gusts of savory odors escaped.

Freckles approached him.

“I want to speak with the Boss,” he said.

The cook glanced at him and answered carelessly: “He can't use you.”

The color flooded Freckles' face, but he said simply: “If you will be
having the goodness to point him out, we will give him a chance to do
his own talking.”

With a shrug of astonishment, the cook led the way to a rough board
table where a broad, square-shouldered man was bending over some
account-books.

“Mr. McLean, here's another man wanting to be taken on the gang, I
suppose,” he said.

“All right,” came the cheery answer. “I never needed a good man more
than I do just now.”

The manager turned a page and carefully began a new line.

“No use of your bothering with this fellow,” volunteered the cook. “He
hasn't but one hand.”

The flush on Freckles' face burned deeper. His lips thinned to a mere
line. He lifted his shoulders, took a step forward, and thrust out his
right arm, from which the sleeve dangled empty at the wrist.

“That will do, Sears,” came the voice of the Boss sharply. “I will
interview my man when I finish this report.”

He turned to his work, while the cook hurried to the fires. Freckles
stood one instant as he had braced himself to meet the eyes of the
manager; then his arm dropped and a wave of whiteness swept him. The
Boss had not even turned his head. He had used the possessive. When he
said “my man,” the hungry heart of Freckles went reaching toward him.

The boy drew a quivering breath. Then he whipped off his old hat and
beat the dust from it carefully. With his left hand he caught the right
sleeve, wiped his sweaty face, and tried to straighten his hair with
his fingers. He broke a spray of ironwort beside him and used the purple
bloom to beat the dust from his shoulders and limbs. The Boss, busy over
his report, was, nevertheless, vaguely alive to the toilet being made
behind him, and scored one for the man.

McLean was a Scotchman. It was his habit to work slowly and
methodically. The men of his camps never had known him to be in a hurry
or to lose his temper. Discipline was inflexible, but the Boss was
always kind. His habits were simple. He shared camp life with his gangs.
The only visible signs of wealth consisted of a big, shimmering diamond
stone of ice and fire that glittered and burned on one of his fingers,
and the dainty, beautiful thoroughbred mare he rode between camps and
across the country on business.

No man of McLean's gangs could honestly say that he ever had been
overdriven or underpaid. The Boss never had exacted any deference from
his men, yet so intense was his personality that no man of them ever had
attempted a familiarity. They all knew him to be a thorough gentleman,
and that in the great timber city several millions stood to his credit.

He was the only son of that McLean who had sent out the finest ships
ever built in Scotland. That his son should carry on this business after
the father's death had been his ambition. He had sent the boy through
the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, and allowed him several years'
travel before he should attempt his first commission for the firm.

Then he was ordered to southern Canada and Michigan to purchase a
consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and south to Indiana for
oak beams. The young man entered these mighty forests, parts of which
lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of time. The clear, cool,
pungent atmosphere was intoxicating. The intense silence, like that of a
great empty cathedral, fascinated him. He gradually learned that, to
the shy wood creatures that darted across his path or peeped inquiringly
from leafy ambush, he was brother. He found himself approaching, with a
feeling of reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages
of sun, wind, and snow. Soon it became difficult to fell them. When he
had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed to learn that in
the swamps and forests he had lost his heart and it was calling--forever
calling him.

When he inherited his father's property, he promptly disposed of it,
and, with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence in the
outskirts of Grand Rapids. With three partners, he organized a lumber
company. His work was to purchase, fell, and ship the timber to the
mills. Marshall managed the milling process and passed the lumber to the
factory. From the lumber, Barthol made beautiful and useful furniture,
which Uptegrove scattered all over the world from a big wholesale house.
Of the thousands who saw their faces reflected on the polished surfaces
of that furniture and found comfort in its use, few there were to whom
it suggested mighty forests and trackless swamps, and the man, big
of soul and body, who cut his way through them, and with the eye of
experience doomed the proud trees that were now entering the homes of
civilization for service.

When McLean turned from his finished report, he faced a young man,
yet under twenty, tall, spare, heavily framed, closely freckled, and
red-haired, with a homely Irish face, but in the steady gray eyes,
straightly meeting his searching ones of blue, there was unswerving
candor and the appearance of longing not to be ignored. He was dressed
in the roughest of farm clothing, and seemed tired to the point of
falling.

“You are looking for work?” questioned McLean.

“Yis,” answered Freckles.

“I am very sorry,” said the Boss with genuine sympathy in his every
tone, “but there is only one man I want at present--a hardy, big fellow
with a stout heart and a strong body. I hoped that you would do, but I
am afraid you are too young and scarcely strong enough.”

Freckles stood, hat in hand, watching McLean.

“And what was it you thought I might be doing?” he asked.

The Boss could scarcely repress a start. Somewhere before accident and
poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated English, even
with an accent. The boy spoke in a mellow Irish voice, sweet and pure.
It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a
trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here
and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse
of infinitives and possessives with which he was very familiar and
which touched him nearly. He was of foreign birth, and despite years of
alienation, in times of strong feeling he committed inherited sins of
accent and construction.

“It's no child's job,” answered McLean. “I am the field manager of a
big lumber company. We have just leased two thousand acres of the
Limberlost. Many of these trees are of great value. We can't leave our
camp, six miles south, for almost a year yet; so we have blazed a trail
and strung barbed wires securely around this lease. Before we return to
our work, I must put this property in the hands of a reliable, brave,
strong man who will guard it every hour of the day, and sleep with one
eye open at night. I shall require the entire length of the trail to be
walked at least twice each day, to make sure that our lines are up and
that no one has been trespassing.”

Freckles was leaning forward, absorbing every word with such intense
eagerness that he was beguiling the Boss into explanations he had never
intended making.

“But why wouldn't that be the finest job in the world for me?” he
pleaded. “I am never sick. I could walk the trail twice, three times
every day, and I'd be watching sharp all the while.”

“It's because you are scarcely more than a boy, and this will be a
trying job for a work-hardened man,” answered McLean. “You see, in the
first place, you would be afraid. In stretching our lines, we killed six
rattlesnakes almost as long as your body and as thick as your arm. It's
the price of your life to start through the marshgrass surrounding the
swamp unless you are covered with heavy leather above your knees.

“You should be able to swim in case high water undermines the temporary
bridge we have built where Sleepy Snake Creek enters the swamp. The fall
and winter changes of weather are abrupt and severe, while I would want
strict watch kept every day. You would always be alone, and I don't
guarantee what is in the Limberlost. It is lying here as it has lain
since the beginning of time, and it is alive with forms and voices. I
don't pretend to say what all of them come from; but from a few slinking
shapes I've seen, and hair-raising yells I've heard, I'd rather not
confront their owners myself; and I am neither weak nor fearful.

“Worst of all, any man who will enter the swamp to mark and steal
timber is desperate. One of my employees at the south camp, John Carter,
compelled me to discharge him for a number of serious reasons. He came
here, entered the swamp alone, and succeeded in locating and marking
a number of valuable trees that he was endeavoring to sell to a rival
company when we secured the lease. He has sworn to have these trees if
he has to die or to kill others to get them; and he is a man that the
strongest would not care to meet.”

“But if he came to steal trees, wouldn't he bring teams and men enough:
that all anyone could do would be to watch and be after you?” queried
the boy.

“Yes,” replied McLean.

“Then why couldn't I be watching just as closely, and coming as fast, as
an older, stronger man?” asked Freckles.

“Why, by George, you could!” exclaimed McLean. “I don't know as the size
of a man would be half so important as his grit and faithfulness, come
to think of it. Sit on that log there and we will talk it over. What is
your name?”

Freckles shook his head at the proffer of a seat, and folding his arms,
stood straight as the trees around him. He grew a shade whiter, but his
eyes never faltered.

“Freckles!” he said.

“Good enough for everyday,” laughed McLean, “but I scarcely can put
'Freckles' on the company's books. Tell me your name.”

“I haven't any name,” replied the boy.

“I don't understand,” said McLean.

“I was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you wouldn't,”
 said Freckles slowly. “I've spent more time on it than I ever did on
anything else in all me life, and I don't understand. Does it seem to
you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was
bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night
on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? That's what
somebody did to me.”

McLean stared aghast. He had no reply ready, and presently in a low
voice he suggested: “And after?”

“The Home people took me in, and I was there the full legal age and
several years over. For the most part we were a lot of little Irishmen
together. They could always find homes for the other children, but
nobody would ever be wanting me on account of me arm.”

“Were they kind to you?” McLean regretted the question the minute it was
asked.

“I don't know,” answered Freckles. The reply sounded so hopeless, even
to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify it by adding: “You see,
it's like this, sir. Kindnesses that people are paid to lay off in job
lots and that belong equally to several hundred others, ain't going to
be soaking into any one fellow so much.”

“Go on,” said McLean, nodding comprehendingly.

“There's nothing worth the taking of your time to tell,” replied
Freckles. “The Home was in Chicago, and I was there all me life until
three months ago. When I was too old for the training they gave to the
little children, they sent me to the closest ward school as long as the
law would let them; but I was never like any of the other children, and
they all knew it. I'd to go and come like a prisoner, and be working
around the Home early and late for me board and clothes. I always wanted
to learn mighty bad, but I was glad when that was over.

“Every few days, all me life, I'd to be called up, looked over, and
refused a home and love, on account of me hand and ugly face; but it was
all the home I'd ever known, and I didn't seem to belong to any place
else.

“Then a new superintendent was put in. He wasn't for being like any of
the others, and he swore he'd weed me out the first thing he did. He
made a plan to send me down the State to a man he said he knew who
needed a boy. He wasn't for remembering to tell that man that I was a
hand short, and he knocked me down the minute he found I was the boy who
had been sent him. Between noon and that evening, he and his son close
my age had me in pretty much the same shape in which I was found in
the beginning, so I lay awake that night and ran away. I'd like to have
squared me account with that boy before I left, but I didn't dare for
fear of waking the old man, and I knew I couldn't handle the two of
them; but I'm hoping to meet him alone some day before I die.”

McLean tugged at his mustache to hide the smile on his lips, but he
liked the boy all the better for this confession.

“I didn't even have to steal clothes to get rid of starting in me Home
ones,” Freckles continued, “for they had already taken all me clean,
neat things for the boy and put me into his rags, and that went almost
as sore as the beatings, for where I was we were always kept tidy and
sweet-smelling, anyway. I hustled clear into this State before I learned
that man couldn't have kept me if he'd wanted to. When I thought I
was good and away from him, I commenced hunting work, but it is with
everybody else just as it is with you, sir. Big, strong, whole men are
the only ones for being wanted.”

“I have been studying over this matter,” answered McLean. “I am not so
sure but that a man no older than you and similar in every way could do
this work very well, if he were not a coward, and had it in him to be
trustworthy and industrious.”

Freckles came forward a step.

“If you will give me a job where I can earn me food, clothes, and a
place to sleep,” he said, “if I can have a Boss to work for like other
men, and a place I feel I've a right to, I will do precisely what you
tell me or die trying.”

He spoke so convincingly that McLean believed, although in his heart he
knew that to employ a stranger would be wretched business for a man with
the interests he had involved.

“Very well,” the Boss found himself answering, “I will enter you on my
pay rolls. We'll have supper, and then I will provide you with clean
clothing, wading-boots, the wire-mending apparatus, and a revolver.
The first thing in the morning, I will take you the length of the trail
myself and explain fully what I want done. All I ask of you is to come
to me at once at the south camp and tell me as a man if you find this
job too hard for you. It will not surprise me. It is work that few men
would perform faithfully. What name shall I put down?”

Freckles' gaze never left McLean's face, and the Boss saw the swift
spasm of pain that swept his lonely, sensitive features.

“I haven't any name,” he said stubbornly, “no more than one somebody
clapped on to me when they put me on the Home books, with not the
thought or care they'd name a house cat. I've seen how they enter those
poor little abandoned devils often enough to know. What they called me
is no more my name than it is yours. I don't know what mine is, and I
never will; but I am going to be your man and do your work, and I'll be
glad to answer to any name you choose to call me. Won't you please be
giving me a name, Mr. McLean?”

The Boss wheeled abruptly and began stacking his books. What he was
thinking was probably what any other gentleman would have thought in the
circumstances. With his eyes still downcast, and in a voice harsh with
huskiness, he spoke.

“I will tell you what we will do, my lad,” he said. “My father was my
ideal man, and I loved him better than any other I have ever known. He
went out five years ago, but that he would have been proud to leave you
his name I firmly believe. If I give to you the name of my nearest kin
and the man I loved best--will that do?”

Freckles' rigid attitude relaxed suddenly. His head dropped, and big
tears splashed on the soiled calico shirt. McLean was not surprised at
the silence, for he found that talking came none too easily just then.

“All right,” he said. “I will write it on the roll--James Ross McLean.”

“Thank you mightily,” said Freckles. “That makes me feel almost as if I
belonged, already.”

“You do,” said McLean. “Until someone armed with every right comes to
claim you, you are mine. Now, come and take a bath, have some supper,
and go to bed.”

As Freckles followed into the lights and sounds of the camp, his heart
and soul were singing for joy.



CHAPTER II

Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

Next morning found Freckles in clean, whole clothing, fed, and rested.
Then McLean outfitted him and gave him careful instruction in the use of
his weapon. The Boss showed him around the timber-line, and engaged him
a place to board with the family of his head teamster, Duncan, whom he
had brought from Scotland with him, and who lived in a small clearing
he was working out between the swamp and the corduroy. When the gang was
started for the south camp, Freckles was left to guard a fortune in the
Limberlost. That he was under guard himself those first weeks he never
knew.

Each hour was torture to the boy. The restricted life of a great
city orphanage was the other extreme of the world compared with the
Limberlost. He was afraid for his life every minute. The heat was
intense. The heavy wading-boots rubbed his feet until they bled. He was
sore and stiff from his long tramp and outdoor exposure. The seven
miles of trail was agony at every step. He practiced at night, under the
direction of Duncan, until he grew sure in the use of his revolver. He
cut a stout hickory cudgel, with a knot on the end as big as his fist;
this never left his hand. What he thought in those first days he himself
could not recall clearly afterward.

His heart stood still every time he saw the beautiful marsh-grass begin
a sinuous waving AGAINST the play of the wind, as McLean had told him it
would. He bolted half a mile with the first boom of the bittern, and his
hat lifted with every yelp of the sheitpoke. Once he saw a lean, shadowy
form following him, and fired his revolver. Then he was frightened worse
than ever for fear it might have been Duncan's collie.

The first afternoon that he found his wires down, and he was compelled
to plunge knee deep into the black swamp-muck to restring them, he
became so ill from fear and nervousness that he scarcely could control
his shaking hand to do the work. With every step, he felt that he would
miss secure footing and be swallowed in that clinging sea of blackness.
In dumb agony he plunged forward, clinging to the posts and trees until
he had finished restringing and testing the wire. He had consumed
much time. Night closed in. The Limberlost stirred gently, then shook
herself, growled, and awoke around him.

There seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and
a little one screeching from every knothole. The bellowing of big
bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of
whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush. Nighthawks swept
past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face. A prowling
wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage. A straying fox bayed
incessantly for its mate.

The hair on the back of Freckles' neck arose as bristles, and his knees
wavered beneath him. He could not see whether the dreaded snakes were on
the trail, or, in the pandemonium, hear the rattle for which McLean had
cautioned him to listen. He stood motionless in an agony of fear. His
breath whistled between his teeth. The perspiration ran down his face
and body in little streams.

Something big, black, and heavy came crashing through the swamp close
to him, and with a yell of utter panic Freckles ran--how far he did not
know; but at last he gained control over himself and retraced his steps.
His jaws set stiffly and the sweat dried on his body. When he reached
the place from which he had started to run, he turned and with measured
steps made his way down the line. After a time he realized that he was
only walking, so he faced that sea of horrors again. When he came toward
the corduroy, the cudgel fell to test the wire at each step.

Sounds that curdled his blood seemed to encompass him, and shapes of
terror to draw closer and closer. Fear had so gained the mastery that he
did not dare look behind him; and just when he felt that he would fall
dead before he ever reached the clearing, came Duncan's rolling call:
“Freckles! Freckles!” A shuddering sob burst in the boy's dry throat;
but he only told Duncan that finding the wire down had caused the delay.

The next morning he started on time. Day after day, with his heart
pounding, he ducked, dodged, ran when he could, and fought when he was
brought to bay. If he ever had an idea of giving up, no one knew it; for
he clung to his job without the shadow of wavering. All these things, in
so far as he guessed them, Duncan, who had been set to watch the first
weeks of Freckles' work, carried to the Boss at the south camp; but
the innermost, exquisite torture of the thing the big Scotchman never
guessed, and McLean, with his finer perceptions, came only a little
closer.

After a few weeks, when Freckles learned that he was still living, that
he had a home, and the very first money he ever had possessed was safe
in his pockets, he began to grow proud. He yet side-stepped, dodged, and
hurried to avoid being late again, but he was gradually developing the
fearlessness that men ever acquire of dangers to which they are hourly
accustomed.

His heart seemed to be leaping when his first rattler disputed the trail
with him, but he mustered courage to attack it with his club. After its
head had been crushed, he mastered an Irishman's inborn repugnance for
snakes sufficiently to cut off its rattles to show Duncan. With this
victory, his greatest fear of them was gone.

Then he began to realize that with the abundance of food in the swamp,
flesh-hunters would not come on the trail and attack him, and he had his
revolver for defence if they did. He soon learned to laugh at the big,
floppy birds that made horrible noises. One day, watching behind a tree,
he saw a crane solemnly performing a few measures of a belated nuptial
song-and-dance with his mate. Realizing that it was intended in
tenderness, no matter how it appeared, the lonely, starved heart of the
boy sympathized with them.

Before the first month passed, he was fairly easy about his job; by the
next he rather liked it. Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle
in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her
sights, sounds, and silences.

When day after day the only thing that relieved his utter loneliness was
the companionship of the birds and beasts of the swamp, it was the
most natural thing in the world that Freckles should turn to them for
friendship. He began by instinctively protecting the weak and helpless.
He was astonished at the quickness with which they became accustomed to
him and the disregard they showed for his movements, when they learned
that he was not a hunter, while the club he carried was used more
frequently for their benefit than his own. He scarcely could believe
what he saw.

From the effort to protect the birds and animals, it was only a short
step to the possessive feeling, and with that sprang the impulse to
caress and provide. Through fall, when brooding was finished and the
upland birds sought the swamp in swarms to feast on its seeds and
berries, Freckles was content with watching them and speculating about
them. Outside of half a dozen of the very commonest they were strangers
to him. The likeness of their actions to humanity was an hourly
surprise.

When black frost began stripping the Limberlost, cutting the ferns,
shearing the vines from the trees, mowing the succulent green things
of the swale, and setting the leaves swirling down, he watched the
departing troops of his friends with dismay. He began to realize that he
would be left alone. He made especial efforts toward friendliness with
the hope that he could induce some of them to stay. It was then that he
conceived the idea of carrying food to the birds; for he saw that they
were leaving for lack of it; but he could not stop them. Day after day,
flocks gathered and departed: by the time the first snow whitened
his trail around the Limberlost, there were left only the little
black-and-white juncos, the sapsuckers, yellow-hammers, a few patriarchs
among the flaming cardinals, the blue jays, the crows, and the quail.

Then Freckles began his wizard work. He cleared a space of swale, and
twice a day he spread a birds' banquet. By the middle of December the
strong winds of winter had beaten most of the seed from the grass and
bushes. The snow fell, covering the swamp, and food was very scarce and
difficult to find. The birds scarcely waited until Freckles' back was
turned to attack his provisions. In a few weeks they flew toward the
clearing to meet him. During the bitter weather of January they came
halfway to the cabin every morning, and fluttered around him as
doves all the way to the feeding-ground. Before February they were so
accustomed to him, and so hunger-driven, that they would perch on
his head and shoulders, and the saucy jays would try to pry into his
pockets.

Then Freckles added to wheat and crumbs, every scrap of refuse food he
could find at the cabin. He carried to his pets the parings of apples,
turnips, potatoes, stray cabbage-leaves, and carrots, and tied to the
bushes meat-bones having scraps of fat and gristle. One morning, coming
to his feeding-ground unusually early, he found a gorgeous cardinal
and a rabbit side by side sociably nibbling a cabbage-leaf, and that
instantly gave to him the idea of cracking nuts, from the store he had
gathered for Duncan's children, for the squirrels, in the effort to add
them to his family. Soon he had them coming--red, gray, and black; then
he became filled with a vast impatience that he did not know their names
or habits.

So the winter passed. Every week McLean rode to the Limberlost; never on
the same day or at the same hour. Always he found Freckles at his work,
faithful and brave, no matter how severe the weather.

The boy's earnings constituted his first money; and when the Boss
explained to him that he could leave them safe at a bank and carry away
a scrap of paper that represented the amount, he went straight on every
payday and made his deposit, keeping out barely what was necessary for
his board and clothing. What he wanted to do with his money he did not
know, but it gave to him a sense of freedom and power to feel that it
was there--it was his and he could have it when he chose. In imitation
of McLean, he bought a small pocket account-book, in which he carefully
set down every dollar he earned and every penny he spent. As his
expenses were small and the Boss paid him generously, it was astonishing
how his little hoard grew.

That winter held the first hours of real happiness in Freckles' life. He
was free. He was doing a man's work faithfully, through every rigor of
rain, snow, and blizzard. He was gathering a wonderful strength of body,
paying his way, and saving money. Every man of the gang and of that
locality knew that he was under the protection of McLean, who was
a power, this had the effect of smoothing Freckles' path in many
directions.

Mrs. Duncan showed him that individual kindness for which his hungry
heart was longing. She had a hot drink ready for him when he came from
a freezing day on the trail. She knit him a heavy mitten for his left
hand, and devised a way to sew and pad the right sleeve that protected
the maimed arm in bitter weather. She patched his clothing--frequently
torn by the wire--and saved kitchen scraps for his birds, not because
she either knew or cared anything about them, but because she herself
was close enough to the swamp to be touched by its utter loneliness.
When Duncan laughed at her for this, she retorted: “My God, mannie, if
Freckles hadna the birds and the beasts he would be always alone. It was
never meant for a human being to be so solitary. He'd get touched in the
head if he hadna them to think for and to talk to.”

“How much answer do ye think he gets to his talkin', lass?” laughed
Duncan.

“He gets the answer that keeps the eye bright, the heart happy, and the
feet walking faithful the rough path he's set them in,” answered Mrs.
Duncan earnestly.

Duncan walked away appearing very thoughtful. The next morning he gave
an ear from the corn he was shelling for his chickens to Freckles, and
told him to carry it to his wild chickens in the Limberlost. Freckles
laughed delightedly.

“Me chickens!” he said. “Why didn't I ever think of that before? Of
course they are! They are just little, brightly colored cocks and hens!
But 'wild' is no good. What would you say to me 'wild chickens' being a
good deal tamer than yours here in your yard?”

“Hoot, lad!” cried Duncan.

“Make yours light on your head and eat out of your hands and pockets,”
 challenged Freckles.

“Go and tell your fairy tales to the wee people! They're juist brash on
believin' things,” said Duncan. “Ye canna invent any story too big to
stop them from callin' for a bigger.”

“I dare you to come see!” retorted Freckles.

“Take ye!” said Duncan. “If ye make juist ane bird licht on your heid
or eat frae your hand, ye are free to help yoursel' to my corn-crib and
wheat bin the rest of the winter.”

Freckles sprang in air and howled in glee.

“Oh, Duncan! You're too, aisy” he cried. “When will you come?”

“I'll come next Sabbath,” said Duncan. “And I'll believe the birds of
the Limberlost are tame as barnyard fowl when I see it, and no sooner!”

After that Freckles always spoke of the birds as his chickens, and the
Duncans followed his example. The very next Sabbath, Duncan, with his
wife and children, followed Freckles to the swamp. They saw a sight so
wonderful it will keep them talking all the remainder of their lives,
and make them unfailing friends of all the birds.

Freckles' chickens were awaiting him at the edge of the clearing. They
cut the frosty air around his head into curves and circles of crimson,
blue, and black. They chased each other from Freckles, and swept so
closely themselves that they brushed him with their outspread wings.

At their feeding-ground Freckles set down his old pail of scraps and
swept the snow from a small level space with a broom improvised of
twigs. As soon as his back was turned, the birds clustered over the
food, snatching scraps to carry to the nearest bushes. Several of the
boldest, a big crow and a couple of jays, settled on the rim and feasted
at leisure, while a cardinal, that hesitated to venture, fumed and
scolded from a twig overhead.

Then Freckles scattered his store. At once the ground resembled the
spread mantle of Montezuma, except that this mass of gaily colored
feathers was on the backs of living birds. While they feasted, Duncan
gripped his wife's arm and stared in astonishment; for from the bushes
and dry grass, with gentle cheeping and queer, throaty chatter, as if to
encourage each other, came flocks of quail. Before anyone saw it arrive,
a big gray rabbit sat in the midst of the feast, contentedly gnawing a
cabbage-leaf.

“Weel, I be drawed on!” came Mrs. Duncan's tense whisper.

“Shu-shu,” cautioned Duncan.

Lastly Freckles removed his cap. He began filling it with handfuls of
wheat from his pockets. In a swarm the grain-eaters arose around him as
a flock of tame pigeons. They perched on his arms and the cap, and in
the stress of hunger, forgetting all caution, a brilliant cock cardinal
and an equally gaudy jay fought for a perching-place on his head.

“Weel, I'm beat,” muttered Duncan, forgetting the silence imposed on his
wife. “I'll hae to give in. 'Seein' is believin'. A man wad hae to see
that to believe it. We mauna let the Boss miss that sight, for it's a
chance will no likely come twice in a life. Everything is snowed under
and thae craturs near starved, but trustin' Freckles that complete they
are tamer than our chickens. Look hard, bairns!” he whispered. “Ye winna
see the like o' yon again, while God lets ye live. Notice their color
against the ice and snow, and the pretty skippin' ways of them! And
spunky! Weel, I'm heat fair!”

Freckles emptied his cap, turned his pockets and scattered his last
grain. Then he waved his watching friends good-bye and started down the
timber-line.

A week later, Duncan and Freckles arose from breakfast to face the
bitterest morning of the winter. When Freckles, warmly capped and
gloved, stepped to the corner of the kitchen for his scrap-pail, he
found a big pan of steaming boiled wheat on the top of it. He wheeled to
Mrs. Duncan with a shining face.

“Were you fixing this warm food for me chickens or yours?” he asked.

“It's for yours, Freckles,” she said. “I was afeared this cold weather
they wadna lay good without a warm bite now and then.”

Duncan laughed as he stepped to the other room for his pipe; but
Freckles faced Mrs. Duncan with a trace of every pang of starved
mother-hunger he ever had suffered written large on his homely,
splotched, narrow features.

“Oh, how I wish you were my mother!” he cried.

Mrs. Duncan attempted an echo of her husband's laugh.

“Lord love the lad!” she exclaimed. “Why, Freckles, are ye no bright
enough to learn without being taught by a woman that I am your mither?
If a great man like yoursel' dinna ken that, learn it now and ne'er
forget it. Ance a woman is the wife of any man, she becomes wife to all
men for having had the wifely experience she kens! Ance a man-child has
beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mither to
all men, for the hearts of mithers are everywhere the same. Bless ye,
laddie, I am your mither!”

She tucked the coarse scarf she had knit for him closer over his chest
and pulled his cap lower over his ears, but Freckles, whipping it
off and holding it under his arm, caught her rough, reddened hand and
pressed it to his lips in a long kiss. Then he hurried away to hide the
happy, embarrassing tears that were coming straight from his swelling
heart.

Mrs. Duncan, sobbing unrestrainedly, swept into the adjoining room and
threw herself into Duncan's arms.

“Oh, the puir lad!” she wailed. “Oh, the puir mither-hungry lad! He
breaks my heart!”

Duncan's arms closed convulsively around his wife. With a big, brown
hand he lovingly stroked her rough, sorrel hair.

“Sarah, you're a guid woman!” he said. “You're a michty guid woman! Ye
hae a way o' speakin' out at times that's like the inspired prophets of
the Lord. If that had been put to me, now, I'd 'a' felt all I kent how
to and been keen enough to say the richt thing; but dang it, I'd 'a'
stuttered and stammered and got naething out that would ha' done onybody
a mite o' good. But ye, Sarah! Did ye see his face, woman? Ye sent him
off lookin' leke a white light of holiness had passed ower and settled
on him. Ye sent the lad away too happy for mortal words, Sarah. And
ye made me that proud o' ye! I wouldna trade ye an' my share o' the
Limberlost with ony king ye could mention.”

He relaxed his clasp, and setting a heavy hand on each shoulder, he
looked straight into her eyes.

“Ye're prime, Sarah! Juist prime!” he said.

Sarah Duncan stood alone in the middle of her two-roomed log cabin and
lifted a bony, clawlike pair of hands, reddened by frequent immersion
in hot water, cracked and chafed by exposure to cold, black-lined by
constant battle with swamp-loam, calloused with burns, and stared at
them wonderingly.

“Pretty-lookin' things ye are!” she whispered. “But ye hae juist been
kissed. And by such a man! Fine as God ever made at His verra best.
Duncan wouldna trade wi' a king! Na! Nor I wadna trade with a queen wi'
a palace, an' velvet gowns, an' diamonds big as hazelnuts, an' a hundred
visitors a day into the bargain. Ye've been that honored I'm blest if
I can bear to souse ye in dish-water. Still, that kiss winna come off!
Naething can take it from me, for it's mine till I dee. Lord, if I amna
proud! Kisses on these old claws! Weel, I be drawed on!”



CHAPTER III

Wherein a Feather Falls and a Soul Is Born

So Freckles fared through the bitter winter. He was very happy. He
had hungered for freedom, love, and appreciation so long! He had been
unspeakably lonely at the Home; and the utter loneliness of a great
desert or forest is not so difficult to endure as the loneliness of
being constantly surrounded by crowds of people who do not care in the
least whether one is living or dead.

All through the winter Freckles' entire energy was given to keeping up
his lines and his “chickens” from freezing or starving. When the first
breath of spring touched the Limberlost, and the snow receded before it;
when the catkins began to bloom; when there came a hint of green to the
trees, bushes, and swale; when the rushes lifted their heads, and the
pulse of the newly resurrected season beat strongly in the heart of
nature, something new stirred in the breast of the boy.

Nature always levies her tribute. Now she laid a powerful hand on the
soul of Freckles, to which the boy's whole being responded, though
he had not the least idea what was troubling him. Duncan accepted his
wife's theory that it was a touch of spring fever, but Freckles knew
better. He never had been so well. Clean, hot, and steady the blood
pulsed in his veins. He was always hungry, and his most difficult work
tired him not at all. For long months, without a single intermission,
he had tramped those seven miles of trail twice each day, through every
conceivable state of weather. With the heavy club he gave his wires a
sure test, and between sections, first in play, afterward to keep his
circulation going, he had acquired the skill of an expert drum major.
In his work there was exercise for every muscle of his body each hour of
the day, at night a bath, wholesome food, and sound sleep in a room that
never knew fire. He had gained flesh and color, and developed a greater
strength and endurance than anyone ever could have guessed.

Nor did the Limberlost contain last year's terrors. He had been with
her in her hour of desolation, when stripped bare and deserted, she had
stood shivering, as if herself afraid. He had made excursions into the
interior until he was familiar with every path and road that ever
had been cut. He had sounded the depths of her deepest pools, and had
learned why the trees grew so magnificently. He had found that places
of swamp and swale were few compared with miles of solid timber-land,
concealed by summer's luxuriant undergrowth.

The sounds that at first had struck cold fear into his soul he now knew
had left on wing and silent foot at the approach of winter. As flock
after flock of the birds returned and he recognized the old echoes
reawakening, he found to his surprise that he had been lonely for
them and was hailing their return with great joy. All his fears were
forgotten. Instead, he was possessed of an overpowering desire to know
what they were, to learn where they had been, and whether they would
make friends with him as the winter birds had done; and if they did,
would they be as fickle? For, with the running sap, creeping worm, and
winging bug, most of Freckles' “chickens” had deserted him, entered the
swamp, and feasted to such a state of plethora on its store that they
cared little for his supply, so that in the strenuous days of mating and
nest-building the boy was deserted.

He chafed at the birds' ingratitude, but he found speedy consolation in
watching and befriending the newcomers. He surely would have been proud
and highly pleased if he had known that many of the former inhabitants
of the interior swamp now grouped their nests beside the timber-line
solely for the sake of his protection and company.

The yearly resurrection of the Limberlost is a mighty revival. Freckles
stood back and watched with awe and envy the gradual reclothing and
repopulation of the swamp. Keen-eyed and alert through danger and
loneliness, he noted every stage of development, from the first piping
frog and unsheathing bud, to full leafage and the return of the last
migrant.

The knowledge of his complete loneliness and utter insignificance was
hourly thrust upon him. He brooded and fretted until he was in a fever;
yet he never guessed the cause. He was filled with a vast impatience, a
longing that he scarcely could endure.

It was June by the zodiac, June by the Limberlost, and by every delight
of a newly resurrected season it should have been June in the hearts of
all men. Yet Freckles scowled darkly as he came down the trail, and the
running TAP, TAP that tested the sagging wire and telegraphed word
of his coming to his furred and feathered friends of the swamp, this
morning carried the story of his discontent a mile ahead of him.

Freckles' special pet, a dainty, yellow-coated, black-sleeved, cock
goldfinch, had remained on the wire for several days past the bravest
of all; and Freckles, absorbed with the cunning and beauty of the tiny
fellow, never guessed that he was being duped. For the goldfinch was
skipping, flirting, and swinging for the express purpose of so holding
his attention that he would not look up and see a small cradle of
thistledown and wool perilously near his head. In the beginning of
brooding, the spunky little homesteader had clung heroically to the wire
when he was almost paralyzed with fright. When day after day passed
and brought only softly whistled repetitions of his call, a handful of
crumbs on the top of a locust line-post, and gently worded coaxings, he
grew in confidence. Of late he had sung and swung during the passing of
Freckles, who, not dreaming of the nest and the solemn-eyed little hen
so close above, thought himself unusually gifted in his power to attract
the birds. This morning the goldfinch scarcely could believe his ears,
and clung to the wire until an unusually vicious rap sent him spinning a
foot in air, and his “PTSEET” came with a squall of utter panic.

The wires were ringing with a story the birds could not translate, and
Freckles was quite as ignorant of the trouble as they.

A peculiar movement beneath a small walnut tree caught his attention.
He stopped to investigate. There was an unusually large Luna cocoon, and
the moth was bursting the upper end in its struggles to reach light and
air. Freckles stood and stared.

“There's something in there trying to get out,” he muttered. “Wonder if
I could help it? Guess I best not be trying. If I hadn't happened along,
there wouldn't have been anyone to do anything, and maybe I'd only be
hurting it. It's--it's----Oh, skaggany! It's just being born!”

Freckles gasped with surprise. The moth cleared the opening, and with
many wabblings and contortions climbed up the tree. He stared speechless
with amazement as the moth crept around a limb and clung to the under
side. There was a big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of
the very snowiest white that Freckles ever had seen. There was a band
of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same
colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head,
and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings. As Freckles gazed,
tense with astonishment, he saw that these were expanding, drooping,
taking on color, and small, oval markings were beginning to show.

The minutes passed. Freckles' steady gaze never wavered. Without
realizing it, he was trembling with eagerness and anxiety. As he saw
what was taking place, “It's going to fly,” he breathed in hushed
wonder. The morning sun fell on the moth and dried its velvet down,
while the warm air made it fluffy. The rapidly growing wings began to
show the most delicate green, with lavender fore-ribs, transparent,
eye-shaped markings, edged with lines of red, tan, and black, and long,
crisp trailers.

Freckles was whispering to himself for fear of disturbing the moth. It
began a systematic exercise of raising and lowering its exquisite wings
to dry them and to establish circulation. The boy realized that soon it
would be able to spread them and sail away. His long-coming soul sent up
its first shivering cry.

“I don't know what it is! Oh, I wish I knew! How I wish I knew! It must
be something grand! It can't be a butterfly! It's away too big. Oh, I
wish there was someone to tell me what it is!”

He climbed on the locust post, and balancing himself with the wire,
held a finger in the line of the moth's advance up the twig. It
unhesitatingly climbed on, so he stepped to the path, holding it to the
light and examining it closely. Then he held it in the shade and turned
it, gloating over its markings and beautiful coloring. When he held the
moth to the limb, it climbed on, still waving those magnificent wings.

“My, but I'd like to be staying with you!” he said. “But if I was to
stand here all day you couldn't grow any prettier than you are right
now, and I wouldn't grow smart enough to tell what you are. I suppose
there's someone who knows. Of course there is! Mr. McLean said there
were people who knew every leaf, bird, and flower in the Limberlost. Oh
Lord! How I wish You'd be telling me just this one thing!”

The goldfinch had ventured back to the wire, for there was his mate,
only a few inches above the man-creature's head; and indeed, he simply
must not be allowed to look up, so the brave little fellow rocked on the
wire and piped, as he had done every day for a week: “SEE ME? SEE ME?”

“See you! Of course I see you,” growled Freckles. “I see you day after
day, and what good is it doing me? I might see you every morning for a
year, and then not be able to be telling anyone about it. 'Seen a bird
with black silk wings--little, and yellow as any canary.' That's as far
as I'd get. What you doing here, anyway? Have you a mate? What's your
name? 'See you?' I reckon I see you; but I might as well be blind, for
any good it's doing me!”

Freckles impatiently struck the wire. With a screech of fear, the
goldfinch fled precipitately. His mate arose from the nest with a
whirr--Freckles looked up and saw it.

“O--ho!” he cried. “So THAT'S what you are doing here! You have a
wife. And so close my head I have been mighty near wearing a bird on my
bonnet, and never knew it!”

Freckles laughed at his own jest, while in better humor he climbed to
examine the neat, tiny cradle and its contents. The hen darted at him in
a frenzy. “Now, where do you come in?” he demanded, when he saw that she
was not similar to the goldfinch.

“You be clearing out of here! This is none of your fry. This is the nest
of me little, yellow friend of the wire, and you shan't be touching it.
Don't blame you for wanting to see, though. My, but it's a fine nest and
beauties of eggs. Will you be keeping away, or will I fire this stick at
you?”

Freckles dropped to the trail. The hen darted to the nest and settled on
it with a tender, coddling movement. He of the yellow coat flew to the
edge to make sure that everything was right. It would have been plain to
the veriest novice that they were partners in that cradle.

“Well, I'll be switched!” muttered Freckles. “If that ain't both their
nest! And he's yellow and she's green, or she's yellow and he's green.
Of course, I don't know, and I haven't any way to find out, but it's
plain as the nose on your face that they are both ready to be fighting
for that nest, so, of course, they belong. Doesn't that beat you? Say,
that's what's been sticking me all of this week on that grass nest in
the thorn tree down the line. One day a blue bird is setting, so I think
it is hers. The next day a brown bird is on, and I chase it off because
the nest is blue's. Next day the brown bird is on again, and I let her
be, because I think it must be hers. Next day, be golly, blue's on, and
off I send her because it's brown's; and now, I bet my hat, it's both
their nest and I've only been bothering them and making a big fool of
mesilf. Pretty specimen I am, pretending to be a friend to the birds,
and so blamed ignorant I don't know which ones go in pairs, and blue and
brown are a pair, of course, if yellow and green are--and there's the
red birds! I never thought of them! He's red and she's gray--and now
I want to be knowing, are they all different? Why no! Of course, they
ain't! There's the jays all blue, and the crows all black.”

The tide of Freckles' discontent welled until he almost choked with
anger and chagrin. He plodded down the trail, scowling blackly and
viciously spanging the wire. At the finches' nest he left the line
and peered into the thorn tree. There was no bird brooding. He pressed
closer to take a peep at the snowy, spotless little eggs he had found so
beautiful, when at the slight noise up raised four tiny baby heads with
wide-open mouths, uttering hunger cries. Freckles stepped back. The
brown bird alighted on the edge and closed one cavity with a wiggling
green worm, while not two minutes later the blue filled another with
a white. That settled it. The blue and brown were mates. Once again
Freckles repeated his “How I wish I knew!”

Around the bridge spanning Sleepy Snake Creek the swale spread widely,
the timber was scattering, and willows, rushes, marsh-grass, and
splendid wild flowers grew abundantly. Here lazy, big, black water
snakes, for which the creek was named, sunned on the bushes, wild ducks
and grebe chattered, cranes and herons fished, and muskrats plowed the
bank in queer, rolling furrows. It was always a place full of interest,
so Freckles loved to linger on the bridge, watching the marsh and water
people. He also transacted affairs of importance with the wild flowers
and sweet marsh-grass. He enjoyed splashing through the shallow pools on
either side of the bridge.

Then, too, where the creek entered the swamp was a place of unusual
beauty. The water spread in darksome, mossy, green pools. Water-plants
and lilies grew luxuriantly, throwing up large, rank, green leaves.
Nowhere else in the Limberlost could be found frog-music to equal
that of the mouth of the creek. The drumming and piping rolled in
never-ending orchestral effect, while the full chorus rang to its
accompaniment throughout the season.

Freckles slowly followed the path leading from the bridge to the line.
It was the one spot at which he might relax his vigilance. The boldest
timber thief the swamp ever had known would not have attempted to enter
it by the mouth of the creek, on account of the water and because there
was no protection from surrounding trees. He was bending the rank grass
with his cudgel, and thinking of the shade the denser swamp afforded,
when he suddenly dodged sidewise; the cudgel whistled sharply through
the air and Freckles sprang back.

From the clear sky above him, first level with his face, then skimming,
dipping, tilting, whirling until it struck, quill down, in the path
in front of him, came a glossy, iridescent, big black feather. As it
touched the ground, Freckles snatched it up with almost a continuous
movement facing the sky. There was not a tree of any size in a large
open space. There was no wind to carry it. From the clear sky it had
fallen, and Freckles, gazing eagerly into the arch of June blue with a
few lazy clouds floating high in the sea of ether, had neither mind nor
knowledge to dream of a bird hanging as if frozen there. He turned the
big quill questioningly, and again his awed eyes swept the sky.

“A feather dropped from Heaven!” he breathed reverently. “Are the holy
angels moulting? But no; if they were, it would be white. Maybe all the
angels are not for being white. What if the angels of God are white and
those of the devil are black? But a black one has no business up there.
Maybe some poor black angel is so tired of being punished it's for
slipping to the gates, beating its wings trying to make the Master
hear!”

Again and again Freckles searched the sky, but there was no answering
gleam of golden gates, no form of sailing bird; then he went slowly
on his way, turning the feather and wondering about it. It was a wing
quill, eighteen inches in length, with a heavy spine, gray at the base,
shading to jet black at the tip, and it caught the play of the sun's
rays in slanting gleams of green and bronze. Again Freckles' “old man
of the sea” sat sullen and heavy on his shoulders and weighted him down
until his step lagged and his heart ached.

“Where did it come from? What is it? Oh, how I wish I knew!” he kept
repeating as he turned and studied the feather, with almost unseeing
eyes, so intently was he thinking.

Before him spread a large, green pool, filled with rotting logs and
leaves, bordered with delicate ferns and grasses among which lifted the
creamy spikes of the arrow-head, the blue of water-hyacinth, and the
delicate yellow of the jewel-flower. As Freckles leaned, handling the
feather and staring at it, then into the depths of the pool, he once
more gave voice to his old query: “I wonder what it is!”

Straight across from him, couched in the mosses of a soggy old log, a
big green bullfrog, with palpitant throat and batting eyes, lifted his
head and bellowed in answer. “FIN' DOUT! FIN' DOUT!”

“Wha--what's that?” stammered Freckles, almost too much bewildered to
speak. “I--I know you are only a bullfrog, but, be jabbers, that sounded
mightily like speech. Wouldn't you please to be saying it over?”

The bullfrog cuddled contentedly in the ooze. Then suddenly he lifted
his voice, and, as an imperative drumbeat, rolled it again: “FIN' DOUT!
FIN' DOUT! FIN DOUT!”

Freckles had the answer. Something seemed to snap in his brain. There
was a wavering flame before his eyes. Then his mind cleared. His
head lifted in a new poise, his shoulders squared, while his spine
straightened. The agony was over. His soul floated free. Freckles came
into his birthright.

“Before God, I will!” He uttered the oath so impressively that the
recording angel never winced as he posted it in the prayer column.

Freckles set his hat over the top of one of the locust posts used
between trees to hold up the wire while he fastened the feather securely
in the band. Then he started down the line, talking to himself as men
who have worked long alone always fall into the habit of doing.

“What a fool I have been!” he muttered. “Of course that's what I have to
do! There wouldn't likely anybody be doing it for me. Of course I can!
What am I a man for? If I was a four-footed thing of the swamp, maybe I
couldn't; but a man can do anything if he's the grit to work hard enough
and stick at it, Mr. McLean is always saying, and here's the way I am to
do it. He said, too, that there were people that knew everything in the
swamp. Of course they have written books! The thing for me to be doing
is to quit moping and be buying some. Never bought a book in me life,
or anything else of much account, for that matter. Oh, ain't I glad I
didn't waste me money! I'll surely be having enough to get a few. Let me
see.”

Freckles sat on a log, took his pencil and account-book, and figured
on a back page. He had walked the timber-line ten months. His pay
was thirty dollars a month, and his board cost him eight. That left
twenty-two dollars a month, and his clothing had cost him very little.
At the least he had two hundred dollars in the bank. He drew a deep
breath and smiled at the sky with satisfaction.

“I'll be having a book about all the birds, trees, flowers, butterflies,
and----Yes, by gummy! I'll be having one about the frogs--if it takes
every cent I have,” he promised himself.

He put away the account-book, that was his most cherished possession,
caught up his stick, and started down the line. The even tap, tap, and
the cheery, gladsome whistle carried far ahead of him the message that
Freckles was himself again.

He fell into a rapid pace, for he had lost time that morning; when he
rounded the last curve he was almost running. There was a chance that
the Boss might be there for his weekly report.

Then, wavering, flickering, darting here and there over the sweet
marsh-grass, came a large black shadow, sweeping so closely before him
that for the second time that morning Freckles dodged and sprang back.
He had seen some owls and hawks of the swamp that he thought might be
classed as large birds, but never anything like this, for six feet it
spread its big, shining wings. Its strong feet could be seen drawn
among its feathers. The sun glinted on its sharp, hooked beak. Its eyes
glowed, caught the light, and seemed able to pierce the ground at his
feet. It cared no more for Freckles than if he had not been there; for
it perched on a low tree, while a second later it awkwardly hopped to
the trunk of a lightning-riven elm, turned its back, and began searching
the blue.

Freckles looked just in time to see a second shadow sweep the grass; and
another bird, a trifle smaller and not quite so brilliant in the light,
slowly sailed down to perch beside the first. Evidently they were mates,
for with a queer, rolling hop the first-comer shivered his bronze wings,
sidled to the new arrival, and gave her a silly little peck on her
wing. Then he coquettishly drew away and ogled her. He lifted his head,
waddled from her a few steps, awkwardly ambled back, and gave her such
a simple sort of kiss on her beak that Freckles burst into a laugh, but
clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound.

The lover ducked and side-stepped a few feet. He spread his wings
and slowly and softly waved them precisely as if he were fanning his
charmer, which was indeed the result he accomplished. Then a wave of
uncontrollable tenderness moved him so he hobbled to his bombardment
once more. He faced her squarely this time, and turned his head from
side to side with queer little jerks and indiscriminate peckings at her
wings and head, and smirkings that really should have been irresistible.
She yawned and shuffled away indifferently. Freckles reached up, pulled
the quill from his hat, and looking from it to the birds, nodded in
settled conviction.

“So you're me black angels, ye spalpeens! No wonder you didn't get in!
But I'll back you to come closer it than any other birds ever did. You
fly higher than I can see. Have you picked the Limberlost for a good
thing and come to try it? Well, you can be me chickens if you want to,
but I'm blest if you ain't cool for new ones. Why don't you take this
stick for a gun and go skinning a mile?”

Freckles broke into an unrestrained laugh, for the bird-lover was keen
about his courting, while evidently his mate was diffident. When he
approached too boisterously, she relieved him of a goodly tuft of
feathers and sent him backward in a series of squirmy little jumps that
gave the boy an idea of what had happened up-sky to send the falling
feather across his pathway.

“Score one for the lady! I'll be umpiring this,” volunteered Freckles.

With a ravishing swagger, half-lifted wings, and deep, guttural hissing,
the lover approached again. He suddenly lifted his body, but she coolly
rocked forward on the limb, glided gracefully beneath him, and slowly
sailed into the Limberlost. He recovered himself and gazed after her in
astonishment.

Freckles hurried down the trail, shaking with laughter. When he neared
the path to the clearing and saw the Boss sitting motionless on the mare
that was the pride of his heart, the boy broke into a run.

“Oh, Mr. McLean!” he cried. “I hope I haven't kept you waiting very
long! And the sun is getting hot! I have been so slow this morning! I
could have gone faster, only there were that many things to keep me, and
I didn't know you would be here. I'll hurry after this. I've never had
to be giving excuses before. The line wasn't down, and there wasn't a
sign of trouble; it was other things that were making me late.”

McLean, smiling on the boy, immediately noticed the difference in him.
This flushed, panting, talkative lad was not the same creature who had
sought him in despair and bitterness. He watched in wonder as Freckles
mopped the perspiration from his forehead and began to laugh. Then,
forgetting all his customary reserve with the Boss, the pent-up
boyishness in the lad broke forth. With an eloquence of which he never
dreamed he told his story. He talked with such enthusiasm that McLean
never took his eyes from his face or shifted in the saddle until he
described the strange bird-lover, and then the Boss suddenly bent over
the pommel and laughed with the boy.

Freckles decorated his story with keen appreciation and rare touches
of Irish wit and drollery that made it most interesting as well as very
funny. It was a first attempt at descriptive narration. With an inborn
gift for striking the vital point, a naturalist's dawning enthusiasm for
the wonders of the Limberlost, and the welling joy of his newly found
happiness, he made McLean see the struggles of the moth and its freshly
painted wings, the dainty, brilliant bird-mates of different colors, the
feather sliding through the clear air, the palpitant throat and batting
eyes of the frog; while his version of the big bird's courtship won for
the Boss the best laugh he had enjoyed for years.

“They're in the middle of a swamp now” said Freckles. “Do you suppose
there is any chance of them staying with me chickens? If they do,
they'll be about the queerest I have; but I tell you, sir, I am finding
some plum good ones. There's a new kind over at the mouth of the creek
that uses its wings like feet and walks on all fours. It travels like a
thrashing machine. There's another, tall as me waist, with a bill a
foot long, a neck near two, not the thickness of me wrist and an elegant
color. He's some blue and gray, touched up with black, white, and brown.
The voice of him is such that if he'd be going up and standing beside
a tree and crying at it a few times he could be sawing it square off. I
don't know but it would be a good idea to try him on the gang, sir.”

McLean laughed. “Those must be blue herons, Freckles,” he said. “And
it doesn't seem possible, but your description of the big black birds
sounds like genuine black vultures. They are common enough in the South.
I've seen them numerous around the lumber camps of Georgia, but I
never before heard of any this far north. They must be strays. You have
described perfectly our nearest equivalent to a branch of these birds
called in Europe Pharaoh's Chickens, but if they are coming to the
Limberlost they will have to drop Pharaoh and become Freckles' Chickens,
like the remainder of the birds; won't they? Or are they too odd and
ugly to interest you?”

“Oh, not at all, at all!” cried Freckles, bursting into pure brogue in
his haste. “I don't know as I'd be calling them exactly pretty, and they
do move like a rocking-horse loping, but they are so big and fearless.
They have a fine color for black birds, and their feet and beaks seem so
strong. You never saw anything so keen as their eyes! And fly? Why, just
think, sir, they must be flying miles straight up, for they were out of
sight completely when the feather fell. I don't suppose I've a chicken
in the swamp that can go as close heaven as those big, black fellows,
and then----”

Freckles' voice dragged and he hesitated.

“Then what?” interestedly urged McLean.

“He was loving her so,” answered Freckles in a hushed voice. “I know it
looked awful funny, and I laughed and told on him, but if I'd taken time
to think I don't believe I'd have done it. You see, I've seen such a
little bit of loving in me life. You easily can be understanding that at
the Home it was every day the old story of neglect and desertion. Always
people that didn't even care enough for their children to keep them, so
you see, sir, I had to like him for trying so hard to make her know how
he loved her. Of course, they're only birds, but if they are caring for
each other like that, why, it's just the same as people, ain't it?”

Freckles lifted his brave, steady eyes to the Boss.

“If anybody loved me like that, Mr. McLean, I wouldn't be spending any
time on how they looked or moved. All I'd be thinking of would be how
they felt toward me. If they will stay, I'll be caring as much for them
as any chickens I have. If I did laugh at them I thought he was just
fine!”

The face of McLean was a study; but the honest eyes of the boy were so
compelling that he found himself answering: “You are right, Freckles.
He's a gentleman, isn't he? And the only real chicken you have. Of
course he'll remain! The Limberlost will be paradise for his family. And
now, Freckles, what has been the trouble all spring? You have done your
work as faithfully as anyone could ask, but I can't help seeing that
there is something wrong. Are you tired of your job?”

“I love it,” answered Freckles. “It will almost break me heart when
the gang comes and begins tearing up the swamp and scaring away me
chickens.”

“Then what is the trouble?” insisted McLean.

“I think, sir, it's been books,” answered Freckles. “You see, I didn't
realize it meself until the bullfrog told me this morning. I hadn't ever
even heard about a place like this. Anyway, I wasn't understanding how
it would be, if I had. Being among these beautiful things every day, I
got so anxious like to be knowing and naming them, that it got to eating
into me and went and made me near sick, when I was well as I could be.
Of course, I learned to read, write, and figure some at school, but
there was nothing there, or in any of the city that I ever got to see,
that would make a fellow even be dreaming of such interesting things
as there are here. I've seen the parks--but good Lord, they ain't even
beginning to be in it with the Limberlost! It's all new and strange to
me. I don't know a thing about any of it. The bullfrog told me to 'find
out,' plain as day, and books are the only way; ain't they?”

“Of course,” said McLean, astonished at himself for his heartfelt
relief. He had not guessed until that minute what it would have meant
to him to have Freckles give up. “You know enough to study out what you
want yourself, if you have the books; don't you?”

“I am pretty sure I do,” said Freckles. “I learned all I'd the chance at
in the Home, and me schooling was good as far as it went. Wouldn't let
you go past fourteen, you know. I always did me sums perfect, and loved
me history books. I had them almost by heart. I never could get me
grammar to suit them. They said it was just born in me to go wrong
talking, and if it hadn't been I suppose I would have picked it up from
the other children; but I'd the best voice of any of them in the Home
or at school. I could knock them all out singing. I was always leader in
the Home, and once one of the superintendents gave me carfare and let
me go into the city and sing in a boys' choir. The master said I'd the
swatest voice of them all until it got rough like, and then he made me
quit for awhile, but he said it would be coming back by now, and I'm
railly thinking it is, sir, for I've tried on the line a bit of late and
it seems to go smooth again and lots stronger. That and me chickens have
been all the company I've been having, and it will be all I'll want if I
can have some books and learn the real names of things, where they come
from, and why they do such interesting things. It's been fretting me
more than I knew to be shut up here among all these wonders and not
knowing a thing. I wanted to ask you what some books would cost me, and
if you'd be having the goodness to get me the right ones. I think I have
enough money.”

Freckles offered his account-book and the Boss studied it gravely.

“You needn't touch your account, Freckles,” he said. “Ten dollars from
this month's pay will provide you everything you need to start on. I
will write a friend in Grand Rapids today to select you the very best
and send them at once.”

Freckles' eyes were shining.

“Never owned a book in me life!” he said. “Even me schoolbooks were
never mine. Lord! How I used to wish I could have just one of them for
me very own! Won't it be fun to see me sawbird and me little yellow
fellow looking at me from the pages of a book, and their real names and
all about them printed alongside? How long will it be taking, sir?”

“Ten days should do it nicely,” said McLean. Then, seeing Freckles'
lengthening face, he added: “I'll have Duncan bring you a ten-bushel
store-box the next time he goes to town. He can haul it to the west
entrance and set it up wherever you want it. You can put in your spare
time filling it with the specimens you find until the books come,
and then you can study out what you have. I suspect you could collect
specimens that I could send to naturalists in the city and sell for you;
things like that winged creature, this morning. I don't know much in
that line, but it must have been a moth, and it might have been rare.
I've seen them by the thousand in museums, and in all nature I don't
remember rarer coloring than their wings. I'll order you a butterfly-net
and box and show you how scientists pin specimens. Possibly you can make
a fine collection of these swamp beauties. It will be all right for you
to take a pair of different moths and butterflies, but I don't want to
hear of your killing any birds. They are protected by heavy fines.”

McLean rode away leaving Freckles staring aghast. Then he saw the point
and smiled. Standing on the trail, he twirled the feather and thought
over the morning.

“Well, if life ain't getting to be worth living!” he said wonderingly.
“Biggest streak of luck I ever had! 'Bout time something was coming my
way, but I wouldn't ever thought anybody could strike such magnificent
prospects through only a falling feather.”



CHAPTER IV

Wherein Freckles Faces Trouble Bravely and Opens the Way for New
Experiences

On Duncan's return from his next trip to town there was a big store-box
loaded on the back of his wagon. He drove to the west entrance of the
swamp, set the box on a stump that Freckles had selected in a beautiful,
sheltered place, and made it secure on its foundations with a tree at
its back.

“It seems most a pity to nail into that tree,” said Duncan. “I haena the
time to examine into the grain of it, but it looks as if it might be a
rare ane. Anyhow, the nailin' winna hurt it deep, and havin' the case by
it will make it safer if it is a guid ane.”

“Isn't it an oak?” asked Freckles.

“Ay,” said Duncan. “It looks like it might be ane of thae fine-grained
white anes that mak' such grand furniture.”

When the body of the case was secure, Duncan made a door from the lid
and fastened it with hinges. He drove a staple, screwed on a latch, and
gave Freckles a small padlock--so that he might fasten in his treasures
safely. He made a shelf at the top for his books, and last of all
covered the case with oil-cloth.

It was the first time in Freckles' life that anyone ever had done that
much for his pleasure, and it warmed his heart with pure joy. If the
interior of the box already had been covered with the rarest treasures
of the Limberlost he could have been no happier.

When the big teamster stood back to look at his work he laughingly
quoted, “'Neat, but no' gaudy,' as McLean says. All we're, needing now
is a coat of paint to make a cupboard that would turn Sarah green with
envy. Ye'll find that safe an' dry, lad, an' that's all that's needed.”

“Mr. Duncan,” said Freckles, “I don't know why you are being so mighty
good to me; but if you have any jobs at the cabin that I could do for
you or Mrs. Duncan, hours off the line, it would make me mighty happy.”

Duncan laughed. “Ye needna feel ye are obliged to me, lad. Ye mauna
think I could take a half-day off in the best hauling season and go to
town for boxes to rig up, and spend of my little for fixtures.”

“I knew Mr. McLean sent you,” said Freckles, his eyes wide and bright
with happiness. “It's so good of him. How I wish I could do something
that would please him as much!”

“Why, Freckles,” said Duncan, as he knelt and began collecting his
tools, “I canna see that it will hurt ye to be told that ye are doing
every day a thing that pleases the Boss as much as anything ye could
do. Ye're being uncommon faithful, lad, and honest as old Father Time.
McLean is trusting ye as he would his own flesh and blood.”

“Oh, Duncan!” cried the happy boy. “Are you sure?”

“Why I know,” answered Duncan. “I wadna venture to say so else. In those
first days he cautioned me na to tell ye, but now he wadna care. D'ye
ken, Freckles, that some of the single trees ye are guarding are worth a
thousand dollars?”

Freckles caught his breath and stood speechless.

“Ye see,” said Duncan, “that's why they maun be watched so closely. They
tak', say, for instance, a burl maple--bird's eye they call it in the
factory, because it's full o' wee knots and twists that look like the
eye of a bird. They saw it out in sheets no muckle thicker than writin'
paper. Then they make up the funiture out of cheaper wood and cover it
with the maple--veneer, they call it. When it's all done and polished ye
never saw onythin' grander. Gang into a retail shop the next time ye
are in town and see some. By sawin' it thin that way they get finish for
thousands of dollars' worth of furniture from a single tree. If ye dinna
watch faithful, and Black Jack gets out a few he has marked, it means
the loss of more money than ye ever dreamed of, lad. The other night,
down at camp, some son of Balaam was suggestin' that ye might be sellin'
the Boss out to Jack and lettin' him tak' the trees secretly, and nobody
wad ever ken till the gang gets here.”

A wave of scarlet flooded Freckles' face and he blazed hotly at the
insult.

“And the Boss,” continued Duncan, coolly ignoring Freckles' anger, “he
lays back just as cool as cowcumbers an' says: 'I'll give a thousand
dollars to ony man that will show me a fresh stump when we reach the
Limberlost,' says he. Some of the men just snapped him op that they'd
find some. So you see how the Boss is trustin' ye, lad.”

“I am gladder than I can ever expriss,” said Freckles. “And now will I
be walking double time to keep some of them from cutting a tree to get
all that money!”

“Mither o' Moses!” howled Duncan. “Ye can trust the Scotch to bungle
things a'thegither. McLean was only meanin' to show ye all confidence
and honor. He's gone and set a high price for some dirty whelp to ruin
ye. I was just tryin' to show ye how he felt toward ye, and I've gone
an' give ye that worry to bear. Damn the Scotch! They're so slow an' so
dumb!”

“Exciptin' prisint company?” sweetly inquired Freckles.

“No!” growled Duncan. “Headin' the list! He'd nae business to set a
price on ye, lad, for that's about the amount of it, an' I'd nae right
to tell ye. We've both done ye ill, an' both meanin' the verra best.
Juist what I'm always sayin' to Sarah.”

“I am mighty proud of what you have been telling me, Duncan,” said
Freckles. “I need the warning, sure. For with the books coming I might
be timpted to neglect me work when double watching is needed. Thank you
more than I can say for putting me on to it. What you've told me may be
the saving of me. I won't stop for dinner now. I'll be getting along the
east line, and when I come around about three, maybe Mother Duncan will
let me have a glass of milk and a bite of something.”

“Ye see now!” cried Duncan in disgust. “Ye'll start on that seven-mile
tramp with na bite to stay your stomach. What was it I told ye?”

“You told me that the Scotch had the hardest heads and the softest
hearts of any people that's living,” answered Freckles.

Duncan grunted in gratified disapproval.

Freckles picked up his club and started down the line, whistling
cheerily, for he had an unusually long repertoire upon which to draw.

Duncan went straight to the lower camp, and calling McLean aside,
repeated the conversation verbatim, ending: “And nae matter what happens
now or ever, dinna ye dare let onythin' make ye believe that Freckles
hasna guarded faithful as ony man could.”

“I don't think anything could shake my faith in the lad,” answered
McLean.

Freckles was whistling merrily. He kept one eye religiously on the line.
The other he divided between the path, his friends of the wire, and a
search of the sky for his latest arrivals. Every day since their coming
he had seen them, either hanging as small, black clouds above the swamp
or bobbing over logs and trees with their queer, tilting walk. Whenever
he could spare time, he entered the swamp and tried to make friends
with them, for they were the tamest of all his unnumbered subjects. They
ducked, dodged, and ambled around him, over logs and bushes, and not
even a near approach would drive them to flight.

For two weeks he had found them circling over the Limberlost regularly,
but one morning the female was missing and only the big black chicken
hung sentinel above the swamp. His mate did not reappear in the
following days, and Freckles grew very anxious. He spoke of it to Mrs.
Duncan, and she quieted his fears by raising a delightful hope in their
stead.

“Why, Freckles, if it's the hen-bird ye are missing, it's ten to one
she's safe,” she said. “She's laid, and is setting, ye silly! Watch him
and mark whaur he lichts. Then follow and find the nest. Some Sabbath
we'll all gang see it.”

Accepting this theory, Freckles began searching for the nest. Because
these “chickens” were large, as the hawks, he looked among the treetops
until he almost sprained the back of his neck. He had half the crow and
hawk nests in the swamp located. He searched for this nest instead of
collecting subjects for his case. He found the pair the middle of one
forenoon on the elm where he had watched their love-making. The big
black chicken was feeding his mate; so it was proved that they were a
pair, they were both alive, and undoubtedly she was brooding. After that
Freckles' nest-hunting continued with renewed zeal, but as he had no
idea where to look and Duncan could offer no helpful suggestion, the
nest was no nearer to being found.

Coming from a long day on the trail, Freckles saw Duncan's children
awaiting him much closer the swale than they usually ventured, and from
their wild gestures he knew that something had happened. He began to
run, but the cry that reached him was: “The books have come!”

How they hurried! Freckles lifted the youngest to his shoulder, the
second took his club and dinner pail, and when they reached Mrs. Duncan
they found her at work on a big box. She had loosened the lid, and then
she laughingly sat on it.

“Ye canna have a peep in here until ye have washed and eaten supper,”
 she said. “It's all ready on the table. Ance ye begin on this, ye'll
no be willin' to tak' your nose o' it till bedtime, and I willna get my
work done the nicht. We've eaten long ago.”

It was difficult work, but Freckles smiled bravely. He made himself
neat, swallowed a few bites, then came so eagerly that Mrs. Duncan
yielded, although she said she very well knew all the time that his
supper would be spoiled.

Lifting the lid, they removed the packing and found in that box books
on birds, trees, flowers, moths, and butterflies. There was also one
containing Freckles' bullfrog, true to life. Besides these were a
butterfly-net, a naturalist's tin specimen-box, a bottle of cyanide,
a box of cotton, a paper of long, steel specimen-pins, and a letter
telling what all these things were and how to use them.

At the discovery of each new treasure, Freckles shouted: “Will you be
looking at this, now?”

Mrs. Duncan cried: “Weel, I be drawed on!”

The eldest boy turned a somersault for every extra, while the baby,
trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut
his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid.
That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had a top
shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of meddling
little fingers.

When Freckles started for the trail next morning, the shining new
specimen-box flashed on his back. The black “chicken,” a mere speck in
the blue, caught the gleam of it. The folded net hung beside the boy's
hatchet, and the bird book was in the box. He walked the line and tested
each section scrupulously, watching every foot of the trail, for he was
determined not to slight his work; but if ever a boy “made haste slowly”
 in a hurry, it was Freckles that morning. When at last he reached the
space he had cleared and planted around his case, his heart swelled with
the pride of possessing even so much that he could call his own, while
his quick eyes feasted on the beauty of it.

He had made a large room with the door of the case set even with one
side of it. On three sides, fine big bushes of wild rose climbed to the
lower branches of the trees. Part of his walls were mallow, part alder,
thorn, willow, and dogwood. Below there filled in a solid mass of pale
pink sheep-laurel, and yellow St. John's wort, while the amber threads
of the dodder interlaced everywhere. At one side the swamp came close,
here cattails grew in profusion. In front of them he had planted a row
of water-hyacinths without disturbing in the least the state of their
azure bloom, and where the ground arose higher for his floor, a row of
foxfire, that soon would be open.

To the left he had discovered a queer natural arrangement of the trees,
that grew to giant size and were set in a gradually narrowing space so
that a long, open vista stretched away until lost in the dim recesses
of the swamp. A little trimming of underbush, rolling of dead logs,
levelling of floor and carpeting with moss, made it easy to understand
why Freckles had named this the “cathedral”; yet he never had been
taught that “the groves were God's first temples.”

On either side of the trees that constituted the first arch of this dim
vista of the swamp he planted ferns that grew waist-high thus early in
the season, and so skilfully the work had been done that not a frond
drooped because of the change. Opposite, he cleared a space and made a
flower bed. He filled one end with every delicate, lacy vine and fern he
could transplant successfully. The body of the bed was a riot of color.
Here he set growing dainty blue-eyed-Marys and blue-eyed grass side
by side. He planted harebells; violets, blue, white, and yellow; wild
geranium, cardinal-flower, columbine, pink snake's mouth, buttercups,
painted trilliums, and orchis. Here were blood-root, moccasin-flower,
hepatica, pitcher-plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and every other flower of
the Limberlost that was in bloom or bore a bud presaging a flower. Every
day saw the addition of new specimens. The place would have driven a
botanist wild with envy.

On the line side he left the bushes thick for concealment, entering by a
narrow path he and Duncan had cleared in setting up the case. He called
this the front door, though he used every precaution to hide it. He
built rustic seats between several of the trees, leveled the floor, and
thickly carpeted it with rank, heavy, woolly-dog moss. Around the case
he planted wild clematis, bittersweet, and wild-grapevines, and trained
them over it until it was almost covered. Every day he planted new
flowers, cut back rough bushes, and coaxed out graceful ones. His
pride in his room was very great, but he had no idea how surprisingly
beautiful it would appear to anyone who had not witnessed its growth and
construction.

This morning Freckles walked straight to his case, unlocked it, and set
his apparatus and dinner inside. He planted a new specimen he had found
close the trail, and, bringing his old scrap-bucket from the corner in
which it was hidden, from a near-by pool he dipped water to pour over
his carpet and flowers.

Then he took out the bird book, settled comfortably on a bench, and
with a deep sigh of satisfaction turned to the section headed. “V.” Past
“veery” and “vireo” he went, down the line until his finger, trembling
with eagerness, stopped at “vulture.”

“'Great black California vulture,'” he read.

“Humph! This side the Rockies will do for us.”

“'Common turkey-buzzard.'”

“Well, we ain't hunting common turkeys. McLean said chickens, and what
he says goes.”

“'Black vulture of the South.'”

“Here we are arrived at once.”

Freckles' finger followed the line, and he read scraps aloud.

“'Common in the South. Sometimes called Jim Crow. Nearest equivalent to
C-a-t-h-a-r-t-e-s A-t-r-a-t-a.'”

“How the divil am I ever to learn them corkin' big words by mesel'?”

“'--the Pharaoh's Chickens of European species. Sometimes stray north as
far as Virginia and Kentucky----'”

“And sometimes farther,” interpolated Freckles, “'cos I got them right
here in Indiana so like these pictures I can just see me big chicken
bobbing up to get his ears boxed. Hey?”

“'Light-blue eggs'----”

“Golly! I got to be seeing them!”

“'--big as a common turkey's, but shaped like a hen's, heavily splotched
with chocolate----'”

“Caramels, I suppose. And----”

“'--in hollow logs or stumps.'”

“Oh, hagginy! Wasn't I barking up the wrong tree, though? Ought to been
looking close the ground all this time. Now it's all to do over, and I
suspect the sooner I start the sooner I'll be likely to find them.”

Freckles put away his book, dampened the smudge-fire, without which the
mosquitoes made the swamp almost unbearable, took his cudgel and lunch,
and went to the line. He sat on a log, ate at dinner-time and drank his
last drop of water. The heat of June was growing intense. Even on the
west of the swamp, where one had full benefit of the breeze from the
upland, it was beginning to be unpleasant in the middle of the day.

He brushed the crumbs from his knees and sat resting awhile and watching
the sky to see if his big chicken were hanging up there. But he came to
the earth abruptly, for there were steps coming down the trail that
were neither McLean's nor Duncan's--and there never had been others.
Freckles' heart leaped hotly. He ran a quick hand over his belt to feel
if his revolver and hatchet were there, caught up his cudgel and laid
it across his knees--then sat quietly, waiting. Was it Black Jack,
or someone even worse? Forced to do something to brace his nerves, he
puckered his stiffening lips and began whistling a tune he had led in
his clear tenor every year of his life at the Home Christmas exercises.

     “Who comes this way, so blithe and gay,
     Upon a merry Christmas day?”

His quick Irish wit roused to the ridiculousness of it until he broke
into a laugh that steadied him amazingly.

Through the bushes he caught a glimpse of the oncoming figure. His heart
flooded with joy, for it was a man from the gang. Wessner had been his
bunk-mate the night he came down the corduroy. He knew him as well as
any of McLean's men. This was no timber-thief. No doubt the Boss had
sent him with a message. Freckles sprang up and called cheerily, a warm
welcome on his face.

“Well, it's good telling if you're glad to see me,” said Wessner, with
something very like a breath of relief. “We been hearing down at the
camp you were so mighty touchy you didn't allow a man within a rod of
the line.”

“No more do I,” answered Freckles, “if he's a stranger, but you're from
McLean, ain't you?”

“Oh, damn McLean!” said Wessner.

Freckles gripped the cudgel until his knuckles slowly turned purple.

“And are you railly saying so?” he inquired with elaborate politeness.

“Yes, I am,” said Wessner. “So would every man of the gang if they
wasn't too big cowards to say anything, unless maybe that other
slobbering old Scotchman, Duncan. Grinding the lives out of us! Working
us like dogs, and paying us starvation wages, while he rolls up his
millions and lives like a prince!”

Green lights began to play through the gray of Freckles' eyes.

“Wessner,” he said impressively, “you'd make a fine pattern for the
father of liars! Every man on that gang is strong and hilthy, paid all
he earns, and treated with the courtesy of a gentleman! As for the Boss
living like a prince, he shares fare with you every day of your lives!”

Wessner was not a born diplomat, but he saw he was on the wrong tack, so
he tried another.

“How would you like to make a good big pile of money, without even
lifting your hand?” he asked.

“Humph!” said Freckles. “Have you been up to Chicago and cornered wheat,
and are you offering me a friendly tip on the invistment of me fortune?”

Wessner came close.

“Freckles, old fellow,” he said, “if you let me give you a pointer, I
can put you on to making a cool five hundred without stepping out of
your tracks.”

Freckles drew back.

“You needn't be afraid of speaking up,” he said. “There isn't a soul in
the Limberlost save the birds and the beasts, unless some of your sort's
come along and's crowding the privileges of the legal tinints.”

“None of my friends along,” said Wessner. “Nobody knew I came but Black,
I--I mean a friend of mine. If you want to hear sense and act with
reason, he can see you later, but it ain't necessary. We can make all
the plans needed. The trick's so dead small and easy.”

“Must be if you have the engineering of it,” said Freckles. But he
heard, with a sigh of relief, that they were alone.

Wessner was impervious. “You just bet it is! Why, only think, Freckles,
slavin' away at a measly little thirty dollars a month, and here is a
chance to clear five hundred in a day! You surely won't be the fool to
miss it!”

“And how was you proposing for me to stale it?” inquired Freckles. “Or
am I just to find it laying in me path beside the line?”

“That's it, Freckles,” blustered the Dutchman, “you're just to find it.
You needn't do a thing. You needn't know a thing. You name a morning
when you will walk up the west side of the swamp and then turn round
and walk back down the same side again and the money is yours. Couldn't
anything be easier than that, could it?”

“Depinds entirely on the man,” said Freckles. The lilt of a lark hanging
above the swale beside them was not sweeter than the sweetness of his
voice. “To some it would seem to come aisy as breathing; and to some,
wringin' the last drop of their heart's blood couldn't force thim! I'm
not the man that goes into a scheme like that with the blindfold over
me eyes, for, you see, it manes to break trust with the Boss; and I've
served him faithful as I knew. You'll have to be making the thing very
clear to me understanding.”

“It's so dead easy,” repeated Wessner, “it makes me tired of the
simpleness of it. You see there's a few trees in the swamp that's real
gold mines. There's three especial. Two are back in, but one's square on
the line. Why, your pottering old Scotch fool of a Boss nailed the
wire to it with his own hands! He never noticed where the bark had been
peeled, or saw what it was. If you will stay on this side of the trail
just one day we can have it cut, loaded, and ready to drive out at
night. Next morning you can find it, report, and be the busiest man
in the search for us. We know where to fix it all safe and easy. Then
McLean has a bet up with a couple of the gang that there can't be a raw
stump found in the Limberlost. There's plenty of witnesses to swear to
it, and I know three that will. There's a cool thousand, and this tree
is worth all of that, raw. Say, it's a gold mine, I tell you, and just
five hundred of it is yours. There's no danger on earth to you, for
you've got McLean that bamboozled you could sell out the whole swamp and
he'd never mistrust you. What do you say?”

Freckles' soul was satisfied. “Is that all?” he asked.

“No, it ain't,” said Wessner. “If you really want to brace up and be a
man and go into the thing for keeps, you can make five times that in a
week. My friend knows a dozen others we could get out in a few days, and
all you'd have to do would be to keep out of sight. Then you could
take your money and skip some night, and begin life like a gentleman
somewhere else. What do you think about it?”

Freckles purred like a kitten.

“'Twould be a rare joke on the Boss,” he said, “to be stalin' from him
the very thing he's trusted me to guard, and be getting me wages all
winter throwed in free. And you're making the pay awful high. Me to
be getting five hundred for such a simple little thing as that. You're
trating me most royal indade! It's away beyond all I'd be expecting.
Sivinteen cints would be a big price for that job. It must be looked
into thorough. Just you wait here until I do a minute's turn in the
swamp, and then I'll be eschorting you out of the clearing and giving
you the answer.”

Freckles lifted the overhanging bushes and hurried to the case. He
unslung the specimen-box and laid it inside with his hatchet and
revolver. He slipped the key in his pocket and went back to Wessner.

“Now for the answer,” he said. “Stand up!”

There was iron in his voice, and he was commanding as an outraged
general. “Anything, you want to be taking off?” he questioned.

Wessner looked the astonishment he felt. “Why, no, Freckles,” he said.

“Have the goodness to be calling me Mister McLean,” snapped Freckles.
“I'm after resarvin' me pet name for the use of me friends! You may
stand with your back to the light or be taking any advantage you want.”

“Why, what do you mean?” spluttered Wessner.

“I'm manin',” said Freckles tersely, “to lick a quarter-section of hell
out of you, and may the Holy Vargin stay me before I leave you here
carrion, for your carcass would turn the stummicks of me chickens!”

At the camp that morning, Wessner's conduct had been so palpable an
excuse to force a discharge that Duncan moved near McLean and whispered,
“Think of the boy, sir?”

McLean was so troubled that, an hour later, he mounted Nellie and
followed Wessner to his home in Wildcat Hollow, only to find that he had
left there shortly before, heading for the Limberlost. McLean rode at
top speed. When Mrs. Duncan told him that a man answering Wessner's
description had gone down the west side of the swamp close noon, he left
the mare in her charge and followed on foot. When he heard voices he
entered the swamp and silently crept close just in time to hear Wessner
whine: “But I can't fight you, Freckles. I hain't done nothing to you.
I'm away bigger than you, and you've only one hand.”

The Boss slid off his coat and crouched among the bushes, ready to
spring; but as Freckles' voice reached him he held himself, with a
strong effort, to learn what mettle was in the boy.

“Don't you be wasting of me good time in the numbering of me hands,”
 cried Freckles. “The stringth of me cause will make up for the weakness
of me mimbers, and the size of a cowardly thief doesn't count. You'll
think all the wildcats of the Limberlost are turned loose on you whin I
come against you, and as for me cause----I slept with you, Wessner, the
night I came down the corduroy like a dirty, friendless tramp, and the
Boss was for taking me up, washing, clothing, and feeding me, and giving
me a home full of love and tinderness, and a master to look to, and
good, well-earned money in the bank. He's trusting me his heartful, and
here comes you, you spotted toad of the big road, and insults me, as is
an honest Irish gintleman, by hinting that you concaive I'd be willing
to shut me eyes and hold fast while you rob him of the thing I was set
and paid to guard, and then act the sneak and liar to him, and ruin and
eternally blacken the soul of me. You damned rascal,” raved Freckles,
“be fighting before I forget the laws of a gintlemin's game and split
your dirty head with me stick!”

Wessner backed away, mumbling, “But I don't want to hurt you, Freckles!”

“Oh, don't you!” raged the boy, now fairly frothing. “Well, you ain't
resembling me none, for I'm itching like death to git me fingers in the
face of you.”

He danced up, and as Wessner lunged in self-defense, ducked under his
arm as a bantam and punched him in the pit of the stomach so that he
doubled with a groan. Before Wessner could straighten himself, Freckles
was on him, fighting like the wildest fury that ever left the beautiful
island. The Dutchman dealt thundering blows that sometimes landed and
sent Freckles reeling, and sometimes missed, while he went plunging into
the swale with the impetus of them. Freckles could not strike with half
Wessner's force, but he could land three blows to the Dutchman's one.
It was here that the boy's days of alert watching on the line, the
perpetual swinging of the heavy cudgel, and the endurance of all weather
stood him in good stead; for he was tough, and agile. He skipped,
ducked, and dodged. For the first five minutes he endured fearful
punishment. Then Wessner's breath commenced to whistle between his
teeth, when Freckles only had begun fighting. He sprang back with shrill
laughter.

“Begolly! and will your honor be whistling the hornpipe for me to be
dancing of?” he cried.

SPANG! went his fist into Wessner's face, and he was past him into the
swale.

“And would you be pleased to tune up a little livelier?” he gasped, and
clipped his ear as he sprang back. Wessner lunged at him in blind fury.
Freckles, seeing an opening, forgot the laws of a gentleman's game and
drove the toe of his heavy wading-boot in Wessner's middle until he
doubled and fell heavily. In a flash Freckles was on him. For a time
McLean could not see what was happening. “Go! Go to him now!” he
commanded himself, but so intense was his desire to see the boy win
alone that he did not stir.

At last Freckles sprang up and backed away. “Time!” he yelled as a fury.
“Be getting up, Mr. Wessner, and don't be afraid of hurting me. I'll let
you throw in an extra hand and lick you to me complate satisfaction all
the same. Did you hear me call the limit? Will you get up and be facing
me?”

As Wessner struggled to his feet, he resembled a battlefield, for his
clothing was in ribbons and his face and hands streaming blood.

“I--I guess I got enough,” he mumbled.

“Oh, you do?” roared Freckles. “Well this ain't your say. You come on
to me ground, lying about me Boss and intimatin' I'd stale from his very
pockets. Now will you be standing up and taking your medicine like a
man, or getting it poured down the throat of you like a baby? I ain't
got enough! This is only just the beginning with me. Be looking out
there!”

He sprang against Wessner and sent him rolling. He attacked the
unresisting figure and fought him until he lay limp and quiet and
Freckles had no strength left to lift an arm. Then he arose and stepped
back, gasping for breath. With his first lungful of air he shouted:
“Time!” But the figure of Wessner lay motionless.

Freckles watched him with regardful eye and saw at last that he was
completely exhausted. He bent over him, and catching him by the back of
the neck, jerked him to his knees. Wessner lifted the face of a whipped
cur, and fearing further punishment, burst into shivering sobs, while
the tears washed tiny rivulets through the blood and muck. Freckles
stepped back, glaring at Wessner, but suddenly the scowl of anger and
the ugly disfiguring red faded from the boy's face. He dabbed at a cut
on his temple from which issued a tiny crimson stream, and jauntily
shook back his hair. His face took on the innocent look of a cherub,
and his voice rivaled that of a brooding dove, but into his eyes crept a
look of diabolical mischief.

He glanced vaguely around him until he saw his club, seized and twirled
it as a drum major, stuck it upright in the muck, and marched on tiptoe
to Wessner, mechanically, as a puppet worked by a string. Bending over,
Freckles reached an arm around Wessner's waist and helped him to his
feet.

“Careful, now” he cautioned, “be careful, Freddy; there's danger of you
hurting me.”

Drawing a handkerchief from a back pocket, Freckles tenderly wiped
Wessner's eyes and nose.

“Come, Freddy, me child,” he admonished Wessner, “it's time little boys
were going home. I've me work to do, and can't be entertaining you any
more today. Come back tomorrow, if you ain't through yet, and we'll
repate the perfarmance. Don't be staring at me so wild like! I would eat
you, but I can't afford it. Me earnings, being honest, come slow, and
I've no money to be squanderin' on the pailful of Dyspeptic's Delight it
would be to taking to work you out of my innards!”

Again an awful wrenching seized McLean. Freckles stepped back as
Wessner, tottering and reeling, as a thoroughly drunken man, came toward
the path, appearing indeed as if wildcats had attacked him.

The cudgel spun high in air, and catching it with an expertness acquired
by long practice on the line, the boy twirled it a second, shook back
his thick hair bonnily, and stepping into the trail, followed Wessner.
Because Freckles was Irish, it was impossible to do it silently, so
presently his clear tenor rang out, though there were bad catches where
he was hard pressed for breath:

     “It was the Dutch.  It was the Dutch.
     Do you think it was the Irish hollered help?
     Not much!
     It was the Dutch.  It was the Dutch----”

Wessner turned and mumbled: “What you following me for? What are you
going to do with me?”

Freckles called the Limberlost to witness: “How's that for the
ingratitude of a beast? And me troubling mesilf to show him off me
territory with the honors of war!”

Then he changed his tone completely and added: “Belike it's this,
Freddy. You see, the Boss might come riding down this trail any minute,
and the little mare's so wheedlesome that if she'd come on to you in
your prisint state all of a sudden, she'd stop that short she'd send Mr.
McLean out over the ears of her. No disparagement intinded to the sinse
of the mare!” he added hastily.

Wessner belched a fearful oath, while Freckles laughed merrily.

“That's a sample of the thanks a generous act's always for getting,” he
continued. “Here's me neglictin' me work to eschort you out proper, and
you saying such awful words Freddy,” he demanded sternly, “do you want
me to soap out your mouth? You don't seem to be realizing it, but if you
was to buck into Mr. McLean in your prisint state, without me there
to explain matters the chance is he'd cut the liver out of you; and I
shouldn't think you'd be wanting such a fine gintleman as him to see
that it's white!”

Wessner grew ghastly under his grime and broke into a staggering run.

“And now will you be looking at the manners of him?” questioned Freckles
plaintively. “Going without even a 'thank you,' right in the face of all
the pains I've taken to make it interesting for him!”

Freckles twirled the club and stood as a soldier at attention
until Wessner left the clearing, but it was the last scene of that
performance. When the boy turned, there was deathly illness on his face,
while his legs wavered beneath his weight. He staggered to the case, and
opening it he took out a piece of cloth. He dipped it into the water,
and sitting on a bench, he wiped the blood and grime from his face,
while his breath sucked between his clenched teeth. He was shivering
with pain and excitement in spite of himself. He unbuttoned the band of
his right sleeve, and turning it back, exposed the blue-lined, calloused
whiteness of his maimed arm, now vividly streaked with contusions, while
in a series of circular dots the blood oozed slowly. Here Wessner had
succeeded in setting his teeth. When Freckles saw what it was he forgave
himself the kick in the pit of Wessner's stomach, and cursed fervently
and deep.

“Freckles, Freckles,” said McLean's voice.

Freckles snatched down his sleeve and arose to his feet.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “You'll surely be belavin' I thought meself
alone.”

McLean pushed him carefully to the seat, and bending over him, opened a
pocket-case that he carried as regularly as his revolver and watch, for
cuts and bruises were of daily occurrence among the gang.

Taking the hurt arm, he turned back the sleeve and bathed and bound the
wounds. He examined Freckles' head and body and convinced himself that
there was no permanent injury, although the cruelty of the punishment
the boy had borne set the Boss shuddering. Then he closed the
case, shoved it into his pocket, and sat beside Freckles. All the
indescribable beauty of the place was strong around him, but he saw
only the bruised face of the suffering boy, who had hedged for the
information he wanted as a diplomat, argued as a judge, fought as a
sheik, and triumphed as a devil.

When the pain lessened and breath relieved Freckles' pounding heart, he
watched the Boss covertly. How had McLean gotten there and how long had
he been there? Freckles did not dare ask. At last he arose, and going
to the case, took out his revolver and the wire-mending apparatus and
locked the door. Then he turned to McLean.

“Have you any orders, sir?” he asked.

“Yes,” said McLean, “I have, and you are to follow them to the letter.
Turn over that apparatus to me and go straight home. Soak yourself in
the hottest bath your skin will bear and go to bed at once. Now hurry.”

“Mr. McLean,” said Freckles, “it's sorry I am to be telling you, but
the afternoon's walking of the line ain't done. You see, I was just
for getting to me feet to start, and I was on time, when up came
a gintleman, and we got into a little heated argument. It's either
settled, or it's just begun, but between us, I'm that late I haven't
started for the afternoon yet. I must be going at once, for there's a
tree I must find before the day's over.”

“You plucky little idiot,” growled McLean. “You can't walk the line! I
doubt if you can reach Duncan's. Don't you know when you are done up?
You go to bed; I'll finish your work.”

“Niver!” protested Freckles. “I was just a little done up for the
prisint, a minute ago. I'm all right now. Riding-boots are far too low.
The day's hot and the walk a good seven miles, sir. Niver!”

As he reached for the outfit he pitched forward and his eyes closed.
McLean stretched him on the moss and applied restoratives. When Freckles
returned to consciousness, McLean ran to the cabin to tell Mrs. Duncan
to have a hot bath ready, and to bring Nellie. That worthy woman
promptly filled the wash-boiler, starting a roaring fire under it. She
pushed the horse-trough from its base and rolled it to the kitchen.

By the time McLean came again, leading Nellie and holding Freckles on her
back, Mrs. Duncan was ready for business. She and the Boss laid Freckles
in the trough and poured on hot water until he squirmed. They soaked and
massaged him. Then they drew off the hot water and closed his pores with
cold. Lastly they stretched him on the floor and chafed, rubbed, and
kneaded him until he cried out for mercy. As they rolled him into bed,
his eyes dropped shut, but a little later they flared open.

“Mr. McLean,” he cried, “the tree! Oh, do be looking after the tree!”

McLean bent over him. “Which tree, Freckles?”

“I don't know exact sir; but it's on the east line, and the wire is
fastened to it. He bragged that you nailed it yourself, sir. You'll know
it by the bark having been laid open to the grain somewhere low down.
Five hundred dollars he offered me--to be--selling you out--sir!”

Freckles' head rolled over and his eyes dropped shut. McLean towered
above the lad. His bright hair waved on the pillow. His face was
swollen, and purple with bruises. His left arm, with the hand battered
almost out of shape, stretched beside him, and the right, with no hand
at all, lay across a chest that was a mass of purple welts. McLean's
mind traveled to the night, almost a year before, when he had engaged
Freckles, a stranger.

The Boss bent, covering the hurt arm with one hand and laying the other
with a caress on the boy's forehead. Freckles stirred at his touch, and
whispered as softly as the swallows under the eaves: “If you're coming
this way--tomorrow--be pleased to step over--and we'll repate--the
chorus softly!”

“Bless the gritty devil,” muttered McLean.

Then he went out and told Mrs. Duncan to keep close watch on Freckles,
also to send Duncan to him at the swamp the minute he came home.
Following the trail to the line and back to the scent of the fight, the
Boss entered Freckles' study quietly, as if his spirit, keeping there,
might be roused, and gazed around with astonished eyes.

How had the boy conceived it? What a picture he had wrought in living
colors! He had the heart of a painter. He had the soul of a poet. The
Boss stepped carefully over the velvet carpet to touch the walls of
crisp verdure with gentle fingers. He stood long beside the flower
bed, and gazed at the banked wall of bright bloom as if he doubted its
reality.

Where had Freckles ever found, and how had he transplanted such ferns?
As McLean turned from them he stopped suddenly.

He had reached the door of the cathedral. That which Freckles had
attempted would have been patent to anyone. What had been in the heart
of the shy, silent boy when he had found that long, dim stretch of
forest, decorated its entrance, cleared and smoothed its aisle, and
carpeted its altar? What veriest work of God was in these mighty living
pillars and the arched dome of green! How similar to stained cathedral
windows were the long openings between the trees, filled with rifts of
blue, rays of gold, and the shifting emerald of leaves! Where could be
found mosaics to match this aisle paved with living color and glowing
light? Was Freckles a devout Christian, and did he worship here? Or was
he an untaught heathen, and down this vista of entrancing loveliness did
Pan come piping, and dryads, nymphs, and fairies dance for him?

Who can fathom the heart of a boy? McLean had been thinking of Freckles
as a creature of unswerving honesty, courage, and faithfulness. Here was
evidence of a heart aching for beauty, art, companionship, worship. It
was writ large all over the floor, walls, and furnishing of that little
Limberlost clearing.

When Duncan came, McLean told him the story of the fight, and they
laughed until they cried. Then they started around the line in search of
the tree.

Said Duncan: “Now the boy is in for sore trouble!”

“I hope not,” answered McLean. “You never in all your life saw a cur
whipped so completely. He won't come back for the repetition of the
chorus. We surely can find the tree. If we can't, Freckles can. I will
bring enough of the gang to take it out at once. That will insure peace
for a time, at least, and I am hoping that in a month more the whole
gang may be moved here. It soon will be fall, and then, if he will go, I
intend to send Freckles to my mother to be educated. With his quickness
of mind and body and a few years' good help he can do anything. Why,
Duncan, I'd give a hundred-dollar bill if you could have been here and
seen for yourself.”

“Yes, and I'd 'a' done murder,” muttered the big teamster. “I hope, sir,
ye will make good your plans for Freckles, though I'd as soon see
ony born child o' my ain taken from our home. We love the lad, me and
Sarah.”

Locating the tree was easy, because it was so well identified. When
the rumble of the big lumber wagons passing the cabin on the way to the
swamp wakened Freckles next morning, he sprang up and was soon following
them. He was so sore and stiff that every movement was torture at first,
but he grew easier, and shortly did not suffer so much. McLean scolded
him for coming, yet in his heart triumphed over every new evidence of
fineness in the boy.

The tree was a giant maple, and so precious that they almost dug it out
by the roots. When it was down, cut in lengths, and loaded, there was
yet an empty wagon. As they were gathering up their tools to go, Duncan
said: “There's a big hollow tree somewhere mighty close here that I've
been wanting for a watering-trough for my stock; the one I have is so
small. The Portland company cut this for elm butts last year, and it's
six feet diameter and hollow for forty feet. It was a buster! While the
men are here and there is an empty wagon, why mightn't I load it on and
tak' it up to the barn as we pass?”

McLean said he was very willing, ordered the driver to break line and
load the log, detailing men to assist. He told Freckles to ride on a
section of the maple with him, but now the boy asked to enter the swamp
with Duncan.

“I don't see why you want to go,” said McLean. “I have no business to
let you out today at all.”

“It's me chickens,” whispered Freckles in distress. “You see, I was just
after finding yesterday, from me new book, how they do be nesting in
hollow trees, and there ain't any too many in the swamp. There's just a
chance that they might be in that one.”

“Go ahead,” said McLean. “That's a different story. If they happen to be
there, why tell Duncan he must give up the tree until they have finished
with it.”

Then he climbed on a wagon and was driven away. Freckles hurried into
the swamp. He was a little behind, yet he could see the men. Before he
overtook them, they had turned from the west road and had entered the
swamp toward the east.

They stopped at the trunk of a monstrous prostrate log. It had been cut
three feet from the ground, over three-fourths of the way through, and
had fallen toward the east, the body of the log still resting on the
stump. The underbrush was almost impenetrable, but Duncan plunged in and
with a crowbar began tapping along the trunk to decide how far it
was hollow, so that they would know where to cut. As they waited his
decision, there came from the mouth of it--on wings--a large black bird
that swept over their heads.

Freckles danced wildly. “It's me chickens! Oh, it's me chickens!” he
shouted. “Oh, Duncan, come quick! You've found the nest of me precious
chickens!”

Duncan hurried to the mouth of the log, but Freckles was before him. He
crashed through poison-vines and underbrush regardless of any danger,
and climbed on the stump. When Duncan came he was shouting like a wild
man.

“It's hatched!” he yelled. “Oh, me big chicken has hatched out me little
chicken, and there's another egg. I can see it plain, and oh, the funny
little white baby! Oh, Duncan, can you see me little white chicken?”

Duncan could easily see it; so could everyone else. Freckles crept into
the log and tenderly carried the hissing, blinking little bird to the
light in a leaf-lined hat. The men found it sufficiently wonderful to
satisfy even Freckles, who had forgotten he was ever sore or stiff, and
coddled over it with every blarneying term of endearment he knew.

Duncan gathered his tools. “Deal's off, boys!” he said cheerfully. “This
log mauna be touched until Freckles' chaukies have finished with it. We
might as weel gang. Better put it back, Freckles. It's just out, and it
may chill. Ye will probably hae twa the morn.”

Freckles crept into the log and carefully deposited the baby beside
the egg. When he came back, he said: “I made a big mistake not to be
bringing the egg out with the baby, but I was fearing to touch it.
It's shaped like a hen's egg, and it's big as a turkey's, and the
beautifulest blue--just splattered with big brown splotches, like me
book said, precise. Bet you never saw such a sight as it made on the
yellow of the rotten wood beside that funny leathery-faced little white
baby.”

“Tell you what, Freckles,” said one of the teamsters. “Have you ever
heard of this Bird Woman who goes all over the country with a camera and
makes pictures? She made some on my brother Jim's place last summer, and
Jim's so wild about them he quits plowing and goes after her about every
nest he finds. He helps her all he can to take them, and then she gives
him a picture. Jim's so proud of what he has he keeps them in the Bible.
He shows them to everybody that comes, and brags about how he helped.
If you're smart, you'll send for her and she'll come and make a picture
just like life. If you help her, she will give you one. It would be
uncommon pretty to keep, after your birds are gone. I dunno what they
are. I never see their like before. They must be something rare. Any you
fellows ever see a bird like that hereabouts?”

No one ever had.

“Well,” said the teamster, “failing to get this log lets me off till
noon, and I'm going to town. I go right past her place. I've a big
notion to stop and tell her. If she drives straight back in the swamp
on the west road, and turns east at this big sycamore, she can't miss
finding the tree, even if Freckles ain't here to show her. Jim says
her work is a credit to the State she lives in, and any man is a measly
creature who isn't willing to help her all he can. My old daddy used to
say that all there was to religion was doing to the other fellow what
you'd want him to do to you, and if I was making a living taking bird
pictures, seems to me I'd be mighty glad for a chance to take one like
that. So I'll just stop and tell her, and by gummy! maybe she will give
me a picture of the little white sucker for my trouble.”

Freckles touched his arm.

“Will she be rough with it?” he asked.

“Government land! No!” said the teamster. “She's dead down on anybody
that shoots a bird or tears up a nest. Why, she's half killing herself
in all kinds of places and weather to teach people to love and protect
the birds. She's that plum careful of them that Jim's wife says she has
Jim a standin' like a big fool holding an ombrelly over them when they
are young and tender until she gets a focus, whatever that is. Jim says
there ain't a bird on his place that don't actually seem to like having
her around after she has wheedled them a few days, and the pictures she
takes nobody would ever believe who didn't stand by and see.”

“Will you he sure to tell her to come?” asked Freckles.

Duncan slept at home that night. He heard Freckles slipping out early
the next morning, but he was too sleepy to wonder why, until he came to
do his morning chores. When he found that none of his stock was at all
thirsty, and saw the water-trough brimming, he knew that the boy was
trying to make up to him for the loss of the big trough that he had been
so anxious to have.

“Bless his fool little hot heart!” said Duncan. “And him so sore it is
tearing him to move for anything. Nae wonder he has us all loving him!”

Freckles was moving briskly, and his heart was so happy that he forgot
all about the bruises. He hurried around the trail, and on his way down
the east side he went to see the chickens. The mother bird was on the
nest. He was afraid the other egg might be hatching, so he did not
venture to disturb her. He made the round and reached his study early.
He ate his lunch, but did not need to start on the second trip until the
middle of the afternoon. He would have long hours to work on his flower
bed, improve his study, and learn about his chickens. Lovingly he set
his room in order and watered the flowers and carpet. He had chosen for
his resting-place the coolest spot on the west side, where there was
almost always a breeze; but today the heat was so intense that it
penetrated even there.

“I'm mighty glad there's nothing calling me inside!” he said. “There's
no bit of air stirring, and it will just be steaming. Oh, but it's
luck Duncan found the nest before it got so unbearing hot! I might have
missed it altogether. Wouldn't it have been a shame to lose that sight?
The cunning little divil! When he gets to toddling down that log to meet
me, won't he be a circus? Wonder if he'll be as graceful a performer
afoot as his father and mother?”

The heat became more insistent. Noon came; Freckles ate his dinner and
settled for an hour or two on a bench with a book.



CHAPTER V

Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships

Perhaps there was a breath of sound--Freckles never afterward could
remember--but for some reason he lifted his head as the bushes parted
and the face of an angel looked between. Saints, nymphs, and fairies
had floated down his cathedral aisle for him many times, with forms and
voices of exquisite beauty.

Parting the wild roses at the entrance was beauty of which Freckles
never had dreamed. Was it real or would it vanish as the other dreams?
He dropped his book, and rising to his feet, went a step closer, gazing
intently. This was real flesh and blood. It was in every way kin to the
Limberlost, for no bird of its branches swung with easier grace than
this dainty young thing rocked on the bit of morass on which she stood.
A sapling beside her was not straighter or rounder than her slender
form. Her soft, waving hair clung around her face from the heat, and
curled over her shoulders. It was all of one piece with the gold of the
sun that filtered between the branches. Her eyes were the deepest blue
of the iris, her lips the reddest red of the foxfire, while her cheeks
were exactly of the same satin as the wild rose petals caressing them.
She was smiling at Freckles in perfect confidence, and she cried:

“Oh, I'm so delighted that I've found you!”

The wildly leaping heart of Freckles burst from his body and fell in the
black swamp-muck at her feet with such a thud that he did not understand
how she could avoid hearing. He really felt that if she looked down she
would see.

Incredulous, he quavered: “An'--an' was you looking for me?”

“I hoped I might find you,” said the Angel. “You see, I didn't do as
I was told, and I'm lost. The Bird Woman said I should wait in the
carriage until she came back. She's been gone hours. It's a perfect
Turkish bath in there, and I'm all lumpy with mosquito bites. Just when
I thought that I couldn't bear it another minute, along came the biggest
Papilio Ajax you ever saw. I knew how pleased she'd be, so I ran after
it. It flew so slow and so low that I thought a dozen times I had it.
Then all at once it went from sight above the trees, and I couldn't find
my way back to save me. I think I've walked more than an hour. I have
been mired to my knees. A thorn raked my arm until it is bleeding, and
I'm so tired and warm.”

She parted the bushes farther. Freckles saw that her blue cotton frock
clung to her, limp with perspiration. It was torn across the breast. One
sleeve hung open from shoulder to elbow. A thorn had torn her arm until
it was covered with blood, and the gnats and mosquitoes were clustering
around it. Her feet were in lace hose and low shoes. Freckles gasped. In
the Limberlost in low shoes! He caught an armful of moss from his carpet
and buried it in the ooze in front of her for a footing.

“Come out here so I can see where you are stepping. Quick, for the life
of you!” he ordered.

She smiled on him indulgently.

“Why?” she inquired.

“Did anybody let you come here and not be telling you of the snakes?”
 urged Freckles.

“We met Mr. McLean on the corduroy, and he did say something about
snakes, I believe. The Bird Woman put on leather leggings, and a nice,
parboiled time she must be having! Worst dose I ever endured, and I'd
nothing to do but swelter.”

“Will you be coming out of there?” groaned Freckles.

She laughed as if it were a fine joke.

“Maybe if I'd be telling you I killed a rattler curled upon that same
place you're standing, as long as me body and the thickness of me arm,
you'd be moving where I can see your footing,” he urged insistently.

“What a perfectly delightful little brogue you speak,” she said. “My
father is Irish, and half should be enough to entitle me to that much.
'Maybe--if I'd--be telling you,'” she imitated, rounding and accenting
each word carefully.

Freckles was beginning to feel a wildness in his head. He had derided
Wessner at that same hour yesterday. Now his own eyes were filling with
tears.

“If you were understanding the danger!” he continued desperately.

“Oh, I don't think there is much!”

She tilted on the morass.

“If you killed one snake here, it's probably all there is near; and
anyway, the Bird Woman says a rattlesnake is a gentleman and always
gives warning before he strikes. I don't hear any rattling. Do you?”

“Would you be knowing it if you did?” asked Freckles, almost
impatiently.

How the laugh of the young thing rippled!

“'Would I be knowing it?'” she mocked. “You should see the swamps of
Michigan where they dump rattlers from the marl-dredgers three and four
at a time!”

Freckles stood astounded. She did know. She was not in the least afraid.
She was depending on a rattlesnake to live up to his share of the
contract and rattle in time for her to move. The one characteristic
an Irishman admires in a woman, above all others, is courage. Freckles
worshiped anew. He changed his tactics.

“I'd be pleased to be receiving you at me front door,” he said, “but as
you have arrived at the back, will you come in and be seated?”

He waved toward a bench. The Angel came instantly.

“Oh, how lovely and cool!” she cried.

As she moved across his room, Freckles had difficult work to keep from
falling on his knees; for they were very weak, while he was hard driven
by an impulse to worship.

“Did you arrange this?” she asked.

“Yis,” said Freckles simply.

“Someone must come with a big canvas and copy each side of it,” she
said. “I never saw anything so beautiful! How I wish I might remain
here with you! I will, some day, if you will let me; but now, if you can
spare the time, will you help me find the carriage? If the Bird Woman
comes back and I am gone, she will be almost distracted.”

“Did you come on the west road?” asked Freckles.

“I think so,” she said. “The man who told the Bird Woman said that
was the only place the wires were down. We drove away in, and it was
dreadful--over stumps and logs, and we mired to the hubs. I suppose you
know, though. I should have stayed in the carriage, but I was so tired.
I never dreamed of getting lost. I suspect I will be scolded finely.
I go with the Bird Woman half the time during the summer vacations. My
father says I learn a lot more than I do at school, and get it straight.
I never came within a smell of being lost before. I thought, at first,
it was going to be horrid; but since I've found you, maybe it will be
good fun after all.”

Freckles was amazed to hear himself excusing: “It was so hot in there.
You couldn't be expected to bear it for hours and not be moving. I can
take you around the trail almost to where you were. Then you can sit in
the carriage, and I will go find the Bird Woman.”

“You'll be killed if you do! When she stays this long, it means that she
has a focus on something. You see, when she has a focus, and lies in the
weeds and water for hours, and the sun bakes her, and things crawl over
her, and then someone comes along and scares her bird away just as she
has it coaxed up--why, she kills them. If I melt, you won't go after
her. She's probably blistered and half eaten up; but she never will quit
until she is satisfied.”

“Then it will be safer to be taking care of you,” suggested Freckles.

“Now you're talking sense!” said the Angel.

“May I try to help your arm?” he asked.

“Have you any idea how it hurts?” she parried.

“A little,” said Freckles.

“Well, Mr. McLean said We'd probably find his son here”

“His son!” cried Freckles.

“That's what he said. And that you would do anything you could for us;
and that we could trust you with our lives. But I would have trusted
you anyway, if I hadn't known a thing about you. Say, your father is
rampaging proud of you, isn't he?”

“I don't know,” answered the dazed Freckles.

“Well, call on me if you want reliable information. He's so proud of you
he is all swelled up like the toad in AEsop's Fables. If you have ever
had an arm hurt like this, and can do anything, why, for pity sake, do
it!”

She turned back her sleeve, holding toward Freckles an arm of palest
cameo, shaped so exquisitely that no sculptor could have chiseled it.

Freckles unlocked his case, and taking out some cotton cloth, he tore it
in strips. Then he brought a bucket of the cleanest water he could find.
She yielded herself to his touch as a baby, and he bathed away the blood
and bandaged the ugly, ragged wound. He finished his surgery by lapping
the torn sleeve over the cloth and binding it down with a piece of
twine, with the Angel's help about the knots.

Freckles worked with trembling fingers and a face tense with
earnestness.

“Is it feeling any better?” he asked.

“Oh, it's well now!” cried the Angel. “It doesn't hurt at all, any
more.”

“I'm mighty glad,” said Freckles. “But you had best go and be having
your doctor fix it right; the minute you get home.”

“Oh, bother! A little scratch like that!” jeered the Angel. “My blood is
perfectly pure. It will heal in three days.”

“It's cut cruel deep. It might be making a scar,” faltered Freckles, his
eyes on the ground. “'Twould--'twould be an awful pity. A doctor might
know something to prevent it.”

“Why, I never thought of that!” exclaimed the Angel.

“I noticed you didn't,” said Freckles softly. “I don't know much about
it, but it seems as if most girls would.”

The Angel thought intently, while Freckles still knelt beside her.
Suddenly she gave herself an impatient little shake, lifted her glorious
eyes full to his, and the smile that swept her sweet, young face was the
loveliest thing that Freckles ever had seen.

“Don't let's bother about it,” she proposed, with the faintest hint of
a confiding gesture toward him. “It won't make a scar. Why, it couldn't,
when you have dressed it so nicely.”

The velvety touch of her warm arm was tingling in Freckles' fingertips.
Dainty lace and fine white ribbon peeped through her torn dress. There
were beautiful rings on her fingers. Every article she wore was of
the finest material and in excellent taste. There was the trembling
Limberlost guard in his coarse clothing, with his cotton rags and
his old pail of swamp water. Freckles was sufficiently accustomed to
contrasts to notice them, and sufficiently fine to be hurt by them
always.

He lifted his eyes with a shadowy pain in them to hers, and found them
of serene, unconscious purity. What she had said was straight from a
kind, untainted, young heart. She meant every word of it. Freckles' soul
sickened. He scarcely knew whether he could muster strength to stand.

“We must go and hunt for the carriage,” said the Angel, rising.

In instant alarm for her, Freckles sprang up, grasped the cudgel, and
led the way, sharply watching every step. He went as close the log as he
felt that he dared, and with a little searching found the carriage. He
cleared a path for the Angel, and with a sigh of relief saw her enter it
safely. The heat was intense. She pushed the damp hair from her temples.

“This is a shame!” said Freckles. “You'll never be coming here again.”

“Oh yes I shall!” said the Angel. “The Bird Woman says that these birds
remain over a month in the nest and she would like to make a picture
every few days for seven or eight weeks, perhaps.”

Freckles barely escaped crying aloud for joy.

“Then don't you ever be torturing yourself and your horse to be coming
in here again,” he said. “I'll show you a way to drive almost to the
nest on the east trail, and then you can come around to my room and stay
while the Bird Woman works. It's nearly always cool there, and there's
comfortable seats, and water.”

“Oh! did you have drinking-water there?” she cried. “I was never so
thirsty or so hungry in my life, but I thought I wouldn't mention it.”

“And I had not the wit to be seeing!” wailed Freckles. “I can be getting
you a good drink in no time.”

He turned to the trail.

“Please wait a minute,” called the Angel. “What's your name? I want to
think about you while you are gone.” Freckles lifted his face with the
brown rift across it and smiled quizzically.

“Freckles?” she guessed, with a peal of laughter. “And mine is----”

“I'm knowing yours,” interrupted Freckles.

“I don't believe you do. What is it?” asked the girl.

“You won't be getting angry?”

“Not until I've had the water, at least.”

It was Freckles' turn to laugh. He whipped off his big, floppy straw
hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of all the
sweet tones of his voice: “There's nothing you could be but the Swamp
Angel.”

The girl laughed happily.

Once out of her sight, Freckles ran every step of the way to the cabin.
Mrs. Duncan gave him a small bucket of water, cool from the well. He
carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket filled with bread
and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles, in his left hand.

“Pickles are kind o' cooling,” said Mrs. Duncan.

Then Freckles ran again.

The Angel was on her knees, reaching for the bucket, as he came up.

“Be drinking slow,” he cautioned her.

“Oh!” she cried, with a long breath of satisfaction. “It's so good! You
are more than kind to bring it!”

Freckles stood blinking in the dazzling glory of her smile until he
scarcely could see to lift the basket.

“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I think I had better be naming you the 'Angel.'
My Guardian Angel.”

“Yis,” said Freckles. “I look the character every day--but today most
emphatic!”

“Angels don't go by looks,” laughed the girl. “Your father told us you
had been scrapping. But he told us why. I'd gladly wear all your cuts
and bruises if I could do anything that would make my father look as
peacocky as yours did. He strutted about proper. I never saw anyone look
prouder.”

“Did he say he was proud of me?” marveled Freckles.

“He didn't need to,” answered the Angel. “He was radiating pride from
every pore. Now, have you brought me your dinner?”

“I had my dinner two hours ago,” answered Freckles.

“Honest Injun?” bantered the Angel.

“Honest! I brought that on purpose for you.”

“Well, if you knew how hungry I am, you would know how thankful I am, to
the dot,” said the Angel.

“Then you be eating,” cried the happy Freckles.

The Angel sat on a big camera, spread the lunch on the carriage seat,
and divided it in halves. The daintiest parts she could select she
carefully put back into the basket. The remainder she ate. Again
Freckles found her of the swamp, for though she was almost ravenous,
she managed her food as gracefully as his little yellow fellow, and her
every movement was easy and charming. As he watched her with famished
eyes, Freckles told her of his birds, flowers, and books, and never
realized what he was doing.

He led the horse to a deep pool that he knew of, and the tortured
creature drank greedily, and lovingly rubbed him with its nose as he
wiped down its welted body with grass. Suddenly the Angel cried: “There
comes the Bird Woman!”

Freckles had intended leaving before she came, but now he was glad
indeed to be there, for a warmer, more worn, and worse bitten creature
he never had seen. She was staggering under a load of cameras and
paraphernalia. Freckles ran to her aid. He took all he could carry of
her load, stowed it in the back of the carriage, and helped her in.
The Angel gave her water, knelt and unfastened the leggings, bathed her
face, and offered the lunch.

Freckles brought the horse. He was not sure about the harness, but the
Angel knew, and soon they left the swamp. Then he showed them how to
reach the chicken tree from the outside, indicated a cooler place for
the horse, and told them how, the next time they came, the Angel could
find his room while she waited.

The Bird Woman finished her lunch, and lay back, almost too tired to
speak.

“Were you for getting Little Chicken's picture?” Freckles asked.

“Finely!” she answered. “He posed splendidly. But I couldn't do anything
with his mother. She will require coaxing.”

“The Lord be praised!” muttered Freckles under his breath.

The Bird Woman began to feel better.

“Why do you call the baby vulture 'Little Chicken'?” she asked, leaning
toward Freckles in an interested manner.

“'Twas Duncan began it,” said Freckles. “You see, through the fierce
cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost starving. It is
mighty lonely here, and they were all the company I was having. I got to
carrying scraps and grain down to them. Duncan was that ginerous he was
giving me of his wheat and corn from his chickens' feed, and he called
the birds me swamp chickens. Then when these big black fellows came,
Mr. McLean said they were our nearest kind to some in the old world
that they called 'Pharaoh's Chickens,' and he called mine 'Freckles'
Chickens.'”

“Good enough!” cried the Bird Woman, her splotched purple face lighting
with interest. “You must shoot something for them occasionally, and I'll
bring more food when I come. If you will help me keep them until I
get my series, I'll give you a copy of each study I make, mounted in a
book.”

Freckles drew a deep breath.

“I'll be doing me very best,” he promised, and from the deeps he meant
it.

“I wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?” mused the Bird Woman. “I
am afraid not. It should have pipped today. Isn't it a beauty! I never
before saw either an egg or the young. They are rare this far north.”

“So Mr. McLean said,” answered Freckles.

Before they drove away, the Bird Woman thanked him for his kindness to
the Angel and to her. She gave him her hand at parting, and Freckles
joyfully realized that this was going to be another person for him to
love. He could not remember, after they had driven away, that they even
had noticed his missing hand, and for the first time in his life he had
forgotten it.

When the Bird Woman and the Angel were on the home road, she told of
the little corner of paradise into which she had strayed and of her new
name. The Bird Woman looked at the girl and guessed its appropriateness.

“Did you know Mr. McLean had a son?” asked the Angel. “Isn't the little
accent he has, and the way he twists a sentence, too dear? And isn't it
too old-fashioned and funny to hear him call his father 'mister'?”

“It sounds too good to be true,” said the Bird Woman, answering the
last question first. “I am so tired of these present-day young men who
patronizingly call their fathers 'Dad,' 'Governor,' 'Old Man' and 'Old
Chap,' that the boy's attitude of respect and deference appealed to me
as being fine as silk. There must be something rare about that young
man.”

She did not find it necessary to tell the Angel that for several years
she had known the man who so proudly proclaimed himself Freckles' father
to be a bachelor and a Scotchman. The Bird Woman had a fine way of
attending strictly to her own business.

Freckles turned to the trail, but he stopped at every wild brier to
study the pink satin of the petals. She was not of his world, and
better than any other he knew it; but she might be his Angel, and he was
dreaming of naught but blind, silent worship. He finished the happiest
day of his life, and that night he returned to the swamp as if drawn by
invisible force. That Wessner would try for his revenge, he knew. That
he would be abetted by Black Jack was almost certain, but fear had
fled the happy heart of Freckles. He had kept his trust. He had won the
respect of the Boss. No one ever could wipe from his heart the flood of
holy adoration that had welled with the coming of his Angel. He would do
his best, and trust for strength to meet the dark day of reckoning that
he knew would come sooner or later. He swung round the trail, briskly
tapping the wire, and singing in a voice that scarcely could have been
surpassed for sweetness.

At the edge of the clearing he came into the bright moonlight and there
sat McLean on his mare. Freckles hurried to him.

“Is there trouble?” he inquired anxiously.

“That's what I wanted to ask you,” said the Boss. “I stopped at the
cabin to see you a minute, before I turned in, and they said you had
come down here. You must not do it, Freckles. The swamp is none too
healthful at any time, and at night it is rank poison.”

Freckles stood combing his fingers through Nellie's mane, while the
dainty creature was twisting her head for his caresses. He pushed back
his hat and looked into McLean's face. “It's come to the 'sleep with one
eye open,' sir. I'm not looking for anything to be happening for a week
or two, but it's bound to come, and soon. If I'm to keep me trust as
I've promised you and meself, I've to live here mostly until the gang
comes. You must be knowing that, sir.”

“I'm afraid it's true, Freckles,” said McLean. “And I've decided to
double the guard until we come. It will be only a few weeks, now; and
I'm so anxious for you that you must not be left alone further. If
anything should happen to you, Freckles, it would spoil one of the very
dearest plans of my life.”

Freckles heard with dismay the proposition to place a second guard.

“Oh! no, no, Mr. McLean,” he cried. “Not for the world! I wouldn't be
having a stranger around, scaring me birds and tramping up me study, and
disturbing all me ways, for any money! I am all the guard you need! I
will be faithful! I will turn over the lease with no tree missing--on
me life, I will! Oh, don't be sending another man to set them saying
I turned coward and asked for help. It will just kill the honor of me
heart if you do it. The only thing I want is another gun. If it railly
comes to trouble, six cartridges ain't many, and you know I am slow-like
about reloading.” McLean reached into his hip pocket and handed a
shining big revolver to Freckles, who slipped it beside the one already
in his belt.

Then the Boss sat brooding.

“Freckles,” he said at last, “we never know the timber of a man's soul
until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong.
You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture, my boy, and you
shall have your own way these few weeks yet. Then, if you will go, I
intend to take you to the city and educate you, and you are to be my
son, my lad--my own son!”

Freckles twisted his finger in Nellie's mane to steady himself.

“But why should you be doing that, sir?” he faltered.

McLean slid his arm around the boy's shoulder and gathered him close.

“Because I love you, Freckles,” he said simply.

Freckles lifted a white face. “My God, sir!” he whispered. “Oh, my God!”

McLean tightened his clasp a second longer, then he rode down the trail.

Freckles lifted his hat and faced the sky. The harvest moon looked down,
sheeting the swamp in silver glory. The Limberlost sang her night song.
The swale softly rustled in the wind. Winged things of night brushed
his face; and still Freckles gazed upward, trying to fathom these things
that had come to him. There was no help from the sky. It seemed far
away, cold, and blue. The earth, where flowers blossomed, angels walked,
and love could be found, was better. But to One, above, he must make
acknowledgment for these miracles. His lips moved and he began talking
softly.

“Thank You for each separate good thing that has come to me,” he said,
“and above all for the falling of the feather. For if it didn't really
fall from an angel, its falling brought an Angel, and if it's in the
great heart of you to exercise yourself any further about me, oh, do
please to be taking good care of her!”



CHAPTER VI

Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight

The following morning Freckles, inexpressibly happy, circled the
Limberlost. He kept snatches of song ringing, as well as the wires. His
heart was so full that tears of joy glistened in his eyes. He rigorously
strove to divide his thought evenly between McLean and the Angel.
He realized to the fullest the debt he already owed the Boss and the
magnitude of last night's declaration and promises. He was hourly
planning to deliver his trust and then enter with equal zeal on whatever
task his beloved Boss saw fit to set him next. He wanted to be ready to
meet every device that Wessner and Black Jack could think of to outwit
him. He recognized their double leverage, for if they succeeded in
felling even one tree McLean became liable for his wager.

Freckles' brow wrinkled in his effort to think deeply and strongly, but
from every swaying wild rose the Angel beckoned to him. When he crossed
Sleepy Snake Creek and the goldfinch, waiting as ever, challenged: “SEE
ME?” Freckles saw the dainty swaying grace of the Angel instead. What
is a man to do with an Angel who dismembers herself and scatters over a
whole swamp, thrusting a vivid reminder upon him at every turn?

Freckles counted the days. This first one he could do little but test
his wires, sing broken snatches, and dream; but before the week would
bring her again he could do many things. He would carry all his books
to the swamp to show to her. He would complete his flower bed, arrange
every detail he had planned for his room, and make of it a bower fairies
might envy. He must devise a way to keep water cool. He would ask Mrs.
Duncan for a double lunch and an especially nice one the day of her next
coming, so that if the Bird Woman happened to be late, the Angel might
not suffer from thirst and hunger. He would tell her to bring heavy
leather leggings, so that he might take her on a trip around the trail.
She should make friends with all of his chickens and see their nests.

On the line he talked of her incessantly.

“You needn't be thinking,” he said to the goldfinch, “that because I'm
coming down this line alone day after day, it's always to be so. Some of
these times you'll be swinging on this wire, and you'll see me coming,
and you'll swing, skip, and flirt yourself around, and chip up right
spunky: 'SEE ME?' I'll be saying 'See you? Oh, Lord! See her!' You'll
look, and there she'll stand. The sunshine won't look gold any more, or
the roses pink, or the sky blue, because she'll be the pinkest, bluest,
goldest thing of all. You'll be yelling yourself hoarse with the
jealousy of her. The sawbird will stretch his neck out of joint, and
she'll turn the heads of all the flowers. Wherever she goes, I can
go back afterward and see the things she's seen, walk the path she's
walked, hear the grasses whispering over all she's said; and if there's
a place too swampy for her bits of feet; Holy Mother! Maybe--maybe she'd
be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and letting me carry
her over!”

Freckles shivered as with a chill. He sent the cudgel whirling skyward,
dexterously caught it, and set it spinning.

“You damned presumptuous fool!” he cried. “The thing for you to be
thinking of would be to stretch in the muck for the feet of her to be
walking over, and then you could hold yourself holy to be even of that
service to her.

“Maybe she'll be wanting the cup me blue-and-brown chickens raised their
babies in. Perhaps she'd like to stop at the pool and see me bullfrog
that had the goodness to take on human speech to show me the way out of
me trouble. If there's any feathers falling that day, why, it's from the
wings of me chickens--it's sure to be, for the only Angel outside the
gates will be walking this timberline, and every step of the way I'll be
holding me breath and praying that she don't unfold wings and sail away
before the hungry eyes of me.”

So Freckles dreamed his dreams, made his plans, and watched his line.
He counted not only the days, but the hours of each day. As he told them
off, every one bringing her closer, he grew happier in the prospect of
her coming. He managed daily to leave some offering at the big elm log
for his black chickens. He slipped under the line at every passing, and
went to make sure that nothing was molesting them. Though it was a long
trip, he paid them several extra visits a day for fear a snake, hawk, or
fox might have found the baby. For now his chickens not only represented
all his former interest in them, but they furnished the inducement that
was bringing his Angel.

Possibly he could find other subjects that the Bird Woman wanted. The
teamster had said that his brother went after her every time he found
a nest. He never had counted the nests that he knew of, and it might be
that among all the birds of the swamp some would be rare to her.

The feathered folk of the Limberlost were practically undisturbed save
by their natural enemies. It was very probable that among his chickens
others as odd as the big black ones could be found. If she wanted
pictures of half-grown birds, he could pick up fifty in one morning's
trip around the line, for he had fed, handled, and made friends with
them ever since their eyes opened.

He had gathered bugs and worms all spring as he noticed them on the
grass and bushes, and dropped them into the first little open mouth he
had found. The babies gladly had accepted this queer tri-parent addition
to their natural providers.

When the week had passed, Freckles had his room crisp and glowing
with fresh living things that represented every color of the swamp. He
carried bark and filled all the muckiest places of the trail.

It was middle July. The heat of the past few days had dried the water
around and through the Limberlost, so that it was possible to cross it
on foot in almost any direction--if one had an idea of direction and did
not become completely lost in its rank tangle of vegetation and bushes.
The brighter-hued flowers were opening. The trumpet-creepers were
flaunting their gorgeous horns of red and gold sweetness from the tops
of lordly oak and elm, and below entire pools were pink-sheeted in
mallow bloom.

The heat was doing one other thing that was bound to make Freckles, as a
good Irishman, shiver. As the swale dried, its inhabitants were seeking
the cooler depths of the swamp. They liked neither the heat nor leaving
the field mice, moles, and young rabbits of their chosen location. He
saw them crossing the trail every day as the heat grew intense. The
rattlers were sadly forgetting their manners, for they struck on no
provocation whatever, and did not even remember to rattle afterward.
Daily Freckles was compelled to drive big black snakes and blue racers
from the nests of his chickens. Often the terrified squalls of the
parent birds would reach him far down the line and he would run to
rescue the babies.

He saw the Angel when the carriage turned from the corduroy into the
clearing. They stopped at the west entrance to the swamp, waiting for
him to precede them down the trail, as he had told them it was safest
for the horse that he should do. They followed the east line to a point
opposite the big chickens' tree, and Freckles carried in the cameras and
showed the Bird Woman a path he had cleared to the log. He explained to
her the effect the heat was having on the snakes, and creeping back to
Little Chicken, brought him to the light. As she worked at setting up
her camera, he told her of the birds of the line, while she stared at
him, wide-eyed and incredulous.

They arranged that Freckles should drive the carriage into the east
entrance in the shade and then take the horse toward the north to a
better place he knew. Then he was to entertain the Angel at his study or
on the line until the Bird Woman finished her work and came to them.

“This will take only a little time,” she said. “I know where to set the
camera now, and Little Chicken is big enough to be good and too small
to run away or to act very ugly, so I will be coming soon to see about
those nests. I have ten plates along, and I surely won't use more
than two on him; so perhaps I can get some nests or young birds this
morning.”

Freckles almost flew, for his dream had come true so soon. He was
walking the timber-line and the Angel was following him. He asked to be
excused for going first, because he wanted to be sure the trail was safe
for her. She laughed at his fears, telling him that it was the polite
thing for him to do, anyway.

“Oh!” said Freckles, “so you was after knowing that? Well, I didn't
s'pose you did, and I was afraid you'd think me wanting in respect to be
preceding you!”

The astonished Angel looked at him, caught the irrepressible gleam of
Irish fun in his eyes, so they stood and laughed together.

Freckles did not realize how he was talking that morning. He showed her
many of the beautiful nests and eggs of the line. She could identify a
number of them, but of some she was ignorant, so they made notes of the
number and color of the eggs, material, and construction of nest, color,
size, and shape of the birds, and went to find them in the book.

At his room, when Freckles had lifted the overhanging bushes and stepped
back for her to enter, his heart was all out of time and place. The
study was vastly more beautiful than a week previous. The Angel drew a
deep breath and stood gazing first at one side, then at another,
then far down the cathedral aisle. “It's just fairyland!” she cried
ecstatically. Then she turned and stared at Freckles as she had at his
handiwork.

“What are you planning to be?” she asked wonderingly.

“Whatever Mr. McLean wants me to,” he replied.

“What do you do most?” she asked.

“Watch me lines.”

“I don't mean work!”

“Oh, in me spare time I keep me room and study in me books.”

“Do you work on the room or the books most?”

“On the room only what it takes to keep it up, and the rest of the time
on me books.”

The Angel studied him closely. “Well, maybe you are going to be a great
scholar,” she said, “but you don't look it. Your face isn't right for
that, but it's got something big in it--something really great. I
must find out what it is and then you must work on it. Your father is
expecting you to do something. One can tell by the way he talks. You
should begin right away. You've wasted too much time already.”

Poor Freckles hung his head. He never had wasted an hour in his life.
There never had been one that was his to waste.

The Angel, studying him intently, read the thought in his face. “Oh,
I don't mean that!” she cried, with the frank dismay of sixteen.
“Of course, you're not lazy! No one ever would think that from your
appearance. It's this I mean: there is something fine, strong, and full
of power in your face. There is something you are to do in this
world, and no matter how you work at all these other things, or how
successfully you do them, it is all wasted until you find the ONE THING
that you can do best. If you hadn't a thing in the world to keep you,
and could go anywhere you please and do anything you want, what would
you do?” persisted the Angel.

“I'd go to Chicago and sing in the First Episcopal choir,” answered
Freckles promptly.

The Angel dropped on a seat--the hat she had removed and held in her
fingers rolled to her feet. “There!” she exclaimed vehemently. “You can
see what I'm going to be. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You can sing? Of
course you can sing! It is written all over you.”

“Anyone with half wit could have seen he could sing, without having to
be told,” she thought. “It's in the slenderness of his fingers and his
quick nervous touch. It is in the brightness of his hair, the fire of
his eyes, the breadth of his chest, the muscles of his throat and neck;
and above all, it's in every tone of his voice, for even as he speak
it's the sweetest sound I ever heard from the throat of a mortal.”

“Will you do something for me?” she asked.

“I'll do anything in the world you want me to,” said Freckles largely,
“and if I can't do what you want, I'll go to work at once and I'll try
'til I can.”

“Good! That's business!” said the Angel. “You go over there and stand
before that hedge and sing something. Just anything you think of first.”

Freckles faced the Angel from his banked wall of brown, blue, and
crimson, with its background of solid green, and lifting his face to
the sky, he sang the first thing that came into his mind. It was a
children's song that he had led for the little folks at the Home many
times, recalled to his mind by the Angel's exclamation:

     “To fairyland we go,
     With a song of joy, heigh-o.
     In dreams we'll stand upon that shore
     And all the realm behold;
     We'll see the sights so grand
     That belong to fairyland,
     Its mysteries we will explore,
     Its beauties will unfold.

     “Oh, tra, la, la, oh, ha, ha, ha!
     We're happy now as we can be,
     Our welcome song we will prolong,
     And greet you with our melody.
     O fairyland, sweet fairyland,
     We love to sing----”


No song could have given the intense sweetness and rollicking quality
of Freckles' voice better scope. He forgot everything but pride in his
work. He was singing the chorus, and the Angel was shivering in ecstasy,
when clip! clip! came the sharply beating feet of a swiftly ridden horse
down the trail from the north. They both sprang toward the entrance.

“Freckles! Freckles!” called the voice of the Bird Woman.

They were at the trail on the instant.

“Both those revolvers loaded?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Freckles.

“Is there a way you can cut across the swamp and reach the chicken tree
in a few minutes, and with little noise?”

“Yes.”

“Then go flying,” said the Bird Woman. “Give the Angel a lift behind me,
and we will ride the horse back where you left him and wait for you. I
finished Little Chicken in no time and put him back. His mother came so
close, I felt sure she would enter the log. The light was fine, so I set
and focused the camera and covered it with branches, attached the long
hose, and went away over a hundred feet and hid in some bushes to wait.
A short, stout man and a tall, dark one passed me so closely I almost
could have reached out and touched them. They carried a big saw on their
shoulders. They said they could work until near noon, and then they must
lay off until you passed and then try to load and get out at night. They
went on--not entirely from sight--and began cutting a tree. Mr. McLean
told me the other day what would probably happen here, and if they fell
that tree he loses his wager on you. Keep to the east and north and
hustle. We'll meet you at the carriage. I always am armed. Give Angel
one of your revolvers, and you keep the other. We will separate and
creep toward them from different sides and give them a fusillade that
will send them flying. You hurry, now!”

She lifted the reins and started briskly down the trail. The Angel,
hatless and with sparkling eyes, was clinging around her waist.

Freckles wheeled and ran. He worked his way with much care, dodging
limbs and bushes with noiseless tread, and cutting as closely where
he thought the men were as he felt that he dared if he were to remain
unseen. As he ran he tried to think. It was Wessner, burning for his
revenge, aided by the bully of the locality, that he was going to meet.
He was accustomed to that thought but not to the complication of having
two women on his hands who undoubtedly would have to be taken care of in
spite of the Bird Woman's offer to help him. His heart was jarring as it
never had before with running. He must follow the Bird Woman's plan and
meet them at the carriage, but if they really did intend to try to help
him, he must not allow it. Allow the Angel to try to handle a revolver
in his defence? Never! Not for all the trees in the Limberlost! She
might shoot herself. She might forget to watch sharply and run across
a snake that was not particularly well behaved that morning. Freckles
permitted himself a grim smile as he went speeding on.

When he reached the carriage, the Bird Woman and the Angel had the horse
hitched, the outfit packed, and were calmly waiting. The Bird Woman held
a revolver in her hand. She wore dark clothing. They had pinned a big
focusing cloth over the front of the Angel's light dress.

“Give Angel one of your revolvers, quick!” said the Bird Woman. “We will
creep up until we are in fair range. The underbrush is so thick and they
are so busy that they will never notice us, if we don't make a noise.
You fire first, then I will pop in from my direction, and then you,
Angel, and shoot quite high, or else very low. We mustn't really hit
them. We'll go close enough to the cowards to make it interesting, and
keep it up until we have them going.”

Freckles protested.

The Bird Woman reached over, and, taking the smaller revolver from his
belt, handed it to the Angel. “Keep your nerve steady, dear; watch where
you step, and shoot high,” she said. “Go straight at them from where you
are. Wait until you hear Freckles' first shot, then follow me as closely
as you can, to let them know that we outnumber them. If you want to save
McLean's wager on you, now you go!” she commanded Freckles, who, with an
agonized glance at the Angel, ran toward the east.

The Bird Woman chose the middle distance, and for a last time cautioned
the Angel as she moved away to lie down and shoot high.

Through the underbrush the Bird Woman crept even more closely than she
had intended, found a clear range, and waited for Freckles' shot. There
was one long minute of sickening suspense. The men straightened for
breath. Work was difficult with a handsaw in the heat of the swamp. As
they rested, the big dark fellow took a bottle from his pocket and began
oiling the saw.

“We got to keep mighty quiet,” he said, “and wait to fell it until that
damned guard has gone to his dinner.”

Again they bent to their work. Freckles' revolver spat fire. Lead
spanged on steel. The saw-handle flew from Wessner's hand and he reeled
from the jar of the shock. Black Jack straightened, uttering a fearful
oath. The hat sailed from his head from the far northeast. The Angel
had not waited for the Bird Woman, and her shot scarcely could have been
called high. At almost the same instant the third shot whistled from the
east. Black Jack sprang into the air with a yell of complete panic, for
it ripped a heel from his boot. Freckles emptied his second chamber, and
the earth spattered over Wessner. Shots poured in rapidly. Without
even reaching for a weapon, both men ran toward the east road in great
leaping bounds, while leaden slugs sung and hissed around them in deadly
earnest.

Freckles was trimming his corners as closely as he dared, but if the
Angel did not really intend to hit, she was taking risks in a scandalous
manner.

When the men reached the trail, Freckles yelled at the top of his voice:
“Head them off on the south, boys! Fire from the south!”

As he had hoped, Jack and Wessner instantly plunged into the swale. A
spattering of lead followed them. They crossed the swale, running low,
with not even one backward glance, and entered the woods beyond the
corduroy.

Then the little party gathered at the tree.

“I'd better fix this saw so they can't be using it if they come back,”
 said Freckles, taking out his hatchet and making saw-teeth fly.

“Now we must leave here without being seen,” said the Bird Woman to the
Angel. “It won't do for me to make enemies of these men, for I am likely
to meet them while at work any day.”

“You can do it by driving straight north on this road,” said Freckles.
“I will go ahead and cut the wires for you. The swale is almost dry.
You will only be sinking a little. In a few rods you will strike a
cornfield. I will take down the fence and let you into that. Follow the
furrows and drive straight across it until you come to the other side.
Be following the fence south until you come to a road through the woods
east of it. Then take that road and follow east until you reach the
pike. You will come out on your way back to town, and two miles north
of anywhere they are likely to be. Don't for your lives ever let it out
that you did this,” he earnestly cautioned, “for it's black enemies you
would be making.”

Freckles clipped the wires and they drove through. The Angel leaned
from the carriage and held out his revolver. Freckles looked at her in
surprise. Her eyes were black, while her face was a deeper rose than
usual. He felt that his own was white.

“Did I shoot high enough?” she asked sweetly. “I really forgot about
lying down.”

Freckles winced. Did the child know how close she had gone? Surely she
could not! Or was it possible that she had the nerve and skill to fire
like that purposely?

“I will send the first reliable man I meet for McLean,” said the Bird
Woman, gathering up the lines. “If I don't meet one when we reach town,
we will send a messenger. If it wasn't for having the gang see me, I
would go myself; but I will promise you that you will have help in a
little over two hours. You keep well hidden. They must think some of the
gang is with you now. There isn't a chance that they will be back,
but don't run any risks. Remain under cover. If they should come, it
probably would be for their saw.” She laughed as at a fine joke.



CHAPTER VII

Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail

Round-eyed, Freckles watched the Bird Woman and the Angel drive away.
After they were from sight and he was safely hidden among the branches
of a small tree, he remembered that he neither had thanked them nor said
good-bye. Considering what they had been through, they never would come
again. His heart sank until he had palpitation in his wading-boots.

Stretching the length of the limb, he thought deeply, though he was not
thinking of Black Jack or Wessner. Would the Bird Woman and the Angel
come again? No other woman whom he ever had known would. But did they
resemble any other women he ever had known? He thought of the Bird
Woman's unruffled face and the Angel's revolver practice, and presently
he was not so sure that they would not return.

What were the people in the big world like? His knowledge was so very
limited. There had been people at the Home, who exchanged a stilted,
perfunctory kindness for their salaries. The visitors who called on
receiving days he had divided into three classes: the psalm-singing
kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy in every feature
of their faces; the kind who dressed in silks and jewels, and handed to
those poor little mother-hungry souls worn toys that their children
no longer cared for, in exactly the same spirit in which they pitched
biscuits to the monkeys at the zoo, and for the same reason--to see how
they would take them and be amused by what they would do; and the third
class, whom he considered real people. They made him feel they cared
that he was there, and that they would have been glad to see him
elsewhere.

Now here was another class, that had all they needed of the world's best
and were engaged in doing work that counted. They had things worth while
to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother. With them he
could, for the only time in his life, forget the lost hand that every
day tortured him with a new pang. What kind of people were they and
where did they belong among the classes he knew? He failed to decide,
because he never had known others similar to them; but how he loved
them!

In the world where he was going soon, were the majority like them, or
were they of the hypocrite and bun-throwing classes?

He had forgotten the excitement of the morning and the passing of time
when distant voices aroused him, and he gently lifted his head. Nearer
and nearer they came, and as the heavy wagons rumbled down the east
trail he could hear them plainly. The gang were shouting themselves
hoarse for the Limberlost guard. Freckles did not feel that he deserved
it. He would have given much to be able to go to the men and explain,
but to McLean only could he tell his story.

At the sight of Freckles the men threw up their hats and cheered. McLean
shook hands with him warmly, but big Duncan gathered him into his arms
and hugged him as a bear and choked over a few words of praise. The gang
drove in and finished felling the tree. McLean was angry beyond measure
at this attempt on his property, for in their haste to fell the tree
the thieves had cut too high and wasted a foot and a half of valuable
timber.

When the last wagon rolled away, McLean sat on the stump and Freckles
told the story he was aching to tell. The Boss scarcely could believe
his senses. Also, he was much disappointed.

“I have been almost praying all the way over, Freckles,” he said, “that
you would have some evidence by which we could arrest those fellows and
get them out of our way, but this will never do. We can't mix up those
women in it. They have helped you save me the tree and my wager as well.
Going across the country as she does, the Bird Woman never could be
expected to testify against them.”

“No, indeed; nor the Angel, either, sir,” said Freckles.

“The Angel?” queried the astonished McLean.

The Boss listened in silence while Freckles told of the coming and
christening of the Angel.

“I know her father well,” said McLean at last, “and I have often seen
her. You are right; she is a beautiful young girl, and she appears to be
utterly free from the least particle of false pride or foolishness. I do
not understand why her father risks such a jewel in this place.”

“He's daring it because she is a jewel, sir,” said Freckles, eagerly.
“Why, she's trusting a rattlesnake to rattle before it strikes her, and
of course, she thinks she can trust mankind as well. The man isn't made
who wouldn't lay down the life of him for her. She doesn't need any
care. Her face and the pretty ways of her are all the protection she
would need in a band of howling savages.”

“Did you say she handled one of the revolvers?” asked McLean.

“She scared all the breath out of me body,” admitted Freckles. “Seems
that her father has taught her to shoot. The Bird Woman told her
distinctly to lie low and blaze away high, just to help scare them. The
spunky little thing followed them right out into the west road, spitting
lead like hail, and clipping all around the heads and heels of them; and
I'm damned, sir, if I believe she'd cared a rap if she'd hit. I never
saw much shooting, but if that wasn't the nearest to miss I ever want to
see! Scared the life near out of me body with the fear that she'd drop
one of them. As long as I'd no one to help me but a couple of women that
didn't dare be mixed up in it, all I could do was to let them get away.”

“Now, will they come back?” asked McLean.

“Of course!” said Freckles. “They're not going to be taking that. You
could stake your life on it, they'll be coming back. At least, Black
Jack will. Wessner may not have the pluck, unless he is half drunk. Then
he'd be a terror. And the next time--” Freckles hesitated.

“What?”

“It will be a question of who shoots first and straightest.”

“Then the only thing for me to do is to double the guard and bring the
gang here the first minute possible. As soon as I feel that we have the
rarest of the stuff out below, we will come. The fact is, in many cases,
until it is felled it's difficult to tell what a tree will prove to
be. It won't do to leave you here longer alone. Jack has been shooting
twenty years to your one, and it stands to reason that you are no match
for him. Who of the gang would you like best to have with you?”

“No one, sir,” said Freckles emphatically. “Next time is where I run.
I won't try to fight them alone. I'll just be getting wind of them, and
then make tracks for you. I'll need to come like lightning, and Duncan
has no extra horse, so I'm thinking you'd best get me one--or perhaps a
wheel would be better. I used to do extra work for the Home doctor, and
he would let me take his bicycle to ride around the place. And at times
the head nurse would loan me his for an hour. A wheel would cost less
and be faster than a horse, and would take less care. I believe, if you
are going to town soon, you had best pick up any kind of an old one
at some second-hand store, for if I'm ever called to use it in a hurry
there won't be the handlebars left after crossing the corduroy.”

“Yes,” said McLean; “and if you didn't have a first-class wheel, you
never could cross the corduroy on it at all.”

As they walked to the cabin, McLean insisted on another guard, but
Freckles was stubbornly set on fighting his battle alone. He made one
mental condition. If the Bird Woman was going to give up the Little
Chicken series, he would yield to the second guard, solely for the sake
of her work and the presence of the Angel in the Limberlost. He did not
propose to have a second man unless it were absolutely necessary, for
he had been alone so long that he loved the solitude, his chickens,
and flowers. The thought of having a stranger to all his ways come and
meddle with his arrangements, frighten his pets, pull his flowers,
and interrupt him when he wanted to study, so annoyed him that he was
blinded to his real need for help.

With McLean it was a case of letting his sober, better judgment be
overridden by the boy he was growing so to love that he could not endure
to oppose him, and to have Freckles keep his trust and win alone meant
more than any money the Boss might lose.

The following morning McLean brought the wheel, and Freckles took it to
the trail to test it. It was new, chainless, with as little as possible
to catch in hurried riding, and in every way the best of its kind.
Freckles went skimming around the trail on it on a preliminary trip
before he locked it in his case and started his minute examination of
his line on foot. He glanced around his room as he left it, and then
stood staring.

On the moss before his prettiest seat lay the Angel's hat. In the
excitement of yesterday all of them had forgotten it. He went and picked
it up, oh! so carefully, gazing at it with hungry eyes, but touching it
only to carry it to his case, where he hung it on the shining handlebar
of the new wheel and locked it among his treasures. Then he went to the
trail, with a new expression on his face and a strange throbbing in his
heart. He was not in the least afraid of anything that morning. He felt
he was the veriest Daniel, but all his lions seemed weak and harmless.

What Black Jack's next move would be he could not imagine, but that
there would be a move of some kind was certain. The big bully was not a
man to give up his purpose, or to have the hat swept from his head
with a bullet and bear it meekly. Moreover, Wessner would cling to his
revenge with a Dutchman's singleness of mind.

Freckles tried to think connectedly, but there were too many places on
the trail where the Angel's footprints were yet visible. She had stepped
in one mucky spot and left a sharp impression. The afternoon sun had
baked it hard, and the horses' hoofs had not obliterated any part of it,
as they had in so many places. Freckles stood fascinated, gazing at
it. He measured it lovingly with his eye. He would not have ventured a
caress on her hat any more than on her person, but this was different.
Surely a footprint on a trail might belong to anyone who found and
wanted it. He stooped under the wires and entered the swamp. With a
little searching, he found a big piece of thick bark loose on a log and
carefully peeling it, carried it out and covered the print so that the
first rain would not obliterate it.

When he reached his room, he tenderly laid the hat upon his bookshelf,
and to wear off his awkwardness, mounted his wheel and went spinning on
trail again. It was like flying, for the path was worn smooth with his
feet and baked hard with the sun almost all the way. When he came to the
bark, he veered far to one side and smiled at it in passing. Suddenly
he was off the wheel, kneeling beside it. He removed his hat, carefully
lifted the bark, and gazed lovingly at the imprint.

“I wonder what she was going to say of me voice,” he whispered. “She
never got it said, but from the face of her, I believe she was liking it
fairly well. Perhaps she was going to say that singing was the big thing
I was to be doing. That's what they all thought at the Home. Well, if
it is, I'll just shut me eyes, think of me little room, the face of her
watching, and the heart of her beating, and I'll raise them. Damn them,
if singing will do it, I'll raise them from the benches!”

With this dire threat, Freckles knelt, as at a wayside spring, and
deliberately laid his lips on the footprint. Then he arose, appearing as
if he had been drinking at the fountain of gladness.



CHAPTER VIII

Wherein Freckles Meets a Man of Affairs and Loses Nothing by the
Encounter

“Weel, I be drawed on!” exclaimed Mrs. Duncan.

Freckles stood before her, holding the Angel's hat.

“I've been thinking this long time that ye or Duncan would see that
sunbonnets werena braw enough for a woman of my standing, and ye're a
guid laddie to bring me this beautiful hat.”

She turned it around, examining the weave of the straw and the foliage
trimmings, passing her rough fingers over the satin ties delightedly. As
she held it up, admiring it, Freckles' astonished eyes saw a new side of
Sarah Duncan. She was jesting, but under the jest the fact loomed strong
that, though poor, overworked, and with none but God-given refinement,
there was something in her soul crying after that bit of feminine
finery, and it made his heart ache for her. He resolved that when he
reached the city he would send her a hat, if it took fifty dollars to do
it.

She lingeringly handed it back to him.

“It's unco guid of ye to think of me,” she said lightly, “but I maun
question your taste a wee. D'ye no think ye had best return this and get
a woman with half her hair gray a little plainer headdress? Seems like
that's far ower gay for me. I'm no' saying that it's no' exactly what
I'd like to hae, but I mauna mak mysel' ridiculous. Ye'd best give this
to somebody young and pretty, say about sixteen. Where did ye come by
it, Freckles? If there's anything been dropping lately, ye hae forgotten
to mention it.”

“Do you see anything heavenly about that hat?” queried Freckles, holding
it up.

The morning breeze waved the ribbons gracefully, binding one around
Freckles' sleeve and the other across his chest, where they caught and
clung as if magnetized.

“Yes,” said Sarah Duncan. “It's verra plain and simple, but it juist
makes ye feel that it's all of the finest stuff. It's exactly what I'd
call a heavenly hat.”

“Sure,” said Freckles, “for it's belonging to an Angel!”

Then he told her about the hat and asked her what he should do with it.

“Take it to her, of course!” said Sarah Duncan. “Like it's the only ane
she has and she may need it badly.”

Freckles smiled. He had a clear idea about the hat being the only one
the Angel had. However, there was a thing he felt he should do and
wanted to do, but he was not sure.

“You think I might be taking it home?” he said.

“Of course ye must,” said Mrs. Duncan. “And without another hour's
delay. It's been here two days noo, and she may want it, and be too busy
or afraid to come.”

“But how can I take it?” asked Freckles.

“Gang spinning on your wheel. Ye can do it easy in an hour.”

“But in that hour, what if----?”

“Nonsense!” interrupted Sarah Duncan. “Ye've watched that timber-line
until ye're grown fast to it, lad. Give me your boots and club and I'll
gae walk the south end and watch doon the east and west sides until ye
come back.”

“Mrs. Duncan! You never would be doing it,” cried Freckles.

“Why not?” inquired she.

“But you know you're mortal afraid of snakes and a lot of other things
in the swamp.”

“I am afraid of snakes,” said Mrs. Duncan, “but likely they've gone into
the swamp this hot weather. I'll juist stay on the trail and watch, and
ye might hurry the least bit. The day's so bright it feels like storm. I
can put the bairns on the woodpile to play until I get back. Ye gang awa
and take the blessed little angel her beautiful hat.”

“Are you sure it will be all right?” urged Freckles. “Do you think if
Mr. McLean came he would care?”

“Na,” said Mrs. Duncan; “I dinna. If ye and me agree that a thing ought
to be done, and I watch in your place, why, it's bound to be all right
with McLean. Let me pin the hat in a paper, and ye jump on your wheel
and gang flying. Ought ye put on your Sabbath-day clothes?”

Freckles shook his head. He knew what he should do, but there was no
use in taking time to try to explain it to Mrs. Duncan while he was so
hurried. He exchanged his wading-boots for shoes, gave her his club, and
went spinning toward town. He knew very well where the Angel lived.
He had seen her home many times, and he passed it again without even
raising his eyes from the street, steering straight for her father's
place of business.

Carrying the hat, Freckles passed a long line of clerks, and at the door
of the private office asked to see the proprietor. When he had waited
a moment, a tall, spare, keen-eyed man faced him, and in brisk, nervous
tones asked: “How can I serve you, sir?”

Freckles handed him the package and answered, “By delivering to your
daughter this hat, which she was after leaving at me place the other
day, when she went away in a hurry. And by saying to her and the Bird
Woman that I'm more thankful than I'll be having words to express for
the brave things they was doing for me. I'm McLean's Limberlost guard,
sir.”

“Why don't you take it yourself?” questioned the Man of Affairs.

Freckles' clear gray eyes met those of the Angel's father squarely, and
he asked: “If you were in my place, would you take it to her yourself?”

“No, I would not,” said that gentleman quickly.

“Then why ask why I did not?” came Freckles' lamb-like query.

“Bless me!” said the Angel's father. He stared at the package, then at
the lifted chin of the boy, and then at the package again, and muttered,
“Excuse me!”

Freckles bowed.

“It would be favoring me greatly if you would deliver the hat and the
message. Good morning, sir,” and he turned away.

“One minute,” said the Angel's father. “Suppose I give you permission to
return this hat in person and make your own acknowledgments.”

Freckles stood one moment thinking intently, and then he lifted those
eyes of unswerving truth and asked: “Why should you, sir? You are
kind, indade, to mention it, and it's thanking you I am for your good
intintions, but my wanting to go or your being willing to have me ain't
proving that your daughter would be wanting me or care to bother with
me.”

The Angel's father looked keenly into the face of this extraordinary
young man, for he found it to his liking.

“There's one other thing I meant to say,” said Freckles. “Every day I
see something, and at times a lot of things, that I think the Bird Woman
would be wanting pictures of badly, if she knew. You might be speaking
of it to her, and if she'd want me to, I can send her word when I find
things she wouldn't likely get elsewhere.”

“If that's the case,” said the Angel's father, “and you feel under
obligations for her assistance the other day, you can discharge them in
that way. She is spending all her time in the fields and woods searching
for subjects. If you run across things, perhaps rarer than she may find,
about your work, it would save her the time she spends searching for
subjects, and she could work in security under your protection. By all
means let her know if you find subjects you think she could use, and we
will do anything we can for you, if you will give her what help you can
and see that she is as safe as possible.”

“It's hungry for human beings I am,” said Freckles, “and it's like
Heaven to me to have them come. Of course, I'll be telling or sending
her word every time me work can spare me. Anything I can do it would
make me uncommon happy, but”--again truth had to be told, because it was
Freckles who was speaking--“when it comes to protecting them, I'd risk
me life, to be sure, but even that mightn't do any good in some cases.
There are many dangers to be reckoned with in the swamp, sir, that call
for every person to look sharp. If there wasn't really thieving to guard
against, why, McLean wouldn't need be paying out good money for a guard.
I'd love them to be coming, and I'll do all I can, but you must be told
that there's danger of them running into timber thieves again any day,
sir.”

“Yes,” said the Angel's father, “and I suppose there's danger of the
earth opening up and swallowing the town any day, but I'm damned if
I quit business for fear it will, and the Bird Woman won't, either.
Everyone knows her and her work, and there is no danger in the world
of anyone in any way molesting her, even if he were stealing a few of
McLean's gold-plated trees. She's as safe in the Limberlost as she is at
home, so far as timber thieves are concerned. All I am ever uneasy about
are the snakes, poison-vines, and insects; and those are risks she must
run anywhere. You need not hesitate a minute about that. I shall be glad
to tell them what you wish. Thank you very much, and good day, sir.”

There was no way in which Freckles could know it, but by following his
best instincts and being what he conceived a gentleman should be, he
surprised the Man of Affairs into thinking of him and seeing his face
over his books many times that morning; whereas, if he had gone to the
Angel as he had longed to do, her father never would have given him a
second thought.

On the street he drew a deep breath. How had he acquitted himself? He
only knew that he had lived up to his best impulse, and that is all
anyone can do. He glanced over his wheel to see that it was all right,
and just as he stepped to the curb to mount he heard a voice that
thrilled him through and through: “Freckles! Oh Freckles!”

The Angel separated from a group of laughing, sweet-faced girls and came
hurrying to him. She was in snowy white--a quaint little frock, with
a marvel of soft lace around her throat and wrists. Through the sheer
sleeves of it her beautiful, rounded arms showed distinctly, and it was
cut just to the base of her perfect neck. On her head was a pure white
creation of fancy braid, with folds on folds of tulle, soft and silken
as cobwebs, lining the brim; while a mass of white roses clustered
against the gold of her hair, crept around the crown, and fell in a riot
to her shoulders at the back. There were gleams of gold with settings
of blue on her fingers, and altogether she was the daintiest, sweetest
sight he ever had seen. Freckles, standing on the curb, forgot himself
in his cotton shirt, corduroys, and his belt to which his wire-cutter
and pliers were hanging, and gazed as a man gazes when first he sees
the woman he adores with all her charms enhanced by appropriate and
beautiful clothing.

“Oh Freckles,” she cried as she came to him. “I was wondering about you
the other day. Do you know I never saw you in town before. You watch
that old line so closely! Why did you come? Is there any trouble? Are
you just starting to the Limberlost?”

“I came to bring your hat,” said Freckles. “You forgot it in the rush
the other day. I have left it with your father, and a message trying
to ixpriss the gratitude of me for how you and the Bird Woman were for
helping me out.”

The Angel nodded gravely, then Freckles saw that he had done the proper
thing in going to her father. His heart bounded until it jarred his
body, for she was saying that she scarcely could wait for the time to
come for the next picture of the Little Chicken series. “I want to hear
the remainder of that song, and I hadn't even begun seeing your room
yet,” she complained. “As for singing, if you can sing like that every
day, I never can get enough of it. I wonder if I couldn't bring my banjo
and some of the songs I like best. I'll play and you sing, and we'll put
the birds out of commission.”

Freckles stood on the curb with drooped eyes, for he felt that if
he lifted them the tumult of tender adoration in them would show and
frighten her.

“I was afraid your ixperience the other day would scare you so that
you'd never be coming again,” he found himself saying.

The Angel laughed gaily.

“Did I seem scared?” she questioned.

“No,” said Freckles, “you did not.”

“Oh, I just enjoyed that,” she cried. “Those hateful, stealing old
things! I had a big notion to pink one of them, but I thought maybe
someway it would be best for you that I shouldn't. They needed it. That
didn't scare me; and as for the Bird Woman, she's accustomed to finding
snakes, tramps, cross dogs, sheep, cattle, and goodness knows what! You
can't frighten her when she's after a picture. Did they come back?”

“No,” said Freckles. “The gang got there a little after noon and took
out the tree, but I must tell you, and you must tell the Bird Woman,
that there's no doubt but they will be coming back, and they will have
to make it before long now, for it's soon the gang will be there to work
on the swamp.”

“Oh, what a shame!” cried the Angel. “They'll clear out roads, cut down
the beautiful trees, and tear up everything. They'll drive away the
birds and spoil the cathedral. When they have done their worst, then
all these mills close here will follow in and take out the cheap timber.
Then the landowners will dig a few ditches, build some fires, and in two
summers more the Limberlost will be in corn and potatoes.”

They looked at each other, and groaned despairingly in unison.

“You like it, too,” said Freckles.

“Yes,” said the Angel, “I love it. Your room is a little piece right out
of the heart of fairyland, and the cathedral is God's work, not yours.
You only found it and opened the door after He had it completed. The
birds, flowers, and vines are all so lovely. The Bird Woman says it is
really a fact that the mallows, foxfire, iris, and lilies are larger and
of richer coloring there than in the remainder of the country. She says
it's because of the rich loam and muck. I hate seeing the swamp torn up,
and to you it will be like losing your best friend; won't it?”

“Something like,” said Freckles. “Still, I've the Limberlost in me heart
so that all of it will be real to me while I live, no matter what they
do to it. I'm glad past telling if you will be coming a few more times,
at least until the gang arrives. Past that time I don't allow mesilf to
be thinking.”

“Come, have a cool drink before you start back,” said the Angel.

“I couldn't possibly,” said Freckles. “I left Mrs. Duncan on the trail,
and she's terribly afraid of a lot of things. If she even sees a big
snake, I don't know what she'll do.”

“It won't take but a minute, and you can ride fast enough to make up
for it. Please. I want to think of something fine for you, to make up a
little for what you did for me that first day.”

Freckles looked in sheer wonderment into the beautiful face of the
Angel. Did she truly mean it? Would she walk down that street with him,
crippled, homely, in mean clothing, with the tools of his occupation on
him, and share with him the treat she was offering? He could not believe
it, even of the Angel. Still, in justice to the candor of her pure,
sweet face, he would not think that she would make the offer and not
mean it. She really did mean just what she said, but when it came to
carrying out her offer and he saw the stares of her friends, the
sneers of her enemies--if such as she could have enemies--and heard the
whispered jeers of the curious, then she would see her mistake and be
sorry. It would be only a manly thing for him to think this out, and
save her from the results of her own blessed bigness of heart.

“I railly must be off,” said Freckles earnestly, “but I'm thanking you
more than you'll ever know for your kindness. I'll just be drinking
bowls of icy things all me way home in the thoughts of it.”

Down came the Angel's foot. Her eyes flashed indignantly. “There's no
sense in that,” she said. “How do you think you would have felt when you
knew I was warm and thirsty and you went and brought me a drink and
I wouldn't take it because--because goodness knows why! You can ride
faster to make up for the time. I've just thought out what I want to fix
for you.”

She stepped to his side and deliberately slipped her hand under his
arm--that right arm that ended in an empty sleeve.

“You are coming,” she said firmly. “I won't have it.”

Freckles could not have told how he felt, neither could anyone else. His
blood rioted and his head swam, but he kept his wits. He bent over her.

“Please don't, Angel,” he said softly. “You don't understand.”

How Freckles came to understand was a problem.

“It's this,” he persisted. “If your father met me on the street, in
my station and dress, with you on me arm, he'd have every right to be
caning me before the people, and not a finger would I lift to stay him.”

The Angel's eyes snapped. “If you think my father cares about my doing
anything that is right and kind, and that makes me happy to do--why,
then you completely failed in reading my father, and I'll ask him and
just show you.”

She dropped Freckles' arm and turned toward the entrance to the
building. “Why, look there!” she exclaimed.

Her father stood in a big window fronting the street, a bundle of papers
in his hand, interestedly watching the little scene, with eyes that
comprehended quite as thoroughly as if he had heard every word. The
Angel caught his glance and made a despairing little gesture toward
Freckles. The Man of Affairs answered her with a look of infinite
tenderness. He nodded his head and waved the papers in the direction she
had indicated, and the veriest dolt could have read the words his lips
formed: “Take him along!”

A sudden trembling seized Freckles. At sight of the Angel's father he
had stepped back as far from her as he could, leaned the wheel against
him, and snatched off his hat.

The Angel turned on him with triumphing eyes.

She was highly strung and not accustomed to being thwarted. “Did You see
that?” she demanded. “Now are you satisfied? Will you come, or must I
call a policeman to bring you?”

Freckles went. There was nothing else to do. Guiding his wheel, he
walked down the street beside her. On every hand she was kept busy
giving and receiving the cheeriest greetings. She walked into the
parlors exactly as if she owned them. A clerk came hurrying to meet her.

“There's a table vacant beside a window where it is cool. I'll save it
for you,” and he started back.

“Please not,” said the Angel. “I've taken this man unawares, when
he's in a rush. I'm afraid if we sit down we'll take too much time and
afterward he will blame me.”

She walked to the fountain, and a long row of people stared with all the
varying degrees of insolence and curiosity that Freckles had felt they
would. He glanced at the Angel. NOW would she see?

“On my soul!” he muttered under his breath. “They don't aven touch her!”

She laid down her sunshade and gloves. She walked to the end of the
counter and turned the full battery of her eyes on the attendant.

“Please,” she said.

The white-aproned individual stepped back and gave delighted assent. The
Angel stepped beside him, and selecting a tall, flaring glass, of almost
paper thinness, she stooped and rolled it in a tray of cracked ice.

“I want to mix a drink for my friend,” she said. “He has a long, hot
ride before him, and I don't want him started off with one of those old
palate-teasing sweetnesses that you mix just on purpose to drive a man
back in ten minutes.” There was an appreciative laugh from the line at
the counter.

“I want a clear, cool, sparkling drink that has a tang of acid in it.
Where's the cherry phosphate? That, not at all sweet, would be good;
don't you think?”

The attendant did think. He pointed out the different taps, and the
Angel compounded the drink, while Freckles, standing so erect he almost
leaned backward, gazed at her and paid no attention to anyone else. When
she had the glass brimming, she tilted a l

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