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Silas Strong, Emperor of the Woods

by Irving Bacheller · English · Gutenberg #50091 · 370,328 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Silas Strong, Emperor of the Woods

Author: Irving Bacheller


        
Release date: September 30, 2015 [eBook #50091]
                Most recently updated: October 22, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SILAS STRONG, EMPEROR OF THE WOODS ***

SILAS STRONG, EMPEROR OF THE WOODS

By Irving Bacheller

New York and London Harper and Brothers Publishers

1906

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[Illustration: 0004]

[Illustration: 0005]


TO MY FRIEND THE LATE ARCHER BROWN

in memory of summer days when we wandered far and sat down to rest by
springs and brooks in the doomed empire of Strong and talked of saving
it and of better times and knew not they were impossible.

Some of the people of these pages, when the author endeavored to
regulate their conduct according to well-known rules of literary
construction, declared themselves free and independent. When, urged by
him, they tried to speak and act in the fashion of most novels, they
laughed, and seemed to be ashamed of themselves, and with good reason.

They are slow, stubborn, modest, shy, and used to the open. Not for them
are the narrow stage, the swift action, the fine-wrought chain of artful
incident that characterize a modern romance.

Of late authors have succeeded rather well in turning people into
animals and animals into people. Why not, if one's art can perform
miracles? This book aims not to emulate or amend the work of the
Creator. Its people are just folks of a very old pattern, its animals
rather common and of small attainments. It is in no sense a literary
performance. It pretends to be nothing more than a simple account of
one summer's life, pretty much as it was lived, in a part of the
Adirondacks. It goes on about as things happen there, with a leisurely
pace, like that of the woods lover on a trail who may be halted by
nothing more than a flower or a bird-song. One day follows another in
the old fashion of those places where men go for rest and avarice quits
them with bloody spurs and they forget the calendar and measure time on
the dial of the heavens.

The book has one high ambition. It has tried to tell the sad story of
the wilderness itself--to show, from the woodsman's view-point, the play
of great forces which have been tearing down his home and turning it
into the flesh and bone of cities.

Were it to cause any reader to value what remains of the forest above
its market-price and to do his part in checking the greed of the saws,
it would be worth while--bad as it is.




SILAS STRONG




I

THE song of the saws began long ago at the mouths of the rivers. Slowly
the axes gnawed their way southward, and the ominous, prophetic chant
followed them. Men seemed to goad the rivers to increase their speed.
They caught and held and harnessed them as if they had been horses and
drove them into flumes and leaped them over dams and pulled and hauled
and baffled them until they broke away with the power of madness in
their rush. But, even then, the current of the rivers would not do; the
current of thunderbolts could not have whirled the wheels with speed
enough.

Now steam bursts upon the piston-head with the power of a hundred
horses. The hungry steel races through columns of pine as if they were
soft as butter and its' bass note booms night and day to the heavens.
Hear it now. The burden of that old song is m-o-r-e, m-o-r-e, m-o-r-e!

It is doleful music, God knows, but, mind you, it voices the need of
the growing land. It sings of the doom of the woods. It may be heard all
along the crumbling edge of the wilderness from Maine to Minnesota. Day
by day hammers beat time while the saws continue their epic chorus.

There are towers and spires and domes and high walls where, in our
boyhood, there were only trees far older than the century, and these
rivers that flow north go naked in open fields for half their journey.
Every spring miles of timber come plunging over cataracts and rushing
through rapids and crowding into slow water on its way to the saws.
There a shaft of pine which has been a hundred years getting its girth
is ripped into slices and scattered upon the stack in a minute. A new
river, the rushing, steam-driven river of steel, bears it away to the
growing cities. Silas Strong once wrote in his old memorandum-book these
words: "Strong says to himself seems so the world was goin' to be peeled
an' hollered out an' weighed an' measured an' sold till it's all et up
like an apple."

On the smooth shore of the river below Raquette Falls, and within twenty
rods of his great mill, lived a man of the name of Gordon with two
motherless children. Pity about him! Married a daughter of "Bill" Strong
up in the woods--an excellent woman--made money and wasted it and went
far to the bad. Good fellow, drink, poker, and so on down the hill!
His wife died leaving two children--blue-eyed little people with curly,
flaxen hair--a boy of four a girl of nearly three years. The boy's full
name was John Socksmith Gordon--reduced in familiar parlance to Socky.
The girl was baptized Susan Bradbury Gordon, but was called Sue.

Their Uncle Silas Strong came to the funeral of their mother. He had
travelled more than eighty miles in twenty-four-hours, his boat now
above and now beneath him. He brought his dog and rifle, and wore a
great steel watch-chain and a pair of moccasins w with fringe on the
sides, and a wolf-skin jacket. He carried the children on his shoulders
and tossed them in the air, while his great size and odd attire seemed
to lay hold of their spirits.

As time passed, a halo of romantic splendor gathered about this uncle's
memory. One day Socky heard him referred to as the "Emperor of the
Woods." He was not long finding out that an emperor was a very grand
person who wore gold on his head and shoulders and rode a fine horse
and was always ready for a fight. So their ideal gathered power and
richness, one might say, the longer he lived in their fancy. They loved
their father, but as a hero he had not been a great success. There was
a time when both had entertained some hope for him, but as they saw how
frequently he grew "tired" they gave their devotion more and more to
this beloved memory. Their uncle's home was remote from theirs, and so
his power over them had never been broken by familiarity.

Socky and Sue told their young friends all they had been able to
learn of their Uncle Silas, and, being pressed for more knowledge, had
recourse to invention. Stories which their father had told grew into
wonder-tales of the riches, the strength, the splendor, and the general
destructive power of this great man. Sue, the first day she went
to Sunday-school, when the minister inquired who slew a lion by the
strength of his hands, confidently answered, "Uncle Silas."

There was one girl in the village who had an Uncle Phil with a fine air
of authority and a wonderful watch and chain; there was yet another with
an Uncle Henry, who enjoyed the distinction of having had the small-pox;
there was a boy, also, who had an Uncle Reuben with a wooden leg and a
remarkable history, and a wen beside his nose with a wart on the same.
But these were familiar figures, and while each had merits of no low
degree, their advocates were soon put to shame by the charms of that
mysterious and remote Uncle Silas.

There was a little nook in the lumber-yard where children used to meet
every Saturday for play and free discussion. There, now and then,
some new-comer entered an uncle in the competition. There, always, a
primitive pride of blood asserted itself in the remote descendants,
shall we say, of many an ancient lord and chieftain. One day--Sue was
then five and Socky six years of age--Lizzie Cornell put a cousin on
exhibit in this little theatre of childhood. He was a boy with red hair
and superior invention from out of town. He stood near Lizzie--a deep
and designing miss--and said not a word, until Sue began about her Uncle
Silas.

It was a new tale of that remarkable hunter which her father had related
the night before while she lay waiting for the sandman. She told how her
uncle had seen a panther one day when he was travelling without a gun.
His dog chased the panther and soon drove him up a tree. Now, it seemed,
the only thing in the nature of a weapon the hunter had with him was a
piece of new rope for his canoe. After a moment's reflection the great
man climbed the tree and threw a noose over the panther's neck while his
faithful dog was barking below. Then the cute Uncle Silas made his rope
fast to a limb and shook the tree so that when the panther jumped for
the ground he hung himself.

To most of those who heard the narrative it seemed to be a rather
creditable exploit, showing, as it did, a shrewdness and ready courage
of no mean order on the part of Uncle Silas. Murmurs of glad approval
were hushed, however, by the voice of the red-headed boy.

"Pooh! that's nothing," said he, with contempt. "My Uncle Mose chased
a panther once an' overtook him and ketched him by the tail an' fetched
his head agin a tree, quick as a flash, an' knocked his brains out."

His words ran glibly and showed an off-hand mastery of panthers quite
unequalled. Here was an uncle of marked superiority and promise.

There was a moment of silence in the crowd.

"If ye don't believe it," said the red-headed boy, "I can show ye a vest
my mother made out o' the skin."

That was conclusive. Sue blushed for shame and looked into the face
of Socky. Her mouth drooped a little and her under lip trembled with
anxiety. Doubt, thoughtfulness, and confusion were on the face of
her brother. He scraped the sand with his foot. He felt that he had
sometimes stretched the truth a little, but this--this went beyond his
capacity for invention.

"Don't believe it," he whispered, with half a sneer as he glanced down
at Sue.

Lizzie Cornell began to titter. All eyes were fixed upon the unhappy
pair as if to say, "How about your Uncle Silas now?" The populace,
deserting the standard of the old king, gathered in front of the
red-headed boy and began to inquire into the merits of Uncle Mose.

Socky and Sue hesitated. Curiosity struggled with resentment. Slowly
and thoughtfully they walked away. For a moment neither spoke. Soon a
cheering thought came into the mind of Sue.

"Maybe Uncle Silas has ketched a panther by the tail, too," said she,
hopefully. Socky, his hands in his pockets, looked down with a dazed
expression.

"I'm going to ask father," said he, thoughtfully.

It was now late in the afternoon. They went home and sat in silence on
the veranda, watching for their father. The old Frenchwoman who kept
house for him tried to coax them in, but they would make no words with
her. Long they sat there looking wistfully down the river-bank.

Presently Sue hauled out of her pocket a tiny rag doll which she carried
for casual use. It came handy in moments of loneliness and despair
outside the house. She toyed with its garments, humming in a motherly
fashion. It was nearly dark when they saw their father staggering
homeward according to his habit. They knew not yet the meaning of that
wavering walk.

"There he comes!" said Socky, as they both ran to meet him. "He can't
carry us to-night. He's awful tired."

They thought him "tired." They kissed him and took his hands in theirs,
and led him into the house. Stern and silent he sat down beside them
at the supper-table. The children were also silent and sober-faced from
intuitive sympathy. They could not yet introduce the topic which weighed
upon them.

Socky looked at his father. For the first time he noted that his clothes
were shabby; he knew that a few days before his father had lost his
watch. The boy stole away from the table, and went to his little trunk
and brought the sacred thing which his teacher had given him Christmas
Day--a cheap watch that told time with a noisy and inspiring tick. He
laid it down by his father's plate.

"There," said he, "I'm going to let you wear my watch."

It was one of those deep thrusts which only the hand of innocence can
administer. Richard Gordon took the watch in his hand and sat a moment
looking down. The boy manfully resumed his chair.

"It don't look very well for you to be going around without a watch," he
remarked, taking up his piece of bread and butter.

His father put the watch in his pocket.

"You can let me wear it Sundays," the boy added. "You won't need it
Sundays."

A smile overspread the man's face.

The children, quick to see their opportunity, approached him on either
side. Sue put her arms around the neck of her father and kissed him.

"Tell us a story about Uncle Silas," she pleaded.

"Uncle Silas!" he exclaimed. "We're all going to see him in a few days."

The children were mute with surprise. Sue's little doll dropped from her
hands to the floor. Her face changed color and she turned quickly, with
a loud cry, and drummed on the table so that the dishes rattled. Socky
leaned over the back of a chair and shook his head, and gave his feet a
fling and then recovered his dignity.

"Now don't get excited," remarked their father.

They ran out of the room, and stood laughing and whispering together for
a moment. Then they rushed back.

"When are we going?" the boy inquired.

"In a day or two," said Gordon, who still sat drinking his tea.

Sue ran to tell Aunt Marie, the housekeeper, and Socky sat in his little
rocking-chair for a moment of sober thought.

"Look here, old chap," said Gordon, who was wont to apply the terms of
mature good-fellowship to his little son. Socky came and stood by the
side of his father.

"You an' I have been friends for some time, haven't we?" was the strange
and half-maudlin query which Gordon put to his son.

The boy smiled and came nearer.

"An' I've always treated ye right--ain't I? Answer me."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, folks say you're neglected an' that you don't have decent clothes
an' that you might as well have no father at all. Now, old boy, I'm
going to tell you the truth; I'm broke--failed in business, an' have had
to give up. Understand me; I haven't a cent in the world."

The man smote his empty pocket suggestively. The boy was now deeply
serious. Not able to comprehend the full purport of his father's words,
he saw something in the face before him which began to hurt. His lower
lip trembled a little.

"Don't worry, old friend," said Gordon, clapping him on the shoulder.

Just then Sue came running back.

"Say," said she, climbing on a round of her father's chair, "did Uncle
Silas ever ketch a panther by the tail?"

The children held their breaths waiting for the answer.

"Ketch a panther by the tail!" their father exclaimed. "Whatever put
that in your head?"

Sue answered with some show of excitement. Her words came fast.

"Lizzie Cornell's cousin he said that his Uncle Mose had ketched a
panther by the tail an' knocked his brains out."

Their father smiled again.

"That kind o' floored ye, didn't it, old girl?" said he, with a kiss.
"Le's see," he continued, drawing the children close on either side of
him. "I don' know as he ever ketched a panther by the tail, but I'll
tell ye what he did do. One day when he hadn't any gun with him he come
acrost a big bear, an' Uncle Sile fetched him a cuff with his fist an'
broke the bear's neck, an' then he brought him home on his back an' et
him for dinner."

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, her mouth and eyes wide open.

Socky whistled a shrill note of surprise and thankfulness. Then he
clucked after the manner of one starting his horse.

"My stars!" he exclaimed, and so saying he skipped across the floor
and brought his fist down heavily upon the lounge. Uncle Silas had been
saved--plucked, as it were, from the very jaws of obscurity.

When they were ready to get into bed the children knelt as usual before
old Aunt Marie, the housekeeper. Sue ventured to add a sentence to her
prayer. "God bless Uncle Silas," said she, "and make him very--very----"

The girl hesitated, trying to find the right word.

"Powerful," her brother suggested, still in the attitude of devotion.

"Powerful," repeated Sue, in a trembling voice, and then added: "for
Christ's sake. Amen."

They lay a long time discussing what they should say and do when at last
they were come into the presence of the great man. Suddenly a notion
entered the mind of Socky that, in order to keep the favor of fortune,
he must rise and clap his hand three times upon the round top of the
posts at the foot of the bed. Accordingly he rose and satisfied this
truly pagan impulse.

Then he repeated the story of his uncle and the bear over and over
again, pausing thoughtfully at the point of severest action and adding
a little color to heighten the effect. Here and there Sue prompted him,
and details arose which seemed to merit careful consideration.

"I wouldn't wonder but what Uncle Silas must 'a' spit on his hand before
he struck the bear," said Socky, remembering how strong men often
prepared themselves for a difficult undertaking.

When the story had been amplified, in a generous degree, and well
committed to memory, they began to talk of Lizzie Cornell and her
cousin, the red-headed boy, and planned how they would seek them out
next day and defy them with the last great achievement of their Uncle
Silas.

"He's a nasty thing," the girl exclaimed, suddenly.

"I feel kind o' sorry for him," said Socky, with a sigh.

"Why?"

"Cos he thinks his uncle beats the world an' he ain't nowhere."

"Maybe he'll want to fight," said Sue.

"Then I'll fetch him a cuff."

"S'pose you was to break his neck?"

"I'll hit him in the breast," said Socky, thoughtfully, feeling his
muscle.

Sue soon fell asleep, but Socky lay thinking about his father. He
had crossed the edge of the beginning of trouble. He thought of those
words--and of a certain look which accompanied them--"I haven't got
a cent in the world." What did they mean? He could only judge from
experience--from moments when he had stood looking through glass windows
and showcases at things which had tempted him and which he had not been
able to enjoy. Oh, the bitter pain of it! Must his father endure that
kind of thing? He lay for a few moments weeping silently.

All at once the thought of his little bank came to him. It was nearly
full of pennies. He rose in bed and listened. The room was dark, but he
could hear Aunt Marie at work in the kitchen. That gave him courage, and
he crept stealthily out of bed and went to his trunk and felt for the
little square house of painted tin with a slot in the chimney. It lay
beneath his Sunday clothes, and he raised and gently shook it. He could
hear that familiar and pleasant sound of the coin.

Meanwhile his father had been sitting alone. For weeks he had been
rapidly going downhill. His friends had all turned against him. He had
been fairly stoned with reproaches. He could see only trouble behind,
disgrace before, and despair on either side. He held a revolver in his
hand. A child's voice rang out in the silence, calling "father."

Gordon leaned forward upon the table. He began to be conscious of things
beyond himself. He heard the great mill-saw roaring in the still night;
he heard the tick of the clock near him. Suddenly his little son peered
through the halfopen door.

"Father," Socky whispered.

Gordon started from his chair, and, seeing the boy, sat down again.

Socky was near crying but restrained himself. Without a word he
deposited his bank on the table. It was a moment of solemn renunciation.
He was like one before the altar giving up the vanities of the world.
He looked soberly at his father and said, "I'm going to give you all my
money."

Gordon said not a word and there was a moment of silence.

"More than a dollar in it," the boy suggested, proudly.

Still his father sat resting his head upon his hand in silence while he
seemed to be trying the point of a pen.

"You may give me five cents if you've a mind to when you open it," Socky
added.

Gordon turned slowly and kissed the forehead of his little son. The boy
put his arms around the neck of his father and begged him to come and
lie upon the bed and tell a story.

So it happened the current of ruin was turned aside--the heat-oppressed
brain diverted from its purpose. For as the man lay beside his children
he began to think of them and less of himself. "I cannot leave them," he
concluded. "When I go I shall take them with me."

In the long, still hours he lay thinking.

The south wind began to stir the pines, and cool air from out of the
wild country came through an open window. Fathoms of dusty, dead air
which had hung for weeks over the valley, growing hotter and more
oppressive in the burning sunlight, moved away. A cloud passing
northward flung a sprinkle of rain upon the broad, smoky flats and was
drained before it reached the great river. All who were sick and weary
felt the ineffable healing of the woodland breeze. It soothed the aching
brain of the mill-owner and slackened the ruinous toil of his thoughts.

Gordon slept soundly for the first time in almost a month.




II

NEXT morning Gordon felt better. He began even to consider what he
could do to mend his life. The children got ready for Sunday-school and
were on their way to church an hour ahead of time. Sue, in her white
dress and pretty bonnet, walked with a self-conscious, don't-touch-me
air. Socky, in his little sailor suit, had the downward eye of
meditation. Each carried a Testament and looked neither to right nor
left. They hurried as if eager for spiritual refreshment. They were,
however, like the veriest barbarians setting out with spears and arrows
in quest of revenge. They were thinking of Lizzie Cornell and that boy
of the red head and the doomed uncle. Socky's lips moved silently as he
hurried. One might have inferred that he was repeating his golden text.
Such an inference would have been far from the truth. He was, in fact,
tightening the grasp of memory on those inspiring words: "an' Uncle Sile
fetched him a cuff with his fist an' broke the bear's neck, an' then he
brought him home on his back an' et him for dinner." They joined a group
of children who were sitting on the steps of the old church. Their
hearts beat fast when they saw Lizzie coming with her cousin, the
red-headed boy.

A number went forth to meet the two.

"Tell us the badger story," said they to the red-headed boy.

"Pooh! that ain't much," he answered, modestly.

"Please tell us," they insisted.

"Wal, one day my Uncle Mose see a side-hill badger--"

"What's a side-hill badger?" a voice interrupted.

"An animal what lives on a hill, an' has legs longer on one side than
on t 'other, so 't he can run round the side of it," said he, glibly, and
with a look of pity for such ignorance.

"Go on with the story," said another voice.

"My Uncle Mose sat an' watched one day up in the limb of a tree above
the hole of a badger. By-an'-by an ol' he badger come out, an' my uncle
dropped onto his back, an' rode him round an' round the hill 'til he was
jes' tuckered out.

Then Uncle Mose put a rope on his neck an' tied him to a tree, an' the
ol' badger dug an' dug until they was a hole in the ground so big you
could put a house in it. An' my uncle he got an idee, an' so one day
he fetched him out to South Colton an' learnt him how to dig wells an'
cellars, an' bym-by the ol' badger could earn more money than a hired
man."

"Shucks!" said Socky, turning upon his adversary with sneering, studied
scorn. "That's nothing!"

Then proudly stepping forward, he flung the latest exploit of his Uncle
Silas into the freckled face of the red-headed boy. It stunned the able
advocate of old Moses Leonard--a mighty hunter in his time--and there
fell a moment of silence followed by murmurs of applause.

The little barbarian--Lizzie Cornell--had begun to scent the battle and
stood sharpening an arrow.

"It's a lie," said the red-headed boy, recovering the power of speech.

"His father's a thief an' a drunkard, anyway." That was the arrow of
Lizzie Cornell.

Socky had raised his fists to vindicate his honor, when, hearing the
remark about his father, he turned quickly upon the girl who made it.

What manner of rebuke he would have administered, history is unable to
record. The minister had come. The children began to scatter. Lizzie and
her red-headed cousin ran around the church. Socky and Sue stood with
angry faces.

Suddenly Socky leaned upon the church door and burst into tears. He
dimly comprehended the disgrace which Lizzie had sought to put upon him.
The minister could not persuade him to enter the church or to explain
the nature of his trouble.

When all had gone into Sunday-school, the boy turned, wiping his eyes.
Sue stood beside him, a portrait of despair.

"Le's go home an' tell our father," said she.

They started slowly, but as their indignation grew their feet hurried.
Neither spoke in the long journey to their door. They ran through the
hall and rushed in upon their father who sat reading.

"Oh, father!" said the girl, in excited tones; "Lizzie Cornell says
you're a thief an' a drunkard."

Gordon rose and turned pale.

The hands and voices of the children were ever raised against him.

"It's a lie!" said he, turning away.

He stood a moment looking out of the window. He must take them to some
lonely part of the wilderness and there make an end of his trouble and
of theirs. He turned to the children, saying, "Right after dinner we'll
start for the woods."

So it befell that in the afternoon of a Sunday late in June, Socky and
Sue, with all their effects in a pack-basket, and their father beside
them, started in a spring-wagon over the broad, stony terraces that lift
southward into thickening woods, on their way to great peril.

And so, too, it befell that in leaving home and the tearful face of dear
Aunt Marie, they were sustained by a thought of that good and mighty man
whom they hoped soon to see--their Uncle Silas.




III.

THE day was hot and still. Slowly they mounted the foot-hills between
meadows aglow with color. The country seemed to flow ever downward past
their sleepy eyes on its way to the great valley. The daisies were like
white foam on the slow cascade of Bowman's Hill, and there were masses
of red and yellow which appeared to be drifting on the flats. A driver
sat on the front seat, and Gordon behind with Socky and Sue. The little
folk chattered together and wearied their father with queries about
birds and beasts. By-and-by the girl grew silent, her chin sank upon her
breast, and her head began to shake and sway as their wagon clattered
over the rough road. In a moment Socky's head was nodding also, and the
feet of both swung limp below the wagon-seat.

They had seemed to sink and rise and struggle and cry out in the
silence, and were now as those drowned beneath it. Gordon drew them
towards him and lifted their legs upon the cushioned wagon-seat. He sat
thinking as they rode. They had been hard on him--those creditors. He
had not meant to steal, but only to borrow that small sum which he had
taken out of the business in order to feed and clothe the children who
lay beside him. True, some dollars of it had gone to buy oblivion--a few
hours of unearned, of unholy relief. How else, thought he, could he have
stood the reproaches of brutal men?

They arrived at Tupper's Mill late in the afternoon. There Gordon found
a canoe and made ready. At this point the river turned like a scared
horse and ran east by south, around Tup-per Ridge, in a wide loop, and,
as if doubting its way, slackened pace, and, wavering right and left,
moved slowly into the shade of the forest, and then, as if reassured,
went on at a full gallop, leaping over the cliff at Fiddler's Falls.
Below, it turned to the north, and, seeming to see its way at last, grew
calm and crossed the flats wearily, covered with foam.

Socky woke and rubbed his eyes when he and his sister were taken out of
the wagon. Sue continued to sleep, although carried like a sack of
meal under the arm of the driver and Silas Strong laid amidships on a
blanket. Mr. Tupper, the mill man, gave them a piece of meat which, out
of courtesy to the law, he called "mountain lamb." With pack aboard and
Socky on a blanket in the bow, Gordon pushed his canoe into the current.

All who journeyed to the Lost River country from the neighborhood
of Hillsborough arrived at Tupper's late in the afternoon. There,
generally, they took canoe and paddled six miles to a log inn at the
head of the still water. But as Gordon started from Tupper's Mill down
stream he had in mind a destination not on any map of this world. Socky
sat facing him, a little hand on either gunwale.

Socky had thought often that day of the incident of the night before and
of his father's poverty. Now he looked him over from head to foot.
He saw the little steel chain fastened to his father's waistcoat and
leading into the pocket where he knew that his own watch lay hidden. The
look of it gave him a feeling of great virtue and satisfaction.

"Father, will you please tell me what time it is?" he inquired.

Gordon removed the watch from his pocket. "Half-past six. We've got to
push on."

It was fine to see that watch in his father's hand.

"I'm going to give it to you," said the boy, soberly. "You can wear it
Sundays an' every day."

Gordon looked into the eyes of his son. He saw there the white soul of
the little traveller just entering upon the world.

"I'm going to buy you some new clothes, too," said Socky, now
overflowing with generosity.

"Where'll you get the money?"

"From my Uncle Silas." After a few moments Socky added, "If I was Lizzie
Cornell's father I'd give her a good whipping."

They rode in silence awhile, and soon the boy lay back on his blanket
looking up at the sky.

"Father," said he, presently.

"What?"

"I'm good to you, ain't I?"

"Very."

There was a moment of silence, and then the boy added, "I love you."

Those words gave the man a new sense of comfort. If he could have done
so he would have embraced his son and covered his face with kisses.

The sun had sunk low and they were entering the edge of the night and
the woodland. Soon the boy fell asleep. The silence of the illimitable
sky seemed to be flooding down and delightful sounds were drifting on
its current. They had passed the inn, long ago and walls of fir and pine
were on either side of them. Gordon put into a deep cove, stopping under
the pine-trees with his bow on a sand-bar. Then he let himself down,
stretching his legs on the canoe bottom and lying back on his blanket.

For a long time he lay there thinking. He had been a man of some
refinement, and nature had punished him, after an old fashion, for the
abuse of it with extreme sensitiveness. He had come to the Adirondacks
from a New England city and married and gone into business. At first he
had prospered, and then he had begun to go down.

He had been a lover of music and a reader of the poets. As he lay
thinking in the early dusk he heard the notes of the wood-thrush. That
bird was like a welcoming trumpeter before the gate of a palace; it
bade him be at home. Above all he could hear the water song of Fiddler's
Falls--the tremulous, organ bass of rock caverns upon which the river
drummed as it fell, the chorus of the on-rushing stream and great
overtones in the timber.

Sound and rhythm seemed to be full of that familiar strain--so like a
solemn warning:

[Illustration: 0038]

A long time he sat hearing it. He began to feel ashamed of his folly and
awakened to the inspiration of a new purpose. He rose and looked about
him.

When you enter a house you begin to feel the heart of its owner.
Something in the walls and furnishings, something in the air--is it a
vibration which dead things have gathered from the living?--bids you
welcome or warns you to depart. It is the true voice of the master.
As Gordon came into the wilderness he felt like one returning to his
father's house. In this great castle the heart of its Master seemed to
speak to him with a tenderness fatherly and unmistakable.

A subtle force like that we find in houses built with hands now bade him
welcome. "Lie down and rest, my son," it seemed to say. "Let not your
heart be troubled. Here in your Father's house are forgiveness and
plenty."

He put away the thought of death. He covered the sleeping boy and girl,
pushed his canoe forward upon the sand, and lying back comfortably soon
fell asleep.

He awoke refreshed at sunrise. The great, green fountain of life, in
the midst of which he had rested, now seemed to fill his heart with its
uplifting joy and energy and persistence.

He built a fire under the trees and broiled the meat and made toast and
coffee. He lifted the children in his arms and kissed them with unusual
tenderness.

"To-day we'll see Uncle Silas," Gordon assured them.

"My Uncle Silas!" said the boy, fondly.

"He's mine, too," Sue declared.

"He's both of our'n," Socky allowed, as they began to eat their
breakfast.




IV

SILAS STRONG, or "Panther Sile," as the hunters called him, spent every
winter in the little forest hamlet of Pitkin and every summer in the
woods.

Lawrence County was the world, and game, wood, and huckleberries the
fulness thereof; all beyond was like the reaches of space unexplored and
mysterious. God was only a word--one may almost say--and mostly part
of a compound adjective; hell was Ogdensburg, to which he had once
journeyed; and the devil was Colonel Jedson. This latter opinion, it
should be said, grew out of an hour in which the Colonel had bullied him
in the witness-chair, and not to any lasting resemblance.

As to Ogdensburg itself, the hunter had based his judgment upon evidence
which, to say the least, was inconclusive. When Sile and the city first
met, they regarded each other with extreme curiosity. A famous hunter,
as he moved along the street with rifle, pack, and panther-skin, Sile
was trying to see everything, and everything seemed to be trying to see
Sile. The city was amused while the watchful eye of Silas grew weary and
his bosom filled with distrust. One tipsy man offered him a jack-knife
as a compliment to the length of his nose, and before he could escape
a new acquaintance had wrongfully borrowed his watch. His conclusions
regarding the city were now fully formed. He broke with it suddenly, and
struck out across country and tramped sixty miles without a rest. Ever
after the thought of Ogdensburg revived memories of confusion, headache,
and irreparable loss. So, it is said, when he heard the minister
describing hell one Sunday at the little school-house in Pitkin, he had
no doubt either of its existence or its location.

All this, however, relates to antecedent years of our history--years
which may not be wholly neglected if one is to understand what follows
them.

After the death of his sister--the late Mrs. Gordon--Strong began to
read his Bible and to cut his trails of thought further and further
towards his final destination. A deeper reverence and a more correct
notion of the devil rewarded his labor.

It must be added that his meditations led him to one remarkable
conclusion--namely, that all women were angels. His parents had left him
nothing save a maiden sister named Cynthia, and characterized by some as
"a reg'lar human panther."

"Wherever Sile is they's panthers," said a guide once, in the little
store at Pitkin.

"Don't make no dif'er'nce whuther he's t' home er in the woods," said
another, solemnly.

That was when God owned the wilderness and kept there a goodly number of
his big cats, four of which had fallen before the rifle of Strong.

Cynthia, in his view, had a special sanctity, but there was another
woman whom he regarded with great tenderness--a cheery-faced maiden lady
of his own age and of the name of Annette.

To Silas she was always Lady Ann. He gave her this title without any
thought or knowledge of foreign customs. "Miss Roice" would have been
too formal, and "Ann" or "Annette" would have been too familiar.
"Lady Ann" seemed to have the proper ring of respect, familiarity, and
distinction. In his view a "lady" was a creature as near perfection as
anything could be in this world.

When a girl of eighteen she had taught in the log school-house. Since
the death of her mother the care of the little home had fallen upon
her. She was a well-fed, cheerful, and comely creature with a genius for
housekeeping.

June had come, and Silas was getting ready to go into camp. There was no
longer any peace for him in the clearing. The odor of the forest and the
sight of the new leaves gave him no rest. Had he not heard in his dreams
the splash of leaping trout, and deer playing in the lily-pads? In the
midst of his preparations, although a silent man, the tumult of joy in
his breast came pouring out in the whistled refrain of "Yankee Doodle."
It was a general and not a special sense of satisfaction which caused
him to shake with laughter now and then as he made his way along the
rough road. Sometimes he rubbed his long nose thoughtfully.

A nature-loving publisher, who often visited his camp, had printed some
cards for him. They bore these modest words:


S. STRONG

GUIDE AND CONTRIVER


He was able in either capacity, but his great gift lay in tongue
control--in his management of silence. He was what they called in that
country "a one-word man." The phrase indicated that he was wont to
express himself with all possible brevity. He never used more than one
word if that could be made to satisfy the demands of politeness and
perspicacity. Even though provocation might lift his feeling to high
degrees of intensity, and well beyond the pale of Christian sentiment,
he was never profuse.

His oaths would often hiss and hang fire a little, but they were in the
end as brief and emphatic as the crack of a rifle. This trait of
brevity was due, in some degree, to the fact that he stammered slightly,
especially in moments of excitement, but more to his life in the silence
of the deep woods.

Silas Strong had filled his great pack at the store and was nearing his
winter home--a rude log-house in the little forest hamlet. He let the
basket down from his broad back to the doorstep. His sister Cynthia,
small, slim, sternfaced, black-eyed, heart and fancy free, stood looking
down at him.

"Wal, what now?" she demanded, in a voice not unlike that of a pea-hen.

"T'-t'-morrer," he stammered, in a loud and cheerful tone.

"What time to-morrer?"

"D-daylight."

"I knew it," she snapped, sinking into a chair, the broom in her hands,
and a woful look upon her. "You've got t' hankerin'."

Silas said nothing, but entered the house and took a drink of water.
Cynthia snapped:

"If I wanted t' marry Net Roice I'd marry 'er an' not be dilly-dallyin'
all my life."

Cynthia was now fifty years of age, and regarded with a stern eye every
act of man which bore any suggestion of dilly-dallying.

"Ain't g-good'nough," he stammered, calmly.

"You're fool 'nough," she declared, with a twang of ill-nature.

"S-supper, Mis' Strong," said he, stirring the fire.

Whenever his sister indulged in language of unusual loudness and
severity he was wont to address her in a gentle tone as "Mis'
Strong"--the only kind of retaliation to which he resorted. He shortened
the "Miss" a little, so that his words might almost be recorded as "Mi'
Strong." In those rare and cheerful moments when her mood was more in
harmony with his own he called her "Sinth" for short. In his letters,
which were few, he had addressed her as "deer sinth." She was,
therefore, a compound person, consisting of a severe and dissenting
character called "Mis' Strong," and a woman of few words and a look of
sickliness and resignation who answered to the pseudonyme of "Sinth."

Born and brought up in the forest, there was much in Silas and Cynthia
that suggested the wild growth of the woodland. Their sister--the late
Mrs. Gordon--had beauty and a head for books. She had gone to town and
worked for her board and spent a year in the academy. Silas and Cynthia,
on the other hand, were without beauty or learning or refinement, nor
had they much understanding of the laws of earth or heaven, save what
nature had taught them; but the devotion of this man to that querulous
little wild-cat of a sister was remarkable. She was to him a sacred
heritage. For love of her he had carried with him these ten years a
burden, as it were, of suppressed and yearning affection. Silas Strong
alone might even have been "good enough," in his own estimation, but he
accepted "Mis' Strong" as a kind of flaw in his own character.

Every June he went to his camp at Lost River, taking Sinth to cook for
him, and returning in the early winter. Next day, at sunrise, they were
to start for the woods.

To-day he helped to get supper, and, having wiped the dishes, put on his
best suit, his fine boots, his new felt hat, and walked a mile to the
little farm of Uncle Ben Roice. He carried with him a gray squirrel in a
cage, and, as he walked, sang in a low voice:

               "All for the love of a charmin' creature,

               All for the love of a lady fair."

It was like any one of a thousand visits he had made there. Annette met
him at the door.

"Why, of all things!" said she. "What have you here?"

"C'ris'mus p-present, Lady Ann," said he.

It should be said that with Silas a gift was a "Christmas present" every
day in the year--the cheerful spirit of that time being always with him.

He proudly put the cage in her hands.

"Much obliged to you, Sile," said she, laughing.

"S-Strong's ahead!" he stammered, cheerfully.

This indicated that in his fight with the powers of evil Strong felt as
if he had at least temporary advantage. When, perhaps, after a moment of
anger it seemed that the Evil One had got the upper hold on him, he was
wont to exclaim, "Satan's ahead!" But the historian is glad to say that
those occasions were, in the main, rare and painful.

"Strong will never give in," said Annette, with laughter.

Strong's affection was expressed only in signs and tokens. Of the former
there were his careful preparation for each visit, and many sighs and
blushes, and now and then a tender glance of the eye. Of tokens there
had been many--a tame fox, ten mink-skins, a fawn, a young thrush, a
pancake-turner carved out of wood, and other important trifles. For
twenty years he had been coming, but never a word of love had passed
between them.

Silas sat in a strong wooden chair. Under the sky he never thought of
his six feet and two inches of bone and muscle; now it seemed to fill
his consciousness and the little room in which he sat. To-day and
generally he leaned against the wall, a knee in his hands as if to keep
himself in proper restraint.

"Did you just come to bring me that squirrel?" Annette inquired.

"No," he answered.

"What then?"

"Squirrel come t' b-bring me."

"Silas Strong!" she exclaimed, playfully, amazed by his frankness.

He put his big hand over his face and enjoyed half a minute of silent
laughter.

"Silas Strong!" she repeated.

"Present,"'said he, as if answering the call of the roll, and sobering
as he uncovered his face.

In conversation Silas had a way of partly closing one eye while the
other opened wide beneath a lifted brow. The one word of the Emperor was
inadequate. He was, indeed, present, but he was extremely happy also, a
condition which should have been freely acknowledged. It must be said,
however, that his features made up in some degree for the idleness of
his tongue. He brushed them with a downward movement, of his hand, as
if to remove all traces of levity and prepare them for their part in
serious conversation.

"All w-well?" he inquired, soberly.

"Eat our allowance," said she, sitting near him. "How's Miss Strong?"

"S-supple!" he answered. Then he ran his fingers through his blond hair
and soberly exclaimed, "Weasels!"

This remark indicated that weasels had been killing the poultry and
applying stimulation to the tongue of Miss Strong. Silas had sent her
fowls away to market the day before.

"Too bad!" was the remark of Lady Ann.

"Fisht?" By this word Silas meant to inquire if she had been fishing.

"Yesterday. Over at the falls--caught ten," said she, getting busy with
her knitting. "B-big?"

"Three that long," she answered, measuring with her thread.

He gave a loud whistle of surprise, thought a moment, and exclaimed,
"M-mountaneyous!" He used this word when contemplating in imagination
news of a large and important character.

"How have you been?"

"Stout," he answered, drawing in his breath.

Annette rose and seemed to go in search of something. The kindly gray
eyes of Silas Strong followed her. A smile lighted up his face. It was
a very plain face, but there was yet something fine about it, something
which invited confidence and respect. The Lady Ann entered her own room,
and soon returned.

"Shut yer eyes," said she.

"What f-for?"

"Chris'mas present."

Silas obeyed, and she thrust three pairs of socks into his coat-pocket.
With a smile he drew them out. Then a partly smothered laugh burst
from his lips, and he held his hand before his face and shook with good
feeling.

"S-socks!" he exclaimed.

"There are two parts of a man which always ought to be kep' warm--his
heart an' his feet," said she.

Silas whacked his knee with his palm and laughed heartily, his wide eye
aglow with merriment. His expression quickly turned serious.

"B-bears plenty!" he exclaimed, as he felt of the socks and looked
them over. This remark indicated that a season of unusual happiness and
prosperity had arrived.

Worked in white yarn at the top of each leg were the words, "Remember
me."

"T-till d-death," he whispered.

"With me on your mind an' them on your feet you ought to be happy," said
Annette.

"An' w-warm," he answered, soberly.

Presently she read aloud to him from the _St. Lawrence Republican_.

"S-some day," said Silas, when at last he had risen to go.

"Some day," she repeated, with a smile.

The only sort of engagement between them lay in the two words "some
day." They served as an avowal of love and intention. Amplified, as it
were, by look and tone as well as by the pressure of the hand-clasp,
they were understood of both.

To-day as Annette returned the assurance she playfully patted his cheek,
a rare token of her approval.

Silas left her at the door and made his way down the dark road. He began
to give himself some highly pleasing assurances.

"S-some day--tall t-talkin'," he stammered, in a whisper, and then he
began to laugh silently.

"Patted my cheek!" he whispered. Then he laughed again.

At the store he had filled his pack with flour, ham, butter, and like
provisions for Lost River camp. At Annette's he had filled his heart
with renewed hope and happiness and was now prepared for the summer.
While he walked along he fell to speculating as to whether Annette could
live under the same roof with Cynthia. A hundred times he had considered
whether he could ask her, and as usual he concluded, "Ca-can't."

The hunter had an old memorandum-book which was a kind of storehouse
for thought, hope, and reflection. Therein he seemed always to regard
himself objectively and spoke of Strong as if he were quite another
person. Before going to bed that evening he made these entries:

_"June the 23. Strong is all mellered up.

"Snags."_

With him the word "meller" meant to soften, and sometimes, even, to
conquer with the club.

The word "snags" undoubtedly bore reference to the difficulties that
beset his way.




V

SILAS and his sister ate their breakfast by candle-light and were off
on the trail before sunrise, a small, yellow dog of the name of
Zeb following. Zeb was a bear-dog with a cross-eye and a serious
countenance. He was, in the main, a brave but a prudent animal. One day
he attacked a bear, which had been stunned by a bullet, and before he
could dodge the bear struck him knocking an eye out. Strong had put it
back, and since that day his dog had borne a cross-eye.

Zeb had a sense of dignity highly becoming in a creature of his
attainments. This morning, however, he scampered up and down the trail,
whining with great joy and leaping to lick the hand of his master.
"Sinth" walked spryly, a little curt in her manner, but passive and
resigned. Silas carried a heavy pack, a coon in a big cage, and led a
fox. When he came to soft places he set the cage down and tethered the
fox, and, taking Sinth in his arms, carried her as one would carry a
baby. Having gained better footing, he would let Sinth down upon a log
or a mossy rock to rest and return for his treasures. After two or three
hours of travel the complaining "Mis' Strong" would appear.

"Seems so ye take pleasure wearin' me out on these here trails," she
would say. "Why don't ye walk a little faster?"

"W-whoa!" he would answer, cheerfully. "Roughlocks!"

The roughlock, it should be explained, was a form of brake used by
log-haulers to check their bobs on a steep hill. In the conversation of
Silas it was a cautionary signal meaning hold up and proceed carefully.

"You don't care if you do kill me--gallopin' through the woods here jes'
like a houn' after a fox. I won't walk another step--not another step."

"Rur-roughlocks!" he commanded himself, as he tied the fox and set the
coon down.

"Won't ride either," she would declare, with emphasis.

"W-wings on, Mis' Strong?" Silas had been known to ask, in a tone of
great gentleness.

She would be apt to answer, "If I had wings, I'd see the last o' you."

Then a little time of rest and silence, after which the big, gentle
hunter would shoulder his pack and lift in his arms the slender
and complaining Miss Strong and carry her up the long grade of Bear
Mountain. Then he would make her comfortable and return for his pets.

That day, having gone back for the fox and the coon, he concluded to try
the experiment of putting them together. Before then he had given the
matter a good deal of thought, for if the two were in a single package,
as it were, the problem of transportation would be greatly simplified.
He could fasten the coon cage on the top of his pack, and so avoid
doubling the trail. He led the fox and carried the coon to the point
where Sinth awaited him. Then he removed the chain from the fox's
collar, carefully opened the cage, and thrust him in. The swift effort
of both animals to find quarter nearly overturned the cage. Spits and
growls of warning followed one another in quick succession. Then each
animal braced himself against an end of the cage, indulging, as it would
seem, in continuous complaint and recrimination.

"Y-you behave!" said Silas, wamingly, as he put the cage on top of his
basket and fastened a stout cord from bars to buckles.

"They 'll fight!" Sinth exclaimed.

"Let 'em f-fight," said Silas, who had sat down before his pack and
adjusted the shoulder-straps.

The growling increased as he rose carefully to his feet, and with a
swift movement coon and fox exchanged positions. Sinth descended the
long hill afoot, and Silas went on cautiously, a low, continuous murmur
of hostile sound rising in the air behind him. Each animal seemed to
think it necessary to remind the other with every breath he took that he
was prepared to defend himself. Their enmity was, it would appear, deep
and racial.

At Cedar Swamp, in the flat below, the big hunter took Sinth in his
arms. Then the sound of menace and complaint rose before and behind him.
Slowly he proceeded, his feet sinking deep in the wet moss. Stepping on
hummocks in a dead creek, he slipped and fell. The little animals
were flung about like shot in a bottle. Each seemed to hold the other
responsible for his discomfiture. They came together in deadly conflict.
The sounds in the cage resembled an explosion of fire-crackers under a
pan. Sinth lifted her voice in a loud outcry of distress and accusation.
Without a word the hunter scrambled to his feet, renewed his hold upon
the complaining Sinth, and set out for dry land. Luckily the mud was not
above his boot-tops. The cage creaked and hurtled. The animals rolled
from side to side in their noisy encounter. The indignant Sinth
struggled to get free with loud, hysteric cries. Strong ran beneath his
burden. He gained the dry trail, and set his sister upon the ground. He
flung off the shoulder-straps, and with a stick separated the animals.
He opened the cage and seized the fox by the nape of the neck, and,
before he could haul him forth, got a nip on the back of his hand. He
lifted the spitting fox and fastened the chain upon his collar. Then
Silas put his hands on his hips and blew like a frightened deer.

"Hell's b-bein' raised," he muttered, as if taking counsel with himself
against Satan. "C-careful!" He was in a mood between amusement and
anger, but was dangerously near the latter.

A little profanity, felt but not expressed, warmed his spirit, so that
he kicked the coon's cage and tumbled it bottom side up. In a moment
he recovered self-control, righted the cage, and whispered, "S-Satan's
ahead!"

The wound upon his hand was bleeding, but he seemed not to mind it.

Having done his best for the comfort of his sister, he brushed the mud
from his boots and trousers, filled his pipe, and sat meditating in a
cloud of tobacco-smoke. Presently he rose and shouldered his pack and
untied the fox and lifted the coon cage.

"I'll walk if it kills me!" Sinth exclaimed, rising with a sigh of utter
recklessness.

"'T-'tain't fur," said Strong, as they renewed their journey.

It was past mid-day when they got to camp, and Sinth lay down to
rest while he fried some ham and boiled the potatoes and made tea and
flapjacks by an open fire.

When he sat on his heels and held his pan over the fire, the long
woodsman used to shut up, as one might say, somewhat in the fashion of
a jack-knife. He was wont to call it "settin' on his hunches." His great
left hand served for a movable screen to protect his face from the heat.
As the odor and sound of the frying rose about him, his features took on
a look of-great benevolence. It was a good part of the meal to hear him
announce, "Di-dinner," in a tender and cheerful tone. As he spoke it the
word was one of great capacity for suggestion. When the sound of it rose
and lingered on its final r, that day they arrived at Lost River camp,
Sinth awoke and came out-of-doors.

"Strong's g-gainin'!" he exclaimed, cheerfully, meaning thereby to
indicate that he hoped soon to overtake his enemy.

The table of bark, fastened to spruce poles, each end lying in a crotch,
had been covered with a mat of ferns and with clean, white dishes. Silas
began to convey the food from fire to table. To his delight he observed
that "Mis' Strong" had gone into retirement. The face of his sister now
wore its better look of sickliness and resignation.

"Opeydildock?" he inquired, tenderly, pouring from a flask into a cup.

"No, sir," she answered, curtly, her tone adding a rebuke to her
negative answer.

"Le's s-set," said he, soberly.

They sat and ate their dinner, after which Silas went back on the trail
to cut and bring wood for the camp-fire. When his job was finished, the
rooms were put to rights, the stove was hot and clean, and an excellent
supper waiting.

Strong's camp consisted of three little log cabins and a large
cook-tent. The end of each cabin was a rude fireplace built of flat
rocks enclosed by upright logs which, lined with sheet-iron, towered
above the roof for a chimney. Each floor an odd mosaic of wooden blocks,
each wall sheathed with redolent strips of cedar, each rude divan
bottomed with deer-skin and covered with balsam pillows, each bedstead
of peeled spruce neatly cut and joined--the whole represented years of
labor. Every winter Silas had come through the woods on a big sled with
"new improvements" for camp. Now there were spring-beds and ticks filled
with husks in the cabins, a stove and all needed accessories in the
cook-tent.

Ever since he could carry a gun Silas had set his traps and hunted
along the valley of Lost River, ranging over the wild country miles from
either shore. Twenty thousand acres of the wilderness, round about, had
belonged to Smith & Gordon, who gave him permission to build his camp.
When he built, timber and land had little value. Under the great,
green roof from Bear Mountain to Four Ponds, from the Raquette to the
Oswegatchie, one might have enjoyed the free hospitality of God.

From a time he could not remember, this great domain had been the home
of Silas Strong. He loved it, and a sense of proprietorship had grown
within him. Therein he had need only of matches, a blanket, and a rifle.
One might have led him blindfolded, in the darkest night, to any part
of it and soon he would have got his bearings. In many places the very
soles of his feet would have told him where he stood.

Long ago its owners had given him charge of this great tract. He had
forbidden the hounding of deer and all kinds of greedy slaughter, and
had made campers careful with fire. Soon he came to be called "The
Emperor of the Woods," and every hunter respected his laws.

Slowly steam-power broke through the hills and approached the ramparts
of the Emperor. This power was like one of the many hands of the
republic gathering for its need. It started wheels and shafts and bore
day and night upon them. Now the song of doom sounded in far corridors
of the great sylvan home of Silas Strong.

It was only a short walk to where the dead hills lay sprinkled over with
ashes, their rock bones bleaching in the sun beneath columns of charred
timber. The spruce and pine had gone with the ever-flowing stream, and
their dead tops had been left to dry and burn with unquenchable fury at
the touch of fire, and to destroy everything, root and branch, and the
earth out of which it grew.

It concerned him much to note, everywhere, signs of a change in
proprietorship. In Strong's youth one felt, from end to end of the
forest, this invitation of its ancient owner, "Come all ye that are
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Now one saw much of
this legend in the forest ways, "All persons are forbidden trespassing
on this property under penalty of the law." Proprietorship had,
seemingly, passed from God to man. The land was worth now thirty
dollars an acre. Silas had established his camp when the boundaries were
indefinite and the old banners of welcome on every trail, and he felt
the change.




VI

IT was near sunset of the second day after the arrival of Sinth and
Silas. They sat together in front of the cook-tent. Silas leaned forward
smoking a pipe. His great, brawny arms, bare to the elbow, rested on his
knees. His faded felt hat was tilted back. He was looking down at the
long stretch of still water, fringed with lily-pads, and reflecting the
colors of either shore.

"You'ain't got a cent to yer name," said Sinth, who was knitting. She
gave the yam a pull, and, as she did so, glanced up at her brother.

"B-better times!" said he, rubbing his hands.

"Better times!" she sneered. "I'd like to know how you can make money
an' charge a dollar a day for board."

Sportsmen visiting there paid for their board, and they with whom Silas
went gave him three dollars a day for his labor.

The truth was that prosperity and Miss Strong were things
irreconcilable. The representatives of prosperity who came to Lost River
camp were often routed by the eye of resentment and the unruly tongue.
Strong knew all this, but she was not the less sacred on that account.
This year he had planned to bring a cow to camp and raise the price of
board.

"You s-see," Strong insisted.

"Huh!" Sinth went on; "we'll mos' kill ourselves, an' nex' spring we
won't have nothin' but a lot o' mink-skins."

Miss Strong, as if this reflection had quite overcome her, gathered up
her knitting and hastened into the cook-tent, where for a moment she
seemed to be venting her spite on the flat-irons and the tea-kettle.
Strong sat alone, smoking thoughtfully. Soon he heard footsteps on the
trail. A stranger, approaching, bade him good-evening.

"From the Migley Lumber Company," the stranger began, as he gave a card
to Strong. "We have bought the Smith & Gordon tract. I have come to
bring this letter and have a talk with you."

Strong read the letter carefully. Then he rose and put his hands in his
pockets, and, with a sly wink at the stranger, walked slowly down the
trail. He wished to go where Sinth would not be able to hear them. Some
twenty rods away both sat down upon a log. The letter was, in effect, an
order of eviction.

"I got t' g-go?" the Emperor inquired.

"That's about the size of it," said the stranger.

"Can't," Strong answered.

"Well, there's no hurry," said the other. "We shall be cutting here in
the fall. I won't disturb you this year."

Silas rose and stood erect before the lumberman.

"Cut everyth-thing?" he inquired, his hand sweeping outward in a gesture
of peculiar eloquence.

"Everything from Round Ridge to Carter's Plain," said the other.

Strong deliberately took off his jacket and laid it on a stump. He
flung his hat upon the ground. Evidently something unusual was about to
happen. Then, forthwith, he broke the silence of more than forty years
and opened his heart to the stranger. He could not control himself; his
tongue almost forgot its infirmity; his words came faster and easier as
he went on.

"N-no, no," he said, "it can't be. Ye 'ain't no r-right t' do it, fer
ye can't never put the w-woods back agin. My God, sir, I've w-wan-dered
over these hills an' flats ever since I was a little b-boy. There
ain't a critter on 'em that d-don't know me. Seems so they was all my
b-brothers. I've seen men come in here nigh dead an' go back w-well.
They's m-med'cine here t' cure all the sickness in a hunderd cities;
they's f-fur 'nough here t' c-cover their naked--they's f-food'nough
t' feed their hungry--an' they's w-wood 'nough t' keep 'em w-warm. God
planted these w-woods an' stocked 'em, an' nobody's ever d-done a day's
work here 'cept me. Now you come along an' say you've bought 'em an' are
g-goin 't' shove us out. I c-can't understand it. God m-made the sky an'
l-lifted up the trees t' sweep the dust out of it an' pump water into
the clouds an' g-give out the breath o' the g-ground. Y-you 'ain't no
right t' git together down there in Albany an' make laws ag'in' the will
o' God. Ye r-rob the world when ye take the tree-tops out o' the sky. Ye
might as well take the clouds out of it. God has gi'n us g-good air
an' the woods an' the w-wild cattle, an' it's free--an' you--you're
g-goin 't' turn ev'rybody out o' here an' seize the g-gift an' trade it
fer d-dollars--you d---little bullcook!"

A "bullcook," it should be explained, was the chore-boy in a
lumber-camp.

Strong sat down and took out an old red handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

He was thinking of the springs and brooks and rivers, of the cool shade,
of the odors of the woodland, of the life-giving air, of the desolation
that was to come.

"It's business," said the stranger, as if that word must put an end to
all argument.

A sound broke the silence like that of distant thunder.

"Hear th-that," Strong went on. "It's the logs g-goin' over Rainbow
Falls. They've been stole off the state l-lands. Th-that's business,
too. Business is king o' this c-country. He t-takes everything he can
l-lay his hands on. He'd t-try t' 'grab heaven if he could g-git over
the f-fence an' b-back agin."

"I am not here to discuss that," said the stranger, rising to go.

"Had s-supper?" Silas asked.

"I've a lunch in the canoe, thank you. The moon is up, an' I'm going to
push on to Copper Falls. Migley will be waiting for me. We shall camp
there for a day or two at Cedar Spring. Good-night."

"Good-night."

It was growing dark. Strong's outbreak had wearied him. He groaned and
shook his head and stood a moment thinking. In the distance he could
hear the hoot of an owl and the bull bass of frogs booming over the
still water.

"G-gone!" he exclaimed, presently. Soon he added, in a mournful tone,
"W-wouldn't d-dast tell Mis' Strong."

He started slowly towards the camp.

"I'll l-lie to her," he whispered, as he went along.

Before going to bed he made this note in his memorandum-book:

_"June the 26 More snags Strong says trubel is like small-pox thing to
do is kepe it from spreadin."_




VII

SINCE early May there had been no rain save a sprinkle now and then.
From Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain, from the St. Lawrence to Sandy
Hook, the earth had been scorching under a hot sun. The heat and dust of
midsummer had dimmed the glory of June.

People those days were thinking less of the timber of the woods and more
of their abundant, cool, and living green. The inns along the edge of
the forest were filling up.

About eleven o'clock of a morning late in June, a young man arrived at
Lost River camp--one Robert Master, whose father owned a camp and some
forty thousand acres not quite a day's tramp to the north. He was a big,
handsome youth of twenty-two, just out of college. Sinth regarded every
new-comer as a natural enemy. She suspected most men of laziness and a
capacity for the oppression of females. She stood in severe silence at
the door of the cook-tent and looked him over as he came. Soon she
went to the stove and began to move the griddles. Silas entered with an
armful of wood.

"If he thinks I'm goin' to wait on him hand an' foot, he's very much
mistaken," said Sinth.

"R-roughlocks!" Silas answered, calmly, as he put a stick on the fire.

Sinth made no reply, but began sullenly rushing to and fro with pots
and pans. Soon her quick knife had taken the jackets off a score of
potatoes. While her hands flew, water leaped on the potatoes, and the
potatoes tumbled into the pot, and the pot jumped into the stove-hole as
the griddle took a slide across the top of the stove. And so with a rush
of feet and a rattle of pots and pans and a sliding of griddles and a
banging of iron doors "Mis' Strong" wore off her temper at hard work.

The Emperor used to smile at this variety of noise and call it
"f-f-female profanity," a phrase not wholly inapt. When the "sport" had
finished his dinner, and she and her brother sat side by side at
the table, she was plain Sinth again, with a look of sickliness and
resignation. She ate freely--but would never confess her appetite--and
so leisurely that Strong often had most of the dishes washed before she
had finished eating.

The young man was eager to begin fishing, and soon after dinner the
Emperor took him over to Catamount Pond. On their way the young man
spoke of the object of his visit.

"Mr. Strong, you know my father?" he half inquired.

"Ay-ah," the Emperor answered.

"He's been a property-holder in this county for five years, every summer
of which I have spent on his land. I feel at home in the woods, and I
cast my first vote at Tifton."

Strong listened thoughtfully.

"I want to do what I can to save the wilderness," young Master went on.

"R-right!" said the Emperor.

"If I were in the Legislature, I believe I could accomplish something.
Anyhow, I am going to make a fight for the vacant seat in the Assembly."

Strong surveyed him from head to foot.

"I wish you would do what you can for me in Pitkin."

"Uh-huh!" Strong answered, in a gentle tone, without opening his
lips. It was a way he had of expressing uncertainty leaning towards
affirmation. He liked the young man; there was, indeed, something
grateful to him in the look and voice of a gentleman.

"You'll never be ashamed of me--I'll see to that," said Master.

Having reached the little pond, Strong gave him his boat, and promised
to return and bring him into camp at six. Here and there trout were
breaking through the smooth plane of water.

The Emperor took a bee-line over the wooded ridge to Robin Lake. There
he spent an hour repairing his bark shanty and gathering balsam boughs
for a bed. Stepping on a layer of spruce poles over which the boughs
were to be spread, in a dark corner of the shanty, his foot went through
and came down upon the nest of one of the most disagreeable creatures in
the wilderness. He sprang away with an oath and fled into the open air.
For a moment he expressed himself in a series of sharp reports, Then,
picking up a long pole, he met the offenders leaving their retreat, and
"mellered" them, as he explained to Sinth that evening.

"T-take that, Amos," he muttered, as he gave one of them another blow.

It should be borne in mind that he called every member of this
malodorous tribe "Amos," because the meanest man he ever knew had borne
that name.

He put his heel in the crotch of a fallen limb and drew his boot. Then
he cautiously cut off the leg of his trousers at the knee, and, poking
cloth and leather into a little hollow, buried them under black earth.

Slowly the "Emperor of the Woods" climbed a ridge on his way to Lost
River camp, one leg bare to the knee. Walking, he thought of Annette.
Lately misfortune had come between them, and now he seemed to be getting
farther from the trail of happiness.

At a point on Balsam Hill he came into the main thoroughfare of the
woodsmen which leads from Bear Mountain to Lost River camp. Where he
could see far down the big trail, under arches of evergreen, he sat on
a stump to rest. His bootless foot, now getting sore, rested on a giant
toadstool.

Thus enthroned, the Emperor looked down at his foot and reconsidered the
relative positions of himself and the Evil One. His faded crown of felt
tilting over one ear, his rough, bearded face wet with perspiration, his
patched trousers truncated over the right knee, below which foot and leg
were uncovered, he was an emperor more distinguished for his appearance
than his lineage.

He took out his old memorandum-book and made this note in it with a stub
of a pencil:

_"June the 27 Strong says one Amos in the bush is worth two in yer
company an a pair of britches."_

The Emperor, although in the main a serious character, enjoyed some
private fun with this worn little book, which he always carried with
him. Therein he did most of his talking, with secret self-applause now
and then, one may fancy. It has thrown some light on the inner life of
the man, and, in a sense, it is one of the figures of our history.




VIII

SILAS put the book in his pocket and looked down the trail. Some ten
rods away two children were running towards him, their hands full of
wild flowers. They were Socky and Sue, on their way to Lost River camp,
and were the first children--save one--who had ever set their feet on
the old trail. Gordon walked slowly, under a heavy pack, well behind
them. They knew they were near their destination. Their father could
scarcely keep them in hailing distance.

Sue had observed that Socky's generosity in the matter of the tin bank
had pleased her father, and so, after much thought, she had determined
to make a venture in benevolence.

"When I see Uncle Silas," said she, "I'm going to give him the
twenty-five cents my Aunt Marie gave me."

"Pooh! he's got loads of money," Socky answered.

They stopped suddenly. Sue dropped her flowers and turned to run. Socky
gave a little jump and recovered his courage. Both retreated a few
steps. There, before them, was the dejected "Emperor of the Woods."

"Says I!" he exclaimed, looking down calmly from his throne.

Socky glanced up at him fearfully.

"Who b-be you?"

"John Socksmith Gordon."

"T-y-ty!" exclaimed the Emperor, an expression, as the historian
believes', of great surprise, standing, perhaps, for the old oath
"By 'Mighty." It consisted of the pronunciation of the two letters
separately and then together.

The Emperor turned to the girl. "And y-yourn?" he inquired.

"Susan Bradbury Gordon," she answered, in a half-whisper.

"I tnum!" exclaimed the Emperor, shaking his bootless foot, whereupon
the new-comers retreated a little farther. The singular word "tnum"
expressed an unusual degree of interest on the part of the Emperor.
"G-goin' fur?" he inquired.

"To Lost River, to see my Uncle Silas."

The Emperor gave a loud whistle of surprise, and repeated the
exclamation--"I tnum!"

"My father's coming," said Socky, as he pointed down the trail.

"Whee-o!" whistled the "Emperor of the Woods," who now perceived his
brother-in-law ascending the trail.

"Old man, what are you doing there?" Gordon asked.

"Thinkin' out some th-thoughts," said the Emperor, soberly, as he came
into the trail, limping on his bare foot, and shook hands. There were
greetings, and the hunter briefly apologized for his bare leg and
explained it.

"Well, how are you?" Gordon asked.

"S-supple!" Strong answered, cheerfully.

The children got behind their father, peering from either side of him
as they saw this uncouth figure coming near. Sue pressed the hand of her
brother so tightly as to cause the boy to break her hold upon him.

"R-ride?" said the Emperor, putting his great hand on the head of
the boy and shaking it a little. Socky looked up at him with large,
wondering, timid eyes. Sue hid her face under the coat-tails of her
father.

"They'd rather walk; come on," said Gordon.

The men proceeded slowly over the hill and down into the valley of
Lost River. The children followed, some twenty paces behind, whispering
together. They were still in happy ignorance of the identity of the
strange man.

"S-sold out--eh?" said the hunter.

"Sold out! Sorry! They're going to shove a railroad in here and begin
cutting."

A smothered oath broke from the lips of the Emperor. Gordon came near to
him and whispered:

"Sile," said he, "don't swear before the kids. I'm bad enough, but I've
always been careful about that. Going to leave 'em here if you'll let
me."

"G-good--" The Emperor stopped short and his voice fell into thoughtful
silence.

As they came in sight of the little clearing and the tent and cabins of
Lost River camp, Sue and Socky ran ahead of the men.

"I'm in trouble," Gordon went on. "My account at the mill is overdrawn.
They've pushed me to the verge of madness. I must have a little help."

The woodsman stopped and put his hand on the shoulder of Gordon.

"Been f-foolish, Dick?" said he, kindly.

"I'm done with that. I want to begin new. I need a little money to throw
to the wolves."

"How m-much?"

"Four hundred dollars would do me."

Strong beckoned to him.

"C-come to my goosepen," said the hunter, as he led the way to an old
basswood some fifty paces from the camp. He removed a piece of bark
which fitted nicely over a hole in the tree-trunk. He put his hand in
the hole which he called a goosepen and took out a roll of bills.

"You save like a squirrel," said Gordon.

"Dunno no other w-way," Strong answered as he began to count the money.
"Three hundred an' s-seventy dollars," he said, presently, and gave it
to his brother-in-law. He felt in the hole again. "B-bank's failed!" he
added.

The kindness of the woodland was in the face of the hunter. He was like
an old hickory drawing its nourishment from the very bosom of the earth
and freely giving its crop. Where he fed there was plenty, and he had no
more thought of his own needs than a tree.

"Thank you' It's enough," said Gordon. "Better keep some of it."

"N-no good here," Strong answered, with his old reliance on the bounty
of nature.

"I'll go out to Pitkin in the morning. I'm going to get a new start in
the world. If you'll take care of the children I'll send you some money
every month. You've been a brother to me, and I'll not forget."

The Emperor sat upon a log and took a pencil and an old memorandum-book
from his pocket and wrote on a leaf this letter to Annette:

_"Deer frend--I am wel compny com today I dunno when I'll see you. woods
is hot and dry fish plenty Socks on feel splendid hopin for better times
"yours trewly

"S. Strong.

"P. S.--Strong's ahed."_

In truth, the whole purpose of the letter lay in that laconic
postscript, expressing, as it did, a sense of moral triumph under great
difficulties.

The Emperor stripped a piece of bark off a birch-tree, trimmed it with
his knife, and, enfolding it around the letter, bound it in the middle
with a long thorn which he drew out of the lapel of his "jacket." He
handed the missive to Gordon, saying, "F-for Ann Roice."

The children stood peering into an open door when the men came and flung
down their packs.

Sinth had gone to work in the garden, which was near the river-bank.
Silas Strong entered his cabin. The children came to their father, who
had seated himself on a chopping-block. Having forgotten the real Uncle
Silas, they had been looking for that splendid creature of whom they had
dreamed.

"Father," Socky whispered, "where is Uncle Silas?"

"That was Uncle Silas," said Gordon.

The eyes of the children were fixed upon his, while their faces began to
change color. The long, dark lashes of little Sue quivered for a second
as if she had received a blow. Socky's glance fell; his trembling hands,
which lay on the knee of Gordon, seemed to clutch at each other; then
his right thumb stood up straight and stiff; his lips parted. One might
have observed a little upward twitch of the muscles under either cheek.
It signalized the first touch of bitter disappointment.

"That man?" he whispered, looking up doubtfully as he pointed in the
direction of the door into which Strong had disappeared.

"That's Uncle Silas," said Gordon, with smiling amusement.

Socky turned and spat upon the ground.

Slowly he walked away, scuffing his feet. Sue followed with a look of
dejection. They went behind the camp and found the big potato-hole and
crawled into it. The bottom was covered with dry leaves. They sat down,
but neither spoke. Socky leaned forward, his chin upon his hands.

"Do you like Uncle Silas?" Sue whispered.

For a moment Socky did not change his attitude or make any reply.

"I wouldn't give him no twenty-five cents," Sue added.

"Don't speak to me," Socky answered, with a quick movement of his knee.

It was a time of sad discovery--that pathetic day when the first castle
of childhood falls upon its builder.

"I'm going home," said Sue.

"You won't be let," Socky answered, his under lip trembling as he
thought of the old lumberyard.

Suddenly he lay over on the leaves, his forehead on his elbow, and
wept in silence. Sue lay beside him, her cheek partly covered by golden
curls. She felt badly, but did not give way. They were both utterly
weary and cast down. Sue lay on her back and drew out her tiny doll
much as a man would light a cigarette in his moment of abstraction. She
flirted it in the air and brought it down upon her breast. The doll had
come out of her pocket just in time to save her. She lay yawning a few
moments, then fell asleep, and soon Socky joined her.

Gordon lay down upon a bed in one of the cabins. He, too, was weary and
soon forgot his troubles. The Emperor, having shifted his garments, went
behind the camp and stood looking down at his sorrowing people. A
smile spread over his countenance. It came and passed like a billow of
sunlight flooding over the hills. He shook his head with amusement.

Soon he turned away and sauntered slowly towards the river-bank. These,
children had been flung, as it were, upon the ruin of his hopes. What
should he do with them and with "Mis' Strong"? Suddenly a reflection of
unusual magnitude broke from his lips.

"They's g-got t' be tall contrivin'," he whispered, with a sigh.

Sinth, who had been sowing onions, heard him coming and rose to her
feet.

"G-Gordon!" said he, pointing towards camp. "Anybody with him?" she
asked..

"The childem," said he. "G-goin't' leave 'em."

Sinth turned with a look of alarm.

"C-can't swear, nuther," Strong added.

"He can take 'em back," said Miss Strong, with flashing eyes and a flirt
of her apron.

"R-roughlocks!" the Emperor demanded, in a low tone.

"Who'll tek care of 'em?"

"M-me."

"Heavens!" she exclaimed, her voice full of despair.

"C-come, Mis' Strong." So saying, Silas took the arm of his complaining
sister and led her up the hill.

When he had come to the potato-hole he pointed down at the children.
They had dressed with scrupulous care for the eye of him who, not an
hour since, had been the greatest of all men. The boy lay in his only
wide, white collar and necktie, in his best coat and knee-breeches.
The girl had on her beloved brown dress and pink sun-bonnet. It was a
picture to fill one's eyes, and all the more if one could have seen the
hearts of those little people. A new look came into the face of Sinth.

"Land sakes!" she exclaimed, raising one of her hands and letting it
fall again; "she looks like Sister Thankful--don't she, don't she,
Silas?"

Sinth wiped her eyes with her apron. The heart of Silas Strong had also
been deeply touched.

"R-reg'lar angel!" he exclaimed, thoughtfully. After a moment of silence
he added, "K-kind o' like leetle f-fawns."

They turned away, proceeding to the cook-tent. Sinth looked as if she
were making up her mind; Silas as if his were already made up. Sinth
began to rattle the pots and pans.

"Sh-h!" Silas hissed, as he fixed the fire.

"What's the matter?" she demanded.

"W-wake 'em up."

"Hope I will," she retorted, loudly.

Strong strode off in the trail to Catamount Pond, where he was to get
Master.

Zeb, the bear-dog, had been digging at a foxhole over in Birch Hollow.
Growing weary and athirst, by-and-by he relinquished his enterprise,
crossed to the trail, and, discovering the scent of strangers, hurried
home. Soon he found those curious little folks down in the potato-hole.
He had never seen a child before. He smelled them over cautiously. His
opinion was extremely favorable. His tail began to wag, and, unable to
restrain his enthusiasm, he expressed himself in a loud bark.

The children awoke, and Zeb retreated. Socky and Sue rose, the latter
crying, while that little, yellow snip of a bear-dog, with cross-eye and
curving tail, surveyed them anxiously. He backed away as if to coax them
out of the hole. When they had come near he seemed to be wiping one foot
after another upon the ground vigorously. As he did so he growled in a
manner calculated to inspire respect. Then he ran around them in a wide
circle at high speed, growling a playful challenge. Socky, who had some
understanding of dogs, dashed upon Zeb, and soon they were all at play
together.




IX.

ON Catamount Pond young Master had enjoyed a memorable day. He was an
expert fisherman, but the lonely quiet of the scene had been more than
fish to him: of it was a barren ridge, from the top of which a broken
column of dead pine, like a shaft of wrought marble, towered straight
and high above the woods. The curving shore had a fringe of lily-pads,
starred here and there with white tufts. Around thickets of birch, on
a point of land, a little cove was the end of all the deer-trails that
came out of Jiminy Swamp. It was the gateway of the pond for all who
journeyed thither to eat and drink. There were white columns on either
side, and opposite the cove's end was a thicket of tamarack, clear of
brush. A deep mat of vivid green moss came to the water's edge. When one
had rounded the point in his canoe, he could see into those cool, dark
alleys of the deer, leading off through slender tamaracks. A little
beyond were the rock bastions of Painter Mountain, five hundred' feet
above the water.

The young man, having grown weary of fishing, leaned back, lighted his
pipe, and drifted. He could hear the chattering of a hedgehog up in the
dry timber, and the scream of a hawk, like the whistle of some craft,
leagues away on the sunlit deep of silence. A wild goose steered
straight across the heavens, far bound, his wings making a noise like
the cleaving of water and the creak of full sails. He saw the man below
him and flung a cry overboard. A great bee, driven out of a lily, threw
his warning loop around the head of the intruder and boomed out of
hearing. Those threads of sound seemed to bind the tongue of the youth,
and to connect his soul with the great silence into which they ran.

Robert Master had crossed that desert of uncertainty which lies between
college and the beginning of a career. At last he had made his plan. He
would try in his own simple way to serve his country. He was a man of
"the new spirit," of pure ideals, of high patriotism. He had set out to
try to make his way in politics.

He had been one of the "big men," dauntless and powerful, who had
saved the day for his _alma mater_ more than once on the track and the
gridiron. Handsome was a word which had been much applied to him. Hard
work in the open air had given him a sturdy figure and added the glow of
health and power to a face of unusual refinement. It was the face of a
man with whom the capacity, for stern trials had come by acquisition
and not by inheritance. He had cheerful brown eyes and a smile of
good-nature that made him beloved. His father was at the big camp, some
twenty miles away, his mother and sister having gone abroad. He and his
father were fond of their forest home; the ladies found it a bore. They
loved better the grand life and the great highways of travel.

Master sat in the centre of his canoe; an elbow rested on his paddle
which lay athwart the gunwales. He drifted awhile. He had chosen his
life work but not his life partner. He pictured to himself the girl he
would love, had he ever the luck to find her. He had thrown off his hat,
and his dark hair shone in the sunlight. Soon he pushed slowly down the
pond. In a moment he stilled his paddle and sat looking into Birch Cove.
Two fawns were playing in the edge of the water, while their dam, with
the dignity of a matron, stood on the shore looking down at them.
The fawns gambolled in the shallows like a colt at play, now and then
dashing their muzzles in the cool water. Their red coats were starred
white as if with snow-flakes. The deer stood a moment looking at Master,
stamped her feet, and retired into one of the dark alleys. In a moment
her fawns followed.

Turning, the fisherman beheld what gave him even greater surprise. In
the shadow of the birches, on a side of the cove and scarcely thirty
feet from his canoe, a girl sat looking at him. She wore a blue knit
jacket and gray skirt. There was nothing on her head save its mass of
light hair that fell curling on her shoulders. Her skin was brown as a
berry, her features of a noble and delicate mould. Her eyes, blue and
large, made their potent appeal to the heart of Master. They were like
those of his dreams--he could never forget them. So far it's the old
story of love at sight--but listen. For half a moment they looked into
each other's eyes. Then the girl, as if she were afraid of him, rose and
disappeared among the columns of white birch.

Long he sat there wondering about this strange vision of girlhood, until
he heard the halloo of Silas Strong. Turning his canoe, he pushed for
the landing.

"L-lucky?" Strong asked.

"Twenty fish, and I saw the most beautiful woman in the world."

"Where?"

"Sitting on the shore of Birch Cove. Any camp near?"

The Emperor shook his head thoughtfully as he lighted his pipe. The two
made their way up the trail.

"W-wonder if it's her?" Strong whispered to himself as he walked along.

After supper that evening Silas Strong gathered a heap of wood for a
bonfire--a way he had of celebrating arrivals at Lost River camp. Soon
he was running upon hands and knees in the firelight, with Socky and Sue
on his back.

"Silas Strong!" was the seornful exclamation of Sinth, as she took a
seat by the fire, "P-present!" he answered, as he werit on, the children
laughing merrily. "Be you a man 'or a fool?"

"Both;" he answered, ceasing his harlequinade. Sinth began her knitting,
wearing, a look of injury. "Plumb crazy 'bout them air childern!" she
exclaimed.

The "Emperor of the Woods" sat on a log, breathing heavily, with Sue and
Socky upon his knees.

"B-bears plenty, Mis' Strong," was the gentle reply of Silas.

"Mis' Strong!" said she, as if insulted. "What ye Mis' Strongin' me
for?"

When others were present she was wont to fling back upon him this
burning query. Now it seemed to stimulate him to a rather unusual
effort.

"S-some folks b-better when ye miss 'em," he suggested, with a smile of
good-nature.

Miss Strong gathered up her knitting and promptly retired, from the
scene. Sue and Socky lay back on the lap of their Uncle Silas looking
into the fire. They now saw in him great possibilities. Socky, in
particular, had begun to regard him as likely to be useful if not highly
magnificent.

Sue lay back and began to make a drowsy display of her learning:

                   "Intry, mintry, cutry com,

                   Apple-seed an' apple-thorn,

                   Wire, brier, limber lock,

                   Twelve geese all in a white flock;

                   Some fly east an' some fly west

                   An' some fly over the cuckoo's nest."

Miss Strong returned shortly and found the children asleep on the knees
of their uncle. In a moment Silas turned his ear and listened.

"Hark!" he whispered.

They could hear some one approaching on the dark trail. A man oddly
picturesque, with a rifle on his shoulder, strode into the firelight.
He wore knee-breeches and a coat of buckskin. He had a rugged face, a
sturdy figure, and was, one would have guessed, some sixty years of age.

A fringe of thin, white hair showed below his cap. He had a white
mustache, through which a forgotten cigar protruded. His black eyes
glowed in the firelight beneath silvered brows. He nodded as they
greeted him. His ruddy face wrinkled thoughtfully as he turned to
Gordon.

"It's a long time," said he, offering his hand.

"Some years," Gordon answered, as he took the hand of Dunmore.

"W-welcome!" said Silas Strong.

"Boneka!" Dunmore exclaimed, gruffly, but with a faint smile. For years
it had been his customary word of greeting.

"The Emperor and his court!" he went on, as he looked about him. "Who
are these?" He surveyed the sleeping children.

"The Duke and Duchess of Hillsborough--nephew and niece of the Emperor,"
Master answered, giving them titles which clung to Socky and Sue for a
twelvemonth.

"The first children I've ever seen in the woods except my own," said the
white-haired man.

Zeb ran around the chair of the Emperor, growling and leaping playfully
at Socky and Sue.

"The court jester!" said Dunmore, looking down at the dog.

He stood a moment with his back to the blazing logs.

Then he went to the chair of the Emperor, and put his hand under the
chin of little Sue and looked into her face. In half a moment he took
her in his arms and sat down by the fireside. The child was yawning
wearily.

"Heigh-ho!" he exclaimed; "let's away to the Isles of Rest."

He rocked back and forth as he held her against his breast and sang this
lullaby:

               "Jack Tot was as big as a baby's thumb,

               And his belly could hold but a drop and a crumb,

                   And a wee little sailor was he--Heigh-ho!

                   A very fine sailor was he.


               'He made his boat of a cocoa-nut shell,

               He sails her at night and he steers her well

                   With the wing of a bumble-bee--Heigh-ho!

                   With the wing of a bumble-bee.


               'She is rigged with the hair of a lady's curl,

               And her lantern is made of a gleaming pearl,

                   And it never goes out in a gale--Heigh-ho!

                   It never goes out in a gale.


               'Her mast is made of a very long thorn,

               She calls her crew with a cricket's horn,

                   And a spider spun her sail--Heigh-ho!

                   A spider he spun her sail.


               'She carries a cargo of baby souls,

               And she crosses the terrible nightmare shoals

                   On her way to the Isles of Rest--Heigh-ho!

                   We're off for the Isles of Rest.


               'And often they smile as the good ship sails--

               Then the skipper is telling incredible tales

                   With many a merry jest--Heigh-ho!

                   He's fond of a merry jest.


               'When the little folks yawn they are ready to go,

               And Jack Tot is lifting his sail--Hee-hoo!

                   In the swell how the little folks nod--He-hoo!

                   Just see how the little folks nod.


               'And some have sailed off when the sky was black,

               And the poor little sailors have never come back,

                   But have steered for the City of God--Heigh-ho!

                   The beautiful City of God!"

The white-haired man closed his eyes and his voice sank low, and the
last words fell softly in a solemn silence that lasted for a long
moment after the lullaby was finished. Presently Sinth came to take the
sleeping child.

"These little folks will take our peace away from us," said he, in a
warning tone.

"Why?"

"The call of the sown land is in their voices," said he. "They give me
sad thoughts."

Sinth smiled and introduced the young man to Dunmore.

"Boneka!" said the latter as they shook hands.

The curiosity of Master was aroused by the strange greeting. He smiled,
and answered, modestly, "I don't understand you."

The stranger sat silent, gazing into the fire, until Silas, who was
evidently in the secret, said to his guest, "Tell 'em."

"There was once a very wise and honored chief," began Dunmore, after
a pause, and looking into the eyes of the young man. "Long before the
lumber hunter had begun to shear the hills, he dwelt among them, with
his good people. He was a great law-giver, and his law was all in two
words--'_Be kind._' Kindness begat kindness, and peace reigned, to be
broken only by some far-come invader. But as time went on quarrels arose
and the law was forgotten. Thereupon the chief invited a great council
and organized the Society of the Magic Word. Every member promised that
whenever the greeting 'Boneka' were given him, he would smile and bow
and answer, 'Ranokoli.' The greeting meant 'Peace,' and the answer, 'I
forgive.'

"Then, one by one, the law-giver called his councillors before him, and
to each he said: 'The Great Spirit is in this greeting. I defy you to
hear it and keep a sober face.'

"Then he said 'Boneka,' and the man would try to resist the influence
of the spirit, but soon smiled in spite of himself, amid the laughter of
the tribe, and said 'Ranokoli.' Thereafter, when a quarrel arose between
two people, an outsider, approaching, would greet them with the magic
word, and immediately they would bow and smile, and answer, 'I forgive.'
But, nevertheless, if one had wronged another he was justly punished by
the chief. So it was that a great ruler made an end of quarrels among
his people."

"A grand idea!" said young Master. "Let's all join that society."

"Those in favor of the suggestion will please say ay." It was Dunmore
who put the question, and, after a vote in its favor, dictated the
pledge, as follows:

_"For value received from my Loving Father, I promise to give to any of
His children, on demand, a smile and full forgiveness."_

All signed it, and so half in play the old Society of the Magic Word was
revived at Lost River camp.

The white-haired man rose and walked to the trail and turned suddenly.

"Strong," said he, "I'm leaving the woods for a week. If they need your
help at home they'll send word to you."

With that he disappeared in the dark trail.

The three other men still sat by the camp-fire.

"Who is Dunmore?" Master inquired, turning to Gordon.

The latter lighted his pipe and began the story.

"An odd man who's spent the most of his life in the woods," said Gordon.
"Came in here for his health long ago from I don't know where; grew
strong, and has always stuck to the woods. Had to work, like the rest of
us, when I knew him. Thirty years ago he began work in this part of the
country as a boom rat--so they tell me. It was on a big drive way down
the Oswegatchie.

"Before we bought the Bear Mountain and Lost River tracts we were looking
for a good cruiser--some one to go through here and estimate the timber
for us. Well, Dunmore was recommended for the job, and we hired him. He
and I travelled over some thirty thousand acres, camping wherever night
overtook us. It did not take me long to discover that he was a gifted
man. Many an evening, as we sat by our lonely fire in the woods, I have
wept and laughed over his poems."

"Poems!" Master exclaimed.

"That's the only word for it," Gordon went on. "The man is a woods
lover and a poet. One night he told me part of his life story. Sile,
you remember when the old iron company shut down their works at Tifton.
Well, everybody left the place except Tom Muir, the postmaster. He was a
widower, and lived with one child--a girl about nineteen years old
when the forest village died. Dunmore married that girl. He told me
how beautiful she was and how he loved her. Well, they didn't get along
together. He was fond of the woods and she was not.

"For five years they lived together in the edge of the wilderness. Then
she left him. Well--poor woman!--it was a lonely life, and some tourist
fell in love with her, they tell me. I don't know about that. Anyhow,
Dunmore was terribly embittered. A little daughter had been born to
them. She was then three years of age."

"She's the angel y-you met to-day over by the p-pond," Strong put in,
looking at Master.

Gordon lighted his pipe and went on with his story.

"Dunmore said that a relative had left him a little money. I remember we
were camping that night on the shore of Buckhorn. Its beauty appealed to
him. He said he'd like to buy that section and build him a camp on the
pond and spend the rest of his life there.

"'But,' said I, 'you couldn't bring up your daughter in the woods.'
Buckhorn was then thirty miles from anywhere.

"'That's just what I wish to do,' he answered. 'The world is so full of
d------d spaniels'--I remember that was the phrase he used--and there's
so much infamy among men, I'd rather keep her out of it. I want her to
be as pure at twenty as she is now. I can teach her all I wish her to
know.'

"Well, I sold him the Buckhorn tract. He built his camp, and moved there
with the little girl and his mother--a woman of poor health and well
past middle age. He brought an old colored man and his wife to be their
servants, and there they are to-day--Dunmore and his mother and the girl
and the two servants, now grown rather aged, they tell me."

"They have never left the woods?" said Master, as if it were too
incredible.

"Dunmore goes to New York, but not oftener than once a year," Gordon
went on. "He has property--a good deal of property, I suppose, and has
to give it some attention. The others have never left the woods."

"Sends home b-big boxes, an' I t-tote 'em in," Silas explained.

"Do you mean to tell me that Dunmore's daughter has never seen the
clearing since she was a baby?"

Strong's interest was thoroughly aroused. He took off his coat and laid
it down carefully, as if he were about to go in swimming. He was wont to
do this when his thoughts demanded free and full expression.

"B-been t' Tillbury post-office w-with the ol' man--n-no further,"
Strong explained. "Dunmore says she 'ain't never s-seen a child 'cept
one. That was a b-baby. Some man an' his w-wife come through here w-with
it from the n-north th-three year ago."

"Fact is, I think he feared for a long time that his wife would try to
get possession of the child," said Gordon. "Late years, I understand,
the girl has had to take care of the old lady. In a letter to me once
Dunmore referred to his daughter as the 'little nun of the green veil,'
and spoke of her devotion to her grandmother."

Gordon rose and went to his bed in one of the cabins. Strong and the
young man kept their seats at the camp-fire, talking of Dunmore and his
daughter and their life in the woods. The Emperor, who felt for this
lonely child of the forest, talked from a sense of duty.

"S-sail in," he presently said. "S-sail in an' t-tame her."

"I don't know how to begin."

"She'll be there t-to-morrer sure," Strong declared.

"So shall I," said the young man.

"C-cal'late she's w-wownded, too," Strong suggested. "B-be careful.
She's like a w-wild deer."

They were leaving the fire on their way to bed. The young man stopped
and repeated the words incredulously--"Like a wild deer!"

"T-take the ch-childem with ye," Strong advised. "She'll w-want t'
look 'em over."




X

SOCKY woke early next morning, and lay looking up at the antlers, guns,
and rifles which adorned the wall. On a table near him were some of the
treasures of that sylvan household--a little book entitled _Melinda_, a
dingy Testament, a plush-covered photograph-album, and a stuffed bird on
a wire bough.

Sinth and the album were inseparable. She sometimes left the dingy
Testament or the little book entitled _Melinda_ at her Pitkin home, but
not the plush-covered album. That was the one link which connected her,
not only with the past, but with a degree of respectability, and even
with a vague hope of paradise. What a pantheon of family deities! What
a museum of hair and whiskers! What a study of the effect of terror,
headache, rheumatism, weariness, Sunday apparel, tight boots, and
reckless photography upon the human countenance!

Therein was the face of Sinth, indescribably gnarled by the lens; a
daguerreotype of her grandmother adorned with lace and tokens of a more
cheerful time in the family history; faces and forms which for Sinth
recalled her play-days, and were gone as hopelessly.

Just after supper the night before, Socky had seen his uncle apply
grease to a number of boots and guns. The boy had been permitted to put
his hands in the thick oil of the bear, and, while its odor irked him a
little, it had, as it were, reduced the friction on his bearings. Since
then the gear of his imagination had seemed to work easier, and had
carried him far towards the goal of manhood.

Immediately after waking he found the bottle of bear's-oil and poured
some on his own boots and rubbed it in. He was now delighted with
the look of them. It was wonderful stuff, that bear's-oil. It made
everything look shiny and cheerful, and gave one a grateful sense of
high accomplishment.

Soon he had greased the bird and the bush, and the oil had dripped
on the album and the dingy Testament and the little book entitled
_Melinda_. Then he greased the feet and legs of Zeb, who lay asleep in
a corner, and who promptly awoke and ran across the floor and leaped
through an open window, and hid himself under a boat, as if for proper
consideration of ways and means. In a few moments Socky had greased
the shoes of his sister, and a ramrod which lay on the window-sill, and
taken the latter into bed with him.

Soon he began to miss the good Aunt Marie, for, generally, when he first
awoke he had gone and got into bed with her. He held to the ramrod and
sustained himself with manly reflections, whispering as they came to
mind: "I'm going to be a man. I ain't no cry-baby. I'm going to kill
bears and send the money to my father, an' my Uncle Silas will give me a
rocking-horse an' a silver dofunny--he said he would."

He ceased to whisper. An imaginary bear had approached the foot of the
bed just in time to save him, for the last of his reflections had been
interrupted by little sobs. He struck bravely with the ramrod and felled
the bear, and got out of bed and skinned him and hung his hide over the
back of a chair. He found some potatoes in a sack beside the fireplace,
and put down a row for the bear's body and some more for the feet and
legs. Then he greased the bear's feet and got into bed again, for Sue
had awoke and begun to cry.

"What's the matter?" he inquired.

"I want my Aunt Marie," the girl sobbed.

"Stop, Uncle Silas 'll hear you," said Socky.

"I don't care."

"I'd be 'shamed," the boy answered, his own voice trembling with
suppressed emotion.

Since a talk he had had with his father the day before, he felt a large
and expanding sense of responsibility for his sister. Just now an-idea
occurred to him--why shouldn't he, in his own person, supply the
deficiencies of the great man they had come to see?

"I'll be your Uncle Silas," he remarked. "I'm a man now, an' I've killed
a bear."

"Where is he?"

"Dead on the floor there."

She covered her face with the blankets.

"I'm going to have a pair o' moccasins an' a rifle, an' I'll carry you
on my b-back." He had stammered on the last word after the manner of his
uncle.

Just then they heard a singular creaking outside the door, and before
either had time to speak it was flung open. They were both sitting up in
bed as their Uncle Silas entered.

"I tnum!" said he, cheerfully.

Suddenly he saw the bird and the books and the table-top and the
potatoes and the ramrod and the hands of Socky. He whistled ruefully;
his smile faded.

"W-well greased!" he said, looking down at the books and the bird.

He found a gun-rag and wiped up the oil as best he could.

"She'll r-raise--" The remark ended in a cough as he wiped the books.
Then he covered them with an empty meal-bag.

The children began to dress while Strong went half-way up the ladder and
called to Gordon, still asleep in the loft above. Then he sat on the bed
and helped the boy and girl get their clothes buttoned..

"My little f-fawns!" he muttered, with a laugh.

He had sat up until one o'clock at work in his little shop by the light
of a lantern. He had sawed some disks from a round beech log and bored
holes in them. He had also made axles and a reach and tongue, and put
them together. Then he had placed a cross-bar and a pivot on the front
axle and fastened a starch-box over all. The result was a wagon, which
he had arisen early to finish, and with which he had come to wake "the
little fawns." Now, when they were dressed, he sat them side by side in
the wagon-box and clattered off down the trail.

At first the children sat silent, oppressed as they were by the odor of
bear's-oil, not yet entirely removed from their hands and faces. As the
wagon proceeded they began to laugh and call the dog. Zeb peered from
under the friendly cover of the boat, and gave a yearning bark which
seemed to express regret, not wholly unmingled with accusation, that
on account of other engagements he would be unable to accept their kind
invitation. At the boat-house were soap and towel and glad deliverance
from the flavor of the bear. On their return "Mis' Strong" met them at
the door of the cook-tent. She raised both hands above her head.

"My album!" she gasped.

"T-y-ty!" the Emperor whispered.

"An' the book my mother gave me!" she exclaimed, her tone rising from
despair to anger. "They're ruined--Silas Strong!"

"N-nonsense," said her brother, calmly.

"Nonsense!" she exclaimed, tauntingly. "Silas Strong, do you know what
has been done to 'em?"

"G-greased," he answered, mildly. "D-do 'em good."

She ran into the cook-tent and returned with the sacred album. There
was an odd menace in her figure as she displayed the book. She spread it
open.

"Look at my grandfather!" she demanded.

The bear's-oil had added emphasis to a subtle, inherent suggestion of
smothered profanity in the image of her ancestor. It had, as it were,
given clearness to an expression of great physical discomfort.

"L-limber him up," said the Emperor, quite soberly.

Master and Gordon were now approaching. The former took off his hat and
bowed to the indignant Sinth and blandly remarked, "Boneka, madam."

The men had begun to laugh. Sinth changed color. She looked down. A
smile began to light her thin face. She turned away, repeated the
magic word in a low voice, and added, "I forgive." She walked hurriedly
through the cook-tent to her own quarters, and sat down and wept as if,
in truth, the oil had entered her soul. It was, in a way, pathetic--her
devotion to the tawdry plush and this poor shadow of her ancestor--and
the historian has a respect for it more profound, possibly, than his
words may indicate. She would have given her album for her friend, and
it may be questioned if any man hath greater love than this.

When she entered the dinner-tent and sat down to stir batter for the
excellent "flapjacks" of Lost River camp, the children came and kissed
her and stood looking up into her face. Socky had begun to comprehend
his relation to the trouble. Shame, guilt, and uncertainty were in his
countenance. Urgent queries touching the use and taste and constitution
of batter and its feeling on the index-finger of one's hand were
pressing upon him, but he saw that, in common decency, they must be
deferred.

"Aunt Sinthy," said the little Duke of Hillsborough.

"What?" she answered.

"I won't never grease your album again."

The woman laughed, placed the pan on the table, and put her arms around
the child. Then she answered, in a tone of good-nature, "If it had been
anything else in this world, I wouldn't have minded."

Just then Zeb slowly entered the cook-tent. He had got rid of some of
the oil, but had acquired a cough. The hair on every leg was damp
and matted. He seemed to doubt his fitness for social enjoyment. In a
tentative manner he surveyed the breakfast-party, as if to study his
effect upon the human species. The Emperor patted him and felt of his
legs.

"What's the matter o' him?" Sinth inquired.

"G-greased!" said the Emperor, with a loud laugh, in which the campers
joined, whereat the dog fled from the cook-tent.

"S-slippery mornin'!" Strong exclaimed, while he stood looking through
the doorway.

"Hard t' keep yer feet," said Sinth, who had caught the contagion of
good feeling which had begun to prevail. It was, indeed, a remark not
without some spiritual significance.

So it befell: the spirit of that old chief whose body had long been
given to the wooded hills came into Lost River camp.

Gordon hurried away after breakfast. While the children stood looking
down the trail and waving their hands and weeping, Silas Strong ran
past them two or three times with the noisy little wagon. Its consoling
clatter silenced them. There had been a deep purpose in the heart of
the Emperor while he spent half the night in his workshop. Gordon had
laughingly explained the cause of their disappointment on arriving at
Lost River camp. Strong was trying to recover their esteem.

"C-come on!" he shouted.

Soon Socky and Sue sat in the little wagon on their way to Catamount
Pond with their Uncle Silas and the young fisherman.




XI.

THE sky was clear, and the rays of the sun fell hot upon the dry woods
that morning when Master and the children and their Uncle Silas reached
the landing at Catamount. Its eastern shore lay deep under cool shadows.
The water plane was like taut canvas on which a glowing picture of
wooded shore and sky and mountain had been painted. Golden robins darted
across a cove and sang in the tree-tops.

Master righted his canoe and put the children aboard and took his place
in the stern-seat.

"I'll slip over to R-Robin," said the Emperor as he shoved the canoe
into deep water. With him to "slip" meant to go, and in his speech he
always "slipped" from one point to another.

Master pushed through the pads and slowly cut the still shadow. The
inverted towers of Painter Mountain began to quake beneath his canoe.
Sue sat in the bow and Socky behind her. The curly hair of the girl,
which had, indeed, the silken yellow of a corn-tassel, showed beneath
her little pink bonnet. Something about her suggested the rose half
open. Socky wore his rabato and necktie and best suit of clothes. They
were both in purple and fine linen, so to speak---no one had thought to
tell them better.

As they came near the point of Birch Cove, Master began to turn the bow
and check his headway. There, on a moss-covered rock, stood the maiden
whom he had seen the day before. A crow with a small scarlet ribbon
about his neck clung upon her shoulder. The girl was looking at the two
children. The bird rose on his wings and, after a moment of hesitation,
flew towards them, the ends of the scarlet ribbon fluttering in the
air. Socky drew back as the crow lighted on a gunwale near his side. Sue
clung to the painter and sat looking backward with curiosity and fear
in her face. The crow turned his head, surveying them as if he were,
indeed, quite overcome with amazement.

"Sit still," said Master, quietly. "He won't hurt you."

The bird rose in the air again, and, darting downward, seized a shiny
buckle above the visor of the boy's cap, which lay on the canoe bottom,
and bore cap and all to his young mistress. Socky began to cry with
alarm.

Master reassured him and paddled slowly towards the moss-covered rock.
Silently his bow touched the shore. He stuck his paddle in the sand. He
stepped into the shallow water and helped the children ashore. In the
edge of the tamaracks and now partly hidden by their foliage, Miss
Dunmore stood looking at the children. Her figure was tall, erect, and
oddly picturesque. Somehow she reminded Master of a deer halted in its
flight by curiosity. Her face, charming in form and expression, betrayed
a childish timidity and innocence. Her large, blue eyes were full of
wonder. Pretty symbols of girlish vanity adorned her figure. There
were fresh violets on her bodice, and a delicate, lacy length of the
moss-vine woven among her curls. The girl's hair, wonderfully full and
rich in color, had streaks of gold in it. A beaded belt and holster of
Indian make held a small pistol.

"Miss Dunmore, I believe?" he ventured.

The girl retired a step or two and stood looking timidly, first at him
and then at the children. Her manner betrayed excitement. She addressed
him with hesitation. "My--my name is Edith Dunmore," she said, in a
tone just above a whisper. With trembling hands she picked a spray of
tamarack that for a moment obscured her face.

"You are the nun of the green veil. I have heard of you," said Master.

"I--I must not speak to you, sir," she said, as she retreated a little
farther.

"My name is Master--Robert Master," said he. "I shall stay only a
minute, but these children would like to know you." While speaking he
had returned to his canoe. Socky and Sue stood still, looking up at the
maiden.

"Children!" she exclaimed, in a low, sweet, tremulous, tone, as she took
a step towards them. "The wonderful little children?"

"Sometimes I think they are brownies," he answered, with a smile of
amusement. "But their uncle calls them little fawns."

Her right hand, which held the spray of tamarack, fell to her side; her
left hand clung to a branch on which the crow sat a little above her
shoulder, and her cheek lay upon her arm as she looked down wistfully,
fondly, at the children. Her blue eyes were full of curiosity.

Socky and Sue regarded the beautiful maiden with a longing akin to that
in her. In all there was a deep, mysterious desire which had grown out
of nature's need--in them for a mother, in her for the endearing touch
of those newly come into the world and for their high companionship.
Moreover, these two little ones, who had now a dim and imperfect
recollection of their mother, had shaped an ideal--partly through the
help of Gordon--to take its place. Therein they saw a lady, young and
beautiful and more like this one who stood before them than like any
they had yet beheld. Sue grasped the hand of her brother, and both stood
gazing at the maiden, but neither spoke nor moved for a moment. Edith
Dun-more leaned forward a little, looking into their faces.

"Can you not speak to me?" she asked.

Socky began to be embarrassed; his eyes fell; he shook his head
doubtfully.

Edith Dunmore looked up at the stalwart figure of the young man. Their
eyes met. She quickly turned away. The tame crow, on the bough above,
began to laugh and chatter as if he thought it all an excellent joke.

"May--I--take them in my arms?" she asked, with hesitation.

"Yes; but I warn you--they have a way of stealing one's heart."

"Ah-h-h-h-h!" croaked the little crow, in a warning cry, as if he had
seen at once the peril of it.

She had begun to move slowly, almost timidly, towards the children. She
knelt before them and took the little hand of Sue in hers and looked
upon it with wonder. She touched it with her lips; she pressed it
against her cheek; she trembled beneath its power. The touch of the
child's hand was, for her, it would almost seem, like that of One on the
eyes of Bartimeus. Suddenly, as by a miracle, Edith Dunmore rose out
of childhood. The veil of the nun was rent away. She was a woman fast
coming into riches of unsuspected inheritance. She put her arms about
the two and gently drew them towards her and held them close. Her
embrace and the touch of her breast upon theirs were grateful to them,
and they kissed her. Her eyes were wet, her sweet voice full of familiar
but uncomprehended longing when she said, "Dear little children!"

"Tut, _tut!_" said the tame crow, who had crept to the end of his
branch, where he stood looking down at them. In a moment he began to
break the green twigs and let them fall on the head of his mistress.

Sue felt the hair and looked into the face and eyes of the maiden with
wondering curiosity. Socky ran his fingers over the beaded belt. Both
had a suspicion which they dared not express that here was an angel in
some way related to their mother.

"You are a beautiful lady," said the boy, with childish frankness.

Master has often tried to describe the scene. He confesses that words,
even though vivid and well spoken, cannot make one to understand the
something which lay beneath all said and done, and which went to his
heart so that for a time he turned and walked away from them.

"Do you remember when you were fairies?" the girl asked of the children.

The latter shook their heads.

"Tell us about the fairies," Sue proposed, timidly.

"They are old, old people--so my father has told me," said the beautiful
lady. "They came into this world thousands of years ago riding in a
great cloud that was drawn by wild geese. The fairies came down, each on
a big flake of snow, and got off in the tree-tops and never went away.
At first they were the teentiest folks--so little that a hundred of them
could stand on a maple leaf--and very, very old. My father says they
were never young in their lives, and I guess they have always lived.
They rode around on the backs of the birds and saw everything in the
world and had such a good time they all began to grow young. Now, as
they grew young they grew bigger and bigger, and every spring a lot more
of the little old people came out of the sky and began to grow young
like the others. And by-and-by some of them were as big as your thumb
and bigger."

"How big do they grow?" the boy asked.

"As they grow young they keep growing bigger. By-and-by the birds cannot
carry them. Then they have to walk, and for the first time in their
lives they begin to get hungry and learn to cry and nobody knows what
is the matter with them. The fairies complain about the noise they make,
and one night a little old woman takes them down into the woods to get
them out of the way. And violets grow wherever their feet touch the
ground, and they sit in a huckleberry bush and make a noise like the cry
of a spotted fawn. The fawns hear them and know very well what they are
crying for. The fawns have always loved them. When the fairies come down
out of the tree-tops they always ride on the fawns, and where they have
sat you can see a little white spot about as big as a flake of snow.
That's why the fawns are spotted, and you know how shy they are--they
mustn't let anybody see the fairies. Well, the young ones sit there in
a huckleberry bush crying. The little animals come and lick their faces
and tell them of a wonderful spring where milk flows out of a little
hill and has a magic power in it, for even if one were crying and tasted
the milk he always became happy. The young fairies climb on the backs of
the fawns and ride away. By-and-by the fawns come to their mothers and
their mothers tell them that no one who has teeth in his head can drink
at the spring. So they wonder what to do. By-and-by they go to the
woodpecker, for he has a pair of forceps and can pull anything, and the
woodpecker pulls their teeth. Then the young fairies do nothing but ride
around--each on a spotted fawn--and drink at the wonderful spring and
grow fat and lazy, and the birds pull every hair out of their heads to
build nests with. They live down in the woods, for they cannot climb
the trees any more, and one day they fall asleep for the first time and
tumble off the fawns and lie on the ground dreaming.

"They dream of the fairy-heaven where they shall grow old again and each
shall have a mother and his own wonderful spring of milk. Now that day
trees begin to grow in the ground beneath them. The trees grow fast, and
all in a night they lift the sleeping fairies far above the ground. The
wind rocks them and they lie dreaming in the tree-tops until a crane, as
he is crossing over the sky, looks down and sees them and goes and takes
them away. You know the cranes have to go through the sky every day and
pick up the young fairies."

She paused and sat holding the hands of little Sue and looking at them
as if their beauty were a great wonder.

"Where do they take them?"

Master was returning, and the girl rose like one afraid and whispered to
the children, "I will tell you if--if you will come again."

"I shall ask your father if I may come and see you," said Master as he
came near.

"Ha! ha! ha!" the bird croaked, fluttering in the air and lighting on
the shoulder of his mistress.

The children stepped aside quickly, as if in fear of it.

She took the crow on her finger and held him at arm's-length. He turned
and tried to catch an end of the scarlet ribbon. She was a picture then
to remind one of the days of falconry. She ran a few paces up a green
aisle in the thicket. She stopped where the young man was unable to see
her.

"Could--could you bring the children again, sir?" she asked.

"On Thursday, at the same hour," he answered.

He heard again the warning of the little crow and her footsteps growing
fainter in the dark trail of the deer.




XII.

MASTER paddled slowly to the landing where he had left Strong, and
gathered lilies while they waited. He pushed up to the shore as soon
as the Emperor had arrived. "Sp'ilt," said the latter, pointing in the
direction of Robin Lake.

"You mean that we cannot use the camp over there?"

"Ay-ah," Strong almost whispered, with a face in which perspiration was
mingled with regret and geniality.

"S-see 'er?"

"Yes," Master answered. "The children were a great help. She fell in
love with them. We are to meet her again Thursday."

"Uh-huh!" Strong exclaimed, in a tone which seemed to say, "I told you
so."

"S-sociable?" he inquired, after a little pause.

"No, but interested."

"Uh-huh, says I!" the Emperor exclaimed again, with playful conceit.
When he was in the mood of self-congratulation he had an odd way of
bringing out those two words--"says I."

"She was afraid of me. I backed away and said very little," Master
explained.

"Th-they'll t-tame her," the Emperor assured him.

"She has a wonderful crow with her," said the young man.

"Her g-guide," Strong explained. "Alwus knows the n-nighest way home."

"If you'll help me, I'll make my camp here," said Master.

"Ay-ah," the Emperor answered.

His manner and his odd remark were full of approval and almost
affectionate admiration. In half a moment his tongue lazily added,
"L-lean her 'gin th-that air rock." In his conversation he conferred the
feminine gender upon all inanimate things--a kind of compliment to the
sex he revered so highly.

"How long will it take?"

"Day," said Strong, surveying the ground.

"I have to speak in Hillsborough on the Fourth. Suppose we tackle it on
my return?"

Strong agreed, and while he and the children set out for camp Master
remained to fish.

Two "sports" had arrived in the absence of the Emperor and were shooting
at a mark--a pastime so utterly foolish in the view of Silas Strong that
he would rarely permit any one at Lost River camp to indulge in it.
He who discharged his rifle without sufficient provocation was roughly
classed with that breed of hounds which had learned no better than to
bark at a squirrel.

"Paunchers!" he muttered, as he came up the trail.

It should be explained here that he divided all "would-be sportsmen"
into three classes--namely, swishers, pouters, and paunchers. A swisher
was one who filled the air within reach of his cast, catching trees and
bushes, but no fish; a pouter, one who baited and hauled his fish as if
it were no better than a bull-pout; a pauncher was wont to hit his deer
"in the middle" and never saw him again.

The Emperor stopped suddenly. He had seen a twig fall near him and heard
the whiz of a bullet.

"Whoa!" he called, his voice ringing in the timber. "H-hold on!"

The Migleys--father and son--of Migleyville, hastened to greet the
"Emperor of the Woods."

They were the heralds of the great king of which Strong had complained
that night he laid his heart bare and whose name was Business--a king
who ruled not with the sword, but with flattery and temptation and
artful devices. The Emperor knew that they were the men who had bought
his stronghold; that they were come to shove the frontier of their
king far beyond the Lost River country; that axes and saws and dams and
flooded flats and whirling wheels and naked hill-sides would soon follow
them.

"How are you, Mr. Strong?" said the elder Migley, who, by his son, was
familiarly called "Pop." He overflowed with geniality. "Glad to see you.
Hot an' dry out in the clearing. Little track-worn. Thought we'd come
in here for a breath o' fresh air an' a week or two o' sport. Have a
drink?"

He winked one eye in a significant manner, which seemed to say that he
had plenty and was out for a good time.

"N-no th-thanks," said Strong, as he surveyed the stout figure of the
elder Migley.

Here was one of the royal family of Business, in dress neatly symbolic,
for Mr. Migley wore a light suit of clothes divided into checks of
considerable magnitude by stripes that ran, as it were, north, south,
east, and west. The broad convexity of his front resembled, in some
degree, an atlas globe. One might have located any part of his system
by degrees of latitude and longitude. His equator was represented by a
large golden chain which curved in a great arc from one pocket of his
waistcoat to the other. As he walked one might have imagined that he
was moving in his orbit. His large, full face was adorned with a
chin-whisker and a selfish and prosperous-looking nose. It had got
possession of nearly all the color in his countenance, and occupied more
than its share of space. The son, "Tom," had older manners and a more
severe face. He carried with him a look of world-weariness and a
sense of all-embracing knowledge so frequently derived from youthful
experience. He was the-only-son type of domestic tyrant--overfed,
selfish, brutal, wearied by adulation, crowned with curly hair.

"Look at that boy," the elder Migley whispered, pointing at the fat
young man of twenty-three who sat on a door-sill cleaning his rifle.
"Ain't he a picture? Got a fast mark in Hash-ford Seminary." Mr. Migley
owned a number of trotting-horses, and his conversation was always
flavored with the cant of the stable.

Strong looked sadly at the fat young man, who was, indeed, the very
personification of pulp, and thought of the doom of the woods.

The elder Migley, as if able to read the mind of Strong, offered him
the consolation of a cigar. Then he reached to the pegs above him and
lowered a quaking whip of greenheart which he had put together soon
after his arrival.

"Heft it," he whispered, pressing his rod upon the Emperor. "Ain't that
a dandy?"

He looked into the eyes of the woodsman. He winked a kind of challenge,
and added, "Seems to me that ought to fetch 'em."

"Mebbe," Strong answered, gently swaying the rod. He was never too free
in committing himself.

"Got it for Tommy," said the new sportsman. "Ketched a four-pounder
with it--ask him if I didn't." Mr. Migley had the habit of
self-corroboration, and Strong used to say that he never believed that
kind of a liar.

"Le's go an' try 'em," Migley suggested.

The Emperor smoked thoughtfully a moment.

"D-down river, bym-by," he said, pointing at the cook-tent as if he had
now to prepare the dinner.

Strong had seen the Migleys before, although he had never entertained
them. They had paunched and pouted in territory not far remote from Lost
River, and won a reputation which had travelled among the guides. They
worked hard, and hurried out of the woods with all the fish and meat
they could carry, and no respect for any law save one--the law of
gravitation. They sat down or lay upon their backs every half-hour. Now,
it seemed, they were to abandon the vulgar art of the pouter for one
more gentle and becoming.

Strong hastened to the cook-tent, where he found Sinth treating the
children to sugared cakes and words of motherly fondness.

"Teenty little dears!" she was saying when Silas entered the door.

She rose quickly, and hurried to the stove with a kind of shame on her
countenance. Silas kept a sober face while he went for the water-pail,
as if he had not "took notice." His joy broke free and expressed itself
in loud laughter on his way to the spring.

"Snook!" Sinth exclaimed, her face red with embarrassment as she heard
him. She poked the fire with great energy, and added: "Let the fool
laugh. I don't care if he did hear me."

A new impulse from the heart of nature entered the Migley breast. Father
and son were seeking an opportunity to use their muscles. The son seized
a girder above his head and began to chin it; the father went to work
with an axe, and his enthusiasm fell in heavy blows upon a beech log.

Strong peered through the window at him and muttered the one
contemptuous word, "W-woodpecker!"

A poor chopper in that part of the country was always classed with the
woodpeckers.

Dinner over, the elder Migley opened his tin fishing-box and displayed
an assortment of cheap flies and leaders.

"Well, captain," said the young man, as he turned to Strong, "if you'll
show us where the trout live, we'll show you who they belong to." He
passed judgment and bestowed rank upon a great many people, and most of
his brevets, if he had been frank with them, would have put his life in
peril.

"Pop" Migley touched a rib of the Emperor with his big, coercive thumb,
shut one eye, and produced a kind of snore in his larynx.

The wit of his son had increased the cheerfulness of Mr. Migley. He
began telling coarse tales, and continued until, as the Emperor would
say, he had "emptied his reel." The man who talked too much always had
a "big reel," in the thought of the Emperor, and "slack line" was the
phrase he applied to empty words.

With everything ready for sport, they proceeded to the landing on Lost
River and were soon seated in a long canoe.

"We'll t-try Dunmore's trout," said Strong as they left the shore.

"Dunmore's trout?" said the elder Migley.

"Ay-uh," the Emperor answered. "He hitched onto an' l-lost him."

"Oh, it's that fish I've heard about that grabbed off one of Dunmore's
flies," said the elder Migley.

"Uh-huh," the Emperor assented.

As a matter of fact, the old gentleman who lived on the shore of
Buckhorn had done a good deal of talking about this remarkable fish.

Father and son sat with rods in hand while Strong worked through the
still water and down a long rush of rapids and halted below them near a
deep pool flecked with foam.

"C-cast," said he.

With a wild swish and a spasmodic movement of arm and shoulder, "Pop"
Migley, who sat amidships, tipped the canoe until it took water.

Strong dashed his paddle and recovered balance. The young man swore.

"C-cast yer _f-flies_," Strong suggested, and his emphasis clearly
indicated that the fisherman should cease casting his body.

Again the _nouveau_ worked his rod, whipping its point to the water fore
and aft. Flies and leader clawed over the back of Silas Strong, fetching
his hat off. Before he could recover, the young man went into action.
Strong ducked in time to save an ear, splashing his paddle again to keep
the canoe on its bottom. The tail-fly had caught above his elbow. When
Strong tried to loosen its hold the young man was tugging at the
line. Strong endeavored to speak, but somehow the words wouldn't come.
Suddenly the other rod came back with a powerful swing and smote him on
the top of his head.

He had been trying to say "See here," but his tongue had halted on the
s. Then he took a new tack, as it were, and tried a phrase which began
with the letter g, and had fair success with it.

Both Migleys gave a start of surprise. The Emperor waited to recover
self-control and felt a touch of remorse.

"Le' me c-climb a t-tree," he suggested, presently.

The elder Migley burst into loud laughter.

"Stop fooling!" said the young man. "I'd like to get some fish."

He swung his rod, and was again tugging at the shirt-sleeve of the
Emperor.

Strong blew as he clung to the leader.

"C-cast c-crossways," he commanded, with a gesture.

The fishermen rested a moment. A hundred feet or so below them Strong
saw a squirrel crossing the still water. Suddenly there was a movement
behind him, and he sank out of sight. In half a moment he rose again,
swimming with frantic haste to reach a clump of alder branches. Strong
knew the mysterious villain of this little drama of the river, but said
not a word of what he had seen.

The "sports" resumed fishing with less confidence and more care. Soon
they were able to reach off twenty feet or so, but they raked the air
with deadly violence, and every moment one leader was laying hold of the
other or catching in a tree-top. Strong pulled down bough after bough to
free the flies. Presently they were caught high in a balsam.

"Take us where there's trout. What do you think we're fishing for,
anyway?" said young Migley.

"B-birds," Strong answered, as he continued hauling at the tree-top
with hand and paddle. He used language always for the simple purpose of
expressing his thoughts. Soon the elder Migley began to feel the need of
information. He passed his rod to the Emperor.

"Show me how ye do it," said he.

Strong paddled to a large, flat rock which rose, mid-stream, a little
above water. He climbed upon it and sat down lazily.

Nature had taught him, as she teaches all who bear heavy burdens, to
conserve his strength. He had none to waste in the support of dignity.
When he sat down his weight was braced with hand, foot, and elbow so
as to rest his heart and muscles. Now he seemed to anchor himself by
throwing his right knee over his left foot. His garment of cord and
muscle lay loosely on his bones. There was that in the pose of this man
to remind one of an ox lying peacefully in the field. He drew a loop of
line off the reel, and with no motion of arm or body, his wrist bent,
the point of the rod sprang forward, his flies leaped the length of
his line and fell lightly on the river surface. They wavered across the
current. He drew another loop of line. The rod rose and gave its double
spring, and his flies leaped away and fell farther down the current. So
his line flickered back and forth, running out and reaching with every
cast until it spanned near a hundred feet.

Still the Emperor smoked lazily, and, saving that little movement of the
wrist, reposed as motionless and serene as the rock upon which he sat.

Suddenly Strong's figure underwent a remarkable change. He bent forward,
alert as a panther in sight of his prey. His mouth was open, his eyes
full of animation. The supple wrist bent swiftly. The flies sprang up
and flashed backward; the line sang in its flight. Where the squirrel
rose a big trout had sprung above water and come down with a splash. But
he had missed his aim. Again the flies lighted precisely where the
trout sprang and wavered slowly through the bubbles. A breath of silence
followed. The finned arrow burst above water in a veil of mist; down he
plunged with a fierce grab at the tail-fly. The wrist of the fisherman
sprang upward. The barb caught; the line slanted straight as a lance and
seemed to strike at the river-bottom. The rod was bending. The fish had
given a quick haul, and now the line's end came rushing in. The shrewd
old trout knew how to gather slack on a fisherman. Strong rose like a
jack-in-the-box. His hand flashed to the reel. It began to play like
the end of a piston. He swung half around and his rod came up. The fish
turned for a mad rush. With hands upon rod and silk the fisherman
held to check him. Strong's line ripped through the water plane from
mid-river to the shadow of the bank. The strain upon the fish's jaw
halted him. He settled and began to jerk on the line. Strong raised his
foot and tapped the butt of his rod. The report seemed to go down the
line as if it had been a telephone message. It startled the trout, and
again he took a long reach of silk off the reel. Then slowly he went
back and forth through an arc of some twenty feet, and the long line
swung like a pendulum. Weakened by his efforts, he began to lead in.
Slowly he came near the rock, and soon the splendid trout lay gasping
from utter weariness an arm's-length from his captor.

As the net approached him he dove again, hauling with fierce energy. The
man was leaning over the edge of the rock, his rod in one hand, his net
in the other. He came near losing his balance in the sudden attack. He
scrambled into position. Again the trout gave up and followed the strain
of the leader. Strong let himself down upon the river-bottom beside the
rock, and stood to his belt in water. The fish retreated again and came
back helpless and was taken.

He filled the net. A great tail-fin waved above its rim. The Emperor
hefted his catch and blew like a buck deer, after his custom in moments
of great stress. Then came a declaration of unusual length.

"Ye could r-reel me in with a c-c-cotton th-thread an' p-pick me up in
yer f-fingers."

It was growing dusk. Strong clambered to the top of the rock. "Pop"
Migley brought the canoe alongside.

The Emperor gave a loud whistle of surprise.

"Dunmore's t-trout!" he said, soberly. He had found a "black gnat"
embedded in the fish's mouth, its snell broken near the loop. He put the
struggling fish back in the net and tied his handkerchief across the top
of it.

The Migleys both agreed that they were ready for supper.

The Emperor got aboard and requested the elder Migley to keep the fish
under water, while he took his paddle and pushed for camp. They put
their trout in a spring at the boat-house.

The sports hurried to camp. Master came down the path and met Strong.

"I've got D-Dunmore's t-trout," said the latter.

"Good!" Master answered; "that will give us an excuse to go and call on
him."




XIII

THAT evening, while the others went out to sit by the camp-fire, Silas
Strong put the children to bed and lay down beside them. They begged him
for a story, he had neither skill nor practice in narration, he had, as
the rustic merchant is wont to say, a desire to please. He knew that he
had disappointed the children and was doing his best to recover their
esteem. Possibly he ought to try and be more like other folks. He rubbed
his thin, sandy beard, he groped among the treasures of his memory.

Infrequently he had gone over them with Sinth or the Lady Ann, but
briefly and with halting words and slow reflection. He had that respect
for the past which is a characteristic of the true historian, but, in
his view, it gave him little to say of his own exploits. He was wont to
observe, ironically, that others knew more of them than he knew himself.
Owing, it may be, to his little infirmity of speech, he had never been
misled into the broad way of prevarication. Brevity had been his refuge
and his strength. He regarded with contempt the boastful narratives of
woodsmen.

Now the siren voices of the little folks had made him thoughtful. Had he
nothing to give them but disappointment? He hesitated. Then he fell, as
it were, but, happily, for the sake of those two he had begun to love,
and not through pride. It was a kind of modesty which caused him to
reach for the candle and blow it out. Then, boldly, as it were, he began
to sing a brief account of one of his own adventures. He could sing
without stammering, and therefore he sang an odd and almost tuneless
chant. He accepted such rhyme and rhythm as chanced to drift in upon
the monotonous current of his epic; but he turned not aside for them. He
sang glibly, jumping in and out of that old, melodious trail of "The Son
of a Gamboleer." Strong called this unique creation of his

"THE STORY OF THE MELLERED BEAR.


               "One day yer Uncle Silas went for to kill a bear,

               An' a dog he took an' follered which his name was

                        little Zeb;

               Bym-by we come acrost a track which looked as big

                        as sin,

               An' Zeb he hollered 'twas a bear, which I didn't quite

                        believe in

               Until I got down on my knee, an' then I kind o'

                        laughed,

               For su'thin' cur'us showed me where he'd wrote his

                        autygraft,

               An' which way he was travellin' all in the frosty snow;

               An' I follered Zeb, the bear-dog, as fast as I could go,

               An' purty soon I see

               Where the bear had tore his overcoat upon a hem

                        lock-tree,

               An' left some threads behind him which fell upon his

                        track,

               Which I wouldn't wonder if he done a-scratchin' of

                        his back,

               Which caused me for to grin an' laugh all on ac

                        count o' my feelin's."

Here came a pause, in which the singer sought a moment of relaxation, as
it would seem, in a thoughtful and timely cough.

               "Bym-by I come up kind o' dost an' where that I

                        could see

               Zeb was jumpin' like a rabbit an' a-hollerin' t' me;

               An' I could see the ol' bear's home all underneath a

                        ledge,

               An' the track of his big moggasins up to the very edge.

               I took an' fetched some pine-knots an' a lot of ol'

                        dead limbs,

               An' built a fire upon his door-step an' let the smoke

                        blow in;

               An' then I took a piece o' rope an' tethered Zeb away

               So's that he'd keep his breeches fer to use another

                        day.

               An' purty soon I listened an' I heard the bear

                        a-coughin',

               An' he sneezed an' bellered out as if he guessed he'd

                        be excused.

               All t' once he bust out an' the rifle give a yell,

               An' I wouldn't wonder if he thought--"

The narrator was halted for half a moment by another frog in his
throat--as he explained. Then he went on:

               "An' Zeb he tore away an' took an' fastened on the

                        bear,

               An' they rolled down-hill together, an' the critter

                        ripped the air,

               An' I didn't dast t' shoot him for fear o' killin' Zeb,

                        So I clubbed my rifle on the bear an' mellered up his

               head."

Moist with perspiration, Silas Strong rose and stood by the bedside and
blew. Fifty miles with a boat on his back could not have taxed him more
severely. He answered a few queries touching the size, fierceness, and
fate of the bear. Then he retreated, whispering as he left the door,
"Strong's ahead."

Zeb lay on the foot of the bed, and Socky, being a little timid in the
dark, coaxed him to lie between them, his paws on the pillow. With their
hands on the back of Zeb, they felt sure no harm could come to them.

"Do you love Uncle Silas?" It was the question of little Sue.

Socky answered, promptly, "Yes; do you?"

"Yes."

"Hunters don't never wear good clothes." So Socky went on, presently,
as if apologizing to his own spirit for the personal appearance of his
uncle. "They git 'em all tore up by the bears an' panthers."

"That's how he got his pants tore," Sue suggested, thinking of his
condition that day they met him on the trail.

"Had a fight with a 'kunk," Socky answered, quickly. He had overheard
something of that adventure at Robin Lake.

They lay thinking a moment. Then up spoke the boy. "I wisht he had a
gold watch."

With Socky the ladder by which a man rose to greatness had many rounds.
The first was great physical strength, the next physical appearance; the
possession of a rifle and the sacred privilege of bathing the same in
bear's-oil was distinctly another; symbols of splendor, such as
watches, finger-rings, and the like, had their places in the ladder, and
qualities of imagination were not wholly disregarded.

Sue tried to think of something good to say--something, possibly, which
would explain her love. It was her first trial at analysis.

"He wouldn't hurt nobody," she suggested.

"He can carry a tree on his back"--so it seemed to Socky.

"He wouldn't let nothin' touch us," said Sue, still working the vein of
kindness which she had discovered.

"He's the most terrible powerful man in the world," Socky averred, and
unconsciously twisted the soft ear of Zeb until the latter gave a little
yelp of complaint.

"He can kill bears an' panthers an' deers an'--an' ketch fish," said
Sue.

"He could swaller a whale," Socky declared, as he thought of the story
of Jonah.

"Aunt Sinthy has got a hole in her shoe." The girl imparted this in a
whisper.

Both felt the back of Zeb and were silent for a little.

"She blubbers!" Socky exclaimed, with a slight touch of contempt in the
way he said it.

"Maybe she got her feet wet and Uncle Silas Spanked her."

"Big folks don't get spanked," the boy assured Sue.

"Do you like her?"

He answered quickly, as if the topic were a bore to him, "Purty well."

Sue had hoped for greater frankness. Her own opinion of her Aunt
Cynthia, while favorable, was unsettled. She thought of a thing in
connection with her aunt which had given her some concern. She had been
full of wonder as to its hidden potentialities.

In a moment Sue broached the subject by saying, "She's got a big mold on
her neck."

"With a long hair on it," Socky added. "Bet you wouldn't dast pull that
hair."

Sue squirmed a little. That single hair had, somehow, reminded her of
the string on a jumping-jack. She reflected a moment, "I put my finger
on it," said she, boastfully.

"That's nothing," Socky answered. "Uncle Silas let me feel the shot what
he got in his arm. Gee, it was kind o' funny." He squirmed a little and
thoughtfully felt his foot.

Sue recognized the superior attraction of the buried shot and held her
peace a moment. Both had begun to yawn.

"Wisht it was t'-morrow," said Sue.

"Why?"

"'Cause I'm going to see the beautiful lady."

"An' the crow, too," Socky whispered.

They were, indeed, to see her sooner than they knew--in dreamland.

Zeb now retired discreetly to the foot of the bed.

After a little silence Sue put her arms about her brother's neck and
pressed him close.

"Wisht I was in heaven," she said, drowsily, with a little cry of
complaint.

"Why?"

"So I could see my mother."

"She's way up a Trillion miles beyond where the hawks fly," said the
boy, as he gaped wearily.

Thereafter the room was silent, save for the muffled barking of Zeb in
his slumber. He, too, was dreaming, no doubt, of things far away.




XIV

THEY were a timely arrival--those new friends who had found Edith
Dunmore. She was no longer satisfied with the narrow world in which her
father had imprisoned her, and had begun to wander alone as if in quest
of a better one. That hour of revelation on the shore of Birch Cove led
quickly to others quite as wonderful.

She had no sooner reached home than she told her grandmother of the
young man and the children who had come with him to the shore of
Catamount and of a strange happiness in her heart. It was then that a
sense of duty in the old Scotchwoman broke away from promises to her son
which had long suppressed it.

As they sat alone, together, the old lady talked to her granddaughter of
the mysteries of life and love and death. Much in this talk the girl
had gathered for herself, by inference, out of books--mostly fairy tales
that her father had brought to her--and out of the evasions which had
greeted her questioning and out of her own heart.

Her queries followed one another fast and were answered freely. She
learned, among other things, a part of the reason for their lonely
life--that her father was not like other men, not even like himself;
that their isolation had been a wicked and foolish error; that men were
not, mostly, children of the devil seeking whom they might destroy, but
kindly, giving and desiring love; that she, Edith Dunmore, had a right
to live like the rest of God's children, and to love and be loved and
given in marriage and to have her part in the world's history.

All this and much good counsel besides the old lady gave to the girl who
sat a long time pondering after her grandmother had left her.

In the miracle of birth and the storied change that follows dissolution
she saw the magic of fairyland. To her Paristan had been much more real
than the republic in which she lived.

She longed for the hour to come when she should again see those
wonderful children and the still more wonderful being who had brought
them in his canoe.

Next morning she set out early in the trail to Catamount with her little
guide and companion. She had named him Roc, after the famous bird of
Oriental tradition. She arrived there long before the hour appointed.
Slowly she wandered to the trail over which Master and the children
would be sure to come. She approached the camp at Lost River and stood
peering through thickets of young fir, She saw the boy and girl at
play, and watched them. Soon Master came out of one of the cabins. Now,
somehow, she felt a greater fear of him than before, yet she longed to
look into his face--to feel the touch of his hand.

The crow had taken his perch in a small tree beside his mistress. He
seemed to be looking thoughtfully at the children, with now and then a
little croak of criticism or of amusement, ending frequently in a sound
like half-suppressed laughter. He raised a foot and slowly scratched his
head, a gaze of meditation deepening in his eyes. Suddenly his interest
seemed to grow keener. He moved a step aside, rose in the air, and
approached the children. Darting to the ground, he picked up a little
silver compass which, one of them had dropped, and quickly returned with
it. The children called to Master, and all three followed the crow. His
mistress, scarcely knowing why, had run up the trail, and Roc pursued
her with foot and wing, croaking urgently, as if his life and spoil
depended on their haste. Reaching a thicket beside the trail, she hid
under its sheltering cover and sat down to rest. The crow, following,
scrambled upon her shoulder and dropped the bit of silver into her lap.
She held his beak to keep him quiet when Master and the children came
near, but as the latter were passing they could hear the smothered
laughter of Roc.

In a moment Socky and Sue ran to their new friend, while Master waited
near them. The crow spread his wings and seemed to threaten with a
scolding chatter. The girl threw the bird in the air and took the hands
of the children and drew them to her breast. She held them close and
looked into their faces.

"Dear fairies!" said she, impulsively kissing them.

"Tell us where the cranes go with--with the young fairies," Sue managed
to say, her hands and voice trembling.

Miss Dunmore sat looking down sadly for a little before she answered.
Sue, curiously, felt "the lady's" cheeks that were now rose-red and
beautiful.

"I will tell you what my father says," the latter began. "The cranes
take them to Slum-bercity on a great marsh and put them in their nests.
The heads of the young fairies are bald and smooth and the cranes sit on
them as if they were eggs. By-and-by wonderful thoughts and dreams come
into them so that the fairies wake up and begin crying for they are
very hungry. They remember the spring of milk, but they are so young and
helpless they can only reach out their hands and cry for it. Some of the
cranes stand on one leg in the marsh and listen. The moment they hear
the young fairies crying they fly away to find mothers for them. The
unhappy little things are really not fairies any more--they are babies.
Some of the cranes come and dance around the nest to keep them quiet,
and the babies sit up and open their eyes and begin to laugh, it is so
very funny. And that night a big crane sits by the side of each baby and
the baby creeps on his back and rides away to his mother. And he is so
weary after his ride that he sleeps and is scarcely able to move, and
when he wakes and smiles and laughs, he remembers how the cranes danced
in the marsh."

Curiously, silently, the children looked into her face, while she, with
wonder equal to their own, put her arms around them.

"My father says that there are no people--that we are really nothing but
young fairies asleep and dreaming up in the tops of the trees, and that
the fairy heaven is not here."

She gazed into the eyes of the boy a moment, all unconscious of
his mental limitations. Then she added, "You're nothing but a big
fairy--you're so very young."

Socky drew away with a look of injury and threw out his chest.

"I'm six years old," he answered, with dignity. "In a little while I'll
be a man."

Miss Dunmore drew them close to her and said, "I wish I could take you
home with me."

"Have you any maple sugar there?" the little girl inquired.

"Yes, and a tame fox and a little fawn."

"But you'ain't got no Uncle Silas," said the boy, boastfully.

"Ner no Aunt Sinth," Sue ventured. Then, with her tiny fingers, she felt
the neck of "the beautiful lady" to see if there were a "mold" on it.
She was thinking of one of the chief attractions of her aunt. In a
moment she added, "Ner no Uncle Robert." They had begun to call him
Uncle Robert.

"Is he the man I saw?" the maiden asked.

Both children nodded affirmatively.

"Do you love him?"

"Yes; would you like to take him home with you, too?" Socky asked, with
a look of deep interest. If they were to go he would wish to have his
new uncle with them, and Sue saw the point.

"He can carry you on his back and growl jes' like a bear," she urged.
"He can put his mouth on your cheek and make such a funny noise."

Miss Dunmore looked away, blushing red. It was a curious kind of
love-making. She whispered in the ear of the little girl, "Would you let
me have him?"

Sue looked up into her eyes doubtfully.

"She wants our Uncle Robert," Socky guessed aloud.

"But not to keep?" Sue questioned, as if it were not to be thought of.

The eyes of the children were looking into those of "the beautiful
lady."

"I couldn't have him?" the latter asked.

"We'll give you our coon," Sue suggested, by way of compromise.

"I am sure he--your uncle--would not go with me," Miss Dunmore
suggested.

Socky seemed now to think that the time had come for authoritative
information. He broke away and called to his new uncle.

The maiden rose quickly, blushing with surprise. She turned away as
Robert Master came in sight, and stood for half a moment looking down.
Then, stooping, she picked a wild flower and timidly offered it. The act
was full of childish simplicity. It spoke for her as her tongue could
not. Knowledge acquired since she saw him last had possibly increased
her shyness.

"She wants you," said the boy, with vast innocence, while he looked up
at the young man.

"I wish I could believe it were true," said Master, as he came nearer by
a step to the daughter of the woodland.

She turned with a look of fear and said, "I must go," as she ran to the
trail, followed by Roc.

A little distance away she turned, looking back at the young man.
Something in her eyes told of a soul beneath them lovelier than its
nobly fashioned house. Moreover, they proclaimed the secret which she
would fain have kept.

"Shall we shake hands?" he asked.

She took a step towards him and stopped.

"No," she answered.

"I must see you again," said Master, with passionate eagerness, fearing
that she was about to leave.

She looked down but made no answer. The children put their arms about
her knees as if to detain her.

"You will not forget to come Thursday?" he added.

"The beautiful lady" stood looking at him, her left hand upon her chin,
her arms bare to the elbows. A smile, an almost imperceptible nod, and
the eloquence of her eyes were the only answer she gave him, but they
were enough.

"Will you not speak to me?" the young man urged, as he came nearer.

She stood looking, curiously, until he could almost have touched her.
Then, gently, she pushed the children away and fled up the trail, her
pet following. In a moment she had gone out of sight.

She was like the spirit of the woodland--wild, beautiful, silent.




XV

THERE was a great marsh around a set-back leading off the still water
near Lost River camp. There the children had seen many cranes, and they
did not forget that certain of them had stood upon one leg. After supper
that evening they sat together whispering awhile and presently stole
away. There was a trail for frog-hunters that led to their destination.
They ran, eagerly, and, just as the sun was going down, stopped on a
high bank overlooking the marshes. It was a broad flat covered with
pools and tall grasses and bogs, crowned with leaves of the sweet-flag
and with cattails and pussy-willows. Now it was still and hazy. The
pools were like mirrors with the golden glow of the sky and soft, dark
shadows in them.

Far out on the marsh they discovered a crane strolling leisurely among
the bogs, and began to chatter about him.

They looked and listened until the sun had gone below the tops of the
trees. Then cranes came flying homeward out of the four skies, and, one
by one, lighted on the edge of a bog some two or three hundred feet
from the children. Sue uttered a little cry of joy. The cranes stood
motionless with heads up.

"They're listening," Socky assured his sister.

Bull-frogs had begun croaking and a mud-hen was making a sound like that
of a rusty pump. The children now sat on the side of the bank and leaned
forward straining their eyes and ears.

Soon the far, shrill cry of some little animal rang above the chorus
of the marsh. The children took it to be a baby, and seemed almost
to writhe with suppressed laughter mingled with hopeful and whispered
comment. In his excitement Socky slipped off his perch and came near
rolling down the side of the bank. One of the cranes began to shuffle
about, his wings half open, like an awkward dancer. Soon the whole group
of birds seemed to be imitating him, and each shuffled on his long legs
as if trying to be most ridiculous. The dusk was thickening, and the
children could only just discern them. They sat close together and
held each other's hands tightly, and looked out upon the marsh and were
silent with awe and expectation. Suddenly the cranes scattered into the
bushes and the sedge. Socky and Sue were now watching to see them fly.
It was almost dark and a big moon seemed to be peering through the tops
of the trees. Soon the great birds strode slowly in single file past the
wonder-stricken two.

"See the babies! See the babies!" Sue cried out.

They squirmed and shivered with awe, their lips and eyes wide with
amazement. In the dim light they imagined that a baby sat on the back
of each crane. Sue had no sooner cried out than there came a flapping
of wings that seemed to fill the sky. The feathered caravan had taken to
the air and were swinging in a wide circle around the edge of the marsh.
They quickly disappeared in the gloom.

"Gone to find mothers for 'em," said Socky, in a trembling whisper.

The children had suddenly become aware that it was quite dark, but
neither dared speak of it. They still sat looking out upon the marsh and
clinging hand to hand. Soon a procession of grotesque and evil creatures
began to pass them: the great bear of the woods who had swallowed alive
all the little runaways, and who, having made them prisoners, only let
them come out now and then to ride upon his back; the big panther-bird
who lured children from their homes with berries and flowers and nuts
and, maybe, raisins, and who, when they were in some lonely place,
dropped stones upon their heads and slew them; odd, indescribable
shapes, some having long, hairy necks and heads like cocoa-nuts; and,
lastly, came that awful horned creature, with cloven hoofs and the body
of a man, who carried a pitchfork and who, soon or late, flung all the
bad children into a lake of fire. Socky and Sue covered their faces with
their hands. Suddenly a prudent thought entered the mind of the boy.

"I'm going to be good," said he, in a loud but timid voice. "I love God
best of every one." His sister gave a little start.

In half a moment she suggested, her eyes covered with her hands, "You
don't love God better than Uncle Silas?"

Socky hesitated. Prudence and affection struggled for the mastery.

"Yes," he managed to say, although with some difficulty. "Don't you?"

Sue hesitated.

He nudged her and whispered, "Say yes--say it out loud."

The word came from Sue in a low, pathetic wail of fear.

"I ain't never goin' to tell any more lies," the boy asserted, in a
firm, clear voice, "er swear er run away."

They both gave a cry of alarm, for Zeb had sprung upon them and begun to
lick their faces. Their aunt and uncle had missed them and Zeb had led
his master to where they sat.

Strong had heard the children choosing between him and their Creator and
understood. Socky and Sue, after the shock of Zeb's sudden arrival, were
encouraged by his presence and began to take counsel together.

"We better go home," said Socky.

"What if we meet something?"

"Pooh! I'll crook my finger to him an' say, 'Sile Strong is my uncle,'"
Socky answered, confidently. "You'll see him run fast enough."

It was a formula which his uncle had taught him, and he had tried it
upon a deer and a hedgehog with eminent success.

The Emperor had planned to give them a scare by way of punishment,
but now he had no heart for severity. He walked through the bushes
whistling. He said not a word as he knelt before them--indeed, the man
dared not trust himself to speak. With cries of joy they climbed upon
his shoulders and embraced him. Strong rose and slowly carried them
through the dark trail. He could not even answer their questions. He.
was thinking of their faith in him--of their love, the like of which he
had-never known or dreamed of and was not able to understand. Sinth was
out with a lantern when they returned. The children were asleep in his
arms.

"Sh-h-h! Don't scold, sister," said he, in a voice so gentle it
surprised himself. They put the children to bed and walked to the
cook-tent. Strong told of all he had heard them say.

"I dunno but you'll have to whip 'em," said Sinth.

Strong was drying the little boots of the boy. He touched them tenderly
with his great hand. He smiled and shook his head and slowly stammered,
"If we're g-goin't' be g-good'nough t' 's-sociate with them we got t'
wh-whip ourselves."

He rose and put a stick of wood on the fire.

"Th-they think I'm m-most as good as God," he added, huskily, and then
he went out-ofdoors.

Before going to bed that night he made this entry in his
memorandum-book:

_"Strong won't do he'll have to be tore down an' built over."_




XVI

THE Migleys had engaged Strong to take them out of the woods next
day. They were going to the Fourth-of-July celebration at Hillsborough.
Master was going also, be orator of the day. Strong, hearing the talk
of the others, had "got to wishin'," as Sinth put it, and had finally
concluded to go on to Hillsborough and witness the celebration. So
Master had sent for his guide to come and stay at Lost River camp until
the return of Silas.

The Emperor was getting ready to go. Some one had told him that a man
at Hillsborough was buying coons and foxes for the zoological gardens
in New York. He considered whether he had better take his young pet coon
with him. In that hour of expanding generosity when he had broken his
bank, as the saying goes, he had forgotten his new responsibilities.
There were the children, and that necessity which often awoke him at
night and whispered of impending evil--he must leave his old home and
find a new one somewhere in the forest. The little people would need
boots and dresses, and why shouldn't they have a rocking-horse or some
cheering toy of that character? Such reflections began to change--to
amend, as it were--his view of money.

Furthermore, Sinth had no respect for coons. Ever since the Emperor had
captured him, much of her ill-nature had been focussed upon the coon.

"W-woods g-goin'," he mused, as he fed the little creature. "W-we got t'
git t-tame."

"You better take him along," said Sinth, as she came out of the
cook-tent. "Jim Warner got ten dollars for a coon down to Canton las'
summer."

"C-come on, Dick," said the hunter, with some regret in his tone as he
fastened the coon's cage upon his basket.

Strong looped a cord through the wire and the buckles of both
shoulder-braces. Master had taken the river route, and would drive
to Hillsborough from Tupper's. Strong and the Migleys were going out
through Pitkin. The "sports" had been on their way for more than half an
hour. Strong put his arms in the straps and followed them. He turned in
the trail and called back:

"B-better times!" he shouted. It was a cheerful sentiment which he often
expressed in moments of parting with Sinth.

"Don't believe it," Sinth answered.

"You s-see," he insisted, and then he disappeared in the timber.

As the travellers went on, the Migleys exhibited increasing respect
for the law of gravitation. They gave their coats to the Emperor,
who studiously kept as far ahead or behind them as possible to avoid
conversation. He was "tongue weary," and told them so.

Late in the afternoon they came to a new lumber-camp. "The Warren job"
had pushed its front across the old trail. What desolation had fallen
where Strong passed, two weeks before, in the shadow of the primeval
wood! Its green roof lay in scraggled, withering heaps; the under
thickets had been cut away; the ferns lay flat, blackening on the
sunburned soil. An old skeleton of pine lifted its broken arms high
above the scene of desolation, and one could hear its bones creak and
rattle in the breezy heavens.

Great shafts of spruce and pine were being sawed into even lengths and
hauled to a skidway. Busy men looked small as ants in the edge of the
high forest. Some swayed in pairs, "pulling the briar," as woodsmen say
of those who work with a saw.

Strong and the Migleys halted to watch the downfall of a great pine.
Soon the sawyers put their wedge in the slit and smote upon it. The
sheet of steel hissed back and forth. Then a few blows of the axe. The
men gave a shout of warning and drew aside. The great tree began to
creak and tremble. Slowly it bent and groaned; its long arms seemed
to clutch at the air. Then it pitched headlong, its top whistling, its
heavy stem shaking the ground upon which it fell. A voice of thunder
seemed to proclaim its fate. The axemen lopped off its branches, and
soon the long column lay stark, and the growth of two centuries had come
to its end. Strong and his companions stood a moment longer watching the
scene.

"Huh!" the Emperor grunted, with a sorry look as they passed on.

Near sundown they came into the cleared land--the sandy, God-forsaken
barrens of Tifton, robbed of root and branch and soil, of their glory,
and the one crop nature had designed for them. The travellers passed a
deserted cabin on a hot, stony hill. In its door-yard they could see a
plough and an old wagon partly overgrown with weeds. Some one had tried
to live on the spoiled earth and had come to discouragement. Where ten
thousand men could have found healing and refreshment there was
not enough growing to feed a dozen sheep. Here a part of the great
inheritance of man had been forever ruined. Strong spoke of the pity of
it.

"Can't be helped," said the elder Migley. "A man has a right to cut and
sell his timber."

Strong made no question of that, claiming only that the cutting should
be "reg'lated," an expression which he rarely took the trouble to
explain. It stood for a meaning well considered--that the forest
belonged to the people, the timber to the owner of the land; that
the right of the owner should be subject to restraint. He should be
permitted to cut trees of a certain size only. So the forest would be
made permanent, and the owner and the generations to follow him would
get a crop of timber every eight or ten years.

The sun was setting when they came into the little forest hamlet. The
Migleys put up at the Pitkin general store, where one might have rude
hospitality as well as merchandise. There Strong left pack and coon
behind the counter and hastened to the home of Annette. The comely young
woman rose from the supper-table and took both his hands in hers.

"Strong's ahead!" he answered, cheerfully, as she greeted him.

In response to her invitation he sat down to eat. Her father lighted his
pipe and left them. Silas told of the swishers and the big trout and the
children.

"M-me an' Sinth is b-bein' cut over," here-marked, with a smile, as he
thought of the children.

"What do you mean?"

"B-bein' cleared an' p-ploughed an' sowed."

She laughed a little as the Emperor unfolded his pleasantry. He thought
of his improved account in the matter of swearing and of the better
temper of Sinth.

"G-gittin' p-proper," he added.

Annette was amused.

"G-got t' leave Lost R-river," he said, presently.

"Got to leave Lost River!" Annette exclaimed.

"Ay-ah," Strong answered. He looked down for a second, then he added,
sorrowfully, "G-goin' to tear down the w-woods."

"It's an outrage. Couldn't you go to the plains?"

"S-sold an' f-fenced."

"How about the Rag Lake country?"

"B-bein' cut."

Annette shook her head ruefully.

"W-woods got t' g-go," said Strong, leaning forward and resting his
elbows on his knees. .

"What'll you do?"

"G-git tame," Strong answered, as he rose and went to the squirrel cage
and began to play with his old pet. The little animal came to his wire
gateway and stood upon the palm of the Emperor's hand.

"T-trespasser!" he remarked, stroking the squirrel. "Th-they'll have me
in a c-cage, too, purty s-soon."

He put the squirrel away and offered his hand to Annette.

"S-some day," he whispered.

"Some day," she answered, with a sigh.

"Y-you're g-goin' to hear me d-do some t-talkin'," he assured her. The
Lady Ann had often mildly complained of his reticence.

They now stood in front of the little veranda. She was looking up at
him.

"It'll 'mount to s-suthin', t-too," he went on. It seemed as if he were
making an honest effort to correct the idleness of his tongue. He was
looking down at her and groping in his mind for some other cheerful
sentiment. He seemed to make this happy discovery, and added,
"W-won-derful good t-times comin'."

With a full heart she pressed his great hand in both of hers.

"K-keep ahead," said he, cheerfully, and bade her good-night.

With this he left her and was happy, for the taming of Sinth had seemed
to bring that "some day" of his promise into the near future.

At the Pitkin general store his two companions had retired for the
night, and he joined a group of woodsmen who occupied everything in the
place which had a fairly smooth and accessible top on it. They were all
in debt to the storekeeper and seemed to entertain a regard for him not
unmingled with pity. This latter sentiment was, the historian believes,
rather well founded. They called him "Billy," with the inflection of
fondness. Two sat slouching, apologetically, on the counter. One
rested his weight, as tenderly and considerately as might be, on a
cracker-barrel. Another reposed with a look of greater confidence on
the end of a nail-keg. They were guides, two of whom had come out for
provisions; the others, like Strong, were on their way to Hillsborough.

"Here's the old Emp'ror," said one, as Strong entered and returned their
greetings and sat down astride the beam of a plough.

"I'd like to know what he thinks of it," said a guide from the Jordan
Lake country.

Strong looked up at him without a word.

"A millionaire has bought thirty thousand acres alongside o' my camp,"
the guide explained. "He won't let me cross on the old trail. I had to
go six mile out o' my way to git here."

He smote the counter with his fist and coupled the name of the rich man
with vile epithets.

"My father and my grandfather travelled that trail before he was born,"
the angry woodsman declared.

Strong leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked at his hands
without speaking. One laughed loudly, another gave out a sympathetic
curse.

"I'll git even with him--you hear me." So the aggrieved party expressed
himself.

"How?" Strong inquired, looking up suddenly.

"I'll git even. I'll send a traveller into that preserve who'll put him
off it." He spoke with a sinister suggestion.

"Huh!" the Emperor grunted. He understood the threat of the other, who
clearly meant to set the woods afire.

"Ain't I right? What d' ye come to, anyway, when ye think it all over?"
The words came hot and fast off the tongue of the com-plainer.

"F-fool," Strong stammered, calmly. There was something in his way of
saying it that made the others laugh.

A faint smile of embarrassment showed in the face of the angry woodsman.

"Me or the millionaire?" he inquired.

"B-both," Strong answered, soberly, as the storm ended in a little gust
of laughter.

Strong had stripped the guide of his anger as deftly as a squirrel could
take the shell off a nut. In the brief silence that followed he thought
of another maxim for his memorandum-book, and soon it was recorded
therein as follows:

_"Man that makes trouble sure to have most of it."_

Presently he who sat on the cracker-barrel remarked, "If them air woods
git afire now, they'll burn the stars out o' heaven."

All eyes turned upon the once violent man.

"Of course, I wouldn't fire the woods," he muttered. He was now cool,
and could see the folly and also the peril which lay in his threat.
"I never said I'd set the woods afire, but the ol' trail has been a
thoroughfare for nigh a hunderd year.-I believe I've got as good a right
to use it as he has."

"Th-think so?" the Emperor inquired.

"Yes, sir."

"Then d-do it," Strong answered, dryly. There was much in those three
words and in the look of the speaker. It said, plainly, that the other
was to do what he thought to be right and never what he knew to be
wrong.

"Lumbermen are more to blame," said another. "Where they've been nobody
wants to go. They cut everything down t' the size o' yer wrist an'
leave the soil covered with tinder-stacks. They think o' nothin' but the
profit. Case o' fire, woods 'round 'em wouldn't hev a ghost of a show."

"Look at the Weaver tract," said he who sat on the nail-keg. "Four
thousand acres o' dead tops--miles on 'em--an' all as dry as gunpowder.
If you was t' touch a match there ye'd have to run fer yer life."

"Go like a scairt deer," said he of the cracker-barrel. "'Fore it
stopped I guess ye'd think the world was afire."

"W-woods g-goin'," said the Emperor, sadly.

He thought of the cold springs at which he had refreshed himself in the
heat of the summer day and which were to perish utterly; he thought
of the brooks and rivers, slowing their pace like one stricken with
infirmity, and, by-and-by, lying dead in the sunlight--lying in a chain
of slimy pools across the great valley of the St. Lawrence; he thought
of green meadows which, soon or late, would probably wither into a
desert.

"What 'll become of us?" said he on the nail-keg.

"Have t' be sawed an' trimmed an' planed an' matched an' go into town."
It was the voice above the cracker-barrel.

"Not me," said the occupant of the nail-keg. "Too many houses an' folks
an' too much noise. Couldn't never stan' it."

"Village is a cur'ous place," said another, who had never been sober
when he saw it. "Steeples an' buildin's an' folks reel 'round in pairs.
Seems so the sidewalk flowed like a river, an' nothin' stan's still long
'nough so ye can see how 't looks."

The speaker was interrupted by the proprietor of the Pitkin general
store, who came downstairs and flung himself on the top of the counter.

"Goin't' the Fourth?" said he of the cracker-barrel.

"Might as well--got t' hev a tooth drawed."

"I've got one that's been growlin' purty spiteful," said the
nail-kegger. "Dunno but I might as well go an' hev it tore out."

"I got t' be snaked, too," said the cracker-barrel man.

"Reg'lar tooth-drawin' down thar to-morrer," said a voice from the
counter.

"Beats all how the teeth git t' rairin' up ev'ry circus an' Fourth o'
July," said the nail-kegger. The laughter which now ensued seemed, as
it were, to shake everybody off his perch. The counter and the
cracker-barrel expressed themselves in a creak of relief, and all went
abovestairs save the Emperor. He cut a few boughs for a pillow, spread
his blanket under the pine-trees, flung an end of it over his great
body, and "let go," as he was wont to say. At any time of day or night
he had only to lie down and "let go," and enjoy absolute forgetfulness.




XVII

AT the break of day next morning, Strong rose and called his
fellow-travellers. Beside the turnpike he built a fire, over which he
began to cook fish and potatoes and coffee. When the Migleys had come,
all sat on a blanket within reach of their food and helped themselves in
a fashion almost as ancient as the hills. Then Strong gave the coon his
share, and washed the dishes and got his pack ready. It was a tramp of
four miles to the station below Pitkin. They arrived there, however,
before the sun was an hour high.

When they were seated in the end of the smoking-car, with coon and pack
beside them, Mr. Migley began to reveal the plans of the great king,
Business. Having increased his territory, he now felt the need of
adding to his power. He must have more legislation, for there were to
be ruthless changes of the map. Those few really free and independent
people who dwelt in and near the Lost River country were to be his
subjects and they must learn to obey. At least they must not oppose him
and make trouble. Gently his envoy began.

"You know," said he, "there's to be a new member of Assembly in our
district."

Strong nodded.

"I want my son to go," the elder Migley went on, as he winked
suggestively. "He's going to make his home in Pitkin, and it's very
necessary to his plans that you people should be with him. He's got the
talent of a statesman. Ask anybody who knows the boy."

He paused a moment. The Emperor made no reply.

"Level-headed and reliable in every spot an' place, an' a good-looker,"
Migley continued, as if he were selling a road-horse, while he nudged
the Emperor. "Look at him. I'd swap faces with that boy any day and give
him ten thousand dollars to boot. Wouldn't you?"

Mr. Migley spoke in dead earnest. He pinched the knee of Strong and
waited for his reply.

"W-wouldn't fit me," the Emperor replied.

"Pop" Migley took the answer as a compliment and gurgled with good
feeling.

"Strong, you're a kind of a boss up here in the hills," said he. "There
isn't a jay in the pine lands that wouldn't walk twenty miles to caucus
if you asked him to."

"Dunno," Strong answered, doubtfully.

"I know what I'm talking about," said the lumberman, with a smile. "I
want the vote o' the town o' Pitkin. If we get that we can give 'em all
the flag."

Strong was not unaccustomed to this kind of appeal. There were not many
voters in his town, but they always followed the Emperor.

"You can get it for us," Mr. Migley insisted.

"N-no."

"Why not?"

"I've promised to help M-Master."

"Oh, well, now, look here--you and I ought to be friends," said Migley.
"We ought to stand by each other. You look out for me and I'll look out
for you."

As he offered his alliance, Migley tenderly pressed the shoulder of
Silas Strong. Then he put his index-finger on that square of latitude
and longitude which indicated the region of his heart, and added,
impressively, "I have the reputation of being true to my friends--ask
anybody."

The hunter sat filling his pipe in silence.

"With what's pledged to us, if we get this town we can win easy."

Strong began to puff at his pipe thoughtfully. Here sat a man who could
make or break him. His face reddened a little. He shook his head.

Mr. Migley had caught the eye of a man he knew--Joe Socket--postmaster
and politician of Moon Lake. He rose, tapped the shoulder of Strong, and
said, "Think it over." Then he hurried down the aisle of the car.

He leaned over and whispered into the ear of Socket, "What kind of a man
is Strong?"

"Square," said the other, promptly. "A little cranky in some ways, but
you can depend upon him. He'll do What he says--the devil couldn't turn
him."

"He says he's pledged to Master--that chap who's come up here with a bag
o' money. Do you think Master has bought him?"

"I don't think so. I suppose he could be bought, but--but I never knew
of his taking money. The boys of the back country swear by the Emperor;
they look up to him. Fact is, Sile Strong is a ------ ---- good fellow."

His oath seemed to contradict his affirmation.

"He's like a rock," said Migley. "The glad hand don't make any
impression. What ye going to do with a man who won't drink or talk or
swap lies with ye? I could put the poor devil out of house and home, but
he don't seem to care."

"We'll turn him over to the Congressman," Socket answered. "He'll bring
him into camp. If not we can get along without him."

The fact was the "Emperor of the Woods" was not like any other man they
had to deal with--in history, character, and caliber.

He used his brain for a definite purpose--"to think out thoughts with,"
as he was wont to say, and if his heart approved of them they were
right, and he could no more change them than a tree could change its
bark or its foliage.

As yet the arts and allies of the flatterer had no power over him. He
was content and without any false notion of his own importance.




XVIII

WHAT a fair of American citizenship was on its way to Hillsborough this
morning of the Fourth of July! They that now crowded the train were like
others travelling on all the main thoroughfares of the county--farmers
and their wives, rustic youths and their sweethearts, mill-hands and
mill-owners, teamsters, sawyers, axemen, guides, and storekeepers. They
were celebrating a day's release from the tyranny of Business, and were
not deeply moved by the tyranny which their grandfathers had suffered.
History, save that of the present hour, did not much concern them.

They were mostly sound-hearted men. There were some who, in answer to
the charge that a local statesman had got riches in the Legislature,
were wont to say, "He'd be a fool if he hadn't." He was "a good fellow,"
anyhow, and they loved a good fellow. All the men of wealth and place
and power were in his favor, and had practised upon them the subtle arts
of the friend-maker. They would not have accepted "a bribe"--these good
people now on their way to Hillsborough--but they could get all kinds
of favors from Joe Socket and Pop Migley and Horace Dumay and other
henchmen of the wealthy boss and legislator. They had yielded to the
insidious briberies of friendship--warm greetings and handshakes, loans,
small sinecures, compliments, pledges of undying esteem over clinking
glasses, and similar condescension. They loved the forest and were
sorry to see it go, but many of them got their bread-and-butter by its
downfall--directly or indirectly--and then Socket, Dumay, and
Migley were nothing more or less than lumber, pulp, and water-power
personified. They were like the lords and barons of the olden time--less
arrogant but more powerful. Indeed, Strong was right--the tyrant of the
modern world is that ruthless giant that he called "Business," and his
nobles are coal, iron, cotton, wool, food, power, paper, and lumber.
These people on the edge of the woodland were slaves of power, paper,
and lumber. With able and designing chiefs this great triumvirate gently
drove the good people this way and that, and there was a little touch
of irony in this journey of the latter to celebrate their freedom and
independence.

One who knew them could not help feeling that the old martial spirit
of the day was wholly out of harmony with their own. They were a
peace-loving people, purged of their fathers' hatred, and roars of
defiance found no echo in any breast--save those overheated by alcohol.

Some wore flannel shirts and the livery of a woodsman's toil; some,
unduly urged, no doubt, by a wife or sister, had ventured forth in more
conventional attire. They sat, as if posing for a photograph, galled,
hot, gloomy, suspicious, self-suppressed, silent, their necks hooped in
linen, their bodies resisting the tight embrace of new attire. In the
crowd were a number to whom the reaping of the ruined hills, on either
side of the train, had brought wealth and an air of proprietorship. Most
of the crowd were in high spirits. The sounds of loud talk and laughter
and the rankling smoke of cheap cigars filled the air above them. A lank
youth under a dark, broad-brimmed hat, tilted backward, so as neither
to conceal nor disarrange a rare embellishment of curls upon his brow,
entered the car with another like him. His hair had the ginger-brown,
ringletudinous look of spaniel fur. He began to whistle loudly and, as
it would seem, prelusively. In a moment he was in full song on a ballad
of the cheap theatres, with sentiment like his hair--frank, bold, oily,
and outreaching.

As the train stopped at Hillsborough, Strong rose and put on his pack
and left with the crowd, coon in hand. The sidewalks were crowded, and
Strong took the centre of the street. There, at least, was comparative
seclusion.

Silas had not travelled a block when, all unexpectedly, he became
a centre of attraction. A group of whining dogs gathered about him,
peering wistfully at the coon. They were shortly reinforced by a number
of small boys, which grew with astonishing rapidity. Cries of curiosity
and derision rose around him. Sportsmen who had visited his camp and who
recognized him shouted their greeting to the "Emperor of the Woods." A
"swisher" of some prominence in the little school of sportsmanship at
Lost River came and dispersed the boys. The Emperor kicked at a dog
and ran a little way in pursuit of him. He came back and set down the
coon-cage and shook hands with his pupil. Immediately a dog, approaching
from behind, sprang at the cage and tipped it over, and leaped upon
it and began to claw. Strong seized and flung the dog away, and as he
righted the cage its door came open and the coon escaped. Dodging his
enemy, the little animal sought refuge in a thicket of people. Being
pursued by dogs, and accustomed also to avoid peril by climbing, he
straightway climbed, not a tree, but a tall sapling of a youth, from
which the others broke away in a panic. They were opposite a little
park, and the youth, not daring to lay hold of the animal, fled among
the trees, pursued by Strong and two dogs and a throng of brave spirits
who shouted information as to what he had best do.

For half a moment the frightened coon clung on a shoulder, his tail in
the air, growling at the dogs. The latter leaped up at him, and he began
to feel for more altitude. The youth, who had some knowledge of the
nature of coons, ran to the nearest tree. Quickly the coon sprang upon
it and scrambled far out of reach. He ran up the smooth shaft of elm
and settled on a swaying bough some forty feet above ground. A crowd of
people were now looking up at him.

"Coon in a cage is worth two in a tree," a man shouted.

Strong sat down beneath the tree and lighted his pipe and "thought out"
another bit of wisdom for his memorandum-book. It was:

_"Coon on yer shoulder worth less'n what he is anywhere."_He sat in
meditation--as if, indeed, he were resting in the wilderness. A cannon,
not a hundred feet away, shook the windows of Hillsborough with a
loud explosion for every star on the flag. A perpetual fusillade of
fire-crackers seemed to suggest the stripes. Accustomed to woodland
silences, the Emperor's feeling was, in a measure, like that of his
coon. The "morning salute" ended presently, and then he uttered an
exclamation which indicated clearly that he had been losing ground in
his late struggle with Satan.

One of the guides with whom he had sat in the store at Pitkin came near.
"Had yer tooth drawed?" was the question he put to the Emperor.

Strong was now looking at the empty cage. "Had my coon d-drawed," he
answered.

"Where is he?"

"Up-s-stairs." Strong pointed in the direction of the coon's refuge.

Silas was now the centre of an admiring company. His former pupil had
brought the president of the corporation of Hillsborough to meet him.
The official invited Strong to participate in the games. The Emperor was
willing to do anything to oblige, and walked with his new acquaintance
to the public square.

A trial at lifting and carrying was the first number on the programme.
The contestants leaned, with hands behind them, while others on a raised
platform began to heap bags of oats upon their backs and shoulders.
Loaded to the limit of their strength, they carried the burden as far as
they were able and flung it down. One after another tried, and the last
carried nine bags a distance of seven feet and was rewarded with many
cheers.

It was Strong's turn now. He bent his broad back, and the loaders began
to burden him. At ten they stopped, but Strong called for more. Three
others were heaped upon him, and slowly he began to move away. One could
see only his legs beneath his burden, which towered far above him. Ten
feet beyond the farthest mark he bore the bags and let them down. The
people began cheering, and many came to shake his hand and feel the
sinews in his arms and shoulders. Of the trial at scale-lifting a
woodsman who stood near gave this illuminating description, "When they
all got through, Strong put on two hundred more an' raised his neck
an' lifted, an' the bar come up like a trout after a fly." Silas Strong
stood, his coat off, his trousers tucked in his boots, looking soberly
at the people who cheered him. One eye was wide open, the other partly
closed. There were wrinkles above his wide eye, and his faded felt hat,
tilted backward and to one side, left his face uncovered. He had a new
and grateful sense of being "ahead," but seemed to wonder if so much
brute strength were altogether creditable.

Master was to address the people, and Strong was invited to sit behind
the speaker's table with the select of the county. He accompanied
the president of the corporation to the platform in the park, his
pack-basket on his arm. More than a thousand men and women had gathered
in front of them when the chairman introduced the young orator.

The speech delighted Silas Strong, and he summed it up in his old
memorandum-book as follows:

_"folks cant be no better than the air they brethe "roots of a plant are
in the ground but the roots of a man are in his lungs_

_"whair the woods ar plenty the air is strong an folks are stout an
supple like our forefathers when they licked the British them days they
got a powrful crop of folks sometimes fifteen in a famly the powr of the
woods was in em. now folks live under a sky eight feet above their
heads an take their air secont handed an drink at the bar instead of the
spring an eat more than what they earn an travel on wheels an think so
much of their own helth they aint got no time to think of their countrys
when a man's mind is on his stummick it cant be any where else brains
warnt made to digest vittles with old fashioned ways is best which
Strong says is so also that a man had not oughto eat any more than what
he's earnt by hard labor."_

After the address Strong went home to dinner with Congressman Wilbert,
the leading citizen of Hillsborough. That little town still retained
the democratic spirit of old times. There one had only to be clean and
honest to be respectable, and the mighty often sat at meat with the
lowly. Strong declined the invitation at first, on the plea that he had
fried cakes in his pack-basket, and yielded only after some urging.

The statesman's wife received the hunter cordially and presented him to
her daughter. The girl led Strong aside and began to entertain him. He
had lost his easy, catlike stride, his unconscious control of bone and
muscle. He looked and felt as if he were carrying himself on his own
back. He seemed to be balancing his head carefully, for fear it
would fall off, and had treated his hands like detached sundries in
a camp-outfit by stuffing them into the side pockets of his coat.
Gradually he limbered in his chair and settled down. His confidence
grew, and soon he "horsed" one knee upon the other and flung his hands
around it as if to bind an invisible burden resting on his lap. He
carried this objective treatment of his own, person to such an extreme
that he seemed even to be measuring his breath and to find little
opportunity for cerebration. When the young lady addressed him he often
answered with the old formulas of "I tnum!" or "T-y-ty!" They eased the
responsibility of his tongue, and, without seriously committing him,
expressed a fair degree of interest and surprise.

At the table Strong behaved himself with the utmost conservatism. They
treated him very tenderly, and he found relief in the fact that his
embarrassment seemed not to be observed. He thought it the part of
politeness to refuse nearly everything that was offered and to eat in a
gingerly fashion.

The Congressman had often heard of Silas and gave him many compliments,
and finally asked what, in his opinion, should be done to protect the
forest. Briefly Strong gave his views, and the other seemed to agree
with him.

"I'll do what I can for the woods and for you, too," said the statesman.
"You ought to be a warden with a good salary."

These kindly assurances flattered the "Emperor of the Woods."
Insidiously the great world power was making its most potent appeal to
him.

"I may ask you for a favor now and then," said Wilbert. "I'd be glad if
you'd do what you could to help Migley. He needs the vote of your town."

Strong knew not what to say. "M-mind's m-made up," he stammered, after
a little pause. When his mind was "made up" he had nothing further to do
but obey its will. The other did not quite comprehend his meaning.

Strong in his embarrassment had put too much tabasco sauce on his meat.
He blew, according to his custom in moments of distress, and took a
drink of water. He looked thoughtfully at the small cylinder of glass.
He tried to read its label.

"Small b-bore," he remarked, presently.

"Sh-shoots w-well," he added, after a moment of reflection.

Strong had begun to think of his coon, now clinging in a tree-top.
Suddenly he had become too proud to try to sell him, but he could not
bear to abandon his old pet. So while the others talked together he
began to contrive against the dogs of Hillsborough. As he was about to
leave, he asked Mrs. Wilbert where he could buy "one o' them l-little
r-red guns," by which he meant a bottle of tabasco sauce. She
immediately sent a servant to bring one, which the Emperor accepted with
her compliments. His host went with him to a store where Strong invested
some of his prize-money in "C'ris'mus presents"--so he called them--for
Sinth and the "little fawns," filling his pack well above the brim.

Then, forthwith, Strong proceeded to the coon's refuge, in the public
park, where, with the aid of a Roman-candle, as he explained to Sinth in
the privacy of their cook-tent, he made the coon "l-let go all holts."
The animal had been clinging high in the old elm, and, being stunned
by his fall, Strong caught and held him firmly by the nape of the neck
while he covered him with an armor of liquid fire from the tabasco
bottle. The fur of back and neck and shoulders had now the power to
inflict misery sharper than a serpent's tooth.

"D-Dick," he whispered, "Strong is 'shamed o' y-you. He c-can't 'sociate
n-no more with c-coons in this v-village. But he won't let ye git t-tore
up."

Strong carried his coon out of the park and let him down. In
Hillsborough popular enthusiasm had turned from revelry to refreshment.
The crowd, having retired to home and hostelry, had left the streets
nearly deserted.

Strong's coon set out in the direction of the river, and soon a bull-dog
laid hold of him. The dog gave the coon a shake, and began, as it were,
to lose confidence. He dropped the hot-furred animal, shook his head,
and tarried the tenth part of a second, as if to make a note of the
coon's odor for future reference, and then ran with all speed to the
river. He heeded not the call of his master or the jeering of a number
of small boys. They were no more to him than the idle wind.

The coon proceeded on his way to the woods. Farther on three other dogs
bounded into trouble, and rushed for water. The coon passed two bridges
and made his way across an open field in the direction of Turner's wood.

Strong, whose hunger had not been satisfied, bought some cake and pie,
and made for open country where he sat down by the road-side. Tree-tops
above him were full of chattering birds, driven out of town probably by
its hideous uproar.

The Emperor, having appeased his hunger, took half an hour for
reflection. Before the end of it came he began for the first time in his
life to suffer the penalty of idleness and high living. Indigestion, the
bane of towns and cities, had taken hold of him. Before leaving he made
these entries in his little book:

_"July the 4

"This aint no place for Strong

"Man might as well be in Ogdensburg * as have Ogdensburg in him.

"Strong's coon snaked out of his cage contrived to git even also coon
made free and independent."_

His revenge was of such lasting effect that, some say, for a long time
thereafter dogs in Hillsborough fled terror-stricken at the sight of a
coon-skin overcoat.

   

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