He stood and gaped as Nixon, with a shout of delight, pounced upon some rosy pepper-gra.s.s, stooped to pick a wood aster or gentian, or pointed out to Coombsie the green sarsaparilla plant flaunting and prolific between the trees.

"What do you call this, Marcoo?" the strange boy would exclaim delightedly, finding novel treasure trove in the rare white blossoms of Labrador tea. "I don't remember to have seen this flower on any of our hikes through the Pennsylvania woods!"

To which Coombsie would make answer:--

"Don't ask me, Nix; I know a little about birds, but when it comes to knowing anything of flowers or plants--excepting those that are under our feet every day--I 'fall down flunk!' Hullo! though, here are some devil's pitchforks--or stick-tight--I do know them!"

"So do I!" Nixon stooped over the tall bristly flower-heads, rusty green in color, and gathered a few of the two-p.r.o.nged seed-vessels that cling so readily to the fur of an animal or the clothing of a boy. "It's funny to think how they have to depend upon some pa.s.sing animal to propagate the seeds. Say! but they do stick tight, don't they?" And he slyly slipped a few of the russet pitchforks inside Leon's collar--whereupon a whooping scuffle ensued.

"It looks to me as if _some_ lightfooted animal were in the habit of pa.s.sing here that might carry the seeds along," said the perpetrator of the prank presently, dropping upon his hands and knees to examine breathlessly the leaves and brambles pressed down into a trail so light that it seemed the mere shadow of a pathway leading off into the woods at right angles from where the boys stood.

"You're right. It's a fox-path!" Leon was examining the shadow-tracks too. "A fox trots along here to his hunting-ground where he catches shrews an' mice or gra.s.shoppers even, when he can't get hold of a plump quail or partridge. Whew! I wish I'd brought my gun."

Dead silence for two minutes, while each ear was intently strained to catch the sound of a sly footfall and heard nothing but the noisy shrilling of the cicada, or seventeen-year locust, with the pipe of kindred insects.

"Look! there's been a partridge at work here," cried Nixon by and by, when the still game was over and the boys were forging ahead again.

He pointed to a decayed log whose flaky wood, garnished here and there with a tiny buff feather, was mostly pecked away and reduced to brown powder by the busy bird which had wallowed there.

"He's been trying to get at some insects in the wood. See how he has dusted it all up with his claws an' feathers!" went on the excited speaker. "Oh--but I tell you what makes you feel happy!" He drew a long breath, turning suddenly, impulsively, to the boys behind him. "It's when you're out on a hike an' a partridge rises right in front of you--and you hear his wings sing!"

Colin and Coombsie stared. The strange boy's look flashed with such frank gladness, doubled and trebled by sharing sympathetically, in so far as he could, each bounding thrill that animated the wild, free life about him! They had often been moved by the liquid notes from a songster's throat, but had not come enough into loving touch with Nature to hear music in a bird's wings.

If Leon had heard it, his one idea would have been to silence it with a shot. He stood still in his tracks, bristling like his dog.

"Ughr-r! 'Singing wings'!" he sneered. "Aw! take that talk home to Mamma."

"Say that once again, and I'll lick you!" The stranger's gaze became, now, very straight and inviting from under his broad-brimmed hat.

The atmosphere felt highly charged--unpleasantly so for the other two boys. But at that critical moment an extraordinary sound of other singing--human singing--was borne to them in faint merriment upon the woodland breeze, so primitive, so unlike anything modern, that it might have been Robin Hood himself or one of his green-coated Merry Men singing a roundelay in the woods to the accompaniment of a woodchopper's axe.

"Rond! Rond! Rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!

Rond! rond! rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!"

"_What is it?_ Who is--it?" Nixon's stiffening fists unclosed. His eye was bright with bewilderment.

"Houp-la! it's Toiney--Toiney Leduc." Colin broke into an exultant whoop. "Now we'll have fun! Toiney is a funny one, for sure!"

"He's more fun than a circus," corroborated Coombsie. "We're coming to a little farm-clearing in the woods now, Nix," he explained, falling in by his cousin's side as the four boys moved hastily ahead, challenges forgotten. "There's a house on it, the last for miles. It's owned by a man called Greer, and Toiney Leduc works for him during the summer an'

fall. Toiney is a French-Canadian who came here about a year ago; his brother is employed in one of the shipbuilding yards on the river."

The merry, oft-repeated strain came to them more distinctly now, rolling among the trees:--

"Rond, rond, rond, peti' pie pon' ton'!

C'eta't une bonne femme, Qui garda't s.e.x moutons, Rond', rond', rond, peti' pie pon' ton'!"

"He's singing about the woman who was taking care of her sheep and how the lamb got his chin in the milk! He translated it for me," said Colin.

"'Translate!' He doesn't know enough English to say 'Boo!' straight,"

threw back Leon, as he gained the edge of the clearing. "It is Toiney!"

he cried exultingly. "Toiney--and the _Hare_!"

"The--what? My word! there are surprises enough in these woods--what with forest paintpots--and the rest." Nixon, as he spoke, was bounding out into the open too, thrilled by expectation: a musical woodchopper attended by a tame rodent would certainly be a unique item upon the forest playbill which promised a variety of attractions already.

But he saw no skipping hare upon the green patch of clearing--nothing but a boy of twelve whose full forehead and pointed face was very slightly rodent-like in shape, but whose eyes, which at this startled moment showed little save their whites, were as shy and frightened as a rabbit's, while he shrank close to Toiney's side.

"My brother says that whenever he sees that boy he feels like offering him a bunch of clover or a lettuce leaf!" laughed Leon, repeating the thoughtless speech of an adult. He stooped suddenly, picked some of the shaded clover leaves and a pink blossom: "Eh! want some clover, 'Hare'?"

he asked teasingly, thrusting the green stuff close to the face of the abnormally frightened boy.

The hapless, human Hare sought to efface himself behind Toiney's back.

And the woodchopper began to execute an excited war-dance, flourishing the axe wherewith he had been musically felling a young birch tree for fuel.

"Ha! you Leon, you _coquin_, _gamin_--rogue--you'll say dat one time more, den I go lick you, me!" he cried in his imperfect English eked out with indignant French.

"No, you won't go lick me--you!" Nevertheless Starrie Chase and his mocking face retreated a little; he had no fancy for tackling Toiney and the axe.

"That boy's name is Harold Greer; it's too bad about him," Coombsie was whispering in Nix Warren's ear. "The doctor says he's 'all there,'

nothing wrong with him mentally. But he was born frightened--abnormally timid--and he seems to get worse instead o' better. He's afraid of everything, of his own shadow, I think, and more still of the shadows of others: I mean he's so shy that he won't speak to anybody--if he can help it--except his grandfather and Toiney and the old woman who keeps house for them."

Nixon looked pityingly at the boy who lived thus in his own shadow--the shadow of a baseless fear.

"Whew! it must be bad to be born scared!" he gasped. "I wish we could get Toiney to sing some more."

At this moment there came a wild shout from Colin who had been exploring the clearing and stumbled upon something near the outhouses.

"Gracious! what is it--a wildcat?" he cried. "It isn't a fox--though it has a bushy tail! It's as big as half a dozen squirrels. Hulloo-oo!" in yelling excitement, "it must be a c.o.o.n--a young c.o.o.n."

There was a general stampede for the hen-house, amid the squawking cackle of its rightful inhabitants.

Toiney followed, so did the human Hare, keeping always behind his back and casting nervous glances in Leon's direction.

"Ha! _le pet.i.t raton_--de littal c.o.o.n!" gasped the woodchopper. "W'en I go on top of hen-house dis morning w'at you t'ink I fin' dere, engh? I fin' heem littal c.o.o.n! I'll t'ink he kill two, t'ree poulets--littal chick!" gesticulating fiercely at the dead marauder and at the bodies of some slain chickens. "Dog he kill heem; but, _sapre_! he fight lak _diable_! Engh?"

The last exclamation was a grunt of inquiry as to whether the boys understood how that young racc.o.o.n, about two-thirds grown, had fought.

Toiney shruggingly rubbed his hands on his blue shirt-sleeves while he pointed to a mongrel dog, the other partic.i.p.ant in that early-morning battle, with whom Leon's terrier had been exchanging canine courtesies.

Blink forsook his scarred brother now and sniffed eagerly at the c.o.o.n's dead body as he had sniffed at the poor yellow-legs in the dust.

"Where did he come from, Toiney? Do you suppose he strayed from the c.o.o.n's hole that you found in the woods, among some ledges near Big Swamp?" Colin, together with the other boys, was stooping down to examine the dead body of the wild animal which measured nearly a foot and a half from the tip of its sharp nose to the beginning of the bushy tail that was handsomely ringed with black and a shading buff-color.

"Yaas, he'll com' out f'om de foret--f'om among heem beeg tree." Toiney Leduc, letting his axe fall to the ground, waved an eloquent right arm in its flannel shirt-sleeve toward the woods beyond the clearing.

"Isn't his fur long and thick--more like coa.r.s.e gray hair than fur?"

Nixon stroked the racc.o.o.n's s.h.a.ggy coat.

"Tell us how to find those ledges where the hole is? There may be some live ones in it. I'd give anything to see a live c.o.o.n," urged Coombsie.

"Ah! la! la! You no fin' dat ledge en dat swamp. Eet's littal black in dere, in gran' foret--in dem big ole hood," came the dissuading answer.