He paused, manifestly waiting for the proper awed admiration to come into David's face.

But in David's startled eyes there was no awed admiration, there was only disbelieving horror.

"You mean, you SENT them to the far country?"

"We--what?"

"Sent them. Made them go yourselves--to the far country?"

The younger boy still stared. The older one grinned disagreeably.

"Sure," he answered with laconic indifference. "We sent 'em to the far country, all right."

"But--how did you know they WANTED to go?"

"Wanted--Eh?" exploded the big boy. Then he grinned again, still more disagreeably. "Well, you see, my dear, we didn't ask 'em," he gibed.

Real distress came into David's face.

"Then you don't know at all. And maybe they DIDn't want to go. And if they didn't, how COULD they go singing, as father said? Father wasn't sent. He WENT. And he went singing. He said he did. But these--How would YOU like to have somebody come along and send YOU to the far country, without even knowing if you wanted to go?"

There was no answer. The boys, with a growing fear in their eyes, as at sight of something inexplicable and uncanny, were sidling away; and in a moment they were hurrying down the hill, not, however, without a backward glance or two, of something very like terror.

David, left alone, went on his way with troubled eyes and a thoughtful frown.

David often wore, during those first few days at the Holly farmhouse, a thoughtful face and a troubled frown. There were so many, many things that were different from his mountain home. Over and over, as those first long days pa.s.sed, he read his letter until he knew it by heart--and he had need to. Was he not already surrounded by things and people that were strange to him?

And they were so very strange--these people! There were the boys and men who rose at dawn--yet never paused to watch the sun flood the world with light; who stayed in the fields all day--yet never raised their eyes to the big fleecy clouds overhead; who knew birds only as thieves after fruit and grain, and squirrels and rabbits only as creatures to be trapped or shot. The women--they were even more incomprehensible.

They spent the long hours behind screened doors and windows, washing the same dishes and sweeping the same floors day after day. They, too, never raised their eyes to the blue sky outside, nor even to the crimson roses that peeped in at the window. They seemed rather to be looking always for dirt, yet not pleased when they found it--especially if it had been tracked in on the heel of a small boy's shoe!

More extraordinary than all this to David, however, was the fact that these people regarded HIM, not themselves, as being strange. As if it were not the most natural thing in the world to live with one's father in one's home on the mountain-top, and spend one's days trailing through the forest paths, or lying with a book beside some babbling little stream! As if it were not equally natural to take one's violin with one at times, and learn to catch upon the quivering strings the whisper of the winds through the trees! Even in winter, when the clouds themselves came down from the sky and covered the earth with their soft whiteness,--even then the forest was beautiful; and the song of the brook under its icy coat carried a charm and mystery that were quite wanting in the chattering freedom of summer. Surely there was nothing strange in all this, and yet these people seemed to think there was!

CHAPTER IX

JOE

Day by day, however, as time pa.s.sed, David diligently tried to perform the "dos" and avoid the "don'ts"; and day by day he came to realize how important weeds and woodboxes were, if he were to conform to what was evidently Farmer Holly's idea of "playing in, tune" in this strange new Orchestra of Life in which he found himself.

But, try as he would, there was yet an unreality about it all, a persistent feeling of uselessness and waste, that would not be set aside. So that, after all, the only part of this strange new life of his that seemed real to him was the time that came after four o'clock each day, when he was released from work.

And how full he filled those hours! There was so much to see, so much to do. For sunny days there were field and stream and pasture land and the whole wide town to explore. For rainy days, if he did not care to go to walk, there was his room with the books in the chimney cupboard.

Some of them David had read before, but many of them he had not. One or two were old friends; but not so "Dare Devil d.i.c.k," and "The Pirates of Pigeon Cove" (which he found hidden in an obscure corner behind a loose board). Side by side stood "The Lady of the Lake," "Treasure Island,"

and "David Copperfield"; and coverless and dogeared lay "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Nights," and "Grimm's Fairy Tales." There were more, many more, and David devoured them all with eager eyes. The good in them he absorbed as he absorbed the sunshine; the evil he cast aside unconsciously--it rolled off, indeed, like the proverbial water from the duck's back.

David hardly knew sometimes which he liked the better, his imaginative adventures between the covers of his books or his real adventures in his daily strolls. True, it was not his mountain home--this place in which he found himself; neither was there anywhere his Silver Lake with its far, far-reaching sky above. More deplorable yet, nowhere was there the dear father he loved so well. But the sun still set in rose and gold, and the sky, though small, still carried the snowy sails of its cloud-boats; while as to his father--his father had told him not to grieve, and David was trying very hard to obey.

With his violin for company David started out each day, unless he elected to stay indoors with his books. Sometimes it was toward the village that he turned his steps; sometimes it was toward the hills back of the town. Whichever way it was, there was always sure to be something waiting at the end for him and his violin to discover, if it was nothing more than a big white rose in bloom, or a squirrel sitting by the roadside.

Very soon, however, David discovered that there was something to be found in his wanderings besides squirrels and roses; and that was--people. In spite of the strangeness of these people, they were wonderfully interesting, David thought. And after that he turned his steps more and more frequently toward the village when four o'clock released him from the day's work.

At first David did not talk much to these people. He shrank sensitively from their bold stares and unpleasantly audible comments. He watched them with round eyes of wonder and interest, however,--when he did not think they were watching him. And in time he came to know not a little about them and about the strange ways in which they pa.s.sed their time.

There was the greenhouse man. It would be pleasant to spend one's day growing plants and flowers--but not under that hot, stifling gla.s.s roof, decided David. Besides, he would not want always to pick and send away the very prettiest ones to the city every morning, as the greenhouse man did.

There was the doctor who rode all day long behind the gray mare, making sick folks well. David liked him, and mentally vowed that he himself would be a doctor sometime. Still, there was the stage-driver--David was not sure but he would prefer to follow this man's profession for a life-work; for in his, one could still have the freedom of long days in the open, and yet not be saddened by the sight of the sick before they had been made well--which was where the stage-driver had the better of the doctor, in David's opinion. There were the blacksmith and the storekeepers, too, but to these David gave little thought or attention.

Though he might not know what he did want to do, he knew very well what he did not. All of which merely goes to prove that David was still on the lookout for that great work which his father had said was waiting for him out in the world.

Meanwhile David played his violin. If he found a crimson rambler in bloom in a door-yard, he put it into a little melody of pure delight--that a woman in the house behind the rambler heard the music and was cheered at her task, David did not know. If he found a kitten at play in the sunshine, he put it into a riotous abandonment of tumbling turns and trills--that a fretful baby heard and stopped its wailing, David also did not know. And once, just because the sky was blue and the air was sweet, and it was so good to be alive, David lifted his bow and put it all into a rapturous paean of ringing exultation--that a sick man in a darkened chamber above the street lifted his head, drew in his breath, and took suddenly a new lease of life, David still again did not know. All of which merely goes to prove that David had perhaps found his work and was doing it--although yet still again David did not know.

It was in the cemetery one afternoon that David came upon the Lady in Black. She was on her knees putting flowers on a little mound before her. She looked up as David approached. For a moment she gazed wistfully at him; then as if impelled by a hidden force, she spoke.

"Little boy, who are you?"

"I'm David."

"David! David who? Do you live here? I've seen you here before."

"Oh, yes, I've been here quite a lot of times." Purposely the boy evaded the questions. David was getting tired of questions--especially these questions.

"And have you--lost one dear to you, little boy?"

"Lost some one?"

"I mean--is your father or mother--here?"

"Here? Oh, no, they aren't here. My mother is an angel-mother, and my father has gone to the far country. He is waiting for me there, you know."

"But, that's the same--that is--" She stopped helplessly, bewildered eyes on David's serene face. Then suddenly a great light came to her own. "Oh, little boy, I wish I could understand that--just that," she breathed. "It would make it so much easier--if I could just remember that they aren't here--that they're WAITING--over there!"

But David apparently did not hear. He had turned and was playing softly as he walked away. Silently the Lady in Black knelt, listening, looking after him. When she rose some time later and left the cemetery, the light on her face was still there, deeper, more glorified.

Toward boys and girls--especially boys--of his own age, David frequently turned wistful eyes. David wanted a friend, a friend who would know and understand; a friend who would see things as he saw them, who would understand what he was saying when he played. It seemed to David that in some boy of his own age he ought to find such a friend. He had seen many boys--but he had not yet found the friend.

David had begun to think, indeed, that of all these strange beings in this new life of his, boys were the strangest.

They stared and nudged each other unpleasantly when they came upon him playing. They jeered when he tried to tell them what he had been playing. They had never heard of the great Orchestra of Life, and they fell into most disconcerting fits of laughter, or else backed away as if afraid, when he told them that they themselves were instruments in it, and that if they did not keep themselves in tune, there was sure to be a discord somewhere.

Then there were their games and frolics. Such as were played with b.a.l.l.s, bats, and bags of beans, David thought he would like very much.

But the boys only scoffed when he asked them to teach him how to play.

They laughed when a dog chased a cat, and they thought it very, very funny when Tony, the old black man, tripped on the string they drew across his path. They liked to throw stones and shoot guns, and the more creeping, crawling, or flying creatures that they could send to the far country, the happier they were, apparently. Nor did they like it at all when he asked them if they were sure all these creeping, crawling, flying creatures wanted to leave this beautiful world and to be made dead. They sneered and called him a sissy. David did not know what a sissy was; but from the way they said it, he judged it must be even worse to be a sissy than to be a thief.

And then he discovered Joe.

David had found himself in a very strange, very unlovely neighborhood that afternoon. The street was full of papers and tin cans, the houses were unspeakably forlorn with sagging blinds and lack of paint. Untidy women and blear-eyed men leaned over the dilapidated fences, or lolled on mud-tracked doorsteps. David, his shrinking eyes turning from one side to the other, pa.s.sed slowly through the street, his violin under his arm. Nowhere could David find here the tiniest spot of beauty to "play." He had reached quite the most forlorn little shanty on the street when the promise in his father's letter occurred to him. With a suddenly illumined face, he raised his violin to position and plunged into a veritable whirl of trills and runs and tripping melodies.

"If I didn't just entirely forget that I didn't NEED to SEE anything beautiful to play," laughed David softly to himself. "Why, it's already right here in my violin!"