It was then that Simeon Holly awoke to the sudden realization that it was time for action. He turned to his wife.

"Take the boy to the house," he directed incisively. "We'll have to keep him to-night, I suppose. I'll go for Higgins. Of course the whole thing will have to be put in his hands at once. You can't do anything here," he added, as he caught her questioning glance. "Leave everything just as it is. The man is dead."

"Dead?" It was a sharp cry from the boy, yet there was more of wonder than of terror in it. "Do you mean that he has gone--like the water in the brook--to the far country?" he faltered.

Simeon Holly stared. Then he said more distinctly:--

"Your father is dead, boy."

"And he won't come back any more?" David's voice broke now.

There was no answer. Mrs. Holly caught her breath convulsively and looked away. Even Simeon Holly refused to meet the boy's pleading eyes.

With a quick cry David sprang to his father's side.

"But he's here--right here," he challenged shrilly. "Daddy, daddy, speak to me! It's David!" Reaching out his hand, he gently touched his father's face. He drew back then, at once, his eyes distended with terror. "He isn't! He is--gone," he chattered frenziedly. "This isn't the father-part that KNOWS. It's the other--that they leave. He's left it behind him--like the squirrel, and the water in the brook."

Suddenly the boy's face changed. It grew rapt and luminous as he leaped to his feet, crying joyously: "But he asked me to play, so he went singing--singing just as he said that they did. And I made him walk through green forests with the ripple of the brooks in his ears!

Listen--like this!" And once more the boy raised the violin to his chin, and once more the music trilled and rippled about the shocked, amazed ears of Simeon Holly and his wife.

For a time neither the man nor the woman could speak. There was nothing in their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and washing of pots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this--a moonlit barn, a strange dead man, and that dead man's son babbling of brooks and squirrels, and playing jigs on a fiddle for a dirge. At last, however, Simeon found his voice.

"Boy, boy, stop that!" he thundered. "Are you mad--clean mad? Go into the house, I say!" And the boy, dazed but obedient, put up his violin, and followed the woman, who, with tear-blinded eyes, was leading the way down the stairs.

Mrs. Holly was frightened, but she was also strangely moved. From the long ago the sound of another violin had come to her--a violin, too, played by a boy's hands. But of this, all this, Mrs. Holly did not like to think.

In the kitchen now she turned and faced her young guest.

"Are you hungry, little boy?"

David hesitated; he had not forgotten the woman, the milk, and the gold-piece.

"Are you hungry--dear?" stammered Mrs. Holly again; and this time David's clamorous stomach forced a "yes" from his unwilling lips; which sent Mrs. Holly at once into the pantry for bread and milk and a heaped-up plate of doughnuts such as David had never seen before.

Like any hungry boy David ate his supper; and Mrs. Holly, in the face of this very ordinary sight of hunger being appeased at her table, breathed more freely, and ventured to think that perhaps this strange little boy was not so very strange, after all.

"What is your name?" she found courage to ask then.

"David."

"David what?"

"Just David."

"But your father's name?" Mrs. Holly had almost asked, but stopped in time. She did not want to speak of him. "Where do you live?" she asked instead.

"On the mountain, 'way up, up on the mountain where I can see my Silver Lake every day, you know."

"But you didn't live there alone?"

"Oh, no; with father--before he--went away" faltered the boy.

The woman flushed red and bit her lip.

"No, no, I mean--were there no other houses but yours?" she stammered.

"No, ma'am."

"But, wasn't your mother--anywhere?"

"Oh, yes, in father's pocket."

"Your MOTHER--in your father's POCKET!"

So plainly aghast was the questioner that David looked not a little surprised as he explained.

"You don't understand. She is an angel-mother, and angel-mothers don't have anything only their pictures down here with us. And that's what we have, and father always carried it in his pocket."

"Oh----h," murmured Mrs. Holly, a quick mist in her eyes. Then, gently: "And did you always live there--on the mountain?"

"Six years, father said."

"But what did you do all day? Weren't you ever--lonesome?"

"Lonesome?" The boy's eyes were puzzled.

"Yes. Didn't you miss things--people, other houses, boys of your own age, and--and such things?"

David's eyes widened.

"Why, how could I?" he cried. "When I had daddy, and my violin, and my Silver Lake, and the whole of the great big woods with everything in them to talk to, and to talk to me?"

"Woods, and things in them to--to TALK to you!"

"Why, yes. It was the little brook, you know, after the squirrel, that told me about being dead, and--"

"Yes, yes; but never mind, dear, now," stammered the woman, rising hurriedly to her feet--the boy was a little wild, after all, she thought. "You--you should go to bed. Haven't you a--a bag, or--or anything?"

"No, ma'am; we left it," smiled David apologetically. "You see, we had so much in it that it got too heavy to carry. So we did n't bring it."

"So much in it you didn't bring it, indeed!" repeated Mrs. Holly, under her breath, throwing up her hands with a gesture of despair. "Boy, what are you, anyway?"

It was not meant for a question, but, to the woman's surprise, the boy answered, frankly, simply:--

"Father says that I'm one little instrument in the great Orchestra of Life, and that I must see to it that I'm always in tune, and don't drag or hit false notes."

"My land!" breathed the woman, dropping back in her chair, her eyes fixed on the boy. Then, with an effort, she got to her feet.