"Come, you must go to bed," she stammered. "I'm sure bed is--is the best place you. I think I can find what--what you need," she finished feebly.

In a snug little room over the kitchen some minutes later, David found himself at last alone. The room, though it had once belonged to a boy of his own age, looked very strange to David. On the floor was a rag-carpet rug, the first he had ever seen. On the walls were a fishing-rod, a toy shotgun, and a case full of bugs and moths, each little body impaled on a pin, to David's shuddering horror. The bed had four tall posts at the corners, and a very puffy top that filled David with wonder as to how he was to reach it, or stay there if he did gain it. Across a chair lay a boy's long yellow-white nightshirt that the kind lady had left, after hurriedly wiping her eyes with the edge of its hem. In all the circle of the candlelight there was just one familiar object to David's homesick eyes--the long black violin case which he had brought in himself, and which held his beloved violin.

With his back carefully turned toward the impaled bugs and moths on the wall, David undressed himself and slipped into the yellow-white nightshirt, which he sniffed at gratefully, so like pine woods was the perfume that hung about its folds. Then he blew out the candle and groped his way to the one window the little room contained.

The moon still shone, but little could be seen through the thick green branches of the tree outside. From the yard below came the sound of wheels, and of men's excited voices. There came also the twinkle of lanterns borne by hurrying hands, and the tramp of shuffling feet. In the window David shivered. There were no wide sweep of mountain, hill, and valley, no Silver Lake, no restful hush, no daddy,--no beautiful Things that Were. There was only the dreary, hollow mockery of the Things they had Become.

Long minutes later, David, with the violin in his arms, lay down upon the rug, and, for the first time since babyhood, sobbed himself to sleep--but it was a sleep that brought no rest; for in it he dreamed that he was a big, white-winged moth pinned with a star to an ink-black sky.

CHAPTER IV

TWO LETTERS

In the early gray dawn David awoke. His first sensation was the physical numbness and stiffness that came from his hard bed on the floor.

"Why, daddy," he began, pulling himself half-erect, "I slept all night on--" He stopped suddenly, brushing his eyes with the backs of his hands. "Why, daddy, where--" Then full consciousness came to him.

With a low cry he sprang to his feet and ran to the window. Through the trees he could see the sunrise glow of the eastern sky. Down in the yard no one was in sight; but the barn door was open, and, with a quick indrawing of his breath, David turned back into the room and began to thrust himself into his clothing.

The gold in his sagging pockets clinked and jingled musically; and once half a dozen pieces rolled out upon the floor. For a moment the boy looked as if he were going to let them remain where they were. But the next minute, with an impatient gesture, he had picked them up and thrust them deep into one of his pockets, silencing their jingling with his handkerchief.

Once dressed, David picked up his violin and stepped softly into the hall. At first no sound reached his ears; then from the kitchen below came the clatter of brisk feet and the rattle of tins and crockery.

Tightening his clasp on the violin, David slipped quietly down the back stairs and out to the yard. It was only a few seconds then before he was hurrying through the open doorway of the barn and up the narrow stairway to the loft above.

At the top, however, he came to a sharp pause, with a low cry. The next moment he turned to see a kindly-faced man looking up at him from the foot of the stairs.

"Oh, sir, please--please, where is he? What have you done with him?"

appealed the boy, almost plunging headlong down the stairs in his haste to reach the bottom.

Into the man's weather-beaten face came a look of sincere but awkward sympathy.

"Oh, hullo, sonny! So you're the boy, are ye?" he began diffidently.

"Yes, yes, I'm David. But where is he--my father, you know? I mean the--the part he--he left behind him?" choked the boy. "The part like--the ice-coat?"

The man stared. Then, involuntarily, he began to back away.

"Well, ye see, I--I--"

"But, maybe you don't know," interrupted David feverishly. "You aren't the man I saw last night. Who are you? Where is he--the other one, please?"

"No, I--I wa'n't here--that is, not at the first," spoke up the man quickly, still unconsciously backing away. "Me--I'm only Larson, Perry Larson, ye know. 'T was Mr. Holly you see last night--him that I works for."

"Then, where is Mr. Holly, please?" faltered the boy, hurrying toward the barn door. "Maybe he would know--about father. Oh, there he is!"

And David ran out of the barn and across the yard to the kitchen porch.

It was an unhappy ten minutes that David spent then. Besides Mr. Holly, there were Mrs. Holly, and the man, Perry Larson. And they all talked.

But little of what they said could David understand. To none of his questions could he obtain an answer that satisfied.

Neither, on his part, could he seem to reply to their questions in a way that pleased them.

They went in to breakfast then, Mr. and Mrs. Holly, and the man, Perry Larson. They asked David to go--at least, Mrs. Holly asked him. But David shook his head and said "No, no, thank you very much; I'd rather not, if you please--not now." Then he dropped himself down on the steps to think. As if he could EAT--with that great choking lump in his throat that refused to be swallowed!

David was thoroughly dazed, frightened, and dismayed. He knew now that never again in this world would he see his dear father, or hear him speak. This much had been made very clear to him during the last ten minutes. Why this should be so, or what his father would want him to do, he could not seem to find out. Not until now had he realized at all what this going away of his father was to mean to him. And he told himself frantically that he could not have it so. HE COULD NOT HAVE IT SO! But even as he said the words, he knew that it was so--irrevocably so.

David began then to long for his mountain home. There at least he would have his dear forest all about him, with the birds and the squirrels and the friendly little brooks. There he would have his Silver Lake to look at, too, and all of them would speak to him of his father. He believed, indeed, that up there it would almost seem as if his father were really with him. And, anyway, if his father ever should come back, it would be there that he would be sure to seek him--up there in the little mountain home so dear to them both. Back to the cabin he would go now, then. Yes; indeed he would!

With a low word and a pa.s.sionately intent expression, David got to his feet, picked up his violin, and hurried, firm-footed, down the driveway and out upon the main highway, turning in the direction from whence he had come with his father the night before.

The Hollys had just finished breakfast when Higgins, the coroner, drove into the yard accompanied by William Streeter, the town's most prominent farmer,--and the most miserly one, if report was to be credited.

"Well, could you get anything out of the boy?" demanded Higgins, without ceremony, as Simeon Holly and Larson appeared on the kitchen porch.

"Very little. Really nothing of importance," answered Simeon Holly.

"Where is he now?"

"Why, he was here on the steps a few minutes ago." Simeon Holly looked about him a bit impatiently.

"Well, I want to see him. I've got a letter for him."

"A letter!" exclaimed Simeon Holly and Larson in amazed unison.

"Yes. Found it in his father's pocket," nodded the coroner, with all the tantalizing brevity of a man who knows he has a choice morsel of information that is eagerly awaited. "It's addressed to 'My boy David,'

so I calculated we'd better give it to him first without reading it, seeing it's his. After he reads it, though, I want to see it. I want to see if what it says is any nearer being horse-sense than the other one is."

"The other one!" exclaimed the amazed chorus again.

"Oh, yes, there's another one," spoke up William Streeter tersely. "And I've read it--all but the scrawl at the end. There couldn't anybody read that!" Higgins laughed.

"Well, I'm free to confess 't is a sticker--that name," he admitted.

"And it's the name we want, of course, to tell us who they are--since it seems the boy don't know, from what you said last night. I was in hopes, by this morning, you'd have found out more from him."

Simeon Holly shook his head.

"'T was impossible."

"Gosh! I should say 't was," cut in Perry Larson, with emphasis. "An'

queer ain't no name for it. One minute he'd be talkin' good common sense like anybody: an' the next he'd be chatterin' of coats made o'

ice, an' birds an' squirrels an' babbling brooks. He sure is dippy!

Listen. He actually don't seem ter know the diff'rence between himself an' his fiddle. We was tryin' ter find out this mornin' what he could do, an' what he wanted ter do, when if he didn't up an' say that his father told him it didn't make so much diff'rence WHAT he did so long as he kept hisself in tune an' didn't strike false notes. Now, what do yer think o' that?"

"Yes, I, know" nodded Higgins musingly. "There WAS something queer about them, and they weren't just ordinary tramps. Did I tell you? I overtook them last night away up on the Fairbanks road by the Taylor place, and I gave 'em a lift. I particularly noticed what a decent sort they were. They were clean and quiet-spoken, and their clothes were good, even if they were rough. Yet they didn't have any baggage but them fiddles."

"But what was that second letter you mentioned?" asked Simeon Holly.

Higgins smiled oddly, and reached into his pocket.