Nearest the fence was an aged, gnarled and riven tree, foolishly decked in blossoms, like some faded, wrinkled dame, fatuously reluctant to leave off girlish finery. Under its frivolous branches on the grassy sward would be the place for his first night's halt—for the magic wood just this side of the sun was now seen to be farther off than he had once supposed. So he spread his carpet, arranged the contents of his box neatly, and ate half his food-supply, for one's strength must be kept up in these affairs. As he ate he looked back toward the big house—now left forever—and toward the village beyond. The spires of the three churches were all pointing sternly upward, as if they would mutely direct him aright, but in their shelter one must submit to the prosaic trammels of decency. It was not to be thought of.
He longed for morning to come, so that he might be up and on. He lay down on his mat to be ready for sleep, and watched a big bird far above, cutting lazy graceful figures in the air, like a fancy skater. Then, on a bough above him, a little dusty-looking bird tried to sing, but it sounded only like a very small door creaking on tiny rusted hinges. A fat, gluttonous robin that had been hopping about to peer at him, chirped far more cheerfully as it flew away.
Just at this point he suffered a real adventure. Eight cows sauntered up interestedly and chewed their cuds at him in unison, standing contemplative, calculating, determined. It is a fact in natural history not widely enough recognised that the domestic cow is the most ferocious appearing of all known beasts—a thing to be proved by any who will survey one amid strange surroundings, with a mind cleanly disabused of preconceptions. A visitor from another planet, for example, knowing nothing of our fauna, and confronted in the forest simultaneously by a common red milch cow and the notoriously savage black leopard of the Himalyas, would instinctively shun the cow as a dangerous beast and confidingly seek to fondle the pretty leopard, thus terminating his natural history researches before they were fairly begun.
It can be understood, then, that a moment ensued when the little boy wavered under the steady questioning scrutiny of eight large and powerful cows, all chewing at him in unison. Yet, even so, and knowing, moreover, that strange cows are ever untrustworthy, only for a moment did he waver. Then his new straw hat was off to be shaken at them and he heaved a fierce "H-a-y—y-u-p!"
At this they started, rather indignantly, seeming to meditate his swift destruction; but another shout turned and routed them, and he even chased them a little way, helped now by the inconsiderable dog who came up from pretending to hunt gophers.
After this there seemed nothing to do but eat the other half of the provisions and retire again for the night. Long after the sun went down behind the magic wood he lay uneasily on his lumpy bed, trying again and again to shut his eyes and open them to find it morning—which was the way it always happened in the west bedroom of the big house he had left forever.
But it was different here. And presently, when it seemed nearly dark except for the stars, a disgraceful thing happened. He had pictured the dog as faithful always to him, refusing in the end even to be taken from over his dead body. But the treacherous Penny grew first restive, then plainly desirous of returning to his home. At last, after many efforts to corrupt the adventurer, he started off briskly alone—cornerwise, as little dogs seem always to run—fleeing shamelessly toward that east where shone the tame lights of Virtue.
Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember certain phrases from a tract that Clytie had tried to teach him—"the moment that will close thy life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail in hell"—"impossible to go from the haunts of sin and vice to the presence of the Lamb"—"the torments of an eternal hell are awaiting thee"——
"To-night may be thy latest breath,
Thy little moment here be done.
Eternal woe, the second death,
Awaits the Christ-rejecting one."
This was more than he had ever before been able to recall of such matters. He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly. Yet so was he turned again to better things. Gradually he began to have an inkling of a possibility that made his blood icy—a possibility that not even the spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could mitigate—namely, a vision of himself in the same plight with that person.
Now it was that he began to hear Them all about him. They walked stealthily near, passed him with sinister rustlings, and whispered over him. If They had only talked out—but they whispered—even laughing, crying and singing in whispers. This horror, of course, was not long to be endured. Yet, even so, with increasing myriads of Them all about, rustling and whispering their awful laughs and cries—it was no ignominious rout. With considerable deliberation he folded the carpet, placed it in the box with his other treasure, and started at a pace which may, perhaps, have quickened a little, yet was never undignified—never more than a moderately fast trudge.
He wondered sadly if Clytie would get up to unlock the door for him so late at night. As for Penny, things could never be the same between them again.
He was astounded to see lights burning and the house open—how weird for them to have supper at such an hour! He concealed his box in the grape-arbour and slunk through the kitchen into the dining-room. Probably they had gotten up in the middle of the night, out of tardy alarm for him. It served them right. Yet they seemed hardly to notice him when he slid awkwardly into his chair. He looked calculatingly over the table and asked, in tones that somehow seemed to tell of injury, of personal affront:
"What you having supper for at this time of night?"
His grandfather regarded him now not unkindly, while Clytie seemed confused.
"It's more'n long past midnight!" he insisted.
"Huh! it ain't only a quarter past seven," put in his superior brother. He seemed about to say more, but a glance from the grandfather silenced him.
So that was as late as he had stayed—a quarter after seven? He was ready now to rage at any taunt, and began to eat in haughty silence. He was still eating when his grandfather and Allan left the table, and then he began to feel a little grateful that they had not noticed or asked annoying questions, or tried to be funny or anything. Over a final dish of plum preserves and an imposing segment of marble cake he relented so far as to tell Clytie something of his adventures—especially since she had said that the big hall-clock was very likely slow—that it must surely be a lot later than a quarter past seven. The circumstances had combined to produce a narrative not entirely perspicuous—the two clear points being that They do everything in a whisper, and that Clytie ought to get rid of Penny at once, since he could not be depended upon at great moments.
As to ever sleeping under a tree, Clytie discouraged him. She knew of some Boys that once sat under a tree which was struck by lightning, all being killed save one, who had the rare good luck to be the son of a Presbyterian clergyman. The little boy resolved next time to go beyond the trees to sleep; perhaps if he went far enough he would come to the other one of the Feet, and so have a safeguard against lightning, foreign cows, and Those that walk with rustlings and whisper in the lonely places at night.
The little boy fell asleep, half-persuaded again to virtue, because of its superior comforts. The air about his head seemed full of ghostly "good business hands," each with its accusing forefinger pointed at him for that he had not learned to write one as Ralph Overton did.
Down the hall in his study the old man was musing backward to the delicate, quiet girl with the old-fashioned aureole of curls, who would now and then toss them with a little gesture eloquent of possibilities for unrestraint when she felt the close-drawn rein of his authority. Again he felt her rebellious little tugs, and the wrench of her final defiance when she did the awful thing. He had been told by a plain speaker that her revolt was the fault of his severity. And here was the flesh of her flesh—was it in the same spirit of revolt against authority, a thousandfold magnified? Might he not by according the boy a wise liberty save him in after years from some mad folly akin to