The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before
eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the
trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a plodding,
dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior, but a valued companion for
all that. They were going away from the western light, and striking deep
into the dark woods, but their feet were familiar with the path, and it
was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.
There was hardly a night the summer through when the old cow could be
found waiting at the pasture bars; on the contrary, it was her greatest
pleasure to hide herself away among the high huckleberry bushes, and
though she wore a loud bell she had made the discovery that if one stood
perfectly still it would not ring. So Sylvia had to hunt for her until
she found her, and call Co’! Co’! with never an answering Moo, until her
childish patience was quite spent. If the creature had not given good
milk and plenty of it, the case would have seemed very different to her
owners. Besides, Sylvia had all the time there was, and very little use
to make of it. Sometimes in pleasant weather it was a consolation to
look upon the cow’s pranks as an intelligent attempt to play hide and
seek, and as the child had no playmates she lent herself to this
amusement with a good deal of zest. Though this chase had been so long
that the wary animal herself had given an unusual signal of her
whereabouts, Sylvia had only laughed when she came upon Mistress Moolly
at the swamp-side, and urged her affectionately homeward with a twig of
birch leaves. The old cow was not inclined to wander farther, she even
turned in the right direction for once as they left the pasture, and
stepped along the road at a good pace. She was quite ready to be milked
now, and seldom stopped to browse. Sylvia wondered what her grandmother
would say because they were so late. It was a great while since she had
left home at half past five o’clock, but everybody knew the difficulty
of making this errand a short one. Mrs. Tilley had chased the hornéd
torment too many summer evenings herself to blame any one else for
lingering, and was only thankful as she waited that she had Sylvia,
nowadays, to give such valuable assistance. The good woman suspected
that Sylvia loitered occasionally on her own account; there never was
such a child for straying about out-of-doors since the world was made!
Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried
to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for
Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all before
she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion
of a wretched dry geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.
“‘Afraid of folks,’” old Mrs. Tilley said to herself, with a smile,
after she had made the unlikely choice of Sylvia from her daughter’s
houseful of children, and was returning to the farm. “‘Afraid of folks,’
they said! I guess she won’t be troubled no great with ’em up to the old
place!” When they reached the door of the lonely house and stopped to
unlock it, and the cat came to purr loudly, and rub against them, a
deserted pussy, indeed, but fat with young robins, Sylvia whispered that
this was a beautiful place to live in, and she never should wish to go
home.
The companions followed the shady wood-road, the cow taking slow steps,
and the child very fast ones. The cow stopped long at the brook to
drink, as if the pasture were not half a swamp, and Sylvia stood still
and waited, letting her bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water,
while the great twilight moths struck softly against her. She waded on
through the brook as the cow moved away, and listened to the thrushes
with a heart that beat fast with pleasure. There was a stirring in the
great boughs overhead. They were full of little birds and beasts that
seemed to be wide awake, and going about their world, or else saying
good-night to each other in sleepy twitters. Sylvia herself felt sleepy
as she walked along. However, it was not much farther to the house, and
the air was soft and sweet. She was not often in the woods so late as
this, and it made her feel as if she were a part of the gray shadows and
the moving leaves. She was just thinking how long it seemed since she
first came to the farm a year ago, and wondering if everything went on
in the noisy town just the same as when she was there; the thought of
the great red-faced boy who used to chase and frighten her made her
hurry along the path to escape from the shadow of the trees.
Suddenly this little woods-girl is horror-stricken to hear a clear
whistle not very far away. Not a bird’s whistle, which would have a sort
of friendliness, but a boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat
aggressive. Sylvia left the cow to whatever sad fate might await her,
and stepped discreetly aside into the bushes, but she was just too late.
The enemy had discovered her, and called out in a very cheerful and
persuasive tone, “Halloa, little girl, how far is it to the road?” and
trembling Sylvia answered almost inaudibly, “A good ways.”
She did not dare to look boldly at the tall young man, who carried a gun
over his shoulder, but she came out of her bush and again followed the
cow, while he walked alongside.
“I have been hunting for some birds,” the stranger said kindly, “and I
have lost my way, and need a friend very much. Don’t be afraid,” he
added gallantly. “Speak up and tell me what your name is, and whether
you think I can spend the night at your house, and go out gunning early
in the morning.”
Sylvia was more alarmed than before. Would not her grandmother consider
her much to blame? But who could have foreseen such an accident as this?
It did not appear to be her fault, and she hung her head as if the stem
of it were broken, but managed to answer “Sylvy,” with much effort when
her companion again asked her name.
Mrs. Tilley was standing in the doorway when the trio came into view.
The cow gave a loud moo by way of explanation.
“Yes, you’d better speak up for yourself, you old trial! Where’d she
tucked herself away this time, Sylvy?” Sylvia kept an awed silence; she
knew by instinct that her grandmother did not comprehend the gravity of
the situation. She must be mistaking the stranger for one of the
farmer-lads of the region.
The young man stood his gun beside the door, and dropped a heavy
game-bag beside it; then he bade Mrs. Tilley good-evening, and repeated
his wayfarer’s story, and asked if he could have a night’s lodging.
“Put me anywhere you like,” he said. “I must be off early in the
morning, before day; but I am very hungry, indeed. You can give me some
milk at any rate, that’s plain.”
“Dear sakes, yes,” responded the hostess, whose long slumbering
hospitality seemed to be easily awakened. “You might fare better if you
went out on the main road a mile or so, but you’re welcome to what we’ve
got. I’ll milk right off, and you make yourself at home. You can sleep
on husks or feathers,” she proffered graciously. “I raised them all
myself. There’s good pasturing for geese just below here towards the
ma’sh. Now step round and set a plate for the gentleman, Sylvy!” And
Sylvia promptly stepped. She was glad to have something to do, and she
was hungry herself.
It was a surprise to find so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in
this New England wilderness. The young man had known the horrors of its
most primitive housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of
society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens. This was the
best thrift of an old-fashioned farmstead, though on such a small scale
that it seemed like a hermitage. He listened eagerly to the old woman’s
quaint talk, he watched Sylvia’s pale face and shining gray eyes with
ever growing enthusiasm, and insisted that this was the best supper he
had eaten for a month; then, afterward, the new-made friends sat down in
the doorway together while the moon came up.
Soon it would be berry-time, and Sylvia was a great help at picking. The
cow was a good milker, though a plaguy thing to keep track of, the
hostess gossiped frankly, adding presently that she had buried four
children, so that Sylvia’s mother, and a son (who might be dead) in
California were all the children she had left. “Dan, my boy, was a great
hand to go gunning,” she explained sadly. “I never wanted for pa’tridges
or gray squer’ls while he was to home. He’s been a great wand’rer, I
expect, and he’s no hand to write letters. There, I don’t blame him, I’d
ha’ seen the world myself if it had been so I could.
“Sylvia takes after him,” the grandmother continued affectionately,
after a minute’s pause. “There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her
way over, and the wild creatur’s counts her one o’ themselves. Squer’ls
she’ll tame to come an’ feed right out o’ her hands, and all sorts o’
birds. Last winter she got the jay-birds to bangeing here, and I believe
she’d ‘a’ scanted herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out
amongst ’em, if I hadn’t kep’ watch. Anything but crows, I tell her, I’m
willin’ to help support, — though Dan he went an’ tamed one o’ them that
did seem to have reason same as folks. It was round here a good spell
after he went away. Dan an’ his father they didn’t hitch, — but he never
held up his head ag’in after Dan had dared him an’ gone off.”
The guest did not notice this hint of family sorrows in his eager
interest in something else.
“So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?” he exclaimed, as he looked
round at the little girl who sat, very demure but increasingly sleepy,
in the moonlight. “I am making a collection of birds myself. I have been
at it ever since I was a boy.” (Mrs. Tilley smiled.) “There are two or
three very rare ones I have been hunting for these five years. I mean to
get them on my own ground if they can be found.”
“Do you cage ’em up?” asked Mrs. Tilley doubtfully, in response to this
enthusiastic announcement.
“Oh, no, they’re stuffed and preserved, dozens and dozens of them,” said
the ornithologist, “and I have shot or snared every one myself. I caught
a glimpse of a white heron three miles from here on Saturday, and I have
followed it in this direction. They have never been found in this
district at all. The little white heron, it is,” and he turned again to
look at Sylvia with the hope of discovering that the rare bird was one
of her acquaintances.
But Sylvia was watching a hop-toad in the narrow foot-path.
“You would know the heron if you saw it,” the stranger continued
eagerly. “A queer tall white bird with soft feathers and long thin legs.
And it would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high tree, made of
sticks, something like a hawk’s nest.”
Sylvia’s heart gave a wild beat; she knew that strange white bird, and
had once stolen softly near where it stood in some bright green swamp
grass, away over at the other side of the woods. There was an open place
where the sunshine always seemed strangely yellow and hot, where tall,
nodding rushes grew, and her grandmother had warned her that she might
sink in the soft black mud underneath and never be heard of more. Not
far beyond were the salt marshes and beyond those was the sea, the sea
which Sylvia wondered and dreamed about, but never had looked upon,
though its great voice could often be heard above the noise of the woods
on stormy nights.
“I can’t think of anything I should like so much as to find that heron’s
nest,” the handsome stranger was saying. “I would give ten dollars to
anybody who could show it to me,” he added desperately, “and I mean to
spend my whole vacation hunting for it if need be. Perhaps it was only
migrating, or had been chased out of its own region by some bird of
prey.”
Mrs. Tilley gave amazed attention to all this, but Sylvia still watched
the toad, not divining, as she might have done at some calmer time, that
the creature wished to get to its hole under the doorstep, and was much
hindered by the unusual spectators at that hour of the evening. No
amount of thought, that night, could decide how many wished-for
treasures the ten dollars, so lightly spoken of, would buy.
The next day the young sportsman hovered about the woods, and Sylvia
kept him company, having lost her first fear of the friendly lad, who
proved to be most kind and sympathetic. He told her many things about
the birds and what they knew and where they lived and what they did with
themselves. And he gave her a jack-knife, which she thought as great a
treasure as if she were a desert-islander. All day long he did not once
make her troubled or afraid except when he brought down some
unsuspecting singing creature from its bough. Sylvia would have liked
him vastly better without his gun; she could not understand why he
killed the very birds he seemed to like so much. But as the day waned,
Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration. She had never
seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman’s heart, asleep in
the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love. Some premonition of
that great power stirred and swayed these young foresters who traversed
the solemn woodlands with soft-footed silent care. They stopped to
listen to a bird’s song; they pressed forward again eagerly, parting the
branches,—speaking to each other rarely and in whispers; the young man
going first and Sylvia following, fascinated, a few steps behind, with
her gray eyes dark with excitement.
She grieved because the longed-for white heron was elusive, but she did
not lead the guest, she only followed, and there was no such thing as
speaking first. The sound of her own unquestioned voice would have
terrified her,—it was hard enough to answer yes or no when there was
need of that. At last evening began to fall, and they drove the cow home
together, and Sylvia smiled with pleasure when they came to the place
where she heard the whistle and was afraid only the night before.