Wherein a Feather Falls and a Soul Is Born
So Freckles fared through the bitter winter. He was very happy. He
had hungered for freedom, love, and appreciation so long! He had been
unspeakably lonely at the Home; and the utter loneliness of a great
desert or forest is not so difficult to endure as the loneliness of
being constantly surrounded by crowds of people who do not care in the
least whether one is living or dead.
All through the winter Freckles' entire energy was given to keeping up
his lines and his “chickens” from freezing or starving. When the first
breath of spring touched the Limberlost, and the snow receded before it;
when the catkins began to bloom; when there came a hint of green to the
trees, bushes, and swale; when the rushes lifted their heads, and the
pulse of the newly resurrected season beat strongly in the heart of
nature, something new stirred in the breast of the boy.
Nature always levies her tribute. Now she laid a powerful hand on the
soul of Freckles, to which the boy's whole being responded, though
he had not the least idea what was troubling him. Duncan accepted his
wife's theory that it was a touch of spring fever, but Freckles knew
better. He never had been so well. Clean, hot, and steady the blood
pulsed in his veins. He was always hungry, and his most difficult work
tired him not at all. For long months, without a single intermission,
he had tramped those seven miles of trail twice each day, through every
conceivable state of weather. With the heavy club he gave his wires a
sure test, and between sections, first in play, afterward to keep his
circulation going, he had acquired the skill of an expert drum major.
In his work there was exercise for every muscle of his body each hour of
the day, at night a bath, wholesome food, and sound sleep in a room that
never knew fire. He had gained flesh and color, and developed a greater
strength and endurance than anyone ever could have guessed.
Nor did the Limberlost contain last year's terrors. He had been with
her in her hour of desolation, when stripped bare and deserted, she had
stood shivering, as if herself afraid. He had made excursions into the
interior until he was familiar with every path and road that ever
had been cut. He had sounded the depths of her deepest pools, and had
learned why the trees grew so magnificently. He had found that places
of swamp and swale were few compared with miles of solid timber-land,
concealed by summer's luxuriant undergrowth.
The sounds that at first had struck cold fear into his soul he now knew
had left on wing and silent foot at the approach of winter. As flock
after flock of the birds returned and he recognized the old echoes
reawakening, he found to his surprise that he had been lonely for
them and was hailing their return with great joy. All his fears were
forgotten. Instead, he was possessed of an overpowering desire to know
what they were, to learn where they had been, and whether they would
make friends with him as the winter birds had done; and if they did,
would they be as fickle? For, with the running sap, creeping worm, and
winging bug, most of Freckles' “chickens” had deserted him, entered the
swamp, and feasted to such a state of plethora on its store that they
cared little for his supply, so that in the strenuous days of mating and
nest-building the boy was deserted.
He chafed at the birds' ingratitude, but he found speedy consolation in
watching and befriending the newcomers. He surely would have been proud
and highly pleased if he had known that many of the former inhabitants
of the interior swamp now grouped their nests beside the timber-line
solely for the sake of his protection and company.
The yearly resurrection of the Limberlost is a mighty revival. Freckles
stood back and watched with awe and envy the gradual reclothing and
repopulation of the swamp. Keen-eyed and alert through danger and
loneliness, he noted every stage of development, from the first piping
frog and unsheathing bud, to full leafage and the return of the last
migrant.
The knowledge of his complete loneliness and utter insignificance was
hourly thrust upon him. He brooded and fretted until he was in a fever;
yet he never guessed the cause. He was filled with a vast impatience, a
longing that he scarcely could endure.
It was June by the zodiac, June by the Limberlost, and by every delight
of a newly resurrected season it should have been June in the hearts of
all men. Yet Freckles scowled darkly as he came down the trail, and the
running TAP, TAP that tested the sagging wire and telegraphed word
of his coming to his furred and feathered friends of the swamp, this
morning carried the story of his discontent a mile ahead of him.
Freckles' special pet, a dainty, yellow-coated, black-sleeved, cock
goldfinch, had remained on the wire for several days past the bravest
of all; and Freckles, absorbed with the cunning and beauty of the tiny
fellow, never guessed that he was being duped. For the goldfinch was
skipping, flirting, and swinging for the express purpose of so holding
his attention that he would not look up and see a small cradle of
thistledown and wool perilously near his head. In the beginning of
brooding, the spunky little homesteader had clung heroically to the wire
when he was almost paralyzed with fright. When day after day passed
and brought only softly whistled repetitions of his call, a handful of
crumbs on the top of a locust line-post, and gently worded coaxings, he
grew in confidence. Of late he had sung and swung during the passing of
Freckles, who, not dreaming of the nest and the solemn-eyed little hen
so close above, thought himself unusually gifted in his power to attract
the birds. This morning the goldfinch scarcely could believe his ears,
and clung to the wire until an unusually vicious rap sent him spinning a
foot in air, and his “PTSEET” came with a squall of utter panic.
The wires were ringing with a story the birds could not translate, and
Freckles was quite as ignorant of the trouble as they.
A peculiar movement beneath a small walnut tree caught his attention.
He stopped to investigate. There was an unusually large Luna cocoon, and
the moth was bursting the upper end in its struggles to reach light and
air. Freckles stood and stared.
“There's something in there trying to get out,” he muttered. “Wonder if
I could help it? Guess I best not be trying. If I hadn't happened along,
there wouldn't have been anyone to do anything, and maybe I'd only be
hurting it. It's--it's----Oh, skaggany! It's just being born!”
Freckles gasped with surprise. The moth cleared the opening, and with
many wabblings and contortions climbed up the tree. He stared speechless
with amazement as the moth crept around a limb and clung to the under
side. There was a big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of
the very snowiest white that Freckles ever had seen. There was a band
of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same
colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head,
and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings. As Freckles gazed,
tense with astonishment, he saw that these were expanding, drooping,
taking on color, and small, oval markings were beginning to show.
The minutes passed. Freckles' steady gaze never wavered. Without
realizing it, he was trembling with eagerness and anxiety. As he saw
what was taking place, “It's going to fly,” he breathed in hushed
wonder. The morning sun fell on the moth and dried its velvet down,
while the warm air made it fluffy. The rapidly growing wings began to
show the most delicate green, with lavender fore-ribs, transparent,
eye-shaped markings, edged with lines of red, tan, and black, and long,
crisp trailers.
Freckles was whispering to himself for fear of disturbing the moth. It
began a systematic exercise of raising and lowering its exquisite wings
to dry them and to establish circulation. The boy realized that soon it
would be able to spread them and sail away. His long-coming soul sent up
its first shivering cry.
“I don't know what it is! Oh, I wish I knew! How I wish I knew! It must
be something grand! It can't be a butterfly! It's away too big. Oh, I
wish there was someone to tell me what it is!”
He climbed on the locust post, and balancing himself with the wire,
held a finger in the line of the moth's advance up the twig. It
unhesitatingly climbed on, so he stepped to the path, holding it to the
light and examining it closely. Then he held it in the shade and turned
it, gloating over its markings and beautiful coloring. When he held the
moth to the limb, it climbed on, still waving those magnificent wings.
“My, but I'd like to be staying with you!” he said. “But if I was to
stand here all day you couldn't grow any prettier than you are right
now, and I wouldn't grow smart enough to tell what you are. I suppose
there's someone who knows. Of course there is! Mr. McLean said there
were people who knew every leaf, bird, and flower in the Limberlost. Oh
Lord! How I wish You'd be telling me just this one thing!”
The goldfinch had ventured back to the wire, for there was his mate,
only a few inches above the man-creature's head; and indeed, he simply
must not be allowed to look up, so the brave little fellow rocked on the
wire and piped, as he had done every day for a week: “SEE ME? SEE ME?”
“See you! Of course I see you,” growled Freckles. “I see you day after
day, and what good is it doing me? I might see you every morning for a
year, and then not be able to be telling anyone about it. 'Seen a bird
with black silk wings--little, and yellow as any canary.' That's as far
as I'd get. What you doing here, anyway? Have you a mate? What's your
name? 'See you?' I reckon I see you; but I might as well be blind, for
any good it's doing me!”
Freckles impatiently struck the wire. With a screech of fear, the
goldfinch fled precipitately. His mate arose from the nest with a
whirr--Freckles looked up and saw it.
“O--ho!” he cried. “So THAT'S what you are doing here! You have a
wife. And so close my head I have been mighty near wearing a bird on my
bonnet, and never knew it!”
Freckles laughed at his own jest, while in better humor he climbed to
examine the neat, tiny cradle and its contents. The hen darted at him in
a frenzy. “Now, where do you come in?” he demanded, when he saw that she
was not similar to the goldfinch.
“You be clearing out of here! This is none of your fry. This is the nest
of me little, yellow friend of the wire, and you shan't be touching it.
Don't blame you for wanting to see, though. My, but it's a fine nest and
beauties of eggs. Will you be keeping away, or will I fire this stick at
you?”
Freckles dropped to the trail. The hen darted to the nest and settled on
it with a tender, coddling movement. He of the yellow coat flew to the
edge to make sure that everything was right. It would have been plain to
the veriest novice that they were partners in that cradle.
“Well, I'll be switched!” muttered Freckles. “If that ain't both their
nest! And he's yellow and she's green, or she's yellow and he's green.
Of course, I don't know, and I haven't any way to find out, but it's
plain as the nose on your face that they are both ready to be fighting
for that nest, so, of course, they belong. Doesn't that beat you? Say,
that's what's been sticking me all of this week on that grass nest in
the thorn tree down the line. One day a blue bird is setting, so I think
it is hers. The next day a brown bird is on, and I chase it off because
the nest is blue's. Next day the brown bird is on again, and I let her
be, because I think it must be hers. Next day, be golly, blue's on, and
off I send her because it's brown's; and now, I bet my hat, it's both
their nest and I've only been bothering them and making a big fool of
mesilf. Pretty specimen I am, pretending to be a friend to the birds,
and so blamed ignorant I don't know which ones go in pairs, and blue and
brown are a pair, of course, if yellow and green are--and there's the
red birds! I never thought of them! He's red and she's gray--and now
I want to be knowing, are they all different? Why no! Of course, they
ain't! There's the jays all blue, and the crows all black.”
The tide of Freckles' discontent welled until he almost choked with
anger and chagrin. He plodded down the trail, scowling blackly and
viciously spanging the wire. At the finches' nest he left the line
and peered into the thorn tree. There was no bird brooding. He pressed
closer to take a peep at the snowy, spotless little eggs he had found so
beautiful, when at the slight noise up raised four tiny baby heads with
wide-open mouths, uttering hunger cries. Freckles stepped back. The
brown bird alighted on the edge and closed one cavity with a wiggling
green worm, while not two minutes later the blue filled another with
a white. That settled it. The blue and brown were mates. Once again
Freckles repeated his “How I wish I knew!”
Around the bridge spanning Sleepy Snake Creek the swale spread widely,
the timber was scattering, and willows, rushes, marsh-grass, and
splendid wild flowers grew abundantly. Here lazy, big, black water
snakes, for which the creek was named, sunned on the bushes, wild ducks
and grebe chattered, cranes and herons fished, and muskrats plowed the
bank in queer, rolling furrows. It was always a place full of interest,
so Freckles loved to linger on the bridge, watching the marsh and water
people. He also transacted affairs of importance with the wild flowers
and sweet marsh-grass. He enjoyed splashing through the shallow pools on
either side of the bridge.
Then, too, where the creek entered the swamp was a place of unusual
beauty. The water spread in darksome, mossy, green pools. Water-plants
and lilies grew luxuriantly, throwing up large, rank, green leaves.
Nowhere else in the Limberlost could be found frog-music to equal
that of the mouth of the creek. The drumming and piping rolled in
never-ending orchestral effect, while the full chorus rang to its
accompaniment throughout the season.
Freckles slowly followed the path leading from the bridge to the line.
It was the one spot at which he might relax his vigilance. The boldest
timber thief the swamp ever had known would not have attempted to enter
it by the mouth of the creek, on account of the water and because there
was no protection from surrounding trees. He was bending the rank grass
with his cudgel, and thinking of the shade the denser swamp afforded,
when he suddenly dodged sidewise; the cudgel whistled sharply through
the air and Freckles sprang back.
From the clear sky above him, first level with his face, then skimming,
dipping, tilting, whirling until it struck, quill down, in the path
in front of him, came a glossy, iridescent, big black feather. As it
touched the ground, Freckles snatched it up with almost a continuous
movement facing the sky. There was not a tree of any size in a large
open space. There was no wind to carry it. From the clear sky it had
fallen, and Freckles, gazing eagerly into the arch of June blue with a
few lazy clouds floating high in the sea of ether, had neither mind nor
knowledge to dream of a bird hanging as if frozen there. He turned the
big quill questioningly, and again his awed eyes swept the sky.
“A feather dropped from Heaven!” he breathed reverently. “Are the holy
angels moulting? But no; if they were, it would be white. Maybe all the
angels are not for being white. What if the angels of God are white and
those of the devil are black? But a black one has no business up there.
Maybe some poor black angel is so tired of being punished it's for
slipping to the gates, beating its wings trying to make the Master
hear!”
Again and again Freckles searched the sky, but there was no answering
gleam of golden gates, no form of sailing bird; then he went slowly
on his way, turning the feather and wondering about it. It was a wing
quill, eighteen inches in length, with a heavy spine, gray at the base,
shading to jet black at the tip, and it caught the play of the sun's
rays in slanting gleams of green and bronze. Again Freckles' “old man
of the sea” sat sullen and heavy on his shoulders and weighted him down
until his step lagged and his heart ached.
“Where did it come from? What is it? Oh, how I wish I knew!” he kept
repeating as he turned and studied the feather, with almost unseeing
eyes, so intently was he thinking.
Before him spread a large, green pool, filled with rotting logs and
leaves, bordered with delicate ferns and grasses among which lifted the
creamy spikes of the arrow-head, the blue of water-hyacinth, and the
delicate yellow of the jewel-flower. As Freckles leaned, handling the
feather and staring at it, then into the depths of the pool, he once
more gave voice to his old query: “I wonder what it is!”
Straight across from him, couched in the mosses of a soggy old log, a
big green bullfrog, with palpitant throat and batting eyes, lifted his
head and bellowed in answer. “FIN' DOUT! FIN' DOUT!”
“Wha--what's that?” stammered Freckles, almost too much bewildered to
speak. “I--I know you are only a bullfrog, but, be jabbers, that sounded
mightily like speech. Wouldn't you please to be saying it over?”
The bullfrog cuddled contentedly in the ooze. Then suddenly he lifted
his voice, and, as an imperative drumbeat, rolled it again: “FIN' DOUT!
FIN' DOUT! FIN DOUT!”
Freckles had the answer. Something seemed to snap in his brain. There
was a wavering flame before his eyes. Then his mind cleared. His
head lifted in a new poise, his shoulders squared, while his spine
straightened. The agony was over. His soul floated free. Freckles came
into his birthright.
“Before God, I will!” He uttered the oath so impressively that the
recording angel never winced as he posted it in the prayer column.
Freckles set his hat over the top of one of the locust posts used
between trees to hold up the wire while he fastened the feather securely
in the band. Then he started down the line, talking to himself as men
who have worked long alone always fall into the habit of doing.
“What a fool I have been!” he muttered. “Of course that's what I have to
do! There wouldn't likely anybody be doing it for me. Of course I can!
What am I a man for? If I was a four-footed thing of the swamp, maybe I
couldn't; but a man can do anything if he's the grit to work hard enough
and stick at it, Mr. McLean is always saying, and here's the way I am to
do it. He said, too, that there were people that knew everything in the
swamp. Of course they have written books! The thing for me to be doing
is to quit moping and be buying some. Never bought a book in me life,
or anything else of much account, for that matter. Oh, ain't I glad I
didn't waste me money! I'll surely be having enough to get a few. Let me
see.”
Freckles sat on a log, took his pencil and account-book, and figured
on a back page. He had walked the timber-line ten months. His pay
was thirty dollars a month, and his board cost him eight. That left
twenty-two dollars a month, and his clothing had cost him very little.
At the least he had two hundred dollars in the bank. He drew a deep
breath and smiled at the sky with satisfaction.
“I'll be having a book about all the birds, trees, flowers, butterflies,
and----Yes, by gummy! I'll be having one about the frogs--if it takes
every cent I have,” he promised himself.
He put away the account-book, that was his most cherished possession,
caught up his stick, and started down the line. The even tap, tap, and
the cheery, gladsome whistle carried far ahead of him the message that
Freckles was himself again.
He fell into a rapid pace, for he had lost time that morning; when he
rounded the last curve he was almost running. There was a chance that
the Boss might be there for his weekly report.
Then, wavering, flickering, darting here and there over the sweet
marsh-grass, came a large black shadow, sweeping so closely before him
that for the second time that morning Freckles dodged and sprang back.
He had seen some owls and hawks of the swamp that he thought might be
classed as large birds, but never anything like this, for six feet it
spread its big, shining wings. Its strong feet could be seen drawn
among its feathers. The sun glinted on its sharp, hooked beak. Its eyes
glowed, caught the light, and seemed able to pierce the ground at his
feet. It cared no more for Freckles than if he had not been there; for
it perched on a low tree, while a second later it awkwardly hopped to
the trunk of a lightning-riven elm, turned its back, and began searching
the blue.
Freckles looked just in time to see a second shadow sweep the grass; and
another bird, a trifle smaller and not quite so brilliant in the light,
slowly sailed down to perch beside the first. Evidently they were mates,
for with a queer, rolling hop the first-comer shivered his bronze wings,
sidled to the new arrival, and gave her a silly little peck on her
wing. Then he coquettishly drew away and ogled her. He lifted his head,
waddled from her a few steps, awkwardly ambled back, and gave her such
a simple sort of kiss on her beak that Freckles burst into a laugh, but
clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound.
The lover ducked and side-stepped a few feet. He spread his wings
and slowly and softly waved them precisely as if he were fanning his
charmer, which was indeed the result he accomplished. Then a wave of
uncontrollable tenderness moved him so he hobbled to his bombardment
once more. He faced her squarely this time, and turned his head from
side to side with queer little jerks and indiscriminate peckings at her
wings and head, and smirkings that really should have been irresistible.
She yawned and shuffled away indifferently. Freckles reached up, pulled
the quill from his hat, and looking from it to the birds, nodded in
settled conviction.
“So you're me black angels, ye spalpeens! No wonder you didn't get in!
But I'll back you to come closer it than any other birds ever did. You
fly higher than I can see. Have you picked the Limberlost for a good
thing and come to try it? Well, you can be me chickens if you want to,
but I'm blest if you ain't cool for new ones. Why don't you take this
stick for a gun and go skinning a mile?”
Freckles broke into an unrestrained laugh, for the bird-lover was keen
about his courting, while evidently his mate was diffident. When he
approached too boisterously, she relieved him of a goodly tuft of
feathers and sent him backward in a series of squirmy little jumps that
gave the boy an idea of what had happened up-sky to send the falling
feather across his pathway.
“Score one for the lady! I'll be umpiring this,” volunteered Freckles.
With a ravishing swagger, half-lifted wings, and deep, guttural hissing,
the lover approached again. He suddenly lifted his body, but she coolly
rocked forward on the limb, glided gracefully beneath him, and slowly
sailed into the Limberlost. He recovered himself and gazed after her in
astonishment.
Freckles hurried down the trail, shaking with laughter. When he neared
the path to the clearing and saw the Boss sitting motionless on the mare
that was the pride of his heart, the boy broke into a run.
“Oh, Mr. McLean!” he cried. “I hope I haven't kept you waiting very
long! And the sun is getting hot! I have been so slow this morning! I
could have gone faster, only there were that many things to keep me, and
I didn't know you would be here. I'll hurry after this. I've never had
to be giving excuses before. The line wasn't down, and there wasn't a
sign of trouble; it was other things that were making me late.”
McLean, smiling on the boy, immediately noticed the difference in him.
This flushed, panting, talkative lad was not the same creature who had
sought him in despair and bitterness. He watched in wonder as Freckles
mopped the perspiration from his forehead and began to laugh. Then,
forgetting all his customary reserve with the Boss, the pent-up
boyishness in the lad broke forth. With an eloquence of which he never
dreamed he told his story. He talked with such enthusiasm that McLean
never took his eyes from his face or shifted in the saddle until he
described the strange bird-lover, and then the Boss suddenly bent over
the pommel and laughed with the boy.
Freckles decorated his story with keen appreciation and rare touches
of Irish wit and drollery that made it most interesting as well as very
funny. It was a first attempt at descriptive narration. With an inborn
gift for striking the vital point, a naturalist's dawning enthusiasm for
the wonders of the Limberlost, and the welling joy of his newly found
happiness, he made McLean see the struggles of the moth and its freshly
painted wings, the dainty, brilliant bird-mates of different colors, the
feather sliding through the clear air, the palpitant throat and batting
eyes of the frog; while his version of the big bird's courtship won for
the Boss the best laugh he had enjoyed for years.
“They're in the middle of a swamp now” said Freckles. “Do you suppose
there is any chance of them staying with me chickens? If they do,
they'll be about the queerest I have; but I tell you, sir, I am finding
some plum good ones. There's a new kind over at the mouth of the creek
that uses its wings like feet and walks on all fours. It travels like a
thrashing machine. There's another, tall as me waist, with a bill a
foot long, a neck near two, not the thickness of me wrist and an elegant
color. He's some blue and gray, touched up with black, white, and brown.
The voice of him is such that if he'd be going up and standing beside
a tree and crying at it a few times he could be sawing it square off. I
don't know but it would be a good idea to try him on the gang, sir.”
McLean laughed. “Those must be blue herons, Freckles,” he said. “And
it doesn't seem possible, but your description of the big black birds
sounds like genuine black vultures. They are common enough in the South.
I've seen them numerous around the lumber camps of Georgia, but I
never before heard of any this far north. They must be strays. You have
described perfectly our nearest equivalent to a branch of these birds
called in Europe Pharaoh's Chickens, but if they are coming to the
Limberlost they will have to drop Pharaoh and become Freckles' Chickens,
like the remainder of the birds; won't they? Or are they too odd and
ugly to interest you?”
“Oh, not at all, at all!” cried Freckles, bursting into pure brogue in
his haste. “I don't know as I'd be calling them exactly pretty, and they
do move like a rocking-horse loping, but they are so big and fearless.
They have a fine color for black birds, and their feet and beaks seem so
strong. You never saw anything so keen as their eyes! And fly? Why, just
think, sir, they must be flying miles straight up, for they were out of
sight completely when the feather fell. I don't suppose I've a chicken
in the swamp that can go as close heaven as those big, black fellows,
and then----”
Freckles' voice dragged and he hesitated.
“Then what?” interestedly urged McLean.
“He was loving her so,” answered Freckles in a hushed voice. “I know it
looked awful funny, and I laughed and told on him, but if I'd taken time
to think I don't believe I'd have done it. You see, I've seen such a
little bit of loving in me life. You easily can be understanding that at
the Home it was every day the old story of neglect and desertion. Always
people that didn't even care enough for their children to keep them, so
you see, sir, I had to like him for trying so hard to make her know how
he loved her. Of course, they're only birds, but if they are caring for
each other like that, why, it's just the same as people, ain't it?”
Freckles lifted his brave, steady eyes to the Boss.
“If anybody loved me like that, Mr. McLean, I wouldn't be spending any
time on how they looked or moved. All I'd be thinking of would be how
they felt toward me. If they will stay, I'll be caring as much for them
as any chickens I have. If I did laugh at them I thought he was just
fine!”
The face of McLean was a study; but the honest eyes of the boy were so
compelling that he found himself answering: “You are right, Freckles.
He's a gentleman, isn't he? And the only real chicken you have. Of
course he'll remain! The Limberlost will be paradise for his family. And
now, Freckles, what has been the trouble all spring? You have done your
work as faithfully as anyone could ask, but I can't help seeing that
there is something wrong. Are you tired of your job?”
“I love it,” answered Freckles. “It will almost break me heart when
the gang comes and begins tearing up the swamp and scaring away me
chickens.”
“Then what is the trouble?” insisted McLean.
“I think, sir, it's been books,” answered Freckles. “You see, I didn't
realize it meself until the bullfrog told me this morning. I hadn't ever
even heard about a place like this. Anyway, I wasn't understanding how
it would be, if I had. Being among these beautiful things every day, I
got so anxious like to be knowing and naming them, that it got to eating
into me and went and made me near sick, when I was well as I could be.
Of course, I learned to read, write, and figure some at school, but
there was nothing there, or in any of the city that I ever got to see,
that would make a fellow even be dreaming of such interesting things
as there are here. I've seen the parks--but good Lord, they ain't even
beginning to be in it with the Limberlost! It's all new and strange to
me. I don't know a thing about any of it. The bullfrog told me to 'find
out,' plain as day, and books are the only way; ain't they?”
“Of course,” said McLean, astonished at himself for his heartfelt
relief. He had not guessed until that minute what it would have meant
to him to have Freckles give up. “You know enough to study out what you
want yourself, if you have the books; don't you?”
“I am pretty sure I do,” said Freckles. “I learned all I'd the chance at
in the Home, and me schooling was good as far as it went. Wouldn't let
you go past fourteen, you know. I always did me sums perfect, and loved
me history books. I had them almost by heart. I never could get me
grammar to suit them. They said it was just born in me to go wrong
talking, and if it hadn't been I suppose I would have picked it up from
the other children; but I'd the best voice of any of them in the Home
or at school. I could knock them all out singing. I was always leader in
the Home, and once one of the superintendents gave me carfare and let
me go into the city and sing in a boys' choir. The master said I'd the
swatest voice of them all until it got rough like, and then he made me
quit for awhile, but he said it would be coming back by now, and I'm
railly thinking it is, sir, for I've tried on the line a bit of late and
it seems to go smooth again and lots stronger. That and me chickens have
been all the company I've been having, and it will be all I'll want if I
can have some books and learn the real names of things, where they come
from, and why they do such interesting things. It's been fretting me
more than I knew to be shut up here among all these wonders and not
knowing a thing. I wanted to ask you what some books would cost me, and
if you'd be having the goodness to get me the right ones. I think I have
enough money.”
Freckles offered his account-book and the Boss studied it gravely.
“You needn't touch your account, Freckles,” he said. “Ten dollars from
this month's pay will provide you everything you need to start on. I
will write a friend in Grand Rapids today to select you the very best
and send them at once.”
Freckles' eyes were shining.
“Never owned a book in me life!” he said. “Even me schoolbooks were
never mine. Lord! How I used to wish I could have just one of them for
me very own! Won't it be fun to see me sawbird and me little yellow
fellow looking at me from the pages of a book, and their real names and
all about them printed alongside? How long will it be taking, sir?”
“Ten days should do it nicely,” said McLean. Then, seeing Freckles'
lengthening face, he added: “I'll have Duncan bring you a ten-bushel
store-box the next time he goes to town. He can haul it to the west
entrance and set it up wherever you want it. You can put in your spare
time filling it with the specimens you find until the books come,
and then you can study out what you have. I suspect you could collect
specimens that I could send to naturalists in the city and sell for you;
things like that winged creature, this morning. I don't know much in
that line, but it must have been a moth, and it might have been rare.
I've seen them by the thousand in museums, and in all nature I don't
remember rarer coloring than their wings. I'll order you a butterfly-net
and box and show you how scientists pin specimens. Possibly you can make
a fine collection of these swamp beauties. It will be all right for you
to take a pair of different moths and butterflies, but I don't want to
hear of your killing any birds. They are protected by heavy fines.”
McLean rode away leaving Freckles staring aghast. Then he saw the point
and smiled. Standing on the trail, he twirled the feather and thought
over the morning.
“Well, if life ain't getting to be worth living!” he said wonderingly.
“Biggest streak of luck I ever had! 'Bout time something was coming my
way, but I wouldn't ever thought anybody could strike such magnificent
prospects through only a falling feather.”