Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/G.S.Porter/Freckles.1-9

Text File | 1994-06-03 | 212.9 KB | 4,436 lines

                                 FRECKLES

                           Gene Stratton-Porter




                                   To
                           all good Irishmen
                              in general
                               and one
                         CHARLES DARWIN PORTER
                              in particular



                                 Characters


FRECKLES, a plucky waif who guards the Limberlost timber leases
and dreams of Angels.

THE SWAMP ANGEL, in whom Freckles' sweetest dream materializes.

MCLEAN, a member of a Grand Rapids lumber company, who befriends Freckles.

MRS. DUNCAN, who gives mother-love and a home to Freckles.

DUNCAN, head teamster of McLean's timber gang.

THE BIRD WOMAN, who is collecting camera studies of birds for a book.

LORD AND LADY O'MORE, who come from Ireland in quest of a lost relative.

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS, brusque of manner, but big of heart.

WESSNER, a Dutch timber-thief who wants rascality made easy.

BLACK JACK, a villain to whom thought of repentance comes too late.

SEARS, camp cook.





                                 Contents



I    Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

II   Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

III  Wherein a Feather Falls and a Soul Is Born

IV   Wherein Freckles Faces Trouble Bravely and Opens the Way for
     New Experiences

V    Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships

VI   Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight

VII  Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail

VIII Wherein Freckles Meets a Man of Affairs and Loses Nothing by
     the Encounter

IX   Wherein the Limberlost Falls upon Mrs. Duncan and Freckles
     Comes to the Rescue

X    Wherein Freckles Strives Mightily and the Swamp Angel Rewards Him

XI   Wherein the Butterflies Go on a Spree and Freckles Informs the
     Bird Woman

XII  Wherein Black Jack Captures Freckles and the Angel Captures Jack

XIII Wherein the Angel Releases Freckles, and the Curse of Black
     Jack Falls upon Her

XIV Wherein Freckles Nurses a Heartache and Black Jack Drops Out

XV Wherein Freckles and the Angel Try Taking a Picture, and Little
   Chicken Furnishes the Subject

XVI Wherein the Angel Locates a Rare Tree and Dines with the Gang

XVII Wherein Freckles Offers His Life for His Love and Gets a Broken Body

XVIII Wherein Freckles Refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable
      Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it

XIX Wherein Freckles Finds His Birthright and the Angel Loses Her Heart

XX Wherein Freckles Returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More
   Sails for Ireland Without Him



                                 CHAPTER I

Wherein Great Risks Are Taken and the Limberlost Guard Is Hired

Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of
the Limberlost.  At a glance he might have been mistaken for a
tramp, but he was truly seeking work.  He was intensely eager
to belong somewhere and to be attached to almost any enterprise
that would furnish him food and clothing.

Long before he came in sight of the camp of the Grand Rapids Lumber
Company, he could hear the cheery voices of the men, the neighing
of the horses, and could scent the tempting odors of cooking food.
A feeling of homeless friendlessness swept over him in a sickening wave.
Without stopping to think, he turned into the newly made road and
followed it to the camp, where the gang was making ready for supper
and bed.

The scene was intensely attractive.  The thickness of the swamp
made a dark, massive background below, while above towered
gigantic trees.  The men were calling jovially back and forth as
they unharnessed tired horses that fell into attitudes of rest and
crunched, in deep content, the grain given them.  Duncan, the brawny
Scotch head-teamster, lovingly wiped the flanks of his big bays
with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he softly whistled, "O wha will
be my dearie, O!" and a cricket beneath the leaves at his feet
accompanied him.  The green wood fire hissed and crackled merrily.
Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big black kettles,
and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his testing-fork,
gusts of savory odors escaped.

Freckles approached him.

"I want to speak with the Boss," he said.

The cook glanced at him and answered carelessly:  "He can't use you."

The color flooded Freckles' face, but he said simply:  "If you will
be having the goodness to point him out, we will give him a chance
to do his own talking."

With a shrug of astonishment, the cook led the way to a rough board
table where a broad, square-shouldered man was bending over some
account-books.

"Mr. McLean, here's another man wanting to be taken on the gang,
I suppose," he said.

"All right," came the cheery answer.  "I never needed a good man
more than I do just now."

The manager turned a page and carefully began a new line.

"No use of your bothering with this fellow," volunteered the cook.
"He hasn't but one hand."

The flush on Freckles' face burned deeper.  His lips thinned to a
mere line.  He lifted his shoulders, took a step forward, and thrust
out his right arm, from which the sleeve dangled empty at the wrist.

"That will do, Sears," came the voice of the Boss sharply.  "I will
interview my man when I finish this report."

He turned to his work, while the cook hurried to the fires.
Freckles stood one instant as he had braced himself to meet the
eyes of the manager; then his arm dropped and a wave of whiteness
swept him.  The Boss had not even turned his head.  He had used
the possessive.  When he said "my man," the hungry heart of
Freckles went reaching toward him.

The boy drew a quivering breath.  Then he whipped off his old hat
and beat the dust from it carefully.  With his left hand he caught
the right sleeve, wiped his sweaty face, and tried to straighten
his hair with his fingers.  He broke a spray of ironwort beside
him and used the purple bloom to beat the dust from his shoulders
and limbs.  The Boss, busy over his report, was, nevertheless, vaguely
alive to the toilet being made behind him, and scored one for the man.

McLean was a Scotchman.  It was his habit to work slowly
and methodically.  The men of his camps never had known him to be
in a hurry or to lose his temper.  Discipline was inflexible, but
the Boss was always kind.  His habits were simple.  He shared camp
life with his gangs.  The only visible signs of wealth consisted
of a big, shimmering diamond stone of ice and fire that glittered
and burned on one of his fingers, and the dainty, beautiful
thoroughbred mare he rode between camps and across the country
on business.

No man of McLean's gangs could honestly say that he ever had been
overdriven or underpaid.  The Boss never had exacted any deference
from his men, yet so intense was his personality that no man of
them ever had attempted a familiarity.  They all knew him to be a
thorough gentleman, and that in the great timber city several
millions stood to his credit.

He was the only son of that McLean who had sent out the finest
ships ever built in Scotland.  That his son should carry on this
business after the father's death had been his ambition.  He had
sent the boy through the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, and
allowed him several years' travel before he should attempt his
first commission for the firm.

Then he was ordered to southern Canada and Michigan to purchase
a consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and south to
Indiana for oak beams.  The young man entered these mighty forests,
parts of which lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of time.
The clear, cool, pungent atmosphere was intoxicating.  The intense
silence, like that of a great empty cathedral, fascinated him.
He gradually learned that, to the shy wood creatures that darted
across his path or peeped inquiringly from leafy ambush, he
was brother.  He found himself approaching, with a feeling of
reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages of
sun, wind, and snow.  Soon it became difficult to fell them.
When he had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed
to learn that in the swamps and forests he had lost his heart
and it was calling--forever calling him.

When he inherited his father's property, he promptly disposed of
it, and, with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence in
the outskirts of Grand Rapids.  With three partners, he organized a
lumber company.  His work was to purchase, fell, and ship the timber
to the mills.  Marshall managed the milling process and passed the
lumber to the factory.  From the lumber, Barthol made beautiful and
useful furniture, which Uptegrove scattered all over the world from
a big wholesale house.  Of the thousands who saw their faces
reflected on the polished surfaces of that furniture and found
comfort in its use, few there were to whom it suggested mighty
forests and trackless swamps, and the man, big of soul and body,
who cut his way through them, and with the eye of experience doomed
the proud trees that were now entering the homes of civilization
for service.

When McLean turned from his finished report, he faced a young man,
yet under twenty, tall, spare, heavily framed, closely freckled,
and red-haired, with a homely Irish face, but in the steady gray
eyes, straightly meeting his searching ones of blue, there was
unswerving candor and the appearance of longing not to be ignored.
He was dressed in the roughest of farm clothing, and seemed tired
to the point of falling.

"You are looking for work?" questioned McLean.

"Yis," answered Freckles.

"I am very sorry," said the Boss with genuine sympathy in his every
tone, "but there is only one man I want at present--a hardy, big
fellow with a stout heart and a strong body.  I hoped that you would
do, but I am afraid you are too young and scarcely strong enough."

Freckles stood, hat in hand, watching McLean.

"And what was it you thought I might be doing?" he asked.

The Boss could scarcely repress a start.  Somewhere before accident
and poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated English,
even with an accent.  The boy spoke in a mellow Irish voice, sweet
and pure.  It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet
there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound
of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean,
and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he
was very familiar and which touched him nearly.  He was of foreign
birth, and despite years of alienation, in times of strong feeling
he committed inherited sins of accent and construction.

"It's no child's job," answered McLean.  "I am the field manager of
a big lumber company.  We have just leased two thousand acres of
the Limberlost.  Many of these trees are of great value.  We can't
leave our camp, six miles south, for almost a year yet; so we have
blazed a trail and strung barbed wires securely around this lease.
Before we return to our work, I must put this property in the hands
of a reliable, brave, strong man who will guard it every hour of
the day, and sleep with one eye open at night.  I shall require the
entire length of the trail to be walked at least twice each day, to
make sure that our lines are up and that no one has been trespassing."

Freckles was leaning forward, absorbing every word with such
intense eagerness that he was beguiling the Boss into explanations
he had never intended making.

"But why wouldn't that be the finest job in the world for me?"
he pleaded.  "I am never sick.  I could walk the trail twice,
three times every day, and I'd be watching sharp all the while."

"It's because you are scarcely more than a boy, and this will be a
trying job for a work-hardened man," answered McLean.  "You see, in
the first place, you would be afraid.  In stretching our lines, we
killed six rattlesnakes almost as long as your body and as thick as
your arm.  It's the price of your life to start through the
marshgrass surrounding the swamp unless you are covered with
heavy leather above your knees.

"You should be able to swim in case high water undermines the
temporary bridge we have built where Sleepy Snake Creek enters
the swamp.  The fall and winter changes of weather are abrupt and
severe, while I would want strict watch kept every day.  You would
always be alone, and I don't guarantee what is in the Limberlost.
It is lying here as it has lain since the beginning of time, and it
is alive with forms and voices.  I don't pretend to say what all of
them come from; but from a few slinking shapes I've seen, and
hair-raising yells I've heard, I'd rather not confront their owners
myself; and I am neither weak nor fearful.

"Worst of all, any man who will enter the swamp to mark and steal
timber is desperate.  One of my employees at the south camp, John
Carter, compelled me to discharge him for a number of serious reasons.
He came here, entered the swamp alone, and succeeded in locating
and marking a number of valuable trees that he was endeavoring
to sell to a rival company when we secured the lease.  He has
sworn to have these trees if he has to die or to kill others to
get them; and he is a man that the strongest would not care to meet."

"But if he came to steal trees, wouldn't he bring teams and men
enough: that all anyone could do would be to watch and be after
you?" queried the boy.

"Yes," replied McLean.

"Then why couldn't I be watching just as closely, and coming as
fast, as an older, stronger man?" asked Freckles.

"Why, by George, you could!" exclaimed McLean.  "I don't know as
the size of a man would be half so important as his grit and
faithfulness, come to think of it.  Sit on that log there and we
will talk it over.  What is your name?"

Freckles shook his head at the proffer of a seat, and folding his
arms, stood straight as the trees around him.  He grew a shade
whiter, but his eyes never faltered.

"Freckles!" he said.

"Good enough for everyday," laughed McLean, "but I scarcely can
put `Freckles' on the company's books.  Tell me your name."

"I haven't any name," replied the boy.

"I don't understand," said McLean.

"I was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you
wouldn't," said Freckles slowly.  "I've spent more time on it than
I ever did on anything else in all me life, and I don't understand.
Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row
over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it
out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care
of strangers?  That's what somebody did to me."

McLean stared aghast.  He had no reply ready, and presently in a low
voice he suggested:  "And after?"

"The Home people took me in, and I was there the full legal age and
several years over.  For the most part we were a lot of little
Irishmen together.  They could always find homes for the other
children, but nobody would ever be wanting me on account of me arm."

"Were they kind to you?" McLean regretted the question the minute
it was asked.

"I don't know," answered Freckles.  The reply sounded so hopeless,
even to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify it by adding:
"You see, it's like this, sir.  Kindnesses that people are paid to
lay off in job lots and that belong equally to several hundred
others, ain't going to be soaking into any one fellow so much."

"Go on," said McLean, nodding comprehendingly.

"There's nothing worth the taking of your time to tell,"
replied Freckles.  "The Home was in Chicago, and I was there all
me life until three months ago.  When I was too old for the
training they gave to the little children, they sent me to the
closest ward school as long as the law would let them; but I was
never like any of the other children, and they all knew it.
I'd to go and come like a prisoner, and be working around the
Home early and late for me board and clothes.  I always wanted
to learn mighty bad, but I was glad when that was over.

"Every few days, all me life, I'd to be called up, looked over,
and refused a home and love, on account of me hand and ugly face;
but it was all the home I'd ever known, and I didn't seem to
belong to any place else.

"Then a new superintendent was put in.  He wasn't for being like
any of the others, and he swore he'd weed me out the first thing
he did.  He made a plan to send me down the State to a man he said
he knew who needed a boy.  He wasn't for remembering to tell that man
that I was a hand short, and he knocked me down the minute he found
I was the boy who had been sent him.  Between noon and that evening,
he and his son close my age had me in pretty much the same shape in
which I was found in the beginning, so I lay awake that night and
ran away.  I'd like to have squared me account with that boy before
I left, but I didn't dare for fear of waking the old man, and I
knew I couldn't handle the two of them; but I'm hoping to meet him
alone some day before I die."

McLean tugged at his mustache to hide the smile on his lips, but he
liked the boy all the better for this confession.

"I didn't even have to steal clothes to get rid of starting in me
Home ones," Freckles continued, "for they had already taken all me
clean, neat things for the boy and put me into his rags, and that
went almost as sore as the beatings, for where I was we were always
kept tidy and sweet-smelling, anyway.  I hustled clear into this
State before I learned that man couldn't have kept me if he'd
wanted to.  When I thought I was good and away from him, I
commenced hunting work, but it is with everybody else just as it
is with you, sir.  Big, strong, whole men are the only ones for
being wanted."

"I have been studying over this matter," answered McLean.  "I am not
so sure but that a man no older than you and similar in every way
could do this work very well, if he were not a coward, and had it
in him to be trustworthy and industrious."

Freckles came forward a step.

"If you will give me a job where I can earn me food, clothes, and
a place to sleep," he said, "if I can have a Boss to work for like
other men, and a place I feel I've a right to, I will do precisely
what you tell me or die trying."

He spoke so convincingly that McLean believed, although in his
heart he knew that to employ a stranger would be wretched business
for a man with the interests he had involved.

"Very well," the Boss found himself answering, "I will enter you on
my pay rolls.  We'll have supper, and then I will provide you with
clean clothing, wading-boots, the wire-mending apparatus, and
a revolver.  The first thing in the morning, I will take you the
length of the trail myself and explain fully what I want done.
All I ask of you is to come to me at once at the south camp and
tell me as a man if you find this job too hard for you.  It will not
surprise me.  It is work that few men would perform faithfully.
What name shall I put down?"

Freckles' gaze never left McLean's face, and the Boss saw the
swift spasm of pain that swept his lonely, sensitive features.

"I haven't any name," he said stubbornly, "no more than one
somebody clapped on to me when they put me on the Home books, with
not the thought or care they'd name a house cat.  I've seen how they
enter those poor little abandoned devils often enough to know.
What they called me is no more my name than it is yours.  I don't
know what mine is, and I never will; but I am going to be your man
and do your work, and I'll be glad to answer to any name you choose
to call me.  Won't you please be giving me a name, Mr. McLean?"

The Boss wheeled abruptly and began stacking his books.  What he was
thinking was probably what any other gentleman would have thought
in the circumstances.  With his eyes still downcast, and in a voice
harsh with huskiness, he spoke.

"I will tell you what we will do, my lad," he said.  "My father
was my ideal man, and I loved him better than any other I have
ever known.  He went out five years ago, but that he would have been
proud to leave you his name I firmly believe.  If I give to you the
name of my nearest kin and the man I loved best--will that do?"

Freckles' rigid attitude relaxed suddenly.  His head dropped, and
big tears splashed on the soiled calico shirt.  McLean was not
surprised at the silence, for he found that talking came none too
easily just then.

"All right," he said.  "I will write it on the roll--James Ross McLean."

"Thank you mightily," said Freckles.  "That makes me feel almost as
if I belonged, already."

"You do," said McLean.  "Until someone armed with every right comes
to claim you, you are mine.  Now, come and take a bath, have some
supper, and go to bed."

As Freckles followed into the lights and sounds of the camp, his
heart and soul were singing for joy.



                                 CHAPTER II

          Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

Next morning found Freckles in clean, whole clothing, fed,
and rested.  Then McLean outfitted him and gave him careful
instruction in the use of his weapon.  The Boss showed him around
the timber-line, and engaged him a place to board with the family
of his head teamster, Duncan, whom he had brought from Scotland with
him, and who lived in a small clearing he was working out between
the swamp and the corduroy.  When the gang was started for the
south camp, Freckles was left to guard a fortune in the Limberlost.
That he was under guard himself those first weeks he never knew.

Each hour was torture to the boy.  The restricted life of a great
city orphanage was the other extreme of the world compared with
the Limberlost.  He was afraid for his life every minute.  The heat
was intense.  The heavy wading-boots rubbed his feet until they bled.
He was sore and stiff from his long tramp and outdoor exposure.
The seven miles of trail was agony at every step.  He practiced at
night, under the direction of Duncan, until he grew sure in the use
of his revolver.  He cut a stout hickory cudgel, with a knot on the
end as big as his fist; this never left his hand.  What he thought
in those first days he himself could not recall clearly afterward.

His heart stood still every time he saw the beautiful marsh-grass
begin a sinuous waving AGAINST the play of the wind, as McLean had
told him it would.  He bolted half a mile with the first boom of
the bittern, and his hat lifted with every yelp of the sheitpoke.
Once he saw a lean, shadowy form following him, and fired his revolver.
Then he was frightened worse than ever for fear it might have been
Duncan's collie.

The first afternoon that he found his wires down, and he was
compelled to plunge knee deep into the black swamp-muck to restring
them, he became so ill from fear and nervousness that he scarcely
could control his shaking hand to do the work.  With every step, he
felt that he would miss secure footing and be swallowed in that
clinging sea of blackness.  In dumb agony he plunged forward,
clinging to the posts and trees until he had finished restringing
and testing the wire.  He had consumed much time.  Night closed in.
The Limberlost stirred gently, then shook herself, growled, and
awoke around him.

There seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and
a little one screeching from every knothole.  The bellowing of big
bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of
whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush.  Nighthawks swept
past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face.
A prowling wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage.
A straying fox bayed incessantly for its mate.

The hair on the back of Freckles' neck arose as bristles, and his
knees wavered beneath him.  He could not see whether the dreaded
snakes were on the trail, or, in the pandemonium, hear the rattle
for which McLean had cautioned him to listen.  He stood motionless
in an agony of fear.  His breath whistled between his teeth.
The perspiration ran down his face and body in little streams.

Something big, black, and heavy came crashing through the swamp
close to him, and with a yell of utter panic Freckles ran--how far
he did not know; but at last he gained control over himself and
retraced his steps.  His jaws set stiffly and the sweat dried on
his body.  When he reached the place from which he had started to
run, he turned and with measured steps made his way down the line.
After a time he realized that he was only walking, so he faced
that sea of horrors again.  When he came toward the corduroy,
the cudgel fell to test the wire at each step.

Sounds that curdled his blood seemed to encompass him, and shapes
of terror to draw closer and closer.  Fear had so gained the mastery
that he did not dare look behind him; and just when he felt that he
would fall dead before he ever reached the clearing, came Duncan's
rolling call:  "Freckles!  Freckles!"  A shuddering sob burst in the
boy's dry throat; but he only told Duncan that finding the wire
down had caused the delay.

The next morning he started on time.  Day after day, with his heart
pounding, he ducked, dodged, ran when he could, and fought when he
was brought to bay.  If he ever had an idea of giving up, no one
knew it; for he clung to his job without the shadow of wavering.
All these things, in so far as he guessed them, Duncan, who had
been set to watch the first weeks of Freckles' work, carried to the
Boss at the south camp; but the innermost, exquisite torture of the
thing the big Scotchman never guessed, and McLean, with his finer
perceptions, came only a little closer.

After a few weeks, when Freckles learned that he was still living,
that he had a home, and the very first money he ever had possessed
was safe in his pockets, he began to grow proud.  He yet side-
stepped, dodged, and hurried to avoid being late again, but he
was gradually developing the fearlessness that men ever acquire
of dangers to which they are hourly accustomed.

His heart seemed to be leaping when his first rattler disputed the
trail with him, but he mustered courage to attack it with his club.
After its head had been crushed, he mastered an Irishman's inborn
repugnance for snakes sufficiently to cut off its rattles to
show Duncan.  With this victory, his greatest fear of them was gone.

Then he began to realize that with the abundance of food in the
swamp, flesh-hunters would not come on the trail and attack him,
and he had his revolver for defence if they did.  He soon learned to
laugh at the big, floppy birds that made horrible noises.  One day,
watching behind a tree, he saw a crane solemnly performing a few
measures of a belated nuptial song-and-dance with his mate.
Realizing that it was intended in tenderness, no matter how it
appeared, the lonely, starved heart of the boy sympathized with them.

Before the first month passed, he was fairly easy about his job; by
the next he rather liked it.  Nature can be trusted to work her own
miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone
among her sights, sounds, and silences.

When day after day the only thing that relieved his utter
loneliness was the companionship of the birds and beasts of the
swamp, it was the most natural thing in the world that Freckles
should turn to them for friendship.  He began by instinctively
protecting the weak and helpless.  He was astonished at the
quickness with which they became accustomed to him and the
disregard they showed for his movements, when they learned that
he was not a hunter, while the club he carried was used more
frequently for their benefit than his own.  He scarcely could
believe what he saw.

From the effort to protect the birds and animals, it was only a
short step to the possessive feeling, and with that sprang the
impulse to caress and provide.  Through fall, when brooding was
finished and the upland birds sought the swamp in swarms to feast
on its seeds and berries, Freckles was content with watching them
and speculating about them.  Outside of half a dozen of the very
commonest they were strangers to him.  The likeness of their actions
to humanity was an hourly surprise.

When black frost began stripping the Limberlost, cutting the ferns,
shearing the vines from the trees, mowing the succulent green
things of the swale, and setting the leaves swirling down, he
watched the departing troops of his friends with dismay.  He began
to realize that he would be left alone.  He made especial efforts
toward friendliness with the hope that he could induce some of them
to stay.  It was then that he conceived the idea of carrying food to
the birds; for he saw that they were leaving for lack of it; but he
could not stop them.  Day after day, flocks gathered and departed:
by the time the first snow whitened his trail around the Limberlost,
there were left only the little black-and-white juncos, the
sapsuckers, yellow-hammers, a few patriarchs among the flaming
cardinals, the blue jays, the crows, and the quail.

Then Freckles began his wizard work.  He cleared a space of swale,
and twice a day he spread a birds' banquet.  By the middle of
December the strong winds of winter had beaten most of the seed
from the grass and bushes.  The snow fell, covering the swamp, and
food was very scarce and difficult to find.  The birds scarcely
waited until Freckles' back was turned to attack his provisions.
In a few weeks they flew toward the clearing to meet him.  During the
bitter weather of January they came halfway to the cabin every
morning, and fluttered around him as doves all the way to the
feeding-ground.  Before February they were so accustomed to him, and
so hunger-driven, that they would perch on his head and shoulders,
and the saucy jays would try to pry into his pockets.

Then Freckles added to wheat and crumbs, every scrap of refuse food
he could find at the cabin.  He carried to his pets the parings of
apples, turnips, potatoes, stray cabbage-leaves, and carrots, and
tied to the bushes meat-bones having scraps of fat and gristle.
One morning, coming to his feeding-ground unusually early, he found
a gorgeous cardinal and a rabbit side by side sociably nibbling a
cabbage-leaf, and that instantly gave to him the idea of cracking
nuts, from the store he had gathered for Duncan's children, for the
squirrels, in the effort to add them to his family.  Soon he had
them coming--red, gray, and black; then he became filled with a
vast impatience that he did not know their names or habits.

So the winter passed.  Every week McLean rode to the Limberlost;
never on the same day or at the same hour.  Always he found Freckles
at his work, faithful and brave, no matter how severe the weather.

The boy's earnings constituted his first money; and when the Boss
explained to him that he could leave them safe at a bank and carry
away a scrap of paper that represented the amount, he went straight
on every payday and made his deposit, keeping out barely what was
necessary for his board and clothing.  What he wanted to do with his
money he did not know, but it gave to him a sense of freedom and
power to feel that it was there--it was his and he could have it
when he chose.  In imitation of McLean, he bought a small pocket
account-book, in which he carefully set down every dollar he earned
and every penny he spent.  As his expenses were small and the Boss
paid him generously, it was astonishing how his little hoard grew.

That winter held the first hours of real happiness in Freckles' life.
He was free.  He was doing a man's work faithfully, through
every rigor of rain, snow, and blizzard.  He was gathering a
wonderful strength of body, paying his way, and saving money.
Every man of the gang and of that locality knew that he was under
the protection of McLean, who was a power, this had the effect of
smoothing Freckles' path in many directions.

Mrs. Duncan showed him that individual kindness for which his
hungry heart was longing.  She had a hot drink ready for him when he
came from a freezing day on the trail.  She knit him a heavy mitten
for his left hand, and devised a way to sew and pad the right
sleeve that protected the maimed arm in bitter weather.  She patched
his clothing--frequently torn by the wire--and saved kitchen scraps
for his birds, not because she either knew or cared anything about
them, but because she herself was close enough to the swamp to be
touched by its utter loneliness.  When Duncan laughed at her for
this, she retorted:  "My God, mannie, if Freckles hadna the birds
and the beasts he would be always alone.  It was never meant for a
human being to be so solitary.  He'd get touched in the head if he
hadna them to think for and to talk to."

"How much answer do ye think he gets to his talkin', lass?"
laughed Duncan.

"He gets the answer that keeps the eye bright, the heart happy,
and the feet walking faithful the rough path he's set them in,"
answered Mrs. Duncan earnestly.

Duncan walked away appearing very thoughtful.  The next morning
he gave an ear from the corn he was shelling for his chickens to
Freckles, and told him to carry it to his wild chickens in
the Limberlost.  Freckles laughed delightedly.

"Me chickens!" he said.  "Why didn't I ever think of that before?
Of course they are!  They are just little, brightly colored cocks
and hens!  But `wild' is no good.  What would you say to me `wild
chickens' being a good deal tamer than yours here in your yard?"

"Hoot, lad!" cried Duncan.

"Make yours light on your head and eat out of your hands and
pockets," challenged Freckles.

"Go and tell your fairy tales to the wee people!  They're juist
brash on believin' things," said Duncan.  "Ye canna invent any
story too big to stop them from callin' for a bigger."

"I dare you to come see!" retorted Freckles.

"Take ye!" said Duncan.  "If ye make juist ane bird licht on your
heid or eat frae your hand, ye are free to help yoursel' to my
corn-crib and wheat bin the rest of the winter."

Freckles sprang in air and howled in glee.

"Oh, Duncan!  You're too, aisy" he cried.  "When will you come?"

"I'll come next Sabbath," said Duncan.  "And I'll believe the birds of
the Limberlost are tame as barnyard fowl when I see it, and no sooner!"

After that Freckles always spoke of the birds as his chickens, and
the Duncans followed his example.  The very next Sabbath, Duncan,
with his wife and children, followed Freckles to the swamp.
They saw a sight so wonderful it will keep them talking all the
remainder of their lives, and make them unfailing friends of all
the birds.

Freckles' chickens were awaiting him at the edge of the clearing.
They cut the frosty air around his head into curves and circles of
crimson, blue, and black.  They chased each other from Freckles, and
swept so closely themselves that they brushed him with their
outspread wings.

At their feeding-ground Freckles set down his old pail of scraps
and swept the snow from a small level space with a broom improvised
of twigs.  As soon as his back was turned, the birds clustered over
the food, snatching scraps to carry to the nearest bushes.  Several of
the boldest, a big crow and a couple of jays, settled on the rim and
feasted at leisure, while a cardinal, that hesitated to venture,
fumed and scolded from a twig overhead.

Then Freckles scattered his store.  At once the ground resembled the
spread mantle of Montezuma, except that this mass of gaily colored
feathers was on the backs of living birds.  While they feasted,
Duncan gripped his wife's arm and stared in astonishment; for from
the bushes and dry grass, with gentle cheeping and queer, throaty
chatter, as if to encourage each other, came flocks of quail.
Before anyone saw it arrive, a big gray rabbit sat in the midst of
the feast, contentedly gnawing a cabbage-leaf.

"Weel, I be drawed on!" came Mrs. Duncan's tense whisper.

"Shu-shu," cautioned Duncan.

Lastly Freckles removed his cap.  He began filling it with handfuls
of wheat from his pockets.  In a swarm the grain-eaters arose around
him as a flock of tame pigeons.  They perched on his arms and the
cap, and in the stress of hunger, forgetting all caution, a
brilliant cock cardinal and an equally gaudy jay fought for a
perching-place on his head.

"Weel, I'm beat," muttered Duncan, forgetting the silence imposed
on his wife.  "I'll hae to give in.  `Seein' is believin'.  A man
wad hae to see that to believe it.  We mauna let the Boss miss that
sight, for it's a chance will no likely come twice in a life.
Everything is snowed under and thae craturs near starved, but
trustin' Freckles that complete they are tamer than our chickens.
Look hard, bairns!" he whispered.  "Ye winna see the like o' yon
again, while God lets ye live.  Notice their color against the ice
and snow, and the pretty skippin' ways of them!  And spunky!
Weel, I'm heat fair!"

Freckles emptied his cap, turned his pockets and scattered his
last grain.  Then he waved his watching friends good-bye and
started down the timber-line.

A week later, Duncan and Freckles arose from breakfast to face the
bitterest morning of the winter.  When Freckles, warmly capped and
gloved, stepped to the corner of the kitchen for his scrap-pail, he
found a big pan of steaming boiled wheat on the top of it.  He wheeled
to Mrs. Duncan with a shining face.

"Were you fixing this warm food for me chickens or yours?" he asked.

"It's for yours, Freckles," she said.  "I was afeared this cold
weather they wadna lay good without a warm bite now and then."

Duncan laughed as he stepped to the other room for his pipe; but
Freckles faced Mrs. Duncan with a trace of every pang of starved
mother-hunger he ever had suffered written large on his homely,
splotched, narrow features.

"Oh, how I wish you were my mother!" he cried.

Mrs. Duncan attempted an echo of her husband's laugh.

"Lord love the lad!" she exclaimed.  "Why, Freckles, are ye no
bright enough to learn without being taught by a woman that I am
your mither?  If a great man like yoursel' dinna ken that, learn it
now and ne'er forget it.  Ance a woman is the wife of any man, she
becomes wife to all men for having had the wifely experience she kens!
Ance a man-child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a
woman, she is mither to all men, for the hearts of mithers are
everywhere the same.  Bless ye, laddie, I am your mither!"

She tucked the coarse scarf she had knit for him closer over his
chest and pulled his cap lower over his ears, but Freckles,
whipping it off and holding it under his arm, caught her rough,
reddened hand and pressed it to his lips in a long kiss.  Then he
hurried away to hide the happy, embarrassing tears that were coming
straight from his swelling heart.

Mrs. Duncan, sobbing unrestrainedly, swept into the adjoining room
and threw herself into Duncan's arms.

"Oh, the puir lad!" she wailed.  "Oh, the puir mither-hungry lad!
He breaks my heart!"

Duncan's arms closed convulsively around his wife.  With a big,
brown hand he lovingly stroked her rough, sorrel hair.

"Sarah, you're a guid woman!" he said.  "You're a michty guid woman!
Ye hae a way o' speakin' out at times that's like the inspired
prophets of the Lord.  If that had been put to me, now, I'd `a' felt
all I kent how to and been keen enough to say the richt thing; but
dang it, I'd `a' stuttered and stammered and got naething out that
would ha' done onybody a mite o' good.  But ye, Sarah!  Did ye see
his face, woman?  Ye sent him off lookin' leke a white light of
holiness had passed ower and settled on him.  Ye sent the lad away
too happy for mortal words, Sarah.  And ye made me that proud o' ye!
I wouldna trade ye an' my share o' the Limberlost with ony king ye
could mention."

He relaxed his clasp, and setting a heavy hand on each shoulder, he
looked straight into her eyes.

"Ye're prime, Sarah!  Juist prime!" he said.

Sarah Duncan stood alone in the middle of her two-roomed log cabin
and lifted a bony, clawlike pair of hands, reddened by frequent
immersion in hot water, cracked and chafed by exposure to cold,
black-lined by constant battle with swamp-loam, calloused with
burns, and stared at them wonderingly.

"Pretty-lookin' things ye are!" she whispered.  "But ye hae juist
been kissed.  And by such a man!  Fine as God ever made at His
verra best.  Duncan wouldna trade wi' a king!  Na!  Nor I wadna
trade with a queen wi' a palace, an' velvet gowns, an' diamonds
big as hazelnuts, an' a hundred visitors a day into the bargain.
Ye've been that honored I'm blest if I can bear to souse ye in
dish-water.  Still, that kiss winna come off!  Naething can take it
from me, for it's mine till I dee.  Lord, if I amna proud!  Kisses on
these old claws!  Weel, I be drawed on!"



                                 CHAPTER III

                 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."



                                 CHAPTER IV

       Wherein Freckles Faces Trouble Bravely and Opens the Way
                            for New Experiences

On Duncan's return from his next trip to town there was a big
store-box loaded on the back of his wagon.  He drove to the west
entrance of the swamp, set the box on a stump that Freckles had
selected in a beautiful, sheltered place, and made it secure on its
foundations with a tree at its back.

"It seems most a pity to nail into that tree," said Duncan.
"I haena the time to examine into the grain of it, but it looks as
if it might be a rare ane.  Anyhow, the nailin' winna hurt it deep,
and havin' the case by it will make it safer if it is a guid ane."

"Isn't it an oak?" asked Freckles.

"Ay," said Duncan.  "It looks like it might be ane of thae
fine-grained white anes that mak' such grand furniture."

When the body of the case was secure, Duncan made a door from the
lid and fastened it with hinges.  He drove a staple, screwed on a
latch, and gave Freckles a small padlock--so that he might fasten
in his treasures safely.  He made a shelf at the top for his books,
and last of all covered the case with oil-cloth.

It was the first time in Freckles' life that anyone ever had done
that much for his pleasure, and it warmed his heart with pure joy.
If the interior of the box already had been covered with the rarest
treasures of the Limberlost he could have been no happier.

When the big teamster stood back to look at his work he laughingly
quoted, "`Neat, but no' gaudy,' as McLean says.  All we're, needing
now is a coat of paint to make a cupboard that would turn Sarah
green with envy.  Ye'll find that safe an' dry, lad, an' that's all
that's needed."

"Mr. Duncan," said Freckles, "I don't know why you are being so
mighty good to me; but if you have any jobs at the cabin that I
could do for you or Mrs. Duncan, hours off the line, it would make
me mighty happy."

Duncan laughed.  "Ye needna feel ye are obliged to me, lad.  Ye mauna
think I could take a half-day off in the best hauling season and go
to town for boxes to rig up, and spend of my little for fixtures."

"I knew Mr. McLean sent you," said Freckles, his eyes wide and
bright with happiness.  "It's so good of him.  How I wish I could do
something that would please him as much!"

"Why, Freckles," said Duncan, as he knelt and began collecting his
tools, "I canna see that it will hurt ye to be told that ye are
doing every day a thing that pleases the Boss as much as anything
ye could do.  Ye're being uncommon faithful, lad, and honest as old
Father Time.  McLean is trusting ye as he would his own flesh and blood."

"Oh, Duncan!" cried the happy boy.  "Are you sure?"

"Why I know," answered Duncan.  "I wadna venture to say so else.
In those first days he cautioned me na to tell ye, but now he
wadna care.  D'ye ken, Freckles, that some of the single trees
ye are guarding are worth a thousand dollars?"

Freckles caught his breath and stood speechless.

"Ye see," said Duncan, "that's why they maun be watched so closely.
They tak', say, for instance, a burl maple--bird's eye they call it
in the factory, because it's full o' wee knots and twists that look
like the eve of a bird.  They saw it out in sheets no muckle thicker
than writin' paper.  Then they make up the funiture out of cheaper
wood and cover it with the maple--veneer, they call it.  When it's
all done and polished ye never saw onythin' grander.  Gang into a
retail shop the next time ye are in town and see some.  By sawin' it
thin that way they get finish for thousands of dollars' worth of
furniture from a single tree.  If ye dinna watch faithful, and Black
Jack gets out a few he has marked, it means the loss of more money
than ye ever dreamed of, lad.  The other night, down at camp, some
son of Balaam was suggestin' that ye might be sellin' the Boss out
to Jack and lettin' him tak' the trees secretly, and nobody wad
ever ken till the gang gets here."

A wave of scarlet flooded Freckles' face and he blazed hotly at the insult.

"And the Boss," continued Duncan, coolly ignoring Freckles' anger,
"he lays back just as cool as cowcumbers an' says:  `I'll give a
thousand dollars to ony man that will show me a fresh stump when we
reach the Limberlost,' says he.  Some of the men just snapped him op
that they'd find some.  So you see bow the Boss is trustin' ye, lad."

"I am gladder than I can ever expriss," said Freckles.  "And now
will I be walking double time to keep some of them from cutting a
tree to get all that money!"

"Mither o' Moses!" howled Duncan.  "Ye can trust the Scotch to
bungle things a'thegither.  McLean was only meanin' to show ye all
confidence and honor.  He's gone and set a high price for some dirty
whelp to ruin ye.  I was just tryin' to show ye how he felt toward
ye, and I've gone an' give ye that worry to bear.  Damn the Scotch!
They're so slow an' so dumb!"

"Exciptin' prisint company?" sweetly inquired Freckles.

"No!" growled Duncan.  "Headin' the list!  He'd nae business to set
a price on ye, lad, for that's about the amount of it, an' I'd nae
right to tell ye.  We've both done ye ill, an' both meanin' the
verra best.  Juist what I'm always sayin' to Sarah."

"I am mighty proud of what you have been telling me, Duncan,"
said Freckles.  "I need the warning, sure.  For with the books
coming I might be timpted to neglect me work when double watching
is needed.  Thank you more than I can say for putting me on to it.
What you've told me may be the saving of me.  I won't stop for
dinner now.  I'll be getting along the east line, and when I come
around about three, maybe Mother Duncan will let me have a glass
of milk and a bite of something."

"Ye see now!" cried Duncan in disgust.  "Ye'll start on that
seven-mile tramp with na bite to stay your stomach.  What was it I
told ye?"

"You told me that the Scotch had the hardest heads and the softest
hearts of any people that's living," answered Freckles.

Duncan grunted in gratified disapproval.

Freckles picked up his club and started down the line, whistling
cheerily, for he had an unusually long repertoire upon which to draw.

Duncan went straight to the lower camp, and calling McLean aside,
repeated the conversation verbatim, ending:  "And nae matter what
happens now or ever, dinna ye dare let onythin' make ye believe
that Freckles hasna guarded faithful as ony man could."

"I don't think anything could shake my faith in the lad," answered McLean.

Freckles was whistling merrily.  He kept one eye religiously on
the line.  The other he divided between the path, his friends of the
wire, and a search of the sky for his latest arrivals.  Every day
since their coming he had seen them, either hanging as small, black
clouds above the swamp or bobbing over logs and trees with their
queer, tilting walk.  Whenever he could spare time, he entered the
swamp and tried to make friends with them, for they were the tamest
of all his unnumbered subjects.  They ducked, dodged, and ambled
around him, over logs and bushes, and not even a near approach
would drive them to flight.

For two weeks he had found them circling over the Limberlost
regularly, but one morning the female was missing and only the big
black chicken hung sentinel above the swamp.  His mate did not
reappear in the following days, and Freckles grew very anxious.
He spoke of it to Mrs. Duncan, and she quieted his fears by raising
a delightful hope in their stead.

"Why, Freckles, if it's the hen-bird ye are missing, it's ten to
one she's safe," she said.  "She's laid, and is setting, ye silly!
Watch him and mark whaur he lichts.  Then follow and find the nest.
Some Sabbath we'll all gang see it."

Accepting this theory, Freckles began searching for the nest.
Because these "chickens" were large, as the hawks, he looked among
the treetops until he almost sprained the back of his neck.  He had
half the crow and hawk nests in the swamp located.  He searched for
this nest instead of collecting subjects for his case.  He found the
pair the middle of one forenoon on the elm where he had watched
their love-making.  The big black chicken was feeding his mate; so
it was proved that they were a pair, they were both alive, and
undoubtedly she was brooding.  After that Freckles' nest-hunting
continued with renewed zeal, but as he had no idea where to look
and Duncan could offer no helpful suggestion, the nest was no
nearer to being found.

Coming from a long day on the trail, Freckles saw Duncan's children
awaiting him much closer the swale than they usually ventured, and
from their wild gestures he knew that something had happened.
He began to run, but the cry that reached him was:  "The books
have come!"

How they hurried!  Freckles lifted the youngest to his shoulder, the
second took his club and dinner pail, and when they reached Mrs.
Duncan they found her at work on a big box.  She had loosened the
lid, and then she laughingly sat on it.

"Ye canna have a peep in here until ye have washed and eaten
supper," she said.  "It's all ready on the table.  Ance ye begin on
this, ye'll no be willin' to tak' your nose o' it till bedtime, and
I willna get my work done the nicht.  We've eaten long ago."

It was difficult work, but Freckles smiled bravely.  He made himself
neat, swallowed a few bites, then came so eagerly that Mrs. Duncan
yielded, although she said she very well knew all the time that his
supper would be spoiled.

Lifting the lid, they removed the packing and found in that box
books on birds, trees, flowers, moths, and butterflies.  There was
also one containing Freckles' bullfrog, true to life.  Besides these
were a butterfly-net, a naturalist's tin specimen-box, a bottle of
cyanide, a box of cotton, a paper of long, steel specimen-pins, and
a letter telling what all these things were and how to use them.

At the discovery of each new treasure, Freckles shouted:  "Will you
be looking at this, now?"

Mrs. Duncan cried:  "Weel, I be drawed on!"

The eldest boy turned a somersault for every extra, while the baby,
trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and
cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the
box-lid.  That sobered them, they carried the books indoors.  Mrs.
Duncan had a top shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above
the reach of meddling little fingers.

When Freckles started for the trail next morning, the shining new
specimen-box flashed on his back.  The black "chicken," a mere speck
in the blue, caught the gleam of it.  The folded net hung beside the
boy's hatchet, and the bird book was in the box.  He walked the line
and tested each section scrupulously, watching every foot of the
trail, for he was determined not to slight his work; but if ever a
boy "made haste slowly" in a hurry, it was Freckles that morning.
When at last he reached the space he had cleared and planted around
his case, his heart swelled with the pride of possessing even so
much that he could call his own, while his quick eyes feasted on
the beauty of it.

He had made a large room with the door of the case set even with
one side of it.  On three sides, fine big bushes of wild rose
climbed to the lower branches of the trees.  Part of his walls were
mallow, part alder, thorn, willow, and dogwood.  Below there filled
in a solid mass of pale pink sheep-laurel, and yellow St. John's
wort, while the amber threads of the dodder interlaced everywhere.
At one side the swamp came close, here cattails grew in profusion.
In front of them he had planted a row of water-hyacinths without
disturbing in the least the state of their azure bloom, and where
the ground arose higher for his floor, a row of foxfire, that soon
would be open.

To the left he had discovered a queer natural arrangement of the
trees, that grew to giant size and were set in a gradually
narrowing space so that a long, open vista stretched away until
lost in the dim recesses of the swamp.  A little trimming of
underbush, rolling of dead logs, levelling of floor and carpeting
with moss, made it easy to understand why Freckles had named this
the "cathedral"; yet he never had been taught that "the groves were
God's first temples."

On either side of the trees that constituted the first arch of this
dim vista of the swamp he planted ferns that grew waist-high thus
early in the season, and so skilfully the work had been done that
not a frond drooped because of the change.  Opposite, he cleared a
space and made a flower bed.  He filled one end with every delicate,
lacy vine and fern he could transplant successfully.  The body of
the bed was a riot of color.  Here he set growing dainty
blue-eyed-Marys and blue-eyed grass side by side.  He planted
harebells; violets, blue, white, and yellow; wild geranium,
cardinal-flower, columbine, pink snake's mouth, buttercups, painted
trilliums, and orchis.  Here were blood-root, moccasin-flower,
hepatica, pitcher-plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and every other flower
of the Limberlost that was in bloom or bore a bud presaging a
flower.  Every day saw the addition of new specimens.  The place
would have driven a botanist wild with envy.

On the line side he left the bushes thick for concealment, entering
by a narrow path he and Duncan had cleared in setting up the case.
He called this the front door, though he used every precaution to
hide it.  He built rustic seats between several of the trees,
leveled the floor, and thickly carpeted it with rank, heavy,
woolly-dog moss.  Around the case he planted wild clematis,
bittersweet, and wild-grapevines, and trained them over it until it
was almost covered.  Every day he planted new flowers, cut back
rough bushes, and coaxed out graceful ones.  His pride in his room
was very great, but he had no idea how surprisingly beautiful it
would appear to anyone who had not witnessed its growth and construction.

This morning Freckles walked straight to his case, unlocked it, and
set his apparatus and dinner inside.  He planted a new specimen he
had found close the trail, and, bringing his old scrap-bucket from
the corner in which it was hidden, from a near-by pool he dipped
water to pour over his carpet and flowers.

Then he took out the bird book, settled comfortably on a bench, and
with a deep sigh of satisfaction turned to the section headed.  "V."
Past "veery" and "vireo" he went, down the line until his finger,
trembling with eagerness, stopped at "vulture."

"`Great black California vulture,'" he read.

"Humph!  This side the Rockies will do for us."

"`Common turkey-buzzard.'"

"Well, we ain't hunting common turkeys.  McLean said chickens, and
what he says goes."

"`Black vulture of the South.'"

"Here we are arrived at once."

Freckles' finger followed the line, and he read scraps aloud.

"`Common in the South.  Sometimes called Jim Crow.  Nearest
equivalent to C-a-t-h-a-r-t-e-s A-t-r-a-t-a.'"

"How the divil am I ever to learn them corkin' big words by mesel'?"

"`--the Pharaoh's Chickens of European species.  Sometimes stray
north as far as Virginia and Kentucky----'"

"And sometimes farther," interpolated Freckles, "'cos I got them
right here in Indiana so like these pictures I can just see me big
chicken bobbing up to get his ears boxed.  Hey?"

"`Light-blue eggs'----"

"Golly!  I got to be seeing them!"

"`--big as a common turkey's, but shaped like a hen's, heavily
splotched with chocolate----'"

"Caramels, I suppose.  And----"

"`--in hollow logs or stumps.'"

"Oh, hagginy!  Wasn't I barking up the wrong tree, though?  Ought to
been looking close the ground all this time.  Now it's all to do
over, and I suspect the sooner I start the sooner I'll be likely to
find them."

Freckles put away his book, dampened the smudge-fire, without which
the mosquitoes made the swamp almost unbearable, took his cudgel
and lunch, and went to the line.  He sat on a log, ate at
dinner-time and drank his last drop of water.  The heat of June was
growing intense.  Even on the west of the swamp, where one had full
benefit of the breeze from the upland, it was beginning to be
unpleasant in the middle of the day.

He brushed the crumbs from his knees and sat resting awhile and
watching the sky to see if his big chicken were hanging up there.
But he came to the earth abruptly, for there were steps coming down
the trail that were neither McLean's nor Duncan's--and there never
had been others.  Freckles' heart leaped hotly.  He ran a quick hand
over his belt to feel if his revolver and hatchet were there,
caught up his cudgel and laid it across his knees--then sat quietly,
waiting.  Was it Black Jack, or someone even worse?  Forced to do
something to brace his nerves, he puckered his stiffening lips and
began whistling a tune he had led in his clear tenor every year of
his life at the Home Christmas exercises.

            "Who comes this way, so blithe and gay,
             Upon a merry Christmas day?"


His quick Irish wit roused to the ridiculousness of it until he
broke into a laugh that steadied him amazingly.

Through the bushes he caught a glimpse of the oncoming figure.  His
heart flooded with joy, for it was a man from the gang.  Wessner had
been his bunk-mate the night he came down the corduroy.  He knew him
as well as any of McLean's men.  This was no timber-thief.  No doubt
the Boss had sent him with a message.  Freckles sprang up and called
cheerily, a warm welcome on his face.

"Well, it's good telling if you're glad to see me," said Wessner,
with something very like a breath of relief.  "We been hearing down
at the camp you were so mighty touchy you didn't allow a man within
a rod of the line."

"No more do I," answered Freckles, "if he's a stranger, but you're
from McLean, ain't you?"

"Oh, damn McLean!" said Wessner.

Freckles gripped the cudgel until his knuckles slowly turned purple.

"And are you railly saying so?" he inquired with elaborate politeness.

"Yes, I am," said Wessner.  "So would every man of the gang if they
wasn't too big cowards to say anything, unless maybe that other
slobbering old Scotchman, Duncan.  Grinding the lives out of us!
Working us like dogs, and paying us starvation wages, while he
rolls up his millions and lives like a prince!"

Green lights began to play through the gray of Freckles' eyes.

"Wessner," he said impressively, "you'd make a fine pattern for the
father of liars!  Every man on that gang is strong and hilthy, paid
all he earns, and treated with the courtesy of a gentleman!  As for
the Boss living like a prince, he shares fare with you every day of
your lives!"

Wessner was not a born diplomat, but he saw he was on the wrong
tack, so he tried another.

"How would you like to make a good big pile of money, without even
lifting your hand?" he asked.

"Humph!" said Freckles.  "Have you been up to Chicago and cornered
wheat, and are you offering me a friendly tip on the invistment of
me fortune?"

Wessner came close.

"Freckles, old fellow," he said, "if you let me give you a pointer,
I can put you on to making a cool five hundred without stepping out
of your tracks."

Freckles drew back.

"You needn't be afraid of speaking up," he said.  "There isn't a
soul in the Limberlost save the birds and the beasts, unless some
of your sort's come along and's crowding the privileges of the
legal tinints."

"None of my friends along," said Wessner.  "Nobody knew I came but
Black, I--I mean a friend of mine.  If you want to hear sense and
act with reason, he can see you later, but it ain't necessary.  We
can make all the plans needed.  The trick's so dead small and easy."

"Must be if you have the engineering of it," said Freckles.  But he
heard, with a sigh of relief, that they were alone.

Wessner was impervious.  "You just bet it is!  Why, only think,
Freckles, slavin' away at a measly little thirty dollars a month,
and here is a chance to clear five hundred in a day!  You surely
won't be the fool to miss it!"

"And how was you proposing for me to stale it?" inquired Freckles.
"Or am I just to find it laying in me path beside the line?"

"That's it, Freckles," blustered the Dutchman, "you're just to
find it.  You needn't do a thing.  You needn't know a thing.
You name a morning when you will walk up the west side of the
swamp and then turn round and walk back down the same side again
and the money is yours.  Couldn't anything be easier than that,
could it?"

"Depinds entirely on the man," said Freckles.  The lilt of a lark
hanging above the swale beside them was not sweeter than the
sweetness of his voice.  "To some it would seem to come aisy as
breathing; and to some, wringin' the last drop of their heart's
blood couldn't force thim!  I'm not the man that goes into a scheme
like that with the blindfold over me eyes, for, you see, it manes
to break trust with the Boss; and I've served him faithful as I knew.
You'll have to be making the thing very clear to me understanding."

"It's so dead easy," repeated Wessner, "it makes me tired of the
simpleness of it.  You see there's a few trees in the swamp that's
real gold mines.  There's three especial.  Two are back in, but one's
square on the line.  Why, your pottering old Scotch fool of a Boss
nailed the wire to it with his own hands!  He never noticed where
the bark had been peeled, or saw what it was.  If you will stay on
this side of the trail just one day we can have it cut, loaded, and
ready to drive out at night.  Next morning you can find it, report,
and be the busiest man in the search for us.  We know where to fix
it all safe and easy.  Then McLean has a bet up with a couple of
the gang that there can't be a raw stump found in the Limberlost.
There's plenty of witnesses to swear to it, and I know three that will.
There's a cool thousand, and this tree is worth all of that, raw.
Say, it's a gold mine, I tell you, and just five hundred of it
is yours.  There's no danger on earth to you, for you've got McLean
that bamboozled you could sell out the whole swamp and he'd never
mistrust you.  What do you say?"

Freckles' soul was satisfied.  "Is that all?" he asked.

"No, it ain't," said Wessner.  "If you really want to brace up and
be a man and go into the thing for keeps, you can make five times
that in a week.  My friend knows a dozen others we could get out in
a few days, and all you'd have to do would be to keep out of sight.
Then you could take your money and skip some night, and begin life
like a gentleman somewhere else.  What do you think about it?"

Freckles purred like a kitten.

"'Twould be a rare joke on the Boss," he said, "to be stalin' from
him the very thing he's trusted me to guard, and be getting me wages
all winter throwed in free.  And you're making the pay awful high.
Me to be getting five hundred for such a simple little thing as that.
You're trating me most royal indade!  It's away beyond all I'd
be expecting.  Sivinteen cints would be a big price for that job.
It must be looked into thorough.  Just you wait here until I do
a minute's turn in the swamp, and then I'll be eschorting you out
of the clearing and giving you the answer."

Freckles lifted the overhanging bushes and hurried to the case.
He unslung the specimen-box and laid it inside with his hatchet
and revolver.  He slipped the key in his pocket and went back
to Wessner.

"Now for the answer," he said.  "Stand up!"

There was iron in his voice, and he was commanding as an
outraged general.  "Anything, you want to be taking off?"
he questioned.

Wessner looked the astonishment he felt.  "Why, no, Freckles," he said.

"Have the goodness to be calling me Mister McLean," snapped Freckles.
"I'm after resarvin' me pet name for the use of me friends!
You may stand with your back to the light or be taking any
advantage you want."

"Why, what do you mean?" spluttered Wessner.

"I'm manin'," said Freckles tersely, "to lick a quarter-section of
hell out of you, and may the Holy Vargin stay me before I leave you
here carrion, for your carcass would turn the stummicks of me chickens!"

At the camp that morning, Wessner's conduct had been so palpable
an excuse to force a discharge that Duncan moved near McLean and
whispered, "Think of the boy, sir?"

McLean was so troubled that, an hour later, he mounted Nellie and
followed Wessner to his home in Wildcat Hollow, only to find that
he had left there shortly before, heading for the Limberlost.
McLean rode at top speed.  When Mrs. Duncan told him that a man
answering Wessner's description had gone down the west side of the
swamp close noon, he left the mare in her charge and followed on foot.
When he heard voices he entered the swamp and silently crept close
just in time to hear Wessner whine:  "But I can't fight you, Freckles.
I hain't done nothing to you.  I'm away bigger than you, and you've
only one hand."

The Boss slid off his coat and crouched among the bushes, ready to
spring; but as Freckles' voice reached him he held himself, with a
strong effort, to learn what mettle was in the boy.

"Don't you be wasting of me good time in the numbering of me
hands," cried Freckles.  "The stringth of me cause will make up
for the weakness of me mimbers, and the size of a cowardly thief
doesn't count.  You'll think all the wildcats of the Limberlost
are turned loose on you whin I come against you, and as for me
cause----I slept with you, Wessner, the night I came down the
corduroy like a dirty, friendless tramp, and the Boss was for
taking me up, washing, clothing, and feeding me, and giving me a
home full of love and tinderness, and a master to look to, and
good, well-earned money in the bank.  He's trusting me his heartful,
and here comes you, you spotted toad of the big road, and insults
me, as is an honest Irish gintleman, by hinting that you concaive
I'd be willing to shut me eyes and hold fast while you rob him of
the thing I was set and paid to guard, and then act the sneak
and liar to him, and ruin and eternally blacken the soul of me.
You damned rascal," raved Freckles, "be fighting before I forget the
laws of a gintlemin's game and split your dirty head with me stick!"

Wessner backed away, mumbling, "But I don't want to hurt you, Freckles!"

"Oh, don't you!" raged the boy, now fairly frothing.  "Well, you
ain't resembling me none, for I'm itching like death to git me
fingers in the face of you."

He danced up, and as Wessner lunged in self-defense, ducked under
his arm as a bantam and punched him in the pit of the stomach so
that he doubled with a groan.  Before Wessner could straighten
himself, Freckles was on him, fighting like the wildest fury that
ever left the beautiful island.  The Dutchman dealt thundering blows
that sometimes landed and sent Freckles reeling, and sometimes missed,
while he went plunging into the swale with the impetus of them.
Freckles could not strike with half Wessner's force, but he could
land three blows to the Dutchman's one.  It was here that the boy's
days of alert watching on the line, the perpetual swinging of the
heavy cudgel, and the endurance of all weather stood him in good
stead; for he was tough, and agile.  He skipped, ducked, and dodged.
For the first five minutes he endured fearful punishment.
Then Wessner's breath commenced to whistle between his teeth, when
Freckles only had begun fighting.  He sprang back with shrill laughter.

"Begolly!  and will your honor be whistling the hornpipe for me to
be dancing of?" he cried.

SPANG! went his fist into Wessner's face, and he was past him into
the swale.

"And would you be pleased to tune up a little livelier?" he gasped,
and clipped his ear as he sprang back.  Wessner lunged at him in
blind fury.  Freckles, seeing an opening, forgot the laws of a
gentleman's game and drove the toe of his heavy wading-boot in
Wessner's middle until he doubled and fell heavily.  In a flash
Freckles was on him.  For a time McLean could not see what
was happening.  "Go!  Go to him now!" he commanded himself,
but so intense was his desire to see the boy win alone that he
did not stir.

At last Freckles sprang up and backed away.  "Time!" he yelled as
a fury.  "Be getting up, Mr. Wessner, and don't be afraid of
hurting me.  I'll let you throw in an extra hand and lick you to
me complate satisfaction all the same.  Did you hear me call
the limit?  Will you get up and be facing me?"

As Wessner struggled to his feet, he resembled a battlefield, for
his clothing was in ribbons and his face and hands streaming blood.

"I--I guess I got enough," he mumbled.

"Oh, you do?" roared Freckles.  "Well this ain't your say.  You come
on to me ground, lying about me Boss and intimatin' I'd stale from
his very pockets.  Now will you be standing up and taking your
medicine like a man, or getting it poured down the throat of you
like a baby?  I ain't got enough!  This is only just the beginning
with me.  Be looking out there!"

He sprang against Wessner and sent him rolling.  He attacked the
unresisting figure and fought him until he lay limp and quiet and
Freckles had no strength left to lift an arm.  Then he arose and
stepped back, gasping for breath.  With his first lungful of air
he shouted:  "Time!" But the figure of Wessner lay motionless.

Freckles watched him with regardful eye and saw at last that he was
completely exhausted.  He bent over him, and catching him by the
back of the neck, jerked him to his knees.  Wessner lifted the face
of a whipped cur, and fearing further punishment, burst into
shivering sobs, while the tears washed tiny rivulets through the
blood and muck.  Freckles stepped back, glaring at Wessner, but
suddenly the scowl of anger and the ugly disfiguring red faded from
the boy's face.  He dabbed at a cut on his temple from which issued
a tiny crimson stream, and jauntily shook back his hair.  His face
took on the innocent look of a cherub, and his voice rivaled that of
a brooding dove, but into his eyes crept a look of diabolical mischief.

He glanced vaguely around him until he saw his club, seized and
twirled it as a drum major, stuck it upright in the muck, and
marched on tiptoe to Wessner, mechanically, as a puppet worked by
a string.  Bending over, Freckles reached an arm around Wessner's
waist and helped him to his feet.

"Careful, now" he cautioned, "be careful, Freddy; there's danger of
you hurting me."

Drawing a handkerchief from a back pocket, Freckles tenderly wiped
Wessner's eyes and nose.

"Come, Freddy, me child," he admonished Wessner, "it's time little
boys were going home.  I've me work to do, and can't be entertaining
you any more today.  Come back tomorrow, if you ain't through yet,
and we'll repate the perfarmance.  Don't be staring at me so wild like!
I would eat you, but I can't afford it.  Me earnings, being honest,
come slow, and I've no money to be squanderin' on the pailful of
Dyspeptic's Delight it would be to taking to work you out of my innards!"

Again an awful wrenching seized McLean.  Freckles stepped back as
Wessner, tottering and reeling, as a thoroughly drunken man, came
toward the path, appearing indeed as if wildcats had attacked him.

The cudgel spun high in air, and catching it with an expertness
acquired by long practice on the line, the boy twirled it a second,
shook back his thick hair bonnily, and stepping into the trail,
followed Wessner.  Because Freckles was Irish, it was impossible to
do it silently, so presently his clear tenor rang out, though there
were bad catches where he was hard pressed for breath:

            "It was the Dutch.  It was the Dutch.
             Do you think it was the Irish hollered help?
                  Not much!
             It was the Dutch.  It was the Dutch----"


Wessner turned and mumbled:  "What you following me for?  What are
you going to do with me?"

Freckles called the Limberlost to witness:  "How's that for the
ingratitude of a beast?  And me troubling mesilf to show him off me
territory with the honors of war!"

Then he changed his tone completely and added:  "Belike it's
this, Freddy.  You see, the Boss might come riding down this trail
any minute, and the little mare's so wheedlesome that if she'd
come on to you in your prisint state all of a sudden, she'd stop
that short she'd send Mr. McLean out over the ears of her.
No disparagement intinded to the sinse of the mare!" he added hastily.

Wessner belched a fearful oath, while Freckles laughed merrily.

"That's a sample of the thanks a generous act's always for
getting," he continued.  "Here's me negictin' me work to eschort you
out proper, and you saying such awful words Freddy," he demanded
sternly, "do you want me to soap out your mouth?  You don't seem to
be realizing it, but if you was to buck into Mr. McLean in your
prisint state, without me there to explain matters the chance is
he'd cut the liver out of you; and I shouldn't think you'd be
wanting such a fine gintleman as him to see that it's white!"

Wessner grew ghastly under his grime and broke into a staggering run.

"And now will you be looking at the manners of him?" questioned
Freckles plaintively.  "Going without even a `thank you,' right in
the face of all the pains I've taken to make it interesting for him!"

Freckles twirled the club and stood as a soldier at attention until
Wessner left the clearing, but it was the last scene of that
performance.  When the boy turned, there was deathly illness on his
face, while his legs wavered beneath his weight.  He staggered to
the case, and opening it he took out a piece of cloth.  He dipped it
into the water, and sitting on a bench, he wiped the blood and grime
from his face, while his breath sucked between his clenched teeth.
He was shivering with pain and excitement in spite of himself.
He unbuttoned the band of his right sleeve, and turning it back,
exposed the blue-lined, calloused whiteness of his maimed arm,
now vividly streaked with contusions, while in a series of circular
dots the blood oozed slowly.  Here Wessner had succeeded in setting
his teeth.  When Freckles saw what it was he forgave himself the
kick in the pit of Wessner's stomach, and cursed fervently and deep.

"Freckles, Freckles," said McLean's voice.

Freckles snatched down his sleeve and arose to his feet.

"Excuse me, sir," he said.  "You'll surely be belavin' I thought
meself alone."

McLean pushed him carefully to the seat, and bending over him,
opened a pocket-case that he carried as regularly as his revolver and
watch, for cuts and bruises were of daily occurrence among the gang.

Taking the hurt arm, he turned back the sleeve and bathed and bound
the wounds.  He examined Freckles' head and body and convinced
himself that there was no permanent injury, although the cruelty of
the punishment the boy had borne set the Boss shuddering.  Then he
closed the case, shoved it into his pocket, and sat beside Freckles.
All the indescribable beauty of the place was strong around him,
but he saw only the bruised face of the suffering boy, who had
hedged for the information he wanted as a diplomat, argued as a
judge, fought as a sheik, and triumphed as a devil.

When the pain lessened and breath reieved Freckles' pounding heart,
he watched the Boss covertly.  How had McLean gotten there and how
long had he been there?  Freckles did not dare ask.  At last he
arose, and going to the case, took out his revolver and the wire-
mending apparatus and locked the door.  Then he turned to McLean.

"Have you any orders, sir?" he asked.

"Yes," said McLean, "I have, and you are to follow them to
the letter.  Turn over that apparatus to me and go straight home.
Soak yourself in the hottest bath your skin will bear and go to
bed at once.  Now hurry."

"Mr. McLean," said Freckles, "it's sorry I am to be telling you,
but the afternoon's walking of the line ain't done.  You see, I was
just for getting to me feet to start, and I was on time, when up
came a gintleman, and we got into a little heated argument.
It's either settled, or it's just begun, but between us, I'm that
late I haven't started for the afternoon yet.  I must be going
at once, for there's a tree I must find before the day's over."

"You plucky little idiot," growled McLean.  "You can't walk the line!
I doubt if you can reach Duncan's.  Don't you know when you are
done up?  You go to bed; I'll finish your work."

"Niver!" protested Freckles.  "I was just a little done up for the
prisint, a minute ago.  I'm all right now.  Riding-boots are far
too low.  The day's hot and the walk a good seven miles, sir.  Niver!"

As he reached for the outfit he pitched forward and his eyes closed.
McLean stretched him on the moss and applied restoratives.
When Freckles returned to consciousness, McLean ran to the cabin to
tell Mrs. Duncan to have a hot bath ready, and to bring Nellie.
That worthy woman promptly filled the wash-boiler, starting a
roaring fire under it.  She pushed the horse-trough from its base
and rolled it to the kitchen.

By the time McLean came again, leading Nelie and holding Freckles
on her back, Mrs. Duncan was ready for business.  She and the Boss
laid Freckles in the trough and poured on hot water until he squirmed.
They soaked and massaged him.  Then they drew off the hot water and
closed his pores with cold.  Lastly they stretched him on the floor
and chafed, rubbed, and kneaded him until he cried out for mercy.
As they rolled him into bed, his eyes dropped shut, but a little
later they flared open.

"Mr. McLean," he cried, "the tree!  Oh, do be looking after the tree!"

McLean bent over him.  "Which tree, Freckles?"

"I don't know exact" sir; but it's on the east line, and the wire
is fastened to it.  He bragged that you nailed it yourself, sir.
You'll know it by the bark having been laid open to the grain
somewhere low down.  Five hundred dollars he offered me--to be--
selling you out--sir!"

Freckles' head rolled over and his eyes dropped shut.  McLean towered
above the lad.  His bright hair waved on the pillow.  His face was
swollen, and purple with bruises.  His left arm, with the hand
battered almost out of shape, stretched beside him, and the right,
with no hand at all, lay across a chest that was a mass of purple welts.
McLean's mind traveled to the night, almost a year before, when he
had engaged Freckles, a stranger.

The Boss bent, covering the hurt arm with one hand and laying the
other with a caress on the boy's forehead.  Freckles stirred at his
touch, and whispered as softly as the swallows under the eaves:
"If you're coming this way--tomorrow--be pleased to step over--
and we'll repate--the chorus softly!"

"Bless the gritty devil," muttered McLean.

Then he went out and told Mrs. Duncan to keep close watch on
Freckles, also to send Duncan to him at the swamp the minute he
came home.  Following the trail to the line and back to the scent
of the fight, the Boss entered Freckles' study quietly, as if his
spirit, keeping there, might be roused, and gazed around with
astonished eyes.

How had the boy conceived it?  What a picture he had wrought in
living colors!  He had the heart of a painter.  He had the soul of
a poet.  The Boss stepped carefully over the velvet carpet to touch
the walls of crisp verdure with gentle fingers.  He stood long
beside the flower bed, and gazed at the banked wall of bright bloom
as if he doubted its reality.

Where had Freckles ever found, and how had he transplanted
such ferns?  As McLean turned from them he stopped suddenly.

He had reached the door of the cathedral.  That which Freckles had
attempted would have been patent to anyone.  What had been in the
heart of the shy, silent boy when he had found that long, dim
stretch of forest, decorated its entrance, cleared and smoothed
its aisle, and carpeted its altar?  What veriest work of God was
in these mighty living pillars and the arched dome of green!
How similar to stained cathedral windows were the long openings
between the trees, filled with rifts of blue, rays of gold, and the
shifting emerald of leaves!  Where could be found mosaics to match
this aisle paved with living color and glowing light?  Was Freckles
a devout Christian, and did he worship here?  Or was he an untaught
heathen, and down this vista of entrancing loveliness did Pan come
piping, and dryads, nymphs, and fairies dance for him?

Who can fathom the heart of a boy?  McLean had been thinking of
Freckles as a creature of unswerving honesty, courage, and
faithfulness.  Here was evidence of a heart aching for beauty, art,
companionship, worship.  It was writ large all over the floor,
walls, and furnishing of that little Limberlost clearing.

When Duncan came, McLean told him the story of the fight, and they
laughed until they cried.  Then they started around the line in
search of the tree.

Said Duncan:  "Now the boy is in for sore trouble!"

"I hope not," answered McLean.  "You never in all your life saw a
cur whipped so completely.  He won't come back for the repetition of
the chorus.  We surely can find the tree.  If we can't, Freckles can.
I will bring enough of the gang to take it out at once.  That will
insure peace for a time, at least, and I am hoping that in a month
more the whole gang may be moved here.  It soon will be fall, and
then, if he will go, I intend to send Freckles to my mother to
be educated.  With his quickness of mind and body and a few years'
good help he can do anything.  Why, Duncan, I'd give a hundred-
dollar bill if you could have been here and seen for yourself."

"Yes, and I'd `a' done murder," muttered the big teamster.  "I hope,
sir, ye will make good your plans for Freckles, though I'd as soon
see ony born child o' my ain taken from our home.  We love the lad,
me and Sarah."

Locating the tree was easy, because it was so well identified.
When the rumble of the big lumber wagons passing the cabin on the
way to the swamp wakened Freckles next morning, he sprang up and
was soon following them.  He was so sore and stiff that every
movement was torture at first, but he grew easier, and shortly did
not suffer so much.  McLean scolded him for coming, yet in his
heart triumphed over every new evidence of fineness in the boy.

The tree was a giant maple, and so precious that they almost dug it
out by the roots.  When it was down, cut in lengths, and loaded,
there was yet an empty wagon.  As they were gathering up their tools
to go, Duncan said:  "There's a big hollow tree somewhere mighty
close here that I've been wanting for a watering-trough for my
stock; the one I have is so small.  The Portland company cut this
for elm butts last year, and it's six feet diameter and hollow for
forty feet.  It was a buster!  While the men are here and there is an
empty wagon, why mightn't I load it on and tak' it up to the barn
as we pass?"

McLean said he was very willing, ordered the driver to break line
and load the log, detailing men to assist.  He told Freckles to ride
on a section of the maple with him, but now the boy asked to enter
the swamp with Duncan.

"I don't see why you want to go," said McLean.  "I have no business
to let you out today at all."

"It's me chickens," whispered Freckles in distress.  "You see, I was
just after finding yesterday, from me new book, how they do be
nesting in hollow trees, and there ain't any too many in the swamp.
There's just a chance that they might be in that one."

"Go ahead," said McLean.  "That's a different story.  If they happen
to be there, why tell Duncan he must give up the tree until they
have finished with it."

Then he climbed on a wagon and was driven away.  Freckles hurried
into the swamp.  He was a little behind, yet he could see the men.
Before he overtook them, they had turned from the west road and had
entered the swamp toward the east.

They stopped at the trunk of a monstrous prostrate log.  It had been
cut three feet from the ground, over three-fourths of the way
through, and had fallen toward the east, the body of the log still
resting on the stump.  The underbrush was almost impenetrable, but
Duncan plunged in and with a crowbar began tapping along the trunk
to decide how far it was hollow, so that they would know where to cut.
As they waited his decision, there came from the mouth of it--on
wings--a large black bird that swept over their heads.

Freckles danced wildly.  "It's me chickens!  Oh, it's me chickens!"
he shouted.  "Oh, Duncan, come quick!  You've found the nest of me
precious chickens!"

Duncan hurried to the mouth of the log, but Freckles was before him.
He crashed through poison-vines and underbrush regardless of any
danger, and climbed on the stump.  When Duncan came he was shouting
like a wild man.

"It's hatched!" he yelled.  "Oh, me big chicken has hatched out me
little chicken, and there's another egg.  I can see it plain, and
oh, the funny little white baby!  Oh, Duncan, can you see me little
white chicken?"

Duncan could easily see it; so could everyone else.  Freckles crept
into the log and tenderly carried the hissing, blinking little bird
to the light in a leaf-lined hat.  The men found it sufficiently
wonderful to satisfy even Freckles, who had forgotten he was ever
sore or stiff, and coddled over it with every blarneying term of
endearment he knew.

Duncan gathered his tools.  "Deal's off, boys!" he said cheerfully.
"This log mauna be touched until Freckles' chaukies have finished
with it.  We might as weel gang.  Better put it back, Freckles.
It's just out, and it may chill.  Ye will probably hae twa the morn."

Freckles crept into the log and carefully deposited the baby beside
the egg.  When he came back, he said:  "I made a big mistake not to
be bringing the egg out with the baby, but I was fearing to touch it.
It's shaped like a hen's egg, and it's big as a turkey's, and the
beautifulest blue--just splattered with big brown splotches,
like me book said, precise.  Bet you never saw such a sight as it
made on the yellow of the rotten wood beside that funny
leathery-faced little white baby."

"Tell you what, Freckles," said one of the teamsters.  "Have you
ever heard of this Bird Woman who goes all over the country with a
camera and makes pictures?  She made some on my brother Jim's place
last summer, and Jim's so wild about them he quits plowing and goes
after her about every nest he finds.  He helps her all he can to
take them, and then she gives him a picture.  Jim's so proud of what
he has he keeps them in the Bible.  He shows them to everybody that
comes, and brags about how he helped.  If you're smart, you'll send
for her and she'll come and make a picture just like life.  If you
help her, she will give you one.  It would be uncommon pretty to
keep, after your birds are gone.  I dunno what they are.  I never see
their like before.  They must be something rare.  Any you fellows
ever see a bird like that hereabouts?"

No one ever had.

"Well," said the teamster, "failing to get this log lets me off
till noon, and I'm going to town.  I go right past her place.
I've a big notion to stop and tell her.  If she drives straight
back in the swamp on the west road, and turns east at this big
sycamore, she can't miss finding the tree, even if Freckles ain't
here to show her.  Jim says her work is a credit to the State she
lives in, and any man is a measly creature who isn't willing to
help her all he can.  My old daddy used to say that all there was
to religion was doing to the other fellow what you'd want him to
do to you, and if I was making a living taking bird pictures,
seems to me I'd be mighty glad for a chance to take one like that.
So I'll just stop and tell her, and by gummy!  maybe she will give
me a picture of the little white sucker for my trouble."

Freckles touched his arm.

"Will she be rough with it?" he asked.

"Government land!  No!" said the teamster.  "She's dead down on
anybody that shoots a bird or tears up a nest.  Why, she's half
killing herself in all kinds of places and weather to teach people
to love and protect the birds.  She's that plum careful of them that
Jim's wife says she has Jim a standin' like a big fool holding an
ombrelly over them when they are young and tender until she gets a
focus, whatever that is.  Jim says there ain't a bird on his place
that don't actually seem to like having her around after she has
wheedled them a few days, and the pictures she takes nobody would
ever believe who didn't stand by and see."

"Will you he sure to tell her to come?" asked Freckles.

Duncan slept at home that night.  He heard Freckles slipping out
early the next morning, but he was too sleepy to wonder why, until
he came to do his morning chores.  When he found that none of his
stock was at all thirsty, and saw the water-trough brimming, he
knew that the boy was trying to make up to him for the loss of the
big trough that he had been so anxious to have.

"Bless his fool little hot heart!" said Duncan.  "And him so sore it
is tearing him to move for anything.  Nae wonder he has us all
loving him!"

Freckles was moving briskly, and his heart was so happy that he
forgot all about the bruises.  He hurried around the trail, and on
his way down the east side he went to see the chickens.  The mother
bird was on the nest.  He was afraid the other egg might be
hatching, so he did not venture to disturb her.  He made the round
and reached his study early.  He ate his lunch, but did not need
to start on the second trip until the middle of the afternoon.
He would have long hours to work on his flower bed, improve his study,
and learn about his chickens.  Lovingly he set his room in order and
watered the flowers and carpet.  He had chosen for his resting-place
the coolest spot on the west side, where there was almost always a
breeze; but today the heat was so intense that it penetrated even there.

"I'm mighty glad there's nothing calling me inside!" he said.
"There's no bit of air stirring, and it will just be steaming.
Oh, but it's luck Duncan found the nest before it got so unbearing hot!
I might have missed it altogether.  Wouldn't it have been a shame to
lose that sight?  The cunning little divil!  When he gets to toddling
down that log to meet me, won't he be a circus?  Wonder if he'll be
as graceful a performer afoot as his father and mother?"

The heat became more insistent.  Noon came; Freckles ate his dinner
and settled for an hour or two on a bench with a book.



                                 CHAPTER V

            Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships

Perhaps there was a breath of sound--Freckles never afterward could
remember--but for some reason he lifted his head as the bushes
parted and the face of an angel looked between.  Saints, nymphs, and
fairies had floated down his cathedral aisle for him many times,
with forms and voices of exquisite beauty.

Parting the wild roses at the entrance was beauty of which
Freckles never had dreamed.  Was it real or would it vanish as the
other dreams?  He dropped his book, and rising to his feet, went a step
closer, gazing intently.  This was real flesh and blood.  It was in
every way kin to the Limberlost, for no bird of its branches swung
with easier grace than this dainty young thing rocked on the bit of
morass on which she stood.  A sapling beside her was not straighter
or rounder than her slender form.  Her soft, waving hair clung
around her face from the heat, and curled over her shoulders.
It was all of one piece with the gold of the sun that filtered
between the branches.  Her eyes were the deepest blue of the iris,
her lips the reddest red of the foxfire, while her cheeks were
exactly of the same satin as the wild rose petals caressing them.
She was smiling at Freckles in perfect confidence, and she cried:

"Oh, I'm so delighted that I've found you!"

The wildly leaping heart of Freckles burst from his body and fell
in the black swamp-muck at her feet with such a thud that he did
not understand how she could avoid hearing.  He really felt that if
she looked down she would see.

Incredulous, he quavered:  "An'--an' was you looking for me?"

"I hoped I might find you," said the Angel.  "You see, I didn't do
as I was told, and I'm lost.  The Bird Woman said I should wait in
the carriage until she came back.  She's been gone hours.  It's a
perfect Turkish bath in there, and I'm all lumpy with mosquito bites.
Just when I thought that I couldn't bear it another minute,
along came the biggest Papilio Ajax you ever saw.  I knew how
pleased she'd be, so I ran after it.  It flew so slow and so low
that I thought a dozen times I had it.  Then all at once it went
from sight above the trees, and I couldn't find my way back to save me.
I think I've walked more than an hour.  I have been mired to my knees.
A thorn raked my arm until it is bleeding, and I'm so tired and warm."

She parted the bushes farther.  Freckles saw that her blue cotton
frock clung to her, limp with perspiration.  It was torn across
the breast.  One sleeve hung open from shoulder to elbow.  A thorn
had torn her arm until it was covered with blood, and the gnats and
mosquitoes were clustering around it.  Her feet were in lace hose
and low shoes.  Freckles gasped.  In the Limberlost in low shoes!
He caught an armful of moss from his carpet and buried it in the
ooze in front of her for a footing.

"Come out here so I can see where you are stepping.  Quick, for the
life of you!" he ordered.

She smiled on him indulgently.

"Why?" she inquired.

"Did anybody let you come here and not be telling you of the
snakes?" urged Freckles.

"We met Mr. McLean on the corduroy, and he did say something about
snakes, I believe.  The Bird Woman put on leather leggings, and a
nice, parboiled time she must be having!  Worst dose I ever endured,
and I'd nothing to do but swelter."

"Will you be coming out of there?" groaned Freckles.

She laughed as if it were a fine joke.

"Maybe if I'd be telling you I killed a rattler curled upon that
same place you're standing, as long as me body and the thickness
of me arm, you'd be moving where I can see your footing,"
he urged insistently.

"What a perfectly delightful little brogue you speak," she said.
"My father is Irish, and half should be enough to entitle me to
that much.  `Maybe--if I'd--be telling you,'" she imitated, rounding
and accenting each word carefully.

Freckles was beginning to feel a wildness in his head.  He had
derided Wessner at that same hour yesterday.  Now his own eyes were
filling with tears.

"If you were understanding the danger!" he continued desperately.

"Oh, I don't think there is much!"

She tilted on the morass.

"If you killed one snake here, it's probably all there is near; and
anyway, the Bird Woman says a rattlesnake is a gentleman and always
gives warning before he strikes.  I don't hear any rattling.  Do you?"

"Would you be knowing it if you did?" asked Freckles, almost impatiently.

How the laugh of the young thing rippled!

"`Would I be knowing it?'" she mocked.  "You should see the swamps
of Michigan where they dump rattlers from the marl-dredgers three
and four at a time!"

Freckles stood astounded.  She did know.  She was not in the
least afraid.  She was depending on a rattlesnake to live up to
his share of the contract and rattle in time for her to move.
The one characteristic an Irishman admires in a woman, above all
others, is courage.  Freckles worshiped anew.  He changed his tactics.

"I'd be pleased to be receiving you at me front door," he said,
"but as you have arrived at the back, will you come in and be seated?"

He waved toward a bench.  The Angel came instantly.

"Oh, how lovely and cool!" she cried.

As she moved across his room, Freckles had difficult work to keep
from falling on his knees; for they were very weak, while he was
hard driven by an impulse to worship.

"Did you arrange this?" she asked.

"Yis," said Freckles simply.

"Someone must come with a big canvas and copy each side of it," she
said.  "I never saw anything so beautiful!  How I wish I might remain
here with you!  I will, some day, if you will let me; but now, if
you can spare the time, will you help me find the carriage?  If the
Bird Woman comes back and I am gone, she will be almost distracted."

"Did you come on the west road?" asked Freckles.

"I think so," she said.  "The man who told the Bird Woman said that
was the only place the wires were down.  We drove away in, and it
was dreadful--over stumps and logs, and we mired to the hubs.  I
suppose you know, though.  I should have stayed in the carriage, but
I was so tired.  I never dreamed of getting lost.  I suspect I will
be scolded finely.  I go with the Bird Woman half the time during
the summer vacations.  My father says I learn a lot more than I do
at school, and get it straight.  I never came within a smell of
being lost before.  I thought, at first, it was going to be horrid;
but since I've found you, maybe it will be good fun after all."

Freckles was amazed to hear himself excusing:  "It was so hot
in there.  You couldn't be expected to bear it for hours and not
be moving.  I can take you around the trail almost to where you were.
Then you can sit in the carriage, and I will go find the Bird Woman."

"You'll be killed if you do!  When she stays this long, it means
that she has a focus on something.  You see, when she has a focus,
and lies in the weeds and water for hours, and the sun bakes her,
and things crawl over her, and then someone comes along and scares
her bird away just as she has it coaxed up--why, she kills them.
If I melt, you won't go after her.  She's probably blistered and
half eaten up; but she never will quit until she is satisfied."

"Then it will be safer to be taking care of you," suggested Freckles.

"Now you're talking sense!" said the Angel.

"May I try to help your arm?" he asked.

"Have you any idea how it hurts?" she parried.

"A little," said Freckles.

"Well, Mr. McLean said We'd probably find his son here"

"His son!" cried Freckles.

"That's what he said.  And that you would do anything you could for
us; and that we could trust you with our lives.  But I would have
trusted you anyway, if I hadn't known a thing about you.  Say, your
father is rampaging proud of you, isn't he?"

"I don't know," answered the dazed Freckles.

"Well, call on me if you want reliable information.  He's so proud
of you he is all swelled up like the toad in AEsop's Fables.  If you
have ever had an arm hurt like this, and can do anything, why, for
pity sake, do it!"

She turned back her sleeve, holding toward Freckles an arm of
palest cameo, shaped so exquisitely that no sculptor could have
chiseled it.

Freckles unlocked his case, and taking out some cotton cloth, he
tore it in strips.  Then he brought a bucket of the cleanest water
he could find.  She yielded herself to his touch as a baby, and
he bathed away the blood and bandaged the ugly, ragged wound.
He finished his surgery by lapping the torn sleeve over the cloth
and binding it down with a piece of twine, with the Angel's help
about the knots.

Freckles worked with trembling fingers and a face tense with earnestness.

"Is it feeling any better?" he asked.

"Oh, it's well now!" cried the Angel.  "It doesn't hurt at all, any more."

"I'm mighty glad," said Freckles.  "But you had best go and be
having your doctor fix it right; the minute you get home."

"Oh, bother!  A little scratch like that!" jeered the Angel.
"My blood is perfectly pure.  It will heal in three days."

"It's cut cruel deep.  It might be making a scar," faltered Freckles,
his eyes on the ground.  "'Twould--'twould be an awful pity.
A doctor might know something to prevent it."

"Why, I never thought of that!" exclaimed the Angel.

"I noticed you didn't," said Freckles softly.  "I don't know much
about it, but it seems as if most girls would."

The Angel thought intently, while Freckles still knelt beside her.
Suddenly she gave herself an impatient little shake, lifted her
glorious eyes full to his, and the smile that swept her sweet,
young face was the loveliest thing that Freckles ever had seen.

"Don't let's bother about it," she proposed, with the faintest hint
of a confiding gesture toward him.  "It won't make a scar.  Why, it
couldn't, when you have dressed it so nicely."

The velvety touch of her warm arm was tingling in Freckles' fingertips.
Dainty lace and fine white ribbon peeped through her torn dress.
There were beautiful rings on her fingers.  Every article she wore
was of the finest material and in excellent taste.  There was the
trembling Limberlost guard in his coarse clothing, with his cotton
rags and his old pail of swamp water.  Freckles was sufficiently
accustomed to contrasts to notice them, and sufficiently fine to be
hurt by them always.

He lifted his eyes with a shadowy pain in them to hers, and found
them of serene, unconscious purity.  What she had said was straight
from a kind, untainted, young heart.  She meant every word of it.
Freckles' soul sickened.  He scarcely knew whether he could muster
strength to stand.

"We must go and hunt for the carriage," said the Angel, rising.

In instant alarm for her, Freckles sprang up, grasped the cudgel,
and led the way, sharply watching every step.  He went as close the
log as he felt that he dared, and with a little searching found
the carriage.  He cleared a path for the Angel, and with a sigh of
relief saw her enter it safely.  The heat was intense.  She pushed
the damp hair from her temples.

"This is a shame!" said Freckles.  "You'll never be coming here again."

"Oh yes I shall!" said the Angel.  "The Bird Woman says that these
birds remain over a month in the nest and she would like to make a
picture every few days for seven or eight weeks, perhaps."

Freckles barely escaped crying aloud for joy.

"Then don't you ever be torturing yourself and your horse to be
coming in here again," he said.  "I'll show you a way to drive
almost to the nest on the east trail, and then you can come around
to my room and stay while the Bird Woman works.  It's nearly always
cool there, and there's comfortable seats, and water."

"Oh!  did you have drinking-water there?" she cried.  "I was never so
thirsty or so hungry in my life, but I thought I wouldn't mention it."

"And I had not the wit to be seeing!" wailed Freckles.  "I can be
getting you a good drink in no time."

He turned to the trail.

"Please wait a minute," called the Angel.  "What's your name?  I want
to think about you while you are gone."  Freckles lifted his face
with the brown rift across it and smiled quizzically.

"Freckles?" she guessed, with a peal of laughter.  "And mine is----"

"I'm knowing yours," interrupted Freckles.

"I don't believe you do.  What is it?" asked the girl.

"You won't be getting angry?"

"Not until I've had the water, at least."

It was Freckles' turn to laugh.  He whipped off his big, floppy
straw hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of
all the sweet tones of his voice:  "There's nothing you could be but
the Swamp Angel."

The girl laughed happily.

Once out of her sight, Freckles ran every step of the way to
the cabin.  Mrs. Duncan gave him a small bucket of water, cool from
the well.  He carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket
filled with bread and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles, in
his left hand.

"Pickles are kind o' cooling," said Mrs. Duncan.

Then Freckles ran again.

The Angel was on her knees, reaching for the bucket, as he came up.

"Be drinking slow," he cautioned her.

"Oh!" she cried, with a long breath of satisfaction.  "It's so good!
You are more than kind to bring it!"

Freckles stood blinking in the dazzling glory of her smile until he
scarcely could see to lift the basket.

"Mercy!" she exclaimed.  "I think I had better be naming you
the `Angel.' My Guardian Angel."

"Yis," said Freckles.  "I look the character every day--but today
most emphatic!"

"Angels don't go by looks," laughed the girl.  "Your father told us
you had been scrapping.  But he told us why.  I'd gladly wear all
your cuts and bruises if I could do anything that would make my
father look as peacocky as yours did.  He strutted about proper.
I never saw anyone look prouder."

"Did he say he was proud of me?" marveled Freckles.

"He didn't need to," answered the Angel.  "He was radiating
pride from every pore.  Now, have you brought me your dinner?"

"I had my dinner two hours ago," answered Freckles.

"Honest Injun?" bantered the Angel.

"Honest!  I brought that on purpose for you."

"Well, if you knew how hungry I am, you would know how thankful
I am, to the dot," said the Angel.

"Then you be eating," cried the happy Freckles.

The Angel sat on a big camera, spread the lunch on the carriage
seat, and divided it in halves.  The daintiest parts she could
select she carefully put back into the basket.  The remainder
she ate.  Again Freckles found her of the swamp, for though she was
almost ravenous, she managed her food as gracefully as his little
yellow fellow, and her every movement was easy and charming.  As he
watched her with famished eyes, Freckles told her of his birds,
flowers, and books, and never realized what he was doing.

He led the horse to a deep pool that he knew of, and the tortured
creature drank greedily, and lovingly rubbed him with its nose as
he wiped down its welted body with grass.  Suddenly the Angel cried:
"There comes the Bird Woman!"

Freckles had intended leaving before she came, but now he was glad
indeed to be there, for a warmer, more worn, and worse bitten
creature he never had seen.  She was staggering under a load of
cameras and paraphernalia.  Freckles ran to her aid.  He took all he
could carry of her load, stowed it in the back of the carriage, and
helped her in.  The Angel gave her water, knelt and unfastened the
leggings, bathed her face, and offered the lunch.

Freckles brought the horse.  He was not sure about the harness, but
the Angel knew, and soon they left the swamp.  Then he showed them
how to reach the chicken tree from the outside, indicated a cooler
place for the horse, and told them how, the next time they came,
the Angel could find his room while she waited.

The Bird Woman finished her lunch, and lay back, almost too tired
to speak.

"Were you for getting Little Chicken's picture?" Freckles asked.

"Finely!" she answered.  "He posed splendidly.  But I couldn't do
anything with his mother.  She will require coaxing."

"The Lord be praised!" muttered Freckles under his breath.

The Bird Woman began to feel better.

"Why do you call the baby vulture `Little Chicken'?" she asked,
leaning toward Freckles in an interested manner.

"'Twas Duncan began it," said Freckles.  "You see, through the
fierce cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost starving.
It is mighty lonely here, and they were all the company I was having.
I got to carrying scraps and grain down to them.  Duncan was
that ginerous he was giving me of his wheat and corn from his
chickens' feed, and he called the birds me swamp chickens.
Then when these big black fellows came, Mr. McLean said they were
our nearest kind to some in the old world that they called
`Pharaoh's Chickens,' and he called mine `Freckles' Chickens.'"

"Good enough!" cried the Bird Woman, her splotched purple face
lighting with interest.  "You must shoot something for them
occasionally, and I'll bring more food when I come.  If you will
help me keep them until I get my series, I'll give you a copy of
each study I make, mounted in a book."

Freckles drew a deep breath.

"I'll be doing me very best," he promised, and from the deeps he
meant it.

"I wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?" mused the Bird Woman.
"I am afraid not.  It should have pipped today.  Isn't it a beauty!
I never before saw either an egg or the young.  They are rare this
far north."

"So Mr. McLean said," answered Freckles.

Before they drove away, the Bird Woman thanked him for his kindness
to the Angel and to her.  She gave him her hand at parting, and
Freckles joyfully realized that this was going to be another person
for him to love.  He could not remember, after they had driven away,
that they even had noticed his missing hand, and for the first time
in his life he had forgotten it.

When the Bird Woman and the Angel were on the home road, she told
of the little corner of paradise into which she had strayed and
of her new name.  The Bird Woman looked at the girl and guessed
its appropriateness.

"Did you know Mr. McLean had a son?" asked the Angel.  "Isn't the
little accent he has, and the way he twists a sentence, too dear?
And isn't it too old-fashioned and funny to hear him call his
father `mister'?"

"It sounds too good to be true," said the Bird Woman, answering the
last question first.  "I am so tired of these present-day young men
who patronizingly call their fathers `Dad,' `Governor,' `Old Man"
and `Old Chap,' that the boy's attitude of respect and deference
appealed to me as being fine as silk.  There must be something rare
about that young man."

She did not find it necessary to tell the Angel that for several
years she had known the man who so proudly proclaimed himself
Freckles' father to be a bachelor and a Scotchman.  The Bird Woman
had a fine way of attending strictly to her own business.

Freckles turned to the trail, but he stopped at every wild brier to
study the pink satin of the petals.  She was not of his world, and
better than any other he knew it; but she might be his Angel, and
he was dreaming of naught but blind, silent worship.  He finished
the happiest day of his life, and that night he returned to the
swamp as if drawn by invisible force.  That Wessner would try for
his revenge, he knew.  That he would be abetted by Black Jack was
almost certain, but fear had fled the happy heart of Freckles.
He had kept his trust.  He had won the respect of the Boss.
No one ever could wipe from his heart the flood of holy adoration
that had welled with the coming of his Angel.  He would do his best,
and trust for strength to meet the dark day of reckoning that he
knew would come sooner or later.  He swung round the trail, briskly
tapping the wire, and singing in a voice that scarcely could have
been surpassed for sweetness.

At the edge of the clearing he came into the bright moonlight and
there sat McLean on his mare.  Freckles hurried to him.

"Is there trouble?" he inquired anxiously.

"That's what I wanted to ask you," said the Boss.  "I stopped at the
cabin to see you a minute, before I turned in, and they said you
had come down here.  You must not do it, Freckles.  The swamp is none
too healthful at any time, and at night it is rank poison."

Freckles stood combing his fingers through Nellie's mane, while the
dainty creature was twisting her head for his caresses.  He pushed
back his hat and looked into McLean's face.  "It's come to the
`sleep with one eye open,' sir.  I'm not looking for anything to be
happening for a week or two, but it's bound to come, and soon.
If I'm to keep me trust as I've promised you and meself, I've to live
here mostly until the gang comes.  You must be knowing that, sir."

"I'm afraid it's true, Freckles," said McLean.  "And I've decided to
double the guard until we come.  It will be only a few weeks, now;
and I'm so anxious for you that you must not be left alone further.
If anything should happen to you, Freckles, it would spoil one of
the very dearest plans of my life."

Freckles heard with dismay the proposition to place a second guard.

"Oh!  no, no, Mr. McLean," he cried.  "Not for the world!  I wouldn't
be having a stranger around, scaring me birds and tramping up me
study, and disturbing all me ways, for any money!  I am all the
guard you need!  I will be faithful!  I will turn over the lease with
no tree missing--on me life, I will!  Oh, don't be sending another
man to set them saying I turned coward and asked for help.  It will
just kill the honor of me heart if you do it.  The only thing I want
is another gun.  If it railly comes to trouble, six cartridges ain't
many, and you know I am slow-like about reloading."  McLean reached
into his hip pocket and handed a shining big revolver to Freckles,
who slipped it beside the one already in his belt.

Then the Boss sat brooding.

"Freckles," he said at last, "we never know the timber of a man's
soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain
out strong.  You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture,
my boy, and you shall have your own way these few weeks yet.
Then, if you will go, I intend to take you to the city and educate
you, and you are to be my son, my lad--my own son!"

Freckles twisted his finger in Nellie's mane to steady himself.

"But why should you be doing that, sir?" he faltered.

McLean slid his arm around the boy's shoulder and gathered him close.

"Because I love you, Freckles," he said simply.

Freckles lifted a white face.  "My God, sir!" he whispered.  "Oh, my God!"

McLean tightened his clasp a second longer, then he rode down the trail.

Freckles lifted his hat and faced the sky.  The harvest moon looked
down, sheeting the swamp in silver glory.  The Limberlost sang her
night song.  The swale softly rustled in the wind.  Winged things of
night brushed his face; and still Freckles gazed upward, trying to
fathom these things that had come to him.  There was no help from
the sky.  It seemed far away, cold, and blue.  The earth, where
flowers blossomed, angels walked, and love could be found, was better.
But to One, above, he must make acknowledgment for these miracles.
His lips moved and he began talking softly.

"Thank You for each separate good thing that has come to me," he
said, "and above all for the falling of the feather.  For if it
didn't really fall from an angel, its falling brought an Angel, and
if it's in the great heart of you to exercise yourself any further
about me, oh, do please to be taking good care of her!"



                                 CHAPTER VI

            Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight

The following morning Freckles, inexpressibly happy, circled the
Limberlost.  He kept snatches of song ringing, as well as the wires.
His heart was so full that tears of joy glistened in his eyes.
He rigorously strove to divide his thought evenly between McLean and
the Angel.  He realized to the fullest the debt he already owed the
Boss and the magnitude of last night's declaration and promises.
He was hourly planning to deliver his trust and then enter with
equal zeal on whatever task his beloved Boss saw fit to set him next.
He wanted to be ready to meet every device that Wessner and Black Jack
could think of to outwit him.  He recognized their double leverage,
for if they succeeded in felling even one tree McLean became liable
for his wager.

Freckles' brow wrinkled in his effort to think deeply and strongly,
but from every swaying wild rose the Angel beckoned to him.  When he
crossed Sleepy Snake Creek and the goldfinch, waiting as ever,
challenged:  "SEE ME?" Freckles saw the dainty swaying grace of the
Angel instead.  What is a man to do with an Angel who dismembers
herself and scatters over a whole swamp, thrusting a vivid reminder
upon him at every turn?

Freckles counted the days.  This first one he could do little but
test his wires, sing broken snatches, and dream; but before the
week would bring her again he could do many things.  He would carry
all his books to the swamp to show to her.  He would complete his
flower bed, arrange every detail he had planned for his room, and
make of it a bower fairies might envy.  He must devise a way to keep
water cool.  He would ask Mrs. Duncan for a double lunch and an
especially nice one the day of her next coming, so that if the Bird
Woman happened to be late, the Angel might not suffer from thirst
and hunger.  He would tell her to bring heavy leather leggings, so
that he might take her on a trip around the trail.  She should make
friends with all of his chickens and see their nests.

On the line he talked of her incessantly.

"You needn't be thinking," he said to the goldfinch, "that because
I'm coming down this line alone day after day, it's always to be so.
Some of these times you'll be swinging on this wire, and you'll
see me coming, and you'll swing, skip, and flirt yourself around,
and chip up right spunky:  `SEE ME?' I'll be saying `See you?
Oh, Lord!  See her!' You'll look, and there she'll stand.
The sunshine won't look gold any more, or the roses pink, or the
sky blue, because she'll be the pinkest, bluest, goldest thing
of all.  You'll be yelling yourself hoarse with the jealousy of her.
The sawbird will stretch his neck out of joint, and she'll turn the
heads of all the flowers.  Wherever she goes, I can go back
afterward and see the things she's seen, walk the path she's walked,
hear the grasses whispering over all she's said; and if there's
a place too swampy for her bits of feet; Holy Mother!  Maybe--maybe
she'd be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and letting
me carry her over!"

Freckles shivered as with a chill.  He sent the cudgel whirling
skyward, dexterously caught it, and set it spinning.

"You damned presumptuous fool!" he cried.  "The thing for you to be
thinking of would be to stretch in the muck for the feet of her to
be walking over, and then you could hold yourself holy to be even
of that service to her.

"Maybe she'll be wanting the cup me blue-and-brown chickens raised
their babies in.  Perhaps she'd like to stop at the pool and see me
bullfrog that had the goodness to take on human speech to show me
the way out of me trouble.  If there's any feathers falling that
day, why, it's from the wings of me chickens--it's sure to be, for
the only Angel outside the gates will be walking this timberline,
and every step of the way I'll be holding me breath and praying that
she don't unfold wings and sail away before the hungry eyes of me."

So Freckles dreamed his dreams, made his plans, and watched his line.
He counted not only the days, but the hours of each day.  As he
told them off, every one bringing her closer, he grew happier in
the prospect of her coming.  He managed daily to leave some offering
at the big elm log for his black chickens.  He slipped under the
line at every passing, and went to make sure that nothing was
molesting them.  Though it was a long trip, he paid them several
extra visits a day for fear a snake, hawk, or fox might have found
the baby.  For now his chickens not only represented all his former
interest in them, but they furnished the inducement that was
bringing his Angel.

Possibly he could find other subjects that the Bird Woman wanted.
The teamster had said that his brother went after her every time he
found a nest.  He never had counted the nests that he knew of, and
it might be that among all the birds of the swamp some would be
rare to her.

The feathered folk of the Limberlost were practically undisturbed
save by their natural enemies.  It was very probable that among his
chickens others as odd as the big black ones could be found.  If she
wanted pictures of half-grown birds, he could pick up fifty in one
morning's trip around the line, for he had fed, handled, and made
friends with them ever since their eyes opened.

He had gathered bugs and worms all spring as he noticed them on the
grass and bushes, and dropped them into the first little open mouth
he had found.  The babies gladly had accepted this queer tri-parent
addition to their natural providers.

When the week had passed, Freckles had his room crisp and glowing
with fresh living things that represented every color of the swamp.
He carried bark and filled all the muckiest places of the trail.

It was middle July.  The heat of the past few days had dried the
water around and through the Limberlost, so that it was possible to
cross it on foot in almost any direction--if one had an idea of
direction and did not become completely lost in its rank tangle of
vegetation and bushes.  The brighter-hued flowers were opening.
The trumpet-creepers were flaunting their gorgeous horns of red
and gold sweetness from the tops of lordly oak and elm, and below
entire pools were pink-sheeted in mallow bloom.

The heat was doing one other thing that was bound to make Freckles,
as a good Irishman, shiver.  As the swale dried, its inhabitants
were seeking the cooler depths of the swamp.  They liked neither the
heat nor leaving the field mice, moles, and young rabbits of their
chosen location.  He saw them crossing the trail every day as the
heat grew intense.  The rattlers were sadly forgetting their
manners, for they struck on no provocation whatever, and did not
even remember to rattle afterward.  Daily Freckles was compelled to
drive big black snakes and blue racers from the nests of his chickens.
Often the terrified squalls of the parent birds would reach him far
down the line and he would run to rescue the babies.

He saw the Angel when the carriage turned from the corduroy into
the clearing.  They stopped at the west entrance to the swamp,
waiting for him to precede them down the trail, as he had told them
it was safest for the horse that he should do.  They followed the
east line to a point opposite the big chickens' tree, and Freckles
carried in the cameras and showed the Bird Woman a path he had
cleared to the log.  He explained to her the effect the heat was
having on the snakes, and creeping back to Little Chicken, brought
him to the light.  As she worked at setting up her camera, he told
her of the birds of the line, while she stared at him, wide-eyed
and incredulous.

They arranged that Freckles should drive the carriage into the east
entrance in the shade and then take the horse toward the north to
a better place he knew.  Then he was to entertain the Angel at his
study or on the line until the Bird Woman finished her work and
came to them.

"This will take only a little time," she said.  "I know where to set
the camera now, and Little Chicken is big enough to be good and too
small to run away or to act very ugly, so I will be coming soon to
see about those nests.  I have ten plates along, and I surely won't
use more than two on him; so perhaps I can get some nests or young
birds this morning."

Freckles almost flew, for his dream had come true so soon.  He was
walking the timber-line and the Angel was following him.  He asked
to be excused for going first, because he wanted to be sure the
trail was safe for her.  She laughed at his fears, telling him that
it was the polite thing for him to do, anyway.

"Oh!" said Freckles, "so you was after knowing that?  Well, I didn't
s'pose you did, and I was afraid you'd think me wanting in respect
to be preceding you!"

The astonished Angel looked at him, caught the irrepressible gleam
of Irish fun in his eyes, so they stood and laughed together.

Freckles did not realize how he was talking that morning.  He showed
her many of the beautiful nests and eggs of the line.  She could
identify a number of them, but of some she was ignorant, so they
made notes of the number and color of the eggs, material, and
construction of nest, color, size, and shape of the birds, and went
to find them in the book.

At his room, when Freckles had lifted the overhanging bushes and
stepped back for her to enter, his heart was all out of time
and place.  The study was vastly more beautiful than a week previous.
The Angel drew a deep breath and stood gazing first at one side,
then at another, then far down the cathedral aisle.  "It's just
fairyland!" she cried ecstatically.  Then she turned and stared at
Freckles as she had at his handiwork.

"What are you planning to be?" she asked wonderingly.

"Whatever Mr. McLean wants me to," he replied.

"What do you do most?" she asked.

"Watch me lines."

"I don't mean work!"

"Oh, in me spare time I keep me room and study in me books."

"Do you work on the room or the books most?"

"On the room only what it takes to keep it up, and the rest of the
time on me books."

The Angel studied him closely.  "Well, maybe you are going to be a
great scholar," she said, "but you don't look it.  Your face isn't
right for that, but it's got something big in it--something really great.
I must find out what it is and then you must work on it. Your father
is expecting you to do something.  One can tell by the way he talks.
You should begin right away.  You've wasted too much time already."

Poor Freckles hung his head.  He never had wasted an hour in his life.
There never had been one that was his to waste.

The Angel, studying him intently, read the thought in his face.
"Oh, I don't mean that!" she cried, with the frank dismay of
sixteen.  "Of course, you're not lazy!  No one ever would think that
from your appearance.  It's this I mean: there is something fine,
strong, and full of power in your face.  There is something you are
to do in this world, and no matter how you work at all these other
things, or how successfully you do them, it is all wasted until you
find the ONE THING that you can do best.  If you hadn't a thing in
the world to keep you, and could go anywhere you please and do
anything you want, what would you do?" persisted the Angel.

"I'd go to Chicago and sing in the First Episcopal choir," answered
Freckles promptly.

The Angel dropped on a seat--the hat she had removed and held in
her fingers rolled to her feet.  "There!" she exclaimed vehemently.
"You can see what I'm going to be.  Nothing!  Absolutely nothing!
You can sing?  Of course you can sing!  It is written all over you."

"Anyone with half wit could have seen he could sing, without having
to be told," she thought.  "It's in the slenderness of his fingers
and his quick nervous touch.  It is in the brightness of his hair,
the fire of his eyes, the breadth of his chest, the muscles of his
throat and neck; and above all, it's in every tone of his voice,
for even as he speak it's the sweetest sound I ever heard from the
throat of a mortal."

"Will you do something for me?" she asked.

"I'll do anything in the world you want me to," said Freckles
largely, "and if I can't do what you want, I'll go to work at once
and I'll try `til I can."

"Good!  That's business!" said the Angel.  "You go over there and
stand before that hedge and sing something.  Just anything you think
of first."

Freckles faced the Angel from his banked wall of brown, blue, and
crimson, with its background of solid green, and lifting his face
to the sky, he sang the first thing that came into his mind.  It was
a children's song that he had led for the little folks at the Home
many times, recalled to his mind by the Angel's exclamation:

            "To fairyland we go,
             With a song of joy, heigh-o.
             In dreams we'll stand upon that shore
             And all the realm behold;
             We'll see the sights so grand
             That belong to fairyland,
             Its mysteries we will explore,
             Its beauties will unfold.

Oh, tra, la, la, oh, ha, ha, ha!  We're happy now as we can be,
Our welcome song we will prolong, and greet you with our melody.
O fairyland, sweet fairyland, we love to sing----"


No song could have given the intense sweetness and rollicking
quality of Freckles' voice better scope.  He forgot everything but
pride in his work.  He was singing the chorus, and the Angel was
shivering in ecstasy, when clip!  clip!  came the sharply beating
feet of a swiftly ridden horse down the trail from the north.  They
both sprang toward the entrance.

"Freckles!  Freckles!" called the voice of the Bird Woman.

They were at the trail on the instant.

"Both those revolvers loaded?" she asked.

"Yes," said Freckles.

"Is there a way you can cut across the swamp and reach the chicken
tree in a few minutes, and with little noise?"

"Yes."

"Then go flying," said the Bird Woman.  "Give the Angel a lift
behind me, and we will ride the horse back where you left him and
wait for you.  I finished Little Chicken in no time and put him back.
His mother came so close, I felt sure she would enter the log.
The light was fine, so I set and focused the camera and covered
it with branches, attached the long hose, and went away over a
hundred feet and hid in some bushes to wait.  A short, stout man
and a tall, dark one passed me so closely I almost could have reached
out and touched them.  They carried a big saw on their shoulders.
They said they could work until near noon, and then they must lay
off until you passed and then try to load and get out at night.
They went on--not entirely from sight--and began cutting a tree.
Mr. McLean told me the other day what would probably happen here,
and if they fell that tree he loses his wager on you.  Keep to the
east and north and hustle.  We'll meet you at the carriage.  I always
am armed.  Give Angel one of your revolvers, and you keep the other.
We will separate and creep toward them from different sides and
give them a fusillade that will send them flying.  You hurry, now!"

She lifted the reins and started briskly down the trail.  The Angel,
hatless and with sparkling eyes, was clinging around her waist.

Freckles wheeled and ran.  He worked his way with much care, dodging
limbs and bushes with noiseless tread, and cutting as closely where
he thought the men were as he felt that he dared if he were to
remain unseen.  As he ran he tried to think.  It was Wessner, burning
for his revenge, aided by the bully of the locality, that he was
going to meet.  He was accustomed to that thought but not to the
complication of having two women on his hands who undoubtedly would
have to be taken care of in spite of the Bird Woman's offer to help him.
His heart was jarring as it never had before with running.  He must
follow the Bird Woman's plan and meet them at the carriage, but if
they really did intend to try to help him, he must not allow it.
Allow the Angel to try to handle a revolver in his defence?  Never!
Not for all the trees in the Limberlost!  She might shoot herself.
She might forget to watch sharply and run across a snake that was
not particularly well behaved that morning.  Freckles permitted
himself a grim smile as he went speeding on.

When he reached the carriage, the Bird Woman and the Angel had the
horse hitched, the outfit packed, and were calmly waiting.  The Bird
Woman held a revolver in her hand.  She wore dark clothing.  They had
pinned a big focusing cloth over the front of the Angel's light dress.

"Give Angel one of your revolvers, quick!" said the Bird Woman.
"We will creep up until we are in fair range.  The underbrush is so
thick and they are so busy that they will never notice us, if we
don't make a noise.  You fire first, then I will pop in from my
direction, and then you, Angel, and shoot quite high, or else very low.
We mustn't really hit them.  We'll go close enough to the cowards
to make it interesting, and keep it up until we have them going."

Freckles protested.

The Bird Woman reached over, and, taking the smaller revolver from
his belt, handed it to the Angel.  "Keep your nerve steady, dear;
watch where you step, and shoot high," she said.  "Go straight at
them from where you are.  Wait until you hear Freckles' first shot,
then follow me as closely as you can, to let them know that we
outnumber them.  If you want to save McLean's wager on you, now you
go!" she commanded Freckles, who, with an agonized glance at the
Angel, ran toward the east.

The Bird Woman chose the middle distance, and for a last time
cautioned the Angel as she moved away to lie down and shoot high.

Through the underbrush the Bird Woman crept even more closely than
she had intended, found a clear range, and waited for Freckles' shot.
There was one long minute of sickening suspense.  The men
straightened for breath.  Work was difficult with a handsaw in the
heat of the swamp.  As they rested, the big dark fellow took a
bottle from his pocket and began oiling the saw.

"We got to keep mighty quiet," he said, "and wait to fell it until
that damned guard has gone to his dinner."

Again they bent to their work.  Freckles' revolver spat fire.  Lead
spanged on steel.  The saw-handle flew from Wessner's hand and he
reeled from the jar of the shock.  Black Jack straightened, uttering
a fearful oath.  The hat sailed from his head from the far northeast.
The Angel had not waited for the Bird Woman, and her shot scarcely
could have been called high.  At almost the same instant the third
shot whistled from the east.  Black Jack sprang into the air with
a yell of complete panic, for it ripped a heel from his boot.
Freckles emptied his second chamber, and the earth spattered
over Wessner.  Shots poured in rapidly.  Without even reaching
for a weapon, both men ran toward the east road in great leaping
bounds, while leaden slugs sung and hissed around them in
deadly earnest.

Freckles was trimming his corners as closely as he dared, but if
the Angel did not really intend to hit, she was taking risks in a
scandalous manner.

When the men reached the trail, Freckles yelled at the top of his
voice:  "Head them off on the south, boys!  Fire from the south!"

As he had hoped, Jack and Wessner instantly plunged into the swale.
A spattering of lead followed them.  They crossed the swale, running
low, with not even one backward glance, and entered the woods
beyond the corduroy.

Then the little party gathered at the tree.

"I'd better fix this saw so they can't be using it if they come
back," said Freckles, taking out his hatchet and making saw-teeth fly.

"Now we must leave here without being seen," said the Bird Woman to
the Angel.  "It won't do for me to make enemies of these men, for I
am likely to meet them while at work any day."

"You can do it by driving straight north on this road," said Freckles.
"I will go ahead and cut the wires for you.  The swale is almost dry.
You will only be sinking a little.  In a few rods you will strike
a cornfield.  I will take down the fence and let you into that.
Follow the furrows and drive straight across it until you come to
the other side.  Be following the fence south until you come to a
road through the woods east of it.  Then take that road and follow
east until you reach the pike.  You will come out on your way back
to town, and two miles north of anywhere they are likely to be.
Don't for your lives ever let it out that you did this," he
earnestly cautioned, "for it's black enemies you would be making."

Freckles clipped the wires and they drove through.  The Angel leaned
from the carriage and held out his revolver.  Freckles looked at her
in surprise.  Her eyes were black, while her face was a deeper rose
than usual.  He felt that his own was white.

"Did I shoot high enough?" she asked sweetly.  "I really forgot
about lying down."

Freckles winced.  Did the child know how close she had gone?
Surely she could not!  Or was it possible that she had the nerve
and skill to fire like that purposely?

"I will send the first reliable man I meet for McLean," said the
Bird Woman, gathering up the lines.  "If I don't meet one when we
reach town, we will send a messenger.  If it wasn't for having the
gang see me, I would go myself; but I will promise you that you
will have help in a little over two hours.  You keep well hidden.
They must think some of the gang is with you now.  There isn't a
chance that they will be back, but don't run any risks.  Remain
under cover.  If they should come, it probably would be for
their saw."  She laughed as at a fine joke.



                                 CHAPTER VII

    Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail

Round-eyed, Freckles watched the Bird Woman and the Angel drive
away.  After they were from sight and he was safely hidden among the
branches of a small tree, he remembered that he neither had thanked
them nor said good-bye.  Considering what they had been through,
they never would come again.  His heart sank until he had
palpitation in his wading-boots.

Stretching the length of the limb, he thought deeply, though he was
not thinking of Black Jack or Wessner.  Would the Bird Woman and the
Angel come again?  No other woman whom he ever had known would.
But did they resemble any other women he ever had known?  He thought
of the Bird Woman's unruffled face and the Angel's revolver practice,
and presently he was not so sure that they would not return.

What were the people in the big world like?  His knowledge was so
very limited.  There had been people at the Home, who exchanged a
stilted, perfunctory kindness for their salaries.  The visitors who
called on receiving days he had divided into three classes: the
psalm-singing kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy
in every feature of their faces; the kind who dressed in silks and
jewels, and handed to those poor little mother-hungry souls worn
toys that their children no longer cared for, in exactly the same
spirit in which they pitched biscuits to the monkeys at the zoo,
and for the same reason--to see how they would take them and be
amused by what they would do; and the third class, whom he
considered real people.  They made him feel they cared that he was
there, and that they would have been glad to see him elsewhere.

Now here was another class, that had all they needed of the world's
best and were engaged in doing work that counted.  They had things
worth while to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother.
With them he could, for the only time in his life, forget the
lost hand that every day tortured him with a new pang.  What kind
of people were they and where did they belong among the classes
he knew?  He failed to decide, because he never had known others
similar to them; but how he loved them!

In the world where he was going soon, were the majority like them,
or were they of the hypocrite and bun-throwing classes?

He had forgotten the excitement of the morning and the passing of
time when distant voices aroused him, and he gently lifted his head.
Nearer and nearer they came, and as the heavy wagons rumbled down
the east trail he could hear them plainly.  The gang were shouting
themselves hoarse for the Limberlost guard.  Freckles did not feel
that he deserved it.  He would have given much to he able to go
to the men and explain, but to McLean only could he tell his story.

At the sight of Freckles the men threw up their hats and cheered.
McLean shook hands with him warmly, but big Duncan gathered him
into his arms and hugged him as a bear and choked over a few words
of praise.  The gang drove in and finished felling the tree.
McLean was angry beyond measure at this attempt on his property,
for in their haste to fell the tree the thieves had cut too high
and wasted a foot and a half of valuable timber.

When the last wagon rolled away, McLean sat on the stump and
Freckles told the story he was aching to tell.  The Boss scarcely
could believe his senses.  Also, he was much disappointed.

"I have been almost praying all the way over, Freckles," he said,
"that you would have some evidence by which we could arrest those
fellows and get them out of our way, but this will never do.
We can't mix up those women in it.  They have helped you save me
the tree and my wager as well.  Going across the country as she
does, the Bird Woman never could be expected to testify against them."

"No, indeed; nor the Angel, either, sir," said Freckles.

"The Angel?" queried the astonished McLean.

The Boss listened in silence while Freckles told of the coming and
christening of the Angel.

"I know her father well," said McLean at last, "and I have often
seen her.  You are right; she is a beautiful young girl, and she
appears to be utterly free from the least particle of false pride
or foolishness.  I do not understand why her father risks such a
jewel in this place."

"He's daring it because she is a jewel, sir," said Freckles, eagerly.
"Why, she's trusting a rattlesnake to rattle before it strikes her,
and of course, she thinks she can trust mankind as well.  The man
isn't made who wouldn't lay down the life of him for her.  She doesn't
need any care.  Her face and the pretty ways of her are all the
protection she would need in a band of howling savages."

"Did you say she handled one of the revolvers?" asked McLean.

"She scared all the breath out of me body," admitted Freckles.
"Seems that her father has taught her to shoot.  The Bird Woman told
her distinctly to lie low and blaze away high, just to help scare them.
The spunky little thing followed them right out into the west
road, spitting lead like hail, and clipping all around the heads
and heels of them; and I'm damned, sir, if I believe she'd cared a
rap if she'd hit.  I never saw much shooting, but if that wasn't the
nearest to miss I ever want to see!  Scared the life near out of me
body with the fear that she'd drop one of them.  As long as I'd no
one to help me but a couple of women that didn't dare be mixed up
in it, all I could do was to let them get away."

"Now, will they come back?" asked McLean.

"Of course!" said Freckles.  "They're not going to be taking that.
You could stake your life on it, they'll be coming back.  At least,
Black Jack will.  Wessner may not have the pluck, unless he is
half drunk.  Then he'd be a terror.  And the next time--"
Freckles hesitated.

"What?"

"It will be a question of who shoots first and straightest."

"Then the only thing for me to do is to double the guard and bring
the gang here the first minute possible.  As soon as I feel that we
have the rarest of the stuff out below, we will come.  The fact is,
in many cases, until it is felled it's difficult to tell what a
tree will prove to be.  It won't do to leave you here longer alone.
Jack has been shooting twenty years to your one, and it stands to
reason that you are no match for him.  Who of the gang would you
like best to have with you?"

"No one, sir," said Freckles emphatically.  "Next time is where I run.
I won't try to fight them alone.  I'll just be getting wind of
them, and then make tracks for you.  I'll need to come like
lightning, and Duncan has no extra horse, so I'm thinking you'd
best get me one--or perhaps a wheel would be better.  I used to do
extra work for the Home doctor, and he would let me take his
bicycle to ride around the place.  And at times the head nurse would
loan me his for an hour.  A wheel would cost less and be faster than
a horse, and would take less care.  I believe, if you are going to
town soon, you had best pick up any kind of an old one at some
second-hand store, for if I'm ever called to use it in a hurry
there won't be the handlebars left after crossing the corduroy."

"Yes," said McLean; "and if you didn't have a first-class wheel,
you never could cross the corduroy on it at all."

As they walked to the cabin, McLean insisted on another guard, but
Freckles was stubbornly set on fighting his battle alone.  He made
one mental condition.  If the Bird Woman was going to give up the
Little Chicken series, he would yield to the second guard, solely
for the sake of her work and the presence of the Angel in the
Limberlost.  He did not propose to have a second man unless it were
absolutely necessary, for he had been alone so long that he loved
the solitude, his chickens, and flowers.  The thought of having a
stranger to all his ways come and meddle with his arrangements,
frighten his pets, pull his flowers, and interrupt him when he
wanted to study, so annoyed him that he was blinded to his real
need for help.

With McLean it was a case of letting his sober, better judgment be
overridden by the boy he was growing so to love that he could not
endure to oppose him, and to have Freckles keep his trust and win
alone meant more than any money the Boss might lose.

The following morning McLean brought the wheel, and Freckles took
it to the trail to test it.  It was new, chainless, with as little
as possible to catch in hurried riding, and in every way the best
of its kind.  Freckles went skimming around the trail on it on a
preliminary trip before he locked it in his case and started his
minute examination of his line on foot.  He glanced around his room
as he left it, and then stood staring.

On the moss before his prettiest seat lay the Angel's hat.  In the
excitement of yesterday all of them had forgotten it.  He went and
picked it up, oh!  so carefully, gazing at it with hungry eyes, but
touching it only to carry it to his case, where he hung it on the
shining handlebar of the new wheel and locked it among his treasures.
Then he went to the trail, with a new expression on his face and
a strange throbbing in his heart.  He was not in the least afraid
of anything that morning.  He felt he was the veriest Daniel, but
all his lions seemed weak and harmless.

What Black Jack's next move would be he could not imagine, but that
there would be a move of some kind was certain.  The big bully was
not a man to give up his purpose, or to have the hat swept from his
head with a bullet and bear it meekly.  Moreover, Wessner would
cling to his revenge with a Dutchman's singleness of mind.

Freckles tried to think connectedly, but there were too many places
on the trail where the Angel's footprints were vet visible.  She had
stepped in one mucky spot and left a sharp impression.  The afternoon
sun had baked it hard, and the horses' hoofs had not obliterated
any part of it, as they had in so many places.  Freckles stood
fascinated, gazing at it.  He measured it lovingly with his eye.
He would not have ventured a caress on her hat any more than
on her person, but this was different.  Surely a footprint on a
trail might belong to anyone who found and wanted it.  He stooped
under the wires and entered the swamp.  With a little searching, he
found a big piece of thick bark loose on a log and carefully
peeling it, carried it out and covered the print so that the first
rain would not obliterate it.

When he reached his room, he tenderly laid the hat upon his
bookshelf, and to wear off his awkwardness, mounted his wheel and
went spinning on trail again.  It was like flying, for the path was
worn smooth with his feet and baked hard with the sun almost all
the way.  When he came to the bark, he veered far to one side and
smiled at it in passing.  Suddenly he was off the wheel, kneeling
beside it.  He removed his hat, carefully lifted the bark, and gazed
lovingly at the imprint.

"I wonder what she was going to say of me voice," he whispered.
"She never got it said, but from the face of her, I believe she was
liking it fairly well.  Perhaps she was going to say that singing
was the big thing I was to be doing.  That's what they all thought
at the Home.  Well, if it is, I'll just shut me eyes, think of me
little room, the face of her watching, and the heart of her
beating, and I'll raise them.  Damn them, if singing will do it,
I'll raise them from the benches!"

With this dire threat, Freckles knelt, as at a wayside spring, and
deliberately laid his lips on the footprint.  Then he arose,
appearing as if he had been drinking at the fountain of gladness.



                                 CHAPTER VIII

Wherein Freckles Meets a Man of Affairs and Loses Nothing by the Encounter

"Weel, I be drawed on!" exclaimed Mrs. Duncan.

Freckles stood before her, holding the Angel's hat.

"I've been thinking this long time that ye or Duncan would see that
sunbonnets werena braw enough for a woman of my standing, and ye're
a guid laddie to bring me this beautiful hat."

She turned it around, examining the weave of the straw and the
foliage trimmings, passing her rough fingers over the satin
ties delightedly.  As she held it up, admiring it, Freckles'
astonished eyes saw a new side of Sarah Duncan.  She was jesting,
but under the jest the fact loomed strong that, though poor,
overworked, and with none but God-given refinement, there was
something in her soul crying after that bit of feminine finery,
and it made his heart ache for her.  He resolved that when he
reached the city he would send her a hat, if it took fifty
dollars to do it.

She lingeringly handed it back to him.

"It's unco guid of ye to think of me," she said lightly, "but I maun
question your taste a wee.  D'ye no think ye had best return this
and get a woman with half her hair gray a little plainer headdress?
Seems like that's far ower gay for me.  I'm no' saying that it's
no' exactly what I'd like to hae, but I mauna mak mysel' ridiculous.
Ye'd best give this to somebody young and pretty, say about sixteen.
Where did ye come by it, Freckles?  If there's anything been
dropping lately, ye hae forgotten to mention it."

"Do you see anything heavenly about that hat?" queried Freckles,
holding it up.

The morning breeze waved the ribbons gracefully, binding one around
Freckles' sleeve and the other across his chest, where they caught
and clung as if magnetized.

"Yes," said Sarah Duncan.  "It's verra plain and simple, but it
juist makes ye feel that it's all of the finest stuff.  It's exactly
what I'd call a heavenly hat."

"Sure," said Freckles, "for it's belonging to an Angel!"

Then he told her about the hat and asked her what he should do with it.

"Take it to her, of course!" said Sarah Duncan.  "Like it's the only
ane she has and she may need it badly."

Freckles smiled.  He had a clear idea about the hat being the only
one the Angel had.  However, there was a thing he felt he should do
and wanted to do, but he was not sure.

"You think I might be taking it home?" he said.

"Of course ye must," said Mrs. Duncan.  "And without another
hour's delay.  It's been here two days noo, and she may want it,
and be too busy or afraid to come."

"But how can I take it?" asked Freckles.

"Gang spinning on your wheel.  Ye can do it easy in an hour."

"But in that hour, what if----?"

"Nonsense!" interrupted Sarah Duncan.  "Ye've watched that
timber-line until ye're grown fast to it, lad.  Give me your boots
and club and I'll gae walk the south end and watch doon the east
and west sides until ye come back."

"Mrs. Duncan!  You never would be doing it," cried Freckles.

"Why not?" inquired she.

"But you know you're mortal afraid of snakes and a lot of other
things in the swamp."

"I am afraid of snakes," said Mrs. Duncan, "but likely they've gone
into the swamp this hot weather.  I'll juist stay on the trail and
watch, and ye might hurry the least bit.  The day's so bright it
feels like storm.  I can put the bairns on the woodpile to play
until I get back.  Ye gang awa and take the blessed little angel her
beautiful hat."

"Are you sure it will be all right?" urged Freckles.  "Do you think
if Mr. McLean came he would care?"

"Na," said Mrs. Duncan; "I dinna.  If ye and me agree that a thing
ought to be done, and I watch in your place, why, it's bound to be
all right with McLean.  Let me pin the hat in a paper, and ye jump
on your wheel and gang flying.  Ought ye put on your Sabbath-day clothes?"

Freckles shook his head.  He knew what he should do, but there was
no use in taking time to try to explain it to Mrs. Duncan while he
was so hurried.  He exchanged his wading-boots for shoes, gave her
his club, and went spinning toward town.  He knew very well where
the Angel lived.  He had seen her home many times, and he passed it
again without even raising his eyes from the street, steering
straight for her father's place of business.

Carrying the hat, Freckles passed a long line of clerks, and at the
door of the private office asked to see the proprietor.  When he had
waited a moment, a tall, spare, keen-eyed man faced him, and in
brisk, nervous tones asked:  "How can I serve you, sir?"

Freckles handed him the package and answered, "By delivering to
your daughter this hat, which she was after leaving at me place the
other day, when she went away in a hurry.  And by saying to her and
the Bird Woman that I'm more thankful than I'll be having words to
express for the brave things they was doing for me.  I'm McLean's
Limberlost guard, sir."

"Why don't you take it yourself?" questioned the Man of Affairs.

Freckles' clear gray eyes met those of the Angel's father squarely, and
he asked:  "If you were in my place, would you take it to her yourself?"

"No, I would not," said that gentleman quickly.

"Then why ask why I did not?" came Freckles' lamb-like query.

"Bless me!" said the Angel's father.  He stared at the package, then
at the lifted chin of the boy, and then at the package again, and
muttered, "Excuse me!"

Freckles bowed.

"It would be favoring me greatly if you would deliver the hat and
the message.  Good morning, sir," and he turned away.

"One minute," said the Angel's father.  "Suppose I give you permission
to return this hat in person and make your own acknowledgments."

Freckles stood one moment thinking intently, and then he lifted
those eyes of unswerving truth and asked:  "Why should you, sir?
You are kind, indade, to mention it, and it's thanking you I am for
your good intintions, but my wanting to go or your being willing to
have me ain't proving that your daughter would be wanting me or
care to bother with me."

The Angel's father looked keenly into the face of this
extraordinary young man, for he found it to his liking.

"There's one other thing I meant to say," said Freckles.  "Every day
I see something, and at times a lot of things, that I think the
Bird Woman would be wanting pictures of badly, if she knew.
You might be speaking of it to her, and if she'd want me to,
I can send her word when I find things she wouldn't likely
get elsewhere."

"If that's the case," said the Angel's father, "and you feel under
obligations for her assistance the other day, you can discharge
them in that way.  She is spending all her time in the fields and
woods searching for subjects.  If you run across things, perhaps
rarer than she may find, about your work, it would save her the
time she spends searching for subjects, and she could work in
security under your protection.  By all means let her know if you
find subjects you think she could use, and we will do anything we
can for you, if you will give her what help you can and see that
she is as safe as possible."

"It's hungry for human beings I am," said Freckles, "and it's like
Heaven to me to have them come.  Of course, I'll be telling or
sending her word every time me work can spare me.  Anything I can do
it would make me uncommon happy, but"--again truth had to be told,
because it was Freckles who was speaking--"when it comes to
protecting them, I'd risk me life, to be sure, but even that
mightn't do any good in some cases.  There are many dangers to be
reckoned with in the swamp, sir, that call for every person to
look sharp.  If there wasn't really thieving to guard against, why,
McLean wouldn't need be paying out good money for a guard.  I'd love
them to be coming, and I'll do all I can, but you must be told that
there's danger of them running into timber thieves again any day, sir."

"Yes," said the Angel's father, "and I suppose there's danger of
the earth opening up and swallowing the town any day, but I'm
damned if I quit business for fear it will, and the Bird Woman
won't, either.  Everyone knows her and her work, and there is no
danger in the world of anyone in any way molesting her, even if he
were stealing a few of McLean's gold-plated trees.  She's as safe
in the Limberlost as she is at home, so far as timber thieves
are concerned.  All I am ever uneasy about are the snakes, poison-
vines, and insects; and those are risks she must run anywhere.
You need not hesitate a minute about that.  I shall be glad to tell
them what you wish.  Thank you very much, and good day, sir."

There was no way in which Freckles could know it, but by following
his best instincts and being what he conceived a gentleman should
be, he surprised the Man of Affairs into thinking of him and seeing
his face over his books many times that morning; whereas, if he had
gone to the Angel as he had longed to do, her father never would
have given him a second thought.

On the street he drew a deep breath.  How had he acquitted himself?
He only knew that he had lived up to his best impulse, and that is
all anyone can do.  He glanced over his wheel to see that it was all
right, and just as he stepped to the curb to mount he heard a voice
that thrilled him through and through:  "Freckles!  Oh Freckles!"

The Angel separated from a group of laughing, sweet-faced girls and
came hurrying to him.  She was in snowy white--a quaint little
frock, with a marvel of soft lace around her throat and wrists.
Through the sheer sleeves of it her beautiful, rounded arms showed
distinctly, and it was cut just to the base of her perfect neck.
On her head was a pure white creation of fancy braid, with folds on
folds of tulle, soft and silken as cobwebs, lining the brim; while
a mass of white roses clustered against the gold of her hair, crept
around the crown, and fell in a riot to her shoulders at the back.
There were gleams of gold with settings of blue on her fingers, and
altogether she was the daintiest, sweetest sight he ever had seen.
Freckles, standing on the curb, forgot himself in his cotton shirt,
corduroys, and his belt to which his wire-cutter and pliers were
hanging, and gazed as a man gazes when first he sees the woman he adores
with all her charms enhanced by appropriate and beautiful clothing.

"Oh Freckles," she cried as she came to him.  "I was wondering about
you the other day.  Do you know I never saw you in town before.
You watch that old line so closely!  Why did you come?  Is there
any trouble?  Are you just starting to the Limberlost?"

"I came to bring your hat," said Freckles.  "You forgot it in the
rush the other day.  I have left it with your father, and a message
trying to ixpriss the gratitude of me for how you and the Bird
Woman were for helping me out."

The Angel nodded gravely, then Freckles saw that he had done the
proper thing in going to her father.  His heart bounded until it
jarred his body, for she was saying that she scarcely could wait for
the time to come for the next picture of the Little Chicken series.
"I want to hear the remainder of that song, and I hadn't even
begun seeing your room yet," she complained.  "As for singing,
if you can sing like that every day, I never can get enough of it.
I wonder if I couldn't bring my banjo and some of the songs I
like best.  I'll play and you sing, and we'll put the birds out
of commission."

Freckles stood on the curb with drooped eyes, for he felt that if
he lifted them the tumult of tender adoration in them would show
and frighten her.

"I was afraid your ixperience the other day would scare you so that
you'd never be coming again," he found himself saying.

The Angel laughed gaily.

"Did I seem scared?" she questioned.

"No," said Freckles, "you did not."

"Oh, I just enjoyed that," she cried.  "Those hateful, stealing
old things!  I had a big notion to pink one of them, but I thought
maybe someway it would be best for you that I shouldn't.  They needed it.
That didn't scare me; and as for the Bird Woman, she's accustomed
to finding snakes, tramps, cross dogs, sheep, cattle, and goodness
knows what!  You can't frighten her when she's after a picture.
Did they come back?"

"No," said Freckles.  "The gang got there a little after noon and
took out the tree, but I must tell you, and you must tell the Bird
Woman, that there's no doubt but they will be coming back, and they
will have to make it before long now, for it's soon the gang will
be there to work on the swamp."

"Oh, what a shame!" cried the Angel.  "They'll clear out roads, cut
down the beautiful trees, and tear up everything.  They'll drive
away the birds and spoil the cathedral.  When they have done their
worst, then all these mills close here will follow in and take out
the cheap timber.  Then the landowners will dig a few ditches, build
some fires, and in two summers more the Limberlost will be in corn
and potatoes."

They looked at each other, and groaned despairingly in unison.

"You like it, too," said Freckles.

"Yes," said the Angel, "I love it.  Your room is a little piece
right out of the heart of fairyland, and the cathedral is God's
work, not yours.  You only found it and opened the door after He had
it completed.  The birds, flowers, and vines are all so lovely.
The Bird Woman says it is really a fact that the mallows, foxfire,
iris, and lilies are larger and of richer coloring there than in
the remainder of the country.  She says it's because of the rich
loam and muck.  I hate seeing the swamp torn up, and to you it will
be like losing your best friend; won't it?"

"Something like," said Freckles.  "Still, I've the Limberlost in me
heart so that all of it will be real to me while I live, no matter
what they do to it.  I'm glad past telling if you will be coming a
few more times, at least until the gang arrives.  Past that time I
don't allow mesilf to be thinking."

"Come, have a cool drink before you start back," said the Angel.

"I couldn't possibly," said Freckles.  "I left Mrs. Duncan on the
trail, and she's terribly afraid of a lot of things.  If she even
sees a big snake, I don't know what she'll do."

"It won't take but a minute, and you can ride fast enough to make
up for it.  Please.  I want to think of something fine for you, to
make up a little for what you did for me that first day."

Freckles looked in sheer wonderment into the beautiful face of
the Angel.  Did she truly mean it?  Would she walk down that street
with him, crippled, homely, in mean clothing, with the tools of his
occupation on him, and share with him the treat she was offering?
He could not believe it, even of the Angel.  Still, in justice to
the candor of her pure, sweet face, he would not think that she
would make the offer and not mean it.  She really did mean just what
she said, but when it came to carrying out her offer and he saw the
stares of her friends, the sneers of her enemies--if such as she
could have enemies--and heard the whispered jeers of the curious,
then she would see her mistake and be sorry.  It would be only a
manly thing for him to think this out, and save her from the
results of her own blessed bigness of heart.

"I railly must be off," said Freckles earnestly, "but I'm thanking
you more than you'll ever know for your kindness.  I'll just be
drinking bowls of icy things all me way home in the thoughts of it."

Down came the Angel's foot.  Her eyes flashed indignantly.  "There's
no sense in that," she said.  "How do you think you would have felt
when you knew I was warm and thirsty and you went and brought me a
drink and I wouldn't take it because--because goodness knows why!
You can ride faster to make up for the time.  I've just thought out
what I want to fix for you."

She stepped to his side and deliberately slipped her hand under his
arm--that right arm that ended in an empty sleeve.

"You are coming," she said firmly.  "I won't have it."

Freckles could not have told how he felt, neither could anyone else.
His blood rioted and his head swam, but he kept his wits.  He bent
over her.

"Please don't, Angel," he said softly.  "You don't understand."

How Freckles came to understand was a problem.

"It's this," he persisted.  "If your father met me on the street, in
my station and dress, with you on me arm, he'd have every right to
be caning me before the people, and not a finger would I lift to
stay him."

The Angel's eyes snapped.  "If you think my father cares about my
doing anything that is right and kind, and that makes me happy to
do--why, then you completely failed in reading my father, and I'll
ask him and just show you."

She dropped Freckles' arm and turned toward the entrance to
the building.  "Why, look there!" she exclaimed.

Her father stood in a big window fronting the street, a bundle of
papers in his hand, interestedly watching the little scene, with
eyes that comprehended quite as thoroughly as if he had heard
every word.  The Angel caught his glance and made a despairing little
gesture toward Freckles.  The Man of Affairs answered her with a
look of infinite tenderness.  He nodded his head and waved the
papers in the direction she had indicated, and the veriest dolt
could have read the words his lips formed:  "Take him along!"

A sudden trembling seized Freckles.  At sight of the Angel's father
he had stepped back as far from her as he could, leaned the wheel
against him, and snatched off his hat.

The Angel turned on him with triumphing eyes.

She was highly strung and not accustomed to being thwarted.
"Did You see that?" she demanded.  "Now are you satisfied?
Will you come, or must I call a policeman to bring you?"

Freckles went.  There was nothing else to do.  Guiding his wheel, he
walked down the street beside her.  On every hand she was kept busy
giving and receiving the cheeriest greetings.  She walked into the
parlors exactly as if she owned them.  A clerk came hurrying to meet her.

"There's a table vacant beside a window where it is cool.  I'll save
it for you," and he started back.

"Please not," said the Angel.  "I've taken this man unawares, when
he's in a rush.  I'm afraid if we sit down we'll take too much time
and afterward he will blame me."

She walked to the fountain, and a long row of people stared with
all the varying degrees of insolence and curiosity that Freckles
had felt they would.  He glanced at the Angel.  NOW would she see?

"On my soul!" he muttered under his breath.  "They don't aven touch her!"

She laid down her sunshade and gloves.  She walked to the end of the
counter and turned the full battery of her eyes on the attendant.

"Please," she said.

The white-aproned individual stepped back and gave delighted assent.
The Angel stepped beside him, and selecting a tall, flaring glass,
of almost paper thinness, she stooped and rolled it in a tray of
cracked ice.

"I want to mix a drink for my friend," she said.  "He has a long,
hot ride before him, and I don't want him started off with one of
those old palate-teasing sweetnesses that you mix just on purpose
to drive a man back in ten minutes."  There was an appreciative
laugh from the line at the counter.

"I want a clear, cool, sparkling drink that has a tang of acid in it.
Where's the cherry phosphate?  That, not at all sweet, would be good;
don't you think?"

The attendant did think.  He pointed out the different taps, and the
Angel compounded the drink, while Freckles, standing so erect he
almost leaned backward, gazed at her and paid no attention to
anyone else.  When she had the glass brimming, she tilted a little
of its contents into a second glass and tasted it.

"That's entirely too sweet for a thirsty man," she said.

She poured out half the mixture, and refilling the glass, tasted
it a second time.  She submitted that result to the attendant.
"Isn't that about the thing?" she asked.

He replied enthusiastically.  "I'd get my wages raised ten a month
if I could learn that trick."

The Angel carried the brimming, frosty glass to Freckles.  He removed
his hat, and lifting the icy liquid even with her eyes and looking
straight into them, he said in the mellowest of all the mellow
tones of his voice:  "I'll be drinking it to the Swamp Angel."

As he had said to her that first day, she now cautioned him:
"Be drinking slowly."

When the screen-door swung behind them, one of the men at the
counter asked of the attendant:  "Now, what did that mean?"

"Exactly what you saw," replied he, rather curtly.  "We're accustomed
to it here.  Hardly a day passes, this hot weather, but she's
picking up some poor, god-forsaken mortal and bringing him in.
Then she comes behind the counter herself and fixes up a drink
to suit the occasion.  She's all sorts of fancies about what's what
for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit
the spot!  Ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her.
She's a sort of knack at it.  Every once in a while, when the Boss
sees her, he calls out to her to mix him a drink."

"And does she?" asked the man with an interested grin.

"Well, I guess!  But first she goes back and sees how long it is
since he's had a drink.  What he drank last.  How warm he is.  When he
ate last.  Then she comes here and mixes a glass of fizz with a
little touch of acid, and a bit of cherry, lemon, grape, pineapple,
or something sour and cooling, and it hits the spot just as no spot
was ever hit before.  I honestly believe that the INTEREST she takes
in it is half the trick, for I watch her closely and I can't come
within gunshot of her concoctions.  She has a running bill here.
Her father settles once a month.  She gives nine-tenths of it away.
Hardly ever touches it herself, but when she does she makes me mix it.
She's just old persimmons.  Even the scrub-boy of this establishment
would fight for her.  It lasts the year round, for in winter it's some
poor, frozen cuss that she's warming up on hot coffee or chocolate."

"Mighty queer specimen she had this time," volunteered another.
"Irish, hand off, straight as a ramrod, and something worth while
in his face.  Notice that hat peel off, and the eyes of him?
There's a case of `fight for her!' Wonder who he is?"

"I think," said a third, "that he's McLean's Limberlost guard, and
I suspect she's gone to the swamp with the Bird Woman for pictures
and knows him that way.  I've heard that he is a master hand with
the birds, and that would just suit the Bird Woman to a T."

On the street the Angel walked beside Freckles to the first
crossing and there she stopped.  "Now, will you promise to ride fast
enough to make up for the five minutes that took?" she asked.
"I am a little uneasy about Mrs. Duncan."

Freckles turned his wheel into the street.  It seemed to him he had
poured that delicious icy liquid into every vein in his body
instead of his stomach.  It even went to his brain.

"Did you insist on fixing that drink because you knew how
intoxicating `twould be?" he asked.

There was subtlety in the compliment and it delighted the Angel.
She laughed gleefully.

"Next time, maybe you won't take so much coaxing," she teased.

"I wouldn't this, if I had known your father and been understanding
you better.  Do you really think the Bird Woman will be coming again?"

The Angel jeered.  "Wild horses couldn't drag her away," she cried.
"She will have hard work to wait the week out.  I shouldn't be in
the least surprised to see her start any hour."

Freckles could not endure the suspense; it had to come.

"And you?" he questioned, but he dared not lift his eyes.

"Wild horses me, too," she laughed, "couldn't keep me away either!
I dearly love to come, and the next time I am going to bring my
banjo, and I'll play, and you sing for me some of the songs I like
best; won't you?"

"Yis," said Freckles, because it was all he was capable of saying
just then.

"It's beginning to act stormy," she said.  "If you hurry you will
just about make it.  Now, good-bye."



                                 CHAPTER IX

      Wherein the Limberlost Falls upon Mrs. Duncan and Freckles
                            Comes to the Rescue

Freckles was halfway to the Limberlost when he dismounted.  He could
ride no farther, because he could not see the road.  He sat under a
tree, and, leaning against it, sobs shook, twisted, and rent him.
If they would remind him of his position, speak condescendingly, or
notice his hand, he could endure it, but this--it surely would kill him!
His hot, pulsing Irish blood was stirred deeply.  What did they mean?
Why did they do it?  Were they like that to everyone?  Was it pity?

It could not be, for he knew that the Bird Woman and the Angel's
father must know that he was not really McLean's son, and it did
not matter to them in the least.  In spite of accident and poverty,
they evidently expected him to do something worth while in the world.
That must be his remedy.  He must work on his education.  He must
get away.  He must find and do the great thing of which the
Angel talked.  For the first time, his thoughts turned anxiously
toward the city and the beginning of his studies.  McLean and the
Duncans spoke of him as "the boy," but he was a man.  He must face
life bravely and act a man's part.  The Angel was a mere child.
He must not allow her to torture him past endurance with her frank
comradeship that meant to him high heaven, earth's richness, and
all that lay between, and NOTHING to her.

There was an ominous growl of thunder, and amazed at himself,
Freckles snatched up his wheel and raced toward the swamp.  He was
worried to find his boots lying at the cabin door; the children
playing on the woodpile told him that "mither" said they were so
heavy she couldn't walk in them, and she had come back and taken
them off.  Thoroughly frightened, he stopped only long enough to
slip them on, and then sped with all his strength for the Limberlost.
To the west, the long, black, hard-beaten trail lay clear; but far
up the east side, straight across the path, he could see what was
certainly a limp, brown figure.  Freckles spun with all his might.

Face down, Sarah Duncan lay across the trail.  When Freckles turned
her over, his blood chilled at the look of horror settled on her face.
There was a low humming and something spatted against him.
Glancing around, Freckles shivered in terror, for there was a swarm
of wild bees settled on a scrub-thorn only a few yards away.
The air was filled with excited, unsettled bees making ready to
lead farther in search of a suitable location.  Then he thought he
understood, and with a prayer of thankfulness in his heart that she
had escaped, even so narrowly, he caught her up and hurried down
the trail until they were well out of danger.  He laid her in the
shade, and carrying water from the swamp in the crown of his hat,
he bathed her face and hands; but she lay in unbroken stillness,
without a sign of life.

She had found Freckles' boots so large and heavy that she had gone
back and taken them off, although she was mortally afraid to
approach the swamp without them.  The thought of it made her
nervous, and the fact that she never had been there alone added to
her fears.  She had not followed the trail many rods when her
trouble began.  She was not Freckles, so not a bird of the line was
going to be fooled into thinking she was.

They began jumping from their nests and darting from unexpected
places around her head and feet, with quick whirs, that kept her
starting and dodging.  Before Freckles was halfway to the town, poor
Mrs. Duncan was hysterical, and the Limberlost had neither sung nor
performed for her.

But there was trouble brewing.  It was quiet and intensely hot, with
that stifling stillness that precedes a summer storm, and feathers
and fur were tense and nervous.  The birds were singing only a few
broken snatches, and flying around, seeking places of shelter.
One moment everything seemed devoid of life, the next there was an
unexpected whir, buzz, and sharp cry.  Inside, a pandemonium of
growling, spatting, snarling, and grunting broke loose.

The swale bent flat before heavy gusts of wind, and the big black
chicken swept lower and lower above the swamp.  Patches of clouds
gathered, shutting out the sun and making it very dark, and the
next moment were swept away.  The sun poured with fierce, burning
brightness, and everything was quiet.  It was at the first growl of
thunder that Freckles really had noticed the weather, and putting
his own troubles aside resolutely, raced for the swamp.

Sarah Duncan paused on the line.  "Weel, I wouldna stay in this
place for a million a month," she said aloud, and the sound of her
voice brought no comfort, for it was so little like she had thought
it that she glanced hastily around to see if it had really been she
that spoke.  She tremblingly wiped the perspiration from her face
with the skirt of her sunbonnet.

"Awfu' hot," she panted huskily.  "B'lieve there's going to be a
big storm.  I do hope Freckles will hurry."

Her chin was quivering as a terrified child's.  She lifted her
bonnet to replace it and brushed against a bush beside her.
WHIRR, almost into her face, went a nighthawk stretched along a limb
for its daytime nap.  Mrs. Duncan cried out and sprang down the trail,
alighting on a frog that was hopping across.  The horrible croak it
gave as she crushed it sickened her.  She screamed wildly and jumped
to one side.  That carried her into the swale, where the grasses
reached almost to her waist, and her horror of snakes returning,
she made a flying leap for an old log lying beside the line.
She alighted squarely, but it was so damp and rotten that she sank
straight through it to her knees.  She caught at the wire as she
went down, and missing, raked her wrist across a barb until she
tore a bleeding gash.  Her fingers closed convulsively around the
second strand.  She was too frightened to scream now.  Her tongue
stiffened.  She clung frantically to the sagging wire, and finally
managed to grasp it with the other hand.  Then she could reach the top
wire, and so she drew herself up and found solid footing.  She picked
up the club that she had dropped in order to extricate herself.
Leaning heavily on it, she managed to return to the trail, but
she was trembling so that she scarcely could walk.  Going a few
steps farther, she came to the stump of the first tree that had
been taken out.

She sat bolt upright and very still, trying to collect her thoughts
and reason away her terror.  A squirrel above her dropped a nut, and
as it came rattling down, bouncing from branch to branch, every
nerve in her tugged wildly.  When the disgusted squirrel barked
loudly, she sprang to the trail.

The wind arose higher, the changes from light to darkness were more
abrupt, while the thunder came closer and louder at every peal.
In swarms the blackbirds arose from the swale and came flocking
to the interior, with a clamoring cry:  "T'CHECK, T'CHECK."
Grackles marshaled to the tribal call:  "TRALL-A-HEE, TRALL-A-HEE."
Red-winged blackbirds swept low, calling to belated mates:
"FOL-LOW-ME, FOL-LOW-ME."  Big, jetty crows gathered close to her,
crying, as if warning her to flee before it was everlastingly
too late.  A heron, fishing the near-by pool for Freckles' "find-out"
frog, fell into trouble with a muskrat and uttered a rasping note
that sent Mrs. Duncan a rod down the line without realizing that
she had moved.  She was too shaken to run far.  She stopped and
looked around her fearfully.

Several bees struck her and were angrily buzzing before she
noticed them.  Then the humming swelled on all sides.
A convulsive sob shook her, and she ran into the bushes,
now into the swale, anywhere to avoid the swarming bees, ducking,
dodging, fighting for her very life.  Presently the humming
seemed to become a little fainter.  She found the trail again,
and ran with all her might from a few of her angry pursuers.

As she ran, straining every muscle, she suddenly became aware that,
crossing the trail before her, was a big, round, black body, with
brown markings on its back, like painted geometrical patterns.
She tried to stop, but the louder buzzing behind warned her she
dared not.  Gathering her skirts higher, with hair flying around her
face and her eyes almost bursting from their sockets, she ran straight
toward it.  The sound of her feet and the humming of the bees
alarmed the rattler, so it stopped across the trail, lifting its
head above the grasses of the swale and rattling inquiringly--rattled
until the bees were outdone.

Straight toward it went the panic-stricken woman, running wildly
and uncontrollably.  She took one leap, clearing its body on the
path, then flew ahead with winged feet.  The snake, coiled to
strike, missed Mrs. Duncan and landed among the bees instead.
They settled over and around it, and realizing that it had found
trouble, it sank among the grasses and went threshing toward its
den in the deep willow-fringed low ground.  The swale appeared as if
a reaper were cutting a wide swath.  The mass of enraged bees darted
angrily around, searching for it, and striking the scrub-thorn,
began a temporary settling there to discover whether it were a
suitable place.  Completely exhausted, Mrs. Duncan staggered on a
few steps farther, fell facing the path, where Freckles found her,
and lay quietly.

Freckles worked over her until she drew a long, quivering breath
and opened her eyes.

When she saw him bending above her, she closed them tightly, and
gripping him, struggled to her feet.  He helped her, and with his
arm around and half carrying her, they made their way to the clearing.
She clung to him with all her remaining strength, but open her eyes
she would not until her children came clustering around her.
Then, brawny, big Scotswoman though she was, she quietly keeled
over again.  The children added their wailing to Freckles' panic.

This time he was so close the cabin that he could carry her into
the house and lay her on the bed.  He sent the oldest boy scudding
down the corduroy for the nearest neighbor, and between them they
undressed Mrs. Duncan and discovered that she was not bitten.
They bathed and bound the bleeding wrist and coaxed her back
to consciousness.  She lay sobbing and shuddering.  The first
intelligent word she said was:  "Freckles, look at that jar on the
kitchen table and see if my yeast is no running ower."

Several days passed before she could give Duncan and Freckles any
detailed account of what had happened to her, even then she could
not do it without crying as the least of her babies.  Freckles was
almost heartbroken, and nursed her as well as any woman could have
done; while big Duncan, with a heart full for them both, worked
early and late to chink every crack of the cabin and examine every
spot that possibly could harbor a snake.  The effects of her morning
on the trail kept her shivering half the time.  She could not rest
until she sent for McLean and begged him to save Freckles from
further risk, in that place of horrors.  The Boss went to the swamp
with his mind fully determined to do so.

Freckles stood and laughed at him.  "Why, Mr. McLean, don't you
let a woman's nervous system set you worrying about me," he said.
"I'm not denying how she felt, because I've been through it meself,
but that's all over and gone.  It's the height of me glory to fight it
out with the old swamp, and all that's in it, or will be coming to
it, and then to turn it over to you as I promised you and meself
I'd do, sir.  You couldn't break the heart of me entire quicker than
to be taking it from me now, when I'm just on the home-stretch.
It won't be over three or four weeks yet, and when I've gone it
almost a year, why, what's that to me, sir?  You mustn't let a
woman get mixed up with business, for I've always heard about how
it's bringing trouble."

McLean smiled.  "What about that last tree?" he said.

Freckles blushed and grinned appreciatively.

"Angels and Bird Women don't count in the common run, sir," he
affirmed shamelessly.

McLean sat in the saddle and laughed.