OLD JEAN'S STORY
"It's 'Ho for the forest!'" sang Tom Gray jubilantly, as he waved his stout walking stick over the low stone wall that separated the party of picnickers from Upton Wood.
"Isn't it magnificent?" asked Grace of Anne, her gray eyes glowing as she looked ahead at the snowy road that stretched like a great white ribbon between the deep green rows of pine and fir trees.
"Perfect," agreed Anne dreamily, who was drinking in the solemn beauty of the snow-wrapped forest, an expression of reverence on her small face.
"I wonder if the snow in the road is very deep?" soliloquized Jessica unsentimentally.
"How can you break in upon our rapt musings with such commonplaces?" laughed Grace. "To return to earth; I don't imagine the snow is deep. This road is much traveled, and the snow looks fairly well packed. What do you say, Huntsman Gray?" She turned to Tom with a smile.
"It isn't deep. All aboard for Upton Wood!" called Tom cheerily. "Come on, Grace." He extended a helping hand to her.
But Grace needed no assistance. With a laughing shake of her head she vaulted the low wall as easily as Tom himself could have cleared it. Nora followed her, then Miriam, while Anne and Jessica were content to allow themselves to be assisted by David and Reddy. Then the picnickers swung into the wide snow-packed road that wound its way to the other end of Upton Wood, a matter of perhaps ten miles. Being a part of the road to the state capital and a famous automobile route it was sedulously looked after and kept in good condition, and was therefore not difficult to travel.
The cabin of old Jean, the hunter, was situated some distance from the main road in the thickest part of the forest. The day before, the five young men, with a bobsled filled with grocers' supplies, had driven to the point of the road nearest the cabin and a brisk unloading had followed. After their first trip to the cottage old Jean had returned to the sleigh with them, his fur cap awry, gesticulating delightedly and chattering volubly as he walked. Of a surety Mamselle Grace and her friends were welcome. He deplored the fact that they had insisted upon bringing their own provisions, but David, who suspected the old hunter's larder to be none too well stocked with eatables, had quieted Jean's remonstrances with the diplomatic assertion that the affair having been planned by the "Eight Originals Plus Two," as they had now agreed to call themselves, and given in honor of the old hunter himself, it was their privilege to pay the piper. Jean had shaken his head rather dubiously over the miscellaneous heap of groceries that spread over at least a quarter of his floor, but his first protest had been laughingly silenced by the five sturdy foresters, who threatened to turn him out of house and home if he did not allow his friends to celebrate in peace.
On this particular morning Jean had been up and doing since five o'clock. He had decorated his cabin walls with ground pine and evergreen, and as a last touch had, with many chuckles, suspended from the ceiling an unusually perfect piece of mistletoe, which he had tramped into Oakdale early that morning to secure. He had cleaned his rifle first, then swept and scrubbed his cabin floor, and the pine table off which he ate, until the most critical housekeeper could have found no fault with the shining cleanliness of the place. The rousing fire that he built in the big fireplace soon dried the floor, and after arranging his few household effects to the best advantage, Jean busied himself with getting in a good supply of wood before his young guests, who had set the hour of three o'clock for their arrival, should appear upon the scene.
It was precisely ten minutes to three when the little company reached the top of the hill at the foot of which nestled old Jean's cottage, and halted for a moment before descending.
"Sound the call of the Elf's Horn, Tom," demanded Grace. "I only wish I could sound it. I've tried over and over again, but I can't do it."
"It is a gift which the fairies reserve for only a few favored mortals," teased Tom.
"Then I am not one of them," declared Grace. "I have watched for fairies since I was a little girl and never met with one yet. I know every individual fairy in Grimms', Andersen's and Lang's by reputation, too."
"What about your fairy prince?" was Tom's quick question. The two pairs of gray eyes met. Grace smiled with frank amusement.
"I have never looked for a fairy prince," she said lightly. "I never cared half so much about the fairy princes and the clothes and weddings as I did about giants, witches and spells, mysterious happenings and magic mirrors. I loved 'The Brave Little Tailor' and 'The Youth Who Could Not Shiver and Shake.'"
"I always liked the 'False Bride' and 'Rapunzel,'" remarked Jessica sentimentally, who had come up beside Grace and Tom.
"Of what are you talking?" asked Nora, who had caught Jessica's last word.
"We were naming the fairy tales we always liked best."
"I always liked the 'Magic Fiddle,'" said Nora, with a reminiscent chuckle. "I used to keep a copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales in my desk at school, just for that story. It always made me giggle. I could fairly see all those poor people dancing whether they wished to dance or not. Ask Hippy what his favorite fairy tale is," she dimpled, lowering her voice.
"Say, Hippopotamus," called Tom, "what's your favorite fairy tale?" Hippy, who stood a little to one side, appeared to think deeply, then said with a sentimental smile: "The 'Table Prepare Thyself' story. Oh, if I might have had such a table!" Hippy sighed dolefully. "Then I would never have been obliged when out on these excursions to humbly beg for crumbs to sustain my failing strength till such time as you slow-pokes saw fit to eat."
"Don't I always give you things to eat when everyone else laughs at you?" demanded Nora belligerently.
"Yes, my noble benefactor," whined Hippy, "but you didn't to-day."
"I don't intend to, either," was Nora's unfeeling response. "I purposely told Tom to ask you that. I knew you'd name one that had a good deal about eating in it."
"Stop squabbling," commanded Reddy, his fingers fastened in the back of Hippy's collar, "or down the hill you go. Keep quiet, now, Tom is going to perform."
Tom placed his hands to his mouth. His friends listened intently. Then came the peculiar whistle that sounded like the note of a trumpet. Tom whistled repeatedly, and two minutes later they saw old Jean come racing up the steep path toward them. He had heard the mysterious Elf's Horn.
"Never forgot it, did you, Jean?" laughed Tom, seizing the old man's hand and shaking it warmly.
"No, Monsieur Tom; once I hear, it is impossible that I should forget," replied Jean in his quaint English. "An' now that you have honor me this afternoon, it is well that you come to my cabin where the fire burn for you an' the coffee wait, an' all is ready for my frien's who mak' so long walk for the sake of ol' Jean."
"Of course we did, Jean," smiled Grace as they started for the cabin. "Don't we always come to see you when we are home from college?"
"It is true, Mamselle Grace," returned Jean solemnly. "I am lucky man to have such fren's."
"Don't look so sad over it, Jean!" exclaimed Hippy. "Be merry, and gayly dance as I do." He essayed several fantastic steps over the frozen ground, stubbed his toe on a projecting root and lunged forward, falling heavily into a huge snowdrift, his hands and face plowing into the snow.
"Ha, ha!" jeered Reddy. "'Be merry, and gayly dance as I do.' No, thank you. I prefer to walk along like an ordinary human being."
"That is exactly what you are," was Hippy's calm retort from the snowdrift, "'an ordinary human being.'" Floundering out of the drift he shook himself free of snow and, undaunted by his fall, went on skipping and pirouetting toward the cabin, while his companions shrieked mirthful comments into his apparently unhearing ears.
How fast the afternoon and evening slipped away! The girls insisted on helping Jean with the dinner, and at half-past five the whole party sat down at the rude table that had been improvised by the boys the day before. Eating in the heart of the forest made things taste infinitely better than at home. Never before had there been such coffee, or steak, or baked potatoes! There was dessert, too—Mrs. Nesbit's famous fruit cake and Mrs. Harlowe's equally prized mince pie, besides fruit and nuts, Jean adding the latter to the feast. Then everyone's health was drunk in grape juice, and it was almost seven o'clock before Jean and his guests rose from the table.
"Ten minutes to seven," declared David, consulting his watch. "We must leave here at eight o'clock. We ought to be home by nine. I feel very responsible for these youngsters, Jean. It was I who agreed to play chaperon."
"Youngsters, indeed," growled Reddy scornfully. "Listen to Methuselah."
"Tell us a story before we go, Jean," begged Grace. She loved to hear the old hunter tell in his quaint way of his many perilous adventures in the great northwestern woods of Canada, where he had spent so many years of his life.
"If Mamselle Grace like I will tell of w'en I track the fierce panther who have kill my lambs, an' what happen to me."
"Oh, splendid!" cried Grace. "We should love to hear it."
The glow from the big back log reflected the interested faces of the others. Jean's stories were always well received. Settling himself cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall, he related how, after tracking a panther all day, he had slipped while going down a steep bank and losing his footing had plunged to the bottom. How he had lain there bruised and helpless with a broken leg, expecting at any time to see the beast he had been tracking bear down upon him. How at last, after hours of unspeakable agony, help had come in the shape of a tall, strongly built young man, whose cabin was not far off and who had carried Jean to it, then, after roughly setting the injured leg, and making his patient as comfortable as might be expected under the circumstances, he had ridden thirty miles for a doctor, then tended the old hunter until his leg healed.
"Ten week I stay in bed an' this good frien' take care of me. He inten' to go to Alaska for gold. He say he have wife once an' baby but they die in railroad wreck. He never see their bodies. He very sad. The fire in the train burn everybody, all t'ings." Jean waved his arms comprehensively. "He stay by me until I am well. Then he say, 'Jean, come along to Alaska.' But I say, 'No. I am too ol'. I wish live all my days in Canada woods.' So he go on. After many years he write. Only last summer I have receive his letter. He have found plenty gold, an' is rich. He say when he come back, then he will buy for me a new rifle an' give me much money. But what does Jean care for money? Rather I would see my frien' whose letter I have always keep."
The old man ceased speaking and looked retrospectively into the fire. Then, without speaking, he rose, shuffled to a small table in one corner of the room, and opening the drawer took from it a well-thumbed envelope. Returning to the group he handed it to Grace, saying proudly: "This is the letter my frien' write. Will Mamselle Grace read?"
Grace obediently took the letter from the envelope.
"My dear Jean:" she read. "How can I ever forgive myself for neglecting you so long? I can only say that though I have failed to make good my promise to write, you have never been forgotten by me. Jean, I am sorry you didn't come here with me. I found gold, more than I can spend in a lifetime, and I have made you a stockholder in my mine. I am coming back to the States next spring and will look you up first of all. I am sending this to the old address, trusting that if you are not there it will be forwarded to you. I used to think it would be glorious to be rich, but now that I am alone in the world, money seems a poor substitute for my lost happiness.
"Let me hear from you soon, Jean, and address your letter, Post Office Box 462, Nome, Alaska. I hope you are well and happy. You always were a sunshiny old chap. Here's hoping.
"Your old friend,
"Denton."
"Is it not a very gran' letter?" asked old Jean with anxious pride. "My frien' Denton have study in college, too."
"Indeed it is, Jean," agreed Anne warmly.
"Your friend seems to be the right sort of comrade, even if he is a bad correspondent," remarked David Nesbit.
"Something like me," murmured Hippy gently.
No one appeared to notice this modest assertion.
"Sounds like a page from a best seller, doesn't it, Grace?" asked Tom laughingly.
Grace did not answer. She was gazing at the signature of the letter with perplexed eyes. She was wondering why the name Denton seemed so familiar. Remembrance came suddenly—Ruth, of course. With that recollection came a sudden startling train of thought. Ruth's father had gone west, had been heard from in Nevada, then disappeared. Jean's friend had lost his wife and child on a westbound train. Here, however, Grace's supposition proved weak. Both wife and child had been burned to death in the railroad wreck. Still, mistakes in identification were frequently made on such painful occasions. Grace went back to her first supposition. "It is the only shred of a clew that I have run across yet," she reflected. "I am going to hang to it and see where it leads. And to think that perhaps old Jean once knew Ruth's father. It's unbelievable."
"We must start in ten minutes." David's crisp, business-like tones brought her to a realization of her immediate surroundings.
"Ten minutes is long enough for me to say what is on my mind," Grace said eagerly. Then she began to tell of Ruth, her poverty, and her great wish to know whether her father were dead or alive. Knowing Grace as they did, her friends guessed that she had something of real importance to impart. When she came to the part about Ruth's father going west after promising to send for his little family, a light began to dawn upon them, and Jessica exclaimed: "Why, they must have been killed while on their way to join him!"
"It is so. Mamselle speak the truth!" almost shouted Jean. "It was then they die. He have tol' me so many times."
"Then the man who saved Jean must have been Ruth's father!" exclaimed Miriam, "and a dreadful mistake was made in telling him his child was dead, too. The packet fastened by a cord about Ruth's neck ought easily to have proved her identity. Perhaps the packet was stolen."
"Then how did Ruth come by the watch and letter?" asked Grace.
"I give it up," replied Miriam. "It certainly is a tangled web."
"But we shall straighten it," said Grace resolutely. "The next thing to do is to find Mr. Denton. Tell me, Jean, how many years since you first met Mr. Denton?"
Jean counted laboriously on his fingers. "Twelve years," he finally announced, "an' say his family have died six years then."
"Eighteen years," mused Grace, "and Ruth is twenty-two. The years seem to tally with the rest of the story, too. Will you give me Mr. Denton's address and allow me to write to him, Jean?"
"Whatever Mamselle Grace wishes shall be hers," averred Jean.
"Then I'll write the letter to-morrow. The sooner it is written and sent, the sooner we shall receive an answer to it," declared Grace. "That is unless he is dead. But I have a strange presentiment that he is alive. What do you think, Jean?" she turned to the old hunter, who nodded sagely.
"I think my frien', he alive, too," agreed Jean, "an' I hope, mebbe I shall see again."
"You shall see him and so shall Ruth, if letters can accomplish your wish, Jean," promised Grace.
"Eight o'clock," announced David judicially.
No one paid the slightest attention to him, however, Ruth Denton's affairs being altogether too engrossing a matter for discussion. It was half-past eight when, after a hearty vote of thanks and three cheers for old Jean, the picnickers climbed the little hill and took the moonlit homeward trail.