He turned away into the timber.
Gloss entered the house and lit the candles. Twilight had swept down, a twilight fresh with wood-scented dews and fragrant with smoke of the clearing-fires. On the floor beside the fireplace sprawled the form of Daft Davie. He was fast asleep, and Pepper, the ’coon, lay coiled up close beside him. One of the lad’s arms encircled the pet and the little animal’s pointed nose was hidden among the long golden curls. Gloss bent and stroked those curls softly and something warm and wet splashed down and awoke the Nature child.
He scrambled up, his great eyes blinking at the light; then, bending, the boy raised Pepper and placed him in Gloss’s arms.
She sat down on a stool before the fire and gathered the little bush-children close to her. The raccoon sniffed her red cheeks and nosed her soft throat caressingly, and Davie, clinging to her hands, poured forth the story of his day’s adventures. The girl listened, now and then smiling, understanding, as she did so well, those little pictures that the daft child was painting for her. She saw the gray tangle of marsh with the great dead elm lying across it; saw the ragged home of the mink and the tall elm where his enemy, the bald-headed eagle, sat poised and watchful.
When, at last, happy voices were heard coming down the path, she arose with all the old-time gladness astir in her heart. No new and strange shadow could linger for long where the joy-songs of many glad days could be brought to life by memory. And hugging the tiny daft boy close to her she whispered:
“What could I do without you, Davie?”
“Well, I do declare,” cried Mrs. Declute, as she came panting in, “if here she ain’t, right here, and that blessed boy Davie with her, too. Give my life if it don’t beat all, Mrs. Ross.”
“Bless her,” exclaimed the widow, “and to think that we’ve been wonderin’ where she had slipped off to. I’ll just swing the kettle on, Mrs. Declute, so’s we needn’t keep them hungry men waitin’. My, but I do expect they’ll enjoy that custard.”
“Leave us alone for that,” laughed Peeler, who had entered and was drying his face on the long towel hanging behind the door.
Declute came forward, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in red flannel shirt and buckskins.