He pulled his clothes into place, adjusted his hat at the most becoming angle and started up the narrow woodland path, whistling gaily through his teeth. As he disappeared among the trees, the far-off sound of church bells stole to them on the quiet of the Sabbath morning.
CHAPTER II
A CLOSE SHAVE
The Watermelon climbed the stone wall and paused a moment to view his surroundings. The road wound up the hill from the village nestling at its foot and dipped again out of sight farther on. On all sides were the hills, falling rocky pasture lands, rising to orchards or woods, and now and then a farmhouse. It was summer, glad, mad, riotous summer. The sky was a deep, deep blue, with here and there a drifting, snow-white cloud. The fields were gay with buttercups and daisies, and wild roses nodded shyly at him from the briers along the roadside. In the leafy recesses of the trees, the birds twitted and sang. A little gray squirrel peered at him from the limb close by and then scampered off with a whisk of its bushy tail. A brook laughed and tumbled under a slender bridge across the road.
The Watermelon was a vagabond in every fiber of his long graceful self. The open places, the sweep of the wind, the call of the birds, the rise and fall of the hills, hiding the fascinating "beyond," found unconscious harmony with his nature. As a captive animal, given a chance for freedom, makes for the nearest timber; as a cat, in a strange neighborhood, makes for the old, familiar attic, so the Watermelon sought the country, the peace and freedom and space where a man can be a man and not a manikin.
He paused a moment now, in perfect contentment with the world and himself, while up the valley, over the hills, through the sun-warmed air, borne on the breath of the new-mown fields came the sound of distant church bells, softly, musically, soothingly. Slipping from the wall, he set out for the village below in the valley, where the road wound steeply down.
The village boasted but one barber shop, a quiet, little, dusty-white, one-room affair, leaning in timid humility against the protecting wall of the only other public building in town, drygoods, grocery and butcher shop in one. The church bells had stopped for some time when the Watermelon turned into the wide empty street, and strolled carelessly up to the faded red, white and blue pole of Wilton's Tonsorial Parlor. In its Sunday calm the whole village seemed deserted. A few of the bolder spirits who had outgrown apron strings and not yet been snared in any one's bonnet strings, had remained away from church and foregathered in the seclusion of the barber shop. The Watermelon regarded them a moment through the window as he felt carelessly in his pockets for the coins that were never there. It was a quiet crowd, well brushed hair, nicely polished boots and freshly shaved faces. They were reading the sporting news of Saturday's papers and ogling any girl, fairly young and not notoriously homely, who chanced to pass. The barber was cleaning up after his last customer and talking apparently as much to himself as to any one. Convinced of what he knew was so, that he had no money, the Watermelon pushed open the door and entered.
"Hello," said he.
"Hello," said the barber.
All the papers were lowered and all conversation stopped as each man turned and scanned the new-comer with an interest the Watermelon modestly felt was caused by some event other than his own entry. He surmised that James had probably been there before him, and the next words of the barber confirmed his surmise.