“There isn’t any path on this side of the point,” said Captain Doloff, “but you can’t miss your way. A few miles through the woods and you’ll be there.”
“Have no worriment for me; I’m not the bye to go astray, even if the country is new,” was the confident reply of Mike, who, having paid the young man the fee agreed upon, bade him good-by and plunged into the fragrant pine forest. He carried no firearms, not even his revolver,—a fact which caused him no misgiving, since it seemed impossible that he should run into any personal danger. This was not the section of Maine frequented by wild animals, and though there were a few Indians, here and there, all were civilized and they attract no more interest than those of the Caucasian race. A tramp of several miles on such a balmy day was enjoyable when there was just a tinge of crispness in the air to remind one that autumn was only a few weeks away. The pine cones and moss, and the many years’ accumulation of decaying foliage formed a spongy carpet, upon which the shoe pressed without giving back any sound, and made walking the pleasantest sort of gentle exercise.
Mike carried the heavy buckthorn cane which his father had brought with him from Ireland, but he did not need its aid. He twirled it as an officer dallies with his swagger stick and sang snatches of song in that wonderfully sweet voice, which no one could hear without being charmed. Of course it was impossible for the lad to be unaware of his amazing gift in this respect, and you have been told of some of the occasions when he used it for the delight of others. He frequently sang for his father and mother, and again, as in the present instance, the low delightful humming was for his own pleasure, since one of the blessed peculiarities of music is that it requires no “witnesses” for its perfect enjoyment.
Still, as has also been shown, Mike was never forward in displaying his unrivaled voice. Many a time he had listened to the singing of others and joined in the applause without a single one of the audience suspecting how infinitely superior he was to the foremost of the company, nor did Mike ever enlighten them.
With all his waggishness and pugnacity, he was devout in his religious belief and had won the commendation more than once of the priests at home, who knew all about him.
“I wonder why the Lord is so good to me,” he reflected with reverent emotion; “there ain’t a meaner rapscallion in creation than me, and yet He treats me as if I were a twin brother to Alvin and Chester and lots of other folks. I must try to remember all this, but I’m sartin to furget it on the first chance that comes to me.
“Now, about those Boy Scouts,—I wonder what they are; I never heard of ’em before; I s’pose they call themselves Scouts ’cause they’re always scouting for a row, and kick up a shindy whenever they git the chance. I’ll try to do me part, as I always did in the owld country, and since I set fut in Ameriky.”
Giving rein to his mental whimsies, Mike strolled forward until certain he had traveled the full distance. He halted and looked around. Several times a half dozen crows, perched in the treetops, catching sight of him dived away with loud cawing warnings to their comrades of an intrusion into their domain of a foe to be feared, but thus far he had noted no other species of birds. Now, however, when he peered upward through an opening among the branches, he saw a black speck gliding across the thin azure and vanishing in the ocean of ether beyond. It was an eagle, soaring so far aloft that its piercing vision had no knowledge of the tiny form thousands of feet below amid the firs and pines.
“Gosling Lake,” repeated Mike; “I must be near the same, as dad remarked whin his friend Jim Muldoon cracked his head wid the shillalah, but I obsarve it not.”
He listened keenly but caught no distinctive sound. The soft, almost inaudible murmur which is never absent in a wide stretch of forest, or when miles inland from the breathing ocean, brooded in the air and has been called the “voice of silence” itself.