By the time Squib had reached the Vale of the Silent Watchers next day, Seppi had been hard at work for above an hour giving loving touches to his picture of the night before, trying effects and making little studies upon the bits of paper in which Squib’s dinner of yesterday had been wrapped, every one of which had been eagerly kept and hoarded by Seppi.
And now a new life began for both the boys, between whom such a bond of fellowship had been formed. Squib confided his ambition of learning to carve to Seppi, and Seppi, delighted to do anything for one to whom he felt he owed such a debt of gratitude, assured him that it was quite easy to learn to carve little animals and so forth, and offered to teach him the art so far as he knew it himself.
A compact was soon made. Squib had more than one knife, and one of almost perilous excellence, given him by Uncle Ronald. Seppi could bring him any number of little blocks of wood which had been rudely shaped by himself at home, and for which Squib insisted on paying at what seemed to the little goat-herd to be fabulous rates. But Squib had his own views on these matters and was very resolute.
“You shall teach me to carve if you will,” he said, “and I won’t pay you for that, because we’re friends. But I will pay for the wood, because I want you to have some money to get paper or chalks with when these are done and when I’ve gone away. My father and mother give me money, you see, and I haven’t anything particular to do with it. I want to buy your wood, and you must let me, please.”
Then, these preliminaries being amicably settled, the two boys would pass whole days together in that sunny, quiet valley, the one intent upon his pictures, ever learning, ever finding fresh facilities in the use of his new materials; the other, equally engrossed with his knife and wood, appealing constantly to his patient teacher for hints and instruction, but showing an aptitude for form and a dexterity of manipulation which excited Seppi’s honest admiration.
“Breathlessly one boy worked and the other watched.”
Page [94].
Very happy were those days of cloudless sunshine, when it was almost too hot for Squib to ramble far afield, and when sitting beside Seppi in the shade of the pine woods, watching him draw, and carving busily at his growing family of goats and dogs, was the pleasantest thing he could find to do.
When not too much engrossed in their tasks, the children would talk together of all the thoughts and fancies in their heads. Seppi caught at Squib’s fancy about the Silent Watchers of the Valley with the eagerness of a true son of the mountain. He had not the same power of expression that Squib could boast. He could describe what he had seen or heard, but found it less easy to put into words his own imaginings; but he hailed with delight any fanciful idea of the little Herr’s, and they soon began to live in a world and atmosphere of their own, which comes so readily to those upon whom the spell of the mountains has fallen.
Squib had many fancies about that rugged range opposite. He fancied it the home of a great mountain giant, who dwelt in some mighty caverns within. When the echoes of the valley would be awakened by the fall of great avalanches into some far-away and unseen valleys on the opposite slope, he would lift his head and cry,—