So hand in hand they sought the Little Brown Man, but though they called loud and long at the foot of the Tall Pine Tree, they could not find the Little Brown Man. For at the magic of a kindly word, he had flown to the topmost boughs, and there he dwelled for evermore.
CHAPTER XI
A TALE FOR HALLOWEEN
Babette and Antone were the children of a very poor woodcutter. They lived in a little cottage on the side of a steep mountain, and the mountain looked upon a great forest. Now though their father toiled in this forest from dawn until dark, he could earn but little. Wood in that region was plentiful, and woodcutters were numerous. Their mother made fine laces which Antone carried to the market to sell; but in spite of all their efforts, the poor parents seldom could give their children more than bread and broth to eat. Often indeed the broth was lacking if the woodcutter found no hare in the traps he set. Babette and Antone, however, were happy little children and never thought of their poverty. But it worried the woodcutter that Antone was ten years old and had not yet gone to school. Antone's mother taught him to read and write, that the other boys and girls would not be too far beyond him, and Antone studied his lessons diligently. Often as he sat doing his sums on the hearthstone, with a bit of charcoal for a pencil, his mother would sigh sadly. Antone did not like his mother to be sad, and so he always laughed to cheer her.
"Never fear, Mother," he would say. "Soon I shall send myself to school. My vegetable patch does finely. Then, when I am a great scholar, you shall be poor no longer. My father shall have a team of oxen and you a fine satin gown; Babette shall have a dozen real dollies instead of the turnip dollies she now rocks in her dolly cradle."
"Ah, Antone, my son," his mother would answer with a sigh, "unless you make your fortune as a maker of toys, I fear you will have no fortune at all. Your fingers are as clever as a wizard's even now; and though you are past ten, we cannot spare you to go to school."
It was true, as she said. Antone made boats from bits of cedar wood, and when he had fitted them with sails you could not tell them from any that had come out of a shop. He carved a doll's cradle from a pine knot, and for a dolly painted the white face of a turnip until one would think it was the face of some fair maiden,—so blue were this turnip dolly's eyes and so pink her cheeks, her hair of golden corn silk fell in such waves and her robe of young cabbage leaves was so green and beautiful. Then as often as this turnip dolly faded and began to shrivel, Antone made another, which Babette declared was always more beautiful than the one before. Babette had never been to the village and therefore knew nothing of real dollies. She loved her turnip babies tenderly indeed; she always carried them in her arm when she went with Antone to meet their father and sang them little songs as she rocked them to sleep.
Now it happened one night in the season of Halloween that Antone sat carving jack-o'-lanterns to sell in the village. Babette, who was rocking her dolly to sleep, sat watching him. Being but six, she knew nothing about the fun which comes with Halloween, and so she listened round-eyed with wonder to Antone, who knew all things about jack-o'-lanterns. When she heard that boys and girls dressed like goblins and witches frolicked in the village streets, Babette made up her mind to frolic too.