CHAPTER I THE BOY WITH THE PALE EYES
One day early this last summer I was feeling rather puzzled and surprised.
I am a black Shetland pony brought up mostly in cities and lovely open country places, and here was I shut up in a wild hilly spot miles from any human being except a few settlers.
I wasn't worried. I am a middle-aged pony and have seen enough of life to know that it does not pay to get stirred up about mysteries for invariably time straightens them all out.
I was just curious and amused and a little bored. No one was going to hurt me. I was sure of that. I am worth a great deal of money, but why I had been toted from down South to New York, and from New York to a Canadian stock farm and from the stock farm away up here to this out-of-the-way place in the woods was a problem to me.
I didn't like being shut up this fine day, and I didn't understand the reason for it. In the distance were children, a whole flock of them giggling and carrying on and probably crazy to get on my back, but they were being kept away from me.
"Well," I thought, "I'd better take a little nap while I'm waiting for this tangle to straighten itself out," and I was just turning my head to the wall of my log-house stable and drooping my head when there was a slight noise from the direction of the doorway.
At first I was not going to look round. I thought, "Oh! it's only one of the calves from the barnyard. They've been gaping at me ever since I came. What's the use of looking at them. Not one of them understands a Shetland pony."
However, I did at last turn my head. Anything to pass away the time in this dull place. To my surprise, it was not a calf but a boy that stood in the doorway, evidently a city boy for he was smartly dressed and not clad in overalls like the children in the distance, or poor clothes like the children in the few log cabins we had passed on the way to this lonely place.
He was a white-faced lad with light brown hair and pale eyes. I never saw such eyes before except in the head of a cat. They were greenish in hue and they grew bigger and darker as he stared at me. He seemed to be looking right through me at something in the background, and, if I hadn't known there wasn't a thing in the cabin except a couple of deer mice that he couldn't possibly see, I would have looked behind me to find out what he was staring at.