“Stay here, then, Ruth, just for a moment, while I run to the cottage and get my axe and hunting knife. Watch the Bird till my return, so that I may not lose it again; I will come back in a minute.” And David started off in the direction of the cottage.
“How I should love to go with him,” thought Ruth, “to aid and cheer him! But I must say nothing about it unless he asks me, for I might only be in his way.”
In a few minutes David returned, his hunting knife strapped about his waist and his axe swung over his shoulder. “Ruth,” he said, “I will follow the Blue Bird; and when I get to the end of the trail, I will come back again for you. I would take you with me now, but I fear the way will be too rough and hard for you. It will be better for me to return for you, and that I will surely do.”
Ruth longed to accompany him, and David longed to have her; but because each wished to consider the other and to be unselfish in regard to that which they both most desired, they remained apart—as very often happens in other lives, too.
A flash of brilliant colour streaked the woods: the Blue Bird had flown. David waved his hand, called “Goodbye!” and was off once more upon the unknown trail.
Ruth watched him cross the meadow and enter the woods on the further side. Just at this point he turned to wave once more to her; and as he did so he took the spray of forget-me-nots that she had tucked into his cap and put it into the little pocket in the side of the leathern case that held his hunting knife.
Ruth returned to the cottage alone. As the day drew to a close and David did not return, the old Cobbler and his wife asked her where he was.
“I do not know,” answered Ruth simply. “He followed the Blue Bird, and I saw him disappear in the woods. He did not come back to me after that.”
“Followed the Blue Bird!” cried the old couple in one voice. “We never dreamed that he could see that!”