"Well, doggie can't have me." He unclinched her chubby hands, crossed them in her lap, and held them fast while he kissed her tanned and rosy cheek. "Good-by, you young rogue," he said, and strode away.
"Come and lift me down," she wailed. But he knew well she could scramble down by herself when she chose, and walked on. She continued to call after him; then, spying Frale in the wood yard, she imperatively summoned him to her aid, and trotted at his side back to the woodpile, where they sat comfortably upon a log and visited together.
They were the best of friends and chattered with each other as if both were children. In the slender shadow of a juniper tree that stood like a sentinel in the corner of the wood yard they sat, where a high board fence separated them from the back street.
The bishop's place was well planted, and this corner had been the quarters of the house servants in slave times. It was one of Frale's duties to pile here, for winter use, the firewood which he cut in short lengths for the kitchen fire, and long lengths for the open fireplaces.
He hated the hampered village life, and round of small duties—the weeding in the garden, cleaning of piazzas and windows, and the sweeping of the paths. The woodcutting was not so bad, but the rest he held in contempt as women's work. He longed to throw his gun in the hollow of his arm and tramp off over his own mountains. At night he often wept, for homesickness, and wished he might spend a day tending still, or lying on a ridge watching the trail below for intruders on his privacy.
The joy of life had gone out for him. He thought continually of Cassandra and desired her; and his soul wearied for her, until he was tempted to go back to the mountains at all risks, merely for a sight of her. Painfully he had tried to learn to write, working at the copies Betty Towers had set for him,—and certainly she had done all her conscientious heart prompted to interest him and keep him away from the village loungers. He had even progressed far enough to send two horribly spelled missives to Cassandra, feeling great pride in them. And now he had begun to weary of learning. To be able to write those badly scrawled notes was in his eyes surely enough to distinguish him from his companions at home; of what use was more?
"What's that you are tossing up in the air? Let me see it," demanded the child, as Frale tossed and caught again a small, bright object. He kept on tossing it and catching it away from the two little hands stretched out to receive it. "Give it to me. Give it to me, Frale. Let me see it."
He dropped it lightly in her palm. "Don't you lose hit. That thar's somethin' 'at's got a charm to hit."
"What's a 'charm to hit'? I don't see any charm."
Then Frale laughed aloud. He took it with his thumb and forefinger and held it between his eye and the sun. "Is that the way you see the 'charm to hit'? Let me try."