The boy laughed without relaxing a muscle.
“Did he? He’s a fule someways.”
He passed into the kitchen and took Eve’s rocking-chair. She followed him, and stood leaning against the table.
“Then you––you didn’t get lost?”
“Say, you folks make me sick. Why ’ud I get lost more’n other fellers? You guess I’m a kid––but I ain’t. Lost! Gee! Say, sis, Peter orter know’d wher’ I was. I told him I was goin’. An’ I went. Sure I went.” He rubbed his delicate hands together in his glee. His eyes sparkled again with rising excitement. But Eve forgot her fears for him now; she was interested. She was lifted out of her own despair by his evident joy, and waited for him to tell his story.
But Elia had his own way of doing things, and that way was rarely a pleasant one. Nor was it now, as Eve was quickly to learn.
“Yes, sure, Peter’s a fule, someways––but I like him. He’s real good. Say, sis, he’s goin’ to give me all the gold he finds. He said so. Yep. An’ he’ll do it. Guess he’s good. That’s sure why I didn’t do what he told me not to.”
He sat blinking up at his sister with impish amusement. Suddenly something in his expression stirred his sister to alarm. Nor could she have said how it came to her, or what the nature of the alarm. It was there undefined, but none the less certain.
“What did he tell you not to do?” she asked anxiously.
“Give him away. Say, here, I’ll tell you. It’s a dandy yarn. Y’see I ain’t just as other folks are, sis; there’s 258 things I ken do, an’ things I ken understand wot other folks can’t. Say, I ken trail like––like a wolf. Well, I guess one day I told Peter I could trail. I told him I could trail your Will, an’ find out wher’ he got his gold.”