No fresh snow fell through the night, and when David slipped his feet into the skee straps at the lodge door next morning he was rejoiced to find that the snow had packed and crusted a little since the day before, which meant better going. Again he made for the crest of the hill beyond the first clump of evergreens and again he stood at the pinnacle of the ways and wondered which he would take.
“I might count,” he laughed aloud—“I might count them out.” And with that he fell into the school-boy doggerel, nearly as old as boyhood itself: “Eeny—meeny—miny—mo. Catch—a nigger—by the—”
He came to a sudden stop. In the direction of the lumber-camp, where the evergreens marked the beginning of the road, he had caught a glimpse of a gray squirrel. Was it a real squirrel this time, or was it the locked-out fairy again? There was not a minute to be lost. He must find out.
Over the unbroken snow he slid, balancing himself carefully when he came to the hummocks made by the wind or fallen trees, his eyes coming back constantly to the little gray figure before him. It was sitting erect now, under a green bough, apparently busy investigating the contents of a pine cone. But just as David had made up his mind that this time it was a real squirrel, up went the furry paw to an ear in unmistakable salute, just as the locked-out fairy had done when he hopped from the window-ledge of the lodge. Then, with ears set back and tail out straight behind, the squirrel flew down the hill. Away went David after him, the tassel of his toboggan-cap out as straight as the squirrel’s tail.
Never was there such a race. They dodged trees and fallen branches; they leaped drifts; they spun like tops around the curves. Sometimes David was so close upon the fairy’s heels that he could almost have touched him with the end of his steering-cane, but the next moment he generally lost his balance and slipped a skee, and head over heels he would go in the crusty snow. When he righted himself the fairy was always yards ahead, sitting with his shoulders all hunched up as if he were laughing silently at David’s tumble. So exciting was the whole race that David entirely forgot his destination until he suddenly found himself almost bumping a corner of one of the lumber cabins, and the fairy nowhere in sight.
He stopped a minute for breath and to wonder what he would do, when he heard the soft, silvery notes of a violin. The music was coming from inside that very cabin, and a voice was humming softly as well. David moved round to one of the windows, hoping he might be tall enough to look in, but the snow had drifted away from that side and he missed the ledge by several inches. It occurred to him, however, that if the snow had drifted from this end it had probably drifted toward the other. He would try it, at any rate. Round the cabin he went, and, sure enough, there the snow had piled up half-way to the window and David found he could look in comfortably.
There was a great fire blazing inside, and by it sat an old negro with the whitest hair and beard David had ever seen. A fiddle was tucked under his chin and slowly and lovingly he was bowing the melody from it, while one foot patted the time on the floor and a plaintive, mellow voice put words to the music. David listened for the words and caught them:
“Yeah come-a-No-ah—a-stumblin’ tru de dark,
Wif hammah an’ wif nails-to-a-build hisself an ark.
An’-a-yeah come de an’mals-two-a-by two,