VI
THE LOCKED-OUT FAIRY AGAIN LEADS THE WAY AND DAVID HEARS OF A CHRISTMAS PROMISE
David was already beginning to feel very rich in Christmas as he climbed to the crest of the hill the next morning. Yes, the locked-out fairy was right. Real Christmas lay in the hearts and memories of people, and he was sure he was storing up some in his own to last for always.
It was still four days before Christmas, yet he felt all the warm glow of excitement, all the eagerness, all the gladness, that usually attended the very day itself. He was beginning to think that instead of one Christmas he was finding a whole week of it, and for a little boy who had had loneliness fastened to his heels like a shadow for so long the feeling was very wonderful. Not that he did not miss father and mother just the same, but they no longer seemed so far away. There were minutes when he could think them quite close, when they seemed to have a share in all he was doing and thinking, and when that happens with any one we love loneliness vanishes like a shadow at midday.
There were but two paths left for him that morning to choose between—the path leading to the trapper’s and the one to the “lunger’s.” It was not a particularly cheery day. The sky was a leaden gray—a hue forecasting snow before day’s end. The wind was biting and raw, and had there not been a quest afoot David would have been glad to stay near home and share Barney’s cheerful company. As it was, he had about made up his mind that he should choose the trapper. He knew as little about him as he had known of the others, and he pictured a big, gruff, hairy man something like his old Grimm illustration of Bluebeard. But for all that, he seemed more alluring on such a day than a “lunger.”
David very much hoped that the locked-out fairy would be there to take him the way he had chosen to go. He wanted not only the guidance of the fairy, but he wished to see him close again and talk with him. He was looking about for signs when his eyes swept the snow at his feet and there he found the trail laid for him. As far as eye could reach there were the tiny sharp prints of a squirrel’s foot, and they led, not down the hillside to the trapper’s hut, but, straight as a stone drops, to the foot-hill beyond, where the “lunger’s” cottage stood.
David heaved a sigh of disappointment. He would so much rather have gone the other way; but of what use is a fairy counselor and guide if one does not follow his trail? So with something very near to a flagging courage David pushed his way slowly after the tiny footprints.
He missed the exhilaration of the sunshine and air and excitement of the previous days. Somehow he felt this time was going to be a failure and he shrank from facing it; moreover, he thought of what he might have to tell Johanna and Barney afterward, around the fire. A moment before he had felt so rich in the feeling of Christmas. And now, was he going to find an unpleasant memory to take away from the good ones?
There was no sign of life about the little cottage on the foot-hill. The sleeping-porch was deserted, the windows were heavily curtained, the snow was piled up high and unbroken about the door; even the roadway beyond, which led down the other side to the village, was smooth and crusted, showing that no one had come or gone from the house since the last fall of snow.
“It looks awfully gloomy and deserted,” thought David. “The ‘lunger’ must have gone away or died!”
The last was a dreadfully dreary thought, and it almost turned David’s feet on the very threshold, in spite of the fairy’s trail. But the memory of the day before held him back. How nearly he had come to losing a bit of Christmas just because an old white-haired negro had looked at him suddenly through a window! He would mark himself as a quitter and a “’fraid-cat” for all time if he ever let such a thing happen again. And what would the boys on the block think of him?