“O David!” and this time with emphatic pressure on his arm, “David, come home. I can’t let you go off alone.”
“Come with me, then. You’re well blanketed, 100 I see. I’d much rather have some one with me, only Ezra was tired and sleepy.”
He said this with so much of his accustomed manner that Mrs. Bushnell put her hand within his arm and went on, quite content now, and willing that he should speak when it pleased him to do so, and it pleased him very soon.
“Little mother,” he said, “I am afraid you are losing faith in me.”
“Never! David; only—I was a little afraid that you were losing your own head, or faith in yourself.”
“No; but I am afraid I’ve lost my faith in something else. I showed you the two bits of fox-fire that were crossed on one end of the needle in the compass, and the one bit made fast to the other? Well, to-day, when I went to the bottom of the river, the fox-fire gave no light, and the compass was useless. Can you understand how bad that would be under an enemy’s ship, not to know in which direction to navigate?”
“You must have fresh fire, then.”
“That is just what I am out for to-night. I had to wait till the moon was gone.”
“Oh! is that all? How foolish I have been! but you ought to tell me some things, sometimes, David.”
“And so I will. I tell you now that it will be well for you to go home and go to sleep. I may have to go deep into the woods to find the fire I want.”