“You two go on to Frenchman’s Spring, and I’ll stop right here,” he said. “When you git to the spring, give a holler and keep right on a-goin’ as fast as you like and I’ll try to catch you up this side the school.”
“You can’t do it, and you know you can’t,” said Molly. “Even Amos will git there ahead of you.”
“That’s as may be,” replied Young Dan, with dignity.
So the others left him and hastened forward; and he immediately sat down beside the road and fished out the book. He opened it at the title-page with fingers a-tremble with eagerness. He began to read, running a finger from word to word, from line to line. Here were people of types and callings unknown to him, moving in the streets of a city unguessed by him, talking in a way foreign to the Oxbow of things unheard of even by Uncle Bill; and yet he read in a fever of intensity, with moving lips and wrinkled brows. A faint shout of childish voices, touched with a note of derision, came back, but it failed to reach the ears of Young Dan, whose whole attention was fixed on the magic under his eye. He had intended to keep his agreement, but he had completely forgotten Molly and Amos; he turned page after page slowly and so at last came to the end of the first tale.
“Gee, but that feller was smart!” he whispered.
He glanced up, observed the sun and jumped to his feet. He was late for school that morning and accepted the reprimand of Miss Carten, the teacher, and the jeers of Molly and Amos without turning a hair. At the conclusion of the afternoon session he managed to get away by himself and read another story.
With the green-covered book safe in his bosom and the secret of it in his heart, a change came over Young Dan. Molly and Amos were the first to notice it, but they could make nothing of it.
One evening, within a week of the passing of the sportsman, he appeared at the supper-table when the other members of the family were already in their chairs. After eating pancakes for a minute or two in silence, he said, “You set the table to-night, hey, Lucy?”
Lucy, aged six, replied in the affirmative, with evident pride.
“And Molly fried the pancakes, because Ma was busy writin’ a letter to Gran’ma,” continued Young Dan.