A Daughter of the Forest. Raymond Evelyn
regular visiting time.”
The room assigned to Adrian excited his fresh surprise; though he assured himself that he would be amazed at nothing further, when he saw lying upon a table in the middle of the floor, two complete suits of clothing, apparently placed there by the thoughtful host for his guest to use. They were not of the latest style, but perfectly new and bore the stamp of a well-known tailor of his own city.
“Where did he get them, and so soon? What a mammoth of a house it is, though built of logs. And isn’t it the most fitting and beautiful of houses, after all? Whence came those comfortable chairs? and the books? Most of all, where and how did he get that wonderful picture over that magnificent log mantel? It looks like a room made ready for the unexpected coming of some prodigal son! I’m that, sure enough; but not of this household. If I were – well, maybe – Oh! hum!”
The lad crossed the floor and gazed reverently at the solitary painting which the room contained. A marvelously lifelike head of the Man of Sorrows, bending forward and gazing upon the onlooker with eyes of infinite tenderness and appealing. Beneath it ran the inscription: “Come Unto Me”; and in one corner was the artist’s signature – a broken pine branch.
“Whew! I wonder if that fellow ran away from home because he loved a brush and paint tube! What sort of a spot have I strayed into, anyway? A paradise? Hmm. I wish the mater could see me now. She’d not be so unhappy over her unworthy son, maybe. Bless her, anyhow. If everybody had been like her – ”
He finished his soliloquy before an open window, through which he could see the summit of the bare mountain that crowned the centre of the island, and was itself crowned by a single pine-tree. Though many of its branches had been lopped away, enough were left to form a sort of spiral stairway up its straight trunk and to its lofty top.
“What a magnificent flagstaff that would make! I’d like to see Old Glory floating there. Believe I’ll suggest it to the magician – that’s what this woodlander is – and doubtless he’ll attend to that little matter! Shades of Aladdin!”
Adrian was so startled that he dropped into a chair, the better to sustain himself against further Arabian-nights-like discoveries.
It was a flagstaff! Somebody was climbing it – Margot! Up, up, like a squirrel, her blond head appearing first on one side then the other, a glowing budget strapped to her back.
Adrian gasped. No sailor could have been more fleet or sure-footed. It seemed but a moment before that slender figure had scaled the topmost branch and was unrolling the brilliant burden it had borne. The stars and stripes, of course. Adrian would have been bitterly disappointed if it had been anything else this agile maiden hoisted from that dizzy height.
In wild excitement and admiration the watcher leaned out of his window and shouted hoarsely:
“Hurrah! H-u-r-rah! H-u-r – !”
The cheer died in his throat. Something had happened. Something too awful to contemplate. Adrian’s eyes closed that he might not see. Had her foot slipped? Had his own cry reached and startled her?
For she was falling – falling! and the end could be but one.
CHAPTER VI
A ONE-SIDED STORY
Adrian was not a gymnast though he had seen and admired many wonderful feats performed by his own classmates. But he had never beheld a miracle, and such he believed had been accomplished when, upon reaching the foot of that terrible tree, he found Margot sitting beneath it, pale and shaken, but, apparently, unhurt.
She had heard his breathless crashing up the slope and greeted him with a smile, and the tremulous question:
“How did you know where I was?”
“You aren’t – dead?”
“Certainly not. I might have been, though, but God took care.”
“Was it my cheers frightened you?”
“Was it you, then? I heard something, different from the wood sounds, and I looked quick to see. Then my foot slipped and I went down – a way. I caught a branch just in time and, please, don’t tell uncle. I’d rather do that myself.”
“You should never do such a thing. The idea of a girl climbing trees at all, least of any, such a tree as that!”
He threw his head back and looked upward, through the green spiral to the brilliant sky. The enormous height revived the horror he had felt as he leaped through the window and rushed to the mountain.
“Who planned such a death-trap as that, anyway?”
“I did.”
“You! A girl!”
“Yes. Why not. It’s great fun, usually.”
“You’d better have been learning to sew.”
“I can sew, but I don’t like it. Angelique does that. I do like climbing and canoeing and botanizing, and geologizing, and astronomizing, and – ”
Adrian threw up his hands in protest.
“What sort of creature are you, anyway?”
“Just plain girl.”
“Anything but that!”
“Well, girl, without the adjective. Suits me rather better;” and she laughed in a way that proved she was not suffering from her mishap.
“This is the strangest place I ever saw. You are the strangest family. We are certainly in the backwoods of Maine, yet you might be a Holyoke senior, or a circus star, or – a fairy.”
Margot stretched her long arms and looked at them quizzically.
“Fairies don’t grow so big. Why don’t you sit down? Or, if you will, climb up and look toward the narrows on the north. See if Pierre’s birch is coming yet.”
Again Adrian glanced upward, to the flag floating there, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Excuse me, please. That is, I suppose I could do it, only seeing you slip – I prefer to wait awhile.”
“Are you afraid?”
There was no sarcasm in the question. She asked it in all sincerity. Adrian was different from Pierre, the only other boy she knew, and she simply wondered if tree-climbing were among his unknown accomplishments.
It had been, to the extent possible with his city training and his brief summer vacations, though unpracticed of late; but no lad of spirit, least of all impetuous Adrian, could bear even the suggestion of cowardice. He did not sit down, as she had bidden, but tossed aside his rough jacket and leaped to the lower branch of the pine.
“Why, it’s easy! It’s grand!” he called back and went up swiftly enough.
Indeed, it was not so difficult as it appeared from a distance. Wherever the branches failed the spiral ladder had been perfected by great spikes driven into the trunk and he had but to clasp these in turn to make a safe ascent. At the top he waved his hand, then shaded his eyes and peered northward.
“He’s coming! Somebody’s coming!” he shouted. “There’s a little boat pushing off from that other shore.”
Then he descended with a rapidity that delighted even himself and called a bit of praise from Margot.
“I’m so glad you can climb. One can see so much more from the tree-tops; and, oh! there is so much, so much to find out all the time! Isn’t there?”
“Yes. Decidedly. One of the things I’d like to find out first is who you are and how you came here. If you’re willing.”
Then he added, rather hastily: “Of course, I don’t want to be impertinently curious. It only seems so strange to find such educated people buried here in the north woods. I don’t see how you live here. I – I – ”
But the more he tried to explain the more confused he grew, and Margot merrily simplified matters by declaring:
“You are curious, all the same, and so am I. Let’s tell each other all