right,” said Harry.
The lad blew out his candle, but he went to his window instead of his bed. The moonlight was brilliant – among the trees and on the sleeping flowers and the slow run of the broad river, and it was very still out there and very lovely, but he had no wish to be out there. With wind and storm and sun, moon and stars, he had lived face to face all his life, but here they were not the same. Trees, flowers, house, people had reared some wall between him and them, and they seemed now to be very far away. Everybody had been kind to him – all but Hugh. Veiled hostility he had never known before and he could not understand. Everybody had surely been kind, and yet – he turned to his bed, and all night his brain was flashing to and fro between the reel of vivid pictures etched on it in a day and the grim background that had hitherto been his life beyond the hills.
VI
From pioneer habit he awoke before dawn, and for a moment the softness where he lay puzzled him. There was no sound of anybody stirring and he thought he must have waked up in the middle of the night, but he could smell the dawn and he started to spring up. But there was nothing to be done, nothing that he could do. He felt hot and stuffy, though Harry had put up his windows, and he could not lie there wide awake. He could not go out in the heavy dew in the gay clothes and fragile shoes he had taken off, so he slid into his own buckskin clothes and moccasins and out the still open front door and down the path toward the river. Instinctively he had picked up his rifle, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn. Up the river to the right he could faintly see dark woods, and he made toward and plunged into them with his eyes on the ground for signs of game, but he saw tracks only of coon and skunk and fox, and he grunted his disgust and loped ahead for half an hour farther into the heart of the woods. An hour later he loped back on his own tracks. The cabins were awake now, and every pickaninny who saw him showed the whites of his eyes in terror and fled back into his house. He came noiselessly behind a negro woman at the kitchen-door and threw three squirrels on the steps before her. She turned, saw him, and gave a shriek, but recovered herself and picked them up. Her amazement grew as she looked them over, for there was no sign of a bullet-wound, and she went in to tell how the Injun boy must naturally just “charm ’em right out o’ de trees.”
At the front door Harry hailed him and Barbara came running out.
“I forgot to get you another suit of clothes last night,” he said, “and we were scared this morning. We thought you had left us, and Barbara there nearly cried.” Barbara blushed now and did not deny.
“Come to breakfast!” she cried.
“Did you find anything to shoot?” Harry asked.
“Nothin’ but some squirrels,” said the lad.
Colonel Dale soon came in.
“You’ve got the servants mystified,” he said laughingly. “They think you’re a witch. How did you kill those squirrels?”
“I couldn’t see their heads – so I barked ’em.”
“Barked?”
“I shot between the bark and the limb right under the squirrel, an’ the shock kills ’em. Uncle Dan’l Boone showed me how to do that.”
“Daniel Boone!” breathed Harry. “Do you know Daniel Boone?”
“Shucks, Dave can beat him shootin’.”
And then Hugh came in, pale of face and looking rather ashamed. He went straight to the Kentuckian.
“I was rude to you last night and I owe you an apology.”
He thrust out his hand and awkwardly the boy rose and took it.
“And you’ll forgive me, too, Barbara?”
“Of course I will,” she said happily, but holding up one finger of warning – should he ever do it again. The rest of the guests trooped in now, and some were going out on horseback, some for a sail, and some visiting up the river in a barge, and all were paired off, even Harry.
“I’m going to drive Cousin Erskine over the place with my ponies,” said Barbara, “and – ”
“I’m going back to bed,” interrupted Hugh, “or read a little Latin and Greek with Mr. Brockton.” There was impudence as well as humor in this, for the tutor had given up Hugh in despair long ago.
Barbara shook her head.
“You are going with us,” she said.
“I want Hugh to ride with me,” said Colonel Dale, “and give Firefly a little exercise. Nobody else can ride him.”
The Kentucky boy turned a challenging eye, as did every young man at the table, and Hugh felt very comfortable. While every one was getting ready, Harry brought out two foils and two masks on the porch a little later.
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