The bigger boy nodded self-importantly.

"Sure. We just shot 'em--the squirrels. Ben here trapped the rabbits."
He paused, manifestly waiting for the proper awed admiration to come
into David's face.

But in David's startled eyes there was no awed admiration, there was
only disbelieving horror.

"You mean, you SENT them to the far country?"

"We--what?"

"Sent them. Made them go yourselves--to the far country?"

The younger boy still stared. The older one grinned disagreeably.

"Sure," he answered with laconic indifference. "We sent 'em to the far
country, all right."

"But--how did you know they WANTED to go?"

"Wanted--Eh?" exploded the big boy. Then he grinned again, still more
disagreeably. "Well, you see, my dear, we didn't ask 'em," he gibed.

Real distress came into David's face.

"Then you don't know at all. And maybe they DIDn't want to go. And if
they didn't, how COULD they go singing, as father said? Father wasn't
sent. He WENT. And he went singing. He said he did. But these--How
would YOU like to have somebody come along and send YOU to the far
country, without even knowing if you wanted to go?"

There was no answer. The boys, with a growing fear in their eyes, as at
sight of something inexplicable and uncanny, were sidling away; and in
a moment they were hurrying down the hill, not, however, without a
backward glance or two, of something very like terror.

David, left alone, went on his way with troubled eyes and a thoughtful
frown.

David often wore, during those first few days at the Holly farmhouse, a
thoughtful face and a troubled frown. There were so many, many things
that were different from his mountain home. Over and over, as those
first long days passed, he read his letter until he knew it by
heart--and he had need to. Was he not already surrounded by things and
people that were strange to him?

And they were so very strange--these people! There were the boys and
men who rose at dawn--yet never paused to watch the sun flood the world
with light; who stayed in the fields all day--yet never raised their
eyes to the big fleecy clouds overhead; who knew birds only as thieves
after fruit and grain, and squirrels and rabbits only as creatures to
be trapped or shot. The women--they were even more incomprehensible.
They spent the long hours behind screened doors and windows, washing
the same dishes and sweeping the same floors day after day. They, too,
never raised their eyes to the