ated Simeon Holly, with uncordial
accent.

But his wife, hovering in the background, hastened forward at once.

"Oh, yes; yes, indeed," she urged. "I'm sure he--he won't be a mite of
trouble, Simeon."

"Perhaps not," conceded Simeon Holly darkly. "Neither, it is safe to
say, will he be anything else--worth anything."

"That's it exactly," spoke up Streeter, from his seat in the wagon. "If
I thought he'd be worth his salt, now, I'd take him myself; but--well,
look at him this minute," he finished, with a disdainful shrug.

David, on the lowest step, was very evidently not hearing a word of
what was being said. With his sensitive face illumined, he was again
poring over his father's letter.

Something in the sudden quiet cut through his absorption as the noisy
hum of voices had not been able to do, and he raised his head. His eyes
were starlike.

"I'm so glad father told me what to do," he breathed. "It'll be easier
now."

Receiving no answer from the somewhat awkwardly silent men, he went on,
as if in explanation:--

"You know he's waiting for me--in the far country, I mean. He said he
was. And when you've got somebody waiting, you don't mind staying
behind yourself for a little while. Besides, I've GOT to stay to find
out about the beautiful world, you know, so I can tell him, when _I_
go. That's the way I used to do back home on the mountain, you
see,--tell him about things. Lots of days we'd go to walk; then, when
we got home, he'd have me tell him, with my violin, what I'd seen. And
now he says I'm to stay here."

"Here!" It was the quick, stern voice of Simeon Holly.

"Yes," nodded David earnestly; "to learn about the beautiful world.
Don't you remember? And he said I was not to want to go back to my
mountains; that I would not need to, anyway, because the mountains, and
the sky, and the birds and squirrels and brooks are really in my
violin, you know. And--" But with an angry frown Simeon Holly stalked
away, motioning Larson to follow him; and with a merry glance and a low
chuckle Higgins turned his horse about and drove from the yard. A
moment later David found himself alone with Mrs. Holly, who was looking
at him with wistful, though slightly fearful eyes.

"Did you have all the breakfast you wanted?" she asked timidly,
resorting, as she had resorted the night before, to the everyday things
of her world in the hope that they might make this strange little boy
seem less wild, and more nearly human