.

"Oh, yes, thank you." David's eyes had strayed back to the note in his
hand. Suddenly he looked up, a new something in his eyes. "What is it
to be a--a tramp?" he asked. "Those men said daddy and I were tramps."

"A tramp? Oh--er--why, just a--a tramp," stammered Mrs. Holly. "But
never mind that, David. I--I wouldn't think any more about it."

"But what is a tramp?" persisted David, a smouldering fire beginning to
show in his eyes. "Because if they meant THIEVES--"

"No, no, David," interrupted Mrs. Holly soothingly. "They never meant
thieves at all."

"Then, what is it to be a tramp?"

"Why, it's just to--to tramp," explained Mrs. Holly desperately;--"walk
along the road from one town to another, and--and not live in a house
at all."

"Oh!" David's face cleared. "That's all right, then. I'd love to be a
tramp, and so'd father. And we were tramps, sometimes, too, 'cause lots
of times, in the summer, we didn't stay in the cabin hardly any--just
lived out of doors all day and all night. Why, I never knew really what
the pine trees were saying till I heard them at night, lying under
them. You know what I mean. You've heard them, haven't you?"

"At night? Pine trees?" stammered Mrs. Holly helplessly.

"Yes. Oh, haven't you ever heard them at night?" cried the boy, in his
voice a very genuine sympathy as for a grievous loss. "Why, then, if
you've only heard them daytimes, you don't know a bit what pine trees
really are. But I can tell you. Listen! This is what they say,"
finished the boy, whipping his violin from its case, and, after a swift
testing of the strings, plunging into a weird, haunting little melody.

In the doorway, Mrs. Holly, bewildered, yet bewitched, stood
motionless, her eyes half-fearfully, half-longingly fixed on David's
glorified face. She was still in the same position when Simeon Holly
came around the corner of the house.

"Well, Ellen," he began, with quiet scorn, after a moment's stern
watching of the scene before him, "have you nothing better to do this
morning than to listen to this minstrel fellow?"

"Oh, Simeon! Why, yes, of course. I--I forgot--what I was doing,"
faltered Mrs. Holly, flushing guiltily from neck to brow as she turned
and hurried into the house.

David, on the porch steps, seemed to have heard nothing. He was still
playing, his rapt gaze on the distant sky-line, when Simeon Holly
turned upon him with disapproving eyes.

"See here, boy, can't you do anything but