umph! Well, I--That will do, boy. No impertinence, you understand!"
And he had turned away in very obvious anger.

David, with a puzzled sorrow in his heart had started alone then, on
his walk.

CHAPTER VII

"YOU'RE WANTED--YOU'RE WANTED!"

It was Saturday night, and the end of David's third day at the
farmhouse. Upstairs, in the hot little room over the kitchen, the boy
knelt at the window and tried to find a breath of cool air from the
hills. Downstairs on the porch Simeon Holly and his wife discussed the
events of the past few days, and talked of what should be done with
David.

"But what shall we do with him?" moaned Mrs. Holly at last, breaking a
long silence that had fallen between them. "What can we do with him?
Doesn't anybody want him?"

"No, of course, nobody wants him," retorted her husband relentlessly.

And at the words a small figure in a yellow-white nightshirt stopped
short. David, violin in hand, had fled from the little hot room, and
stood now just inside the kitchen door.

"Who can want a child that has been brought up in that heathenish
fashion?" continued Simeon Holly. "According to his own story, even his
father did nothing but play the fiddle and tramp through the woods day
in and day out, with an occasional trip to the mountain village to get
food and clothing when they had absolutely nothing to eat and wear. Of
course nobody wants him!"

David, at the kitchen door, caught his breath chokingly. Then he sped
across the floor to the back hall, and on through the long sheds to the
hayloft in the barn--the place where his father seemed always nearest.

David was frightened and heartsick. NOBODY WANTED HIM. He had heard it
with his own ears, so there was no mistake. What now about all those
long days and nights ahead before he might go, violin in hand, to meet
his father in that far-away country? How was he to live those days and
nights if nobody wanted him? How was his violin to speak in a voice
that was true and pure and full, and tell of the beautiful world, as
his father had said that it must do? David quite cried aloud at the
thought. Then he thought of something else that his father had said:
"Remember this, my boy,--in your violin lie all the things you long
for. You have only to play, and the broad skies of your mountain home
will be over you, and the dear friends and comrades of your mountain
forests will be all about you." With a quick cry David raised his
violin and drew t