the time
is come. But you wear the Cross, a blessed emblem. I shall call you
no more by that heathen Gypsy name. You shall bear the beloved
Christian name of John, to which perhaps you have as good a right as
any. Ah! I will not tell you more. I will wait until I see if you be
worthy indeed. If not--his son shall never know!"

All this Gigi did not understand. But he was happy to know that he
might stay. And he began his new life as one of the Hermit's animal
kingdom by hugging close old Brutus, his first four-footed friend, who
had brought him safely to this haven.

XI

THE PUPIL

_But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the
air and they shall tell thee_.--HOLY WRIT.

Gigi the Gypsy was now become John; no longer an outcast and a
wanderer, but a happy little Christian boy. Surely no child ever lived
so strange a life as he. Surely no boy ever had such queer playmates,
or studied in so wild a school.

First of all he had to become acquainted with his oddly-mixed family of
two-footed and four-footed brothers. Brutus was his friend from the
beginning. The great dog seemed to have adopted for his very own the
boy whom, led by some kindly angel, he had found that night in the
forest. But the other creatures were shy at first. They ran at the
sound of John's shrill boyish voice, and shrank from his quick
movements. They hid in the bushes when he came dashing and dancing
into the clearing after a romp with Brutus, and it would take some
patience to coax them back again.

John saw that this troubled the good old Hermit, whom he loved better
every day, and he tried to imitate his teacher's gentle voice and
manner and his soft tread. The little tumbler was himself light as a
feather, and graceful as the deer, his new-found sister. He was quick
to learn and naturally gentle, though his cruel life had made him
careless and rough. Soon he had made friends with all the Hermit's
pets, so that they knew and loved him almost as well as they did the
master of this forest-school.

In his green doublet and hose, clumsily patched with pieces of gray
serge from the Hermit's own cloak, John rambled about the wild woods,
looking like one of the fairy-folk of whom legends tell. Often he went
with the wise old man, who gave him lessons of the forest which he knew
so well. John learned to steal on tiptoe and surprise the ways of the
wood-folk,--the shy birds and the shyer little