“Exciptin’ prisint company?” sweetly inquired Freckles.
“No!” growled Duncan. “Headin’ the list! He’d nae business to set a price on ye, lad, for that’s about the amount of it, an’ I’d nae right to tell ye. We’ve both done ye ill, an’ both meanin’ the verra best. Juist what I’m always sayin’ to Sarah.”
“I am mighty proud of what you have been telling me, Duncan,” said Freckles. “I need the warning, sure. For with the books coming I might be timpted to neglect me work when double watching is needed. Thank you more than I can say for putting me on to it. What you’ve told me may be the saving of me. I won’t stop for dinner now. I’ll be getting along the east line, and when I come around about three, maybe Mother Duncan will let me have a glass of milk and a bite of something.”
“Ye see now!” cried Duncan in disgust. “Ye’ll start on that seven-mile tramp with na bite to stay your stomach. What was it I told ye?”
“You told me that the Scotch had the hardest heads and the softest hearts of any people that’s living,” answered Freckles.
Duncan grunted in gratified disapproval.
Freckles picked up his club and started down the line, whistling cheerily, for he had an unusually long repertoire upon which to draw.
Duncan went straight to the lower camp, and calling McLean aside, repeated the conversation verbatim, ending: “And nae matter what happens now or ever, dinna ye dare let onythin’ make ye believe that Freckles hasna guarded faithful as ony man could.”
“I don’t think anything could shake my faith in the lad,” answered McLean.
Freckles was whistling merrily. He kept one eye religiously on the line. The other he divided between the path, his friends of the wire, and a search of the sky for his latest arrivals. Every day since their coming he had seen them, either hanging as small, black clouds above the swamp or bobbing over logs and trees with their queer, tilting walk. Whenever he could spare time, he entered the swamp and tried to make friends with them, for they were the tamest of all his unnumbered subjects. They ducked, dodged, and ambled around him, over logs and bushes, and not even a near approach would drive them to flight.
For two weeks he had found them circling over the Limberlost regularly, but one morning the female was missing and only the big black chicken hung sentinel above the swamp. His mate did not reappear in the following days, and Freckles grew very anxious. He spoke of it to Mrs. Duncan, and she quieted his fears by raising a delightful hope in their stead.
“Why, Freckles, if it’s the hen-bird ye are missing, it’s ten to one she’s safe,” she said. “She’s laid, and is setting, ye silly! Watch him and mark whaur he lichts. Then follow and find the nest. Some Sabbath we’ll all gang see it.”
Accepting this theory, Freckles began searching for the nest. Because these “chickens” were large, as the hawks, he looked among the treetops until he almost sprained the back of his neck. He had half the crow and hawk nests in the swamp located. He searched for this nest instead of collecting subjects for his case. He found the pair the middle of one forenoon on the elm where he had watched their lovemaking. The big black chicken was feeding his mate; so it was proved that they were a pair, they were both alive, and undoubtedly she was brooding. After that Freckles’ nest-hunting continued with renewed zeal, but as he had no idea where to look and Duncan could offer no helpful suggestion, the nest was no nearer to being found.
Coming from a long day on the trail, Freckles saw Duncan’s children awaiting him much closer the swale than they usually ventured, and from their wild gestures he knew that something had happened. He began to run, but the cry that reached him was: “The books have come!”
How they hurried! Freckles lifted the youngest to his shoulder, the second took his club and dinner pail, and when they reached Mrs. Duncan they found her at work on a big box. She had loosened the lid, and then she laughingly sat on it.
“Ye canna have a peep in here until ye have washed and eaten supper,” she said. “It’s all ready on the table. Ance ye begin on this, ye’ll no be willin’ to tak’ your nose o’ it till bedtime, and I willna get my work done the nicht. We’ve eaten long ago.”
It was difficult work, but Freckles smiled bravely. He made himself neat, swallowed a few bites, then came so eagerly that Mrs. Duncan yielded, although she said she very well knew all the time that his supper would be spoiled.
Lifting the lid, they removed the packing and found in that box books on birds, trees, flowers, moths, and butterflies. There was also one containing Freckles’ bullfrog, true to life. Besides these were a butterfly-net, a naturalist’s tin specimen-box, a bottle of cyanide, a box of cotton, a paper of long, steel specimen-pins, and a letter telling what all these things were and how to use them.
At the discovery of each new treasure, Freckles shouted: “Will you be looking at this, now?”
Mrs. Duncan cried: “Weel, I be drawed on!”
The eldest boy turned a somersault for every extra, while the baby, trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid. That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had
