That Fortune | Page 8

a little while," Phil went on to say.
"And you were away the whole afternoon. It is a pity the days are so
short. And you don't know what you lost."
"No great, I guess."
"Celia and her mother were here. They stayed all the afternoon."
"Celia Howard? Did she wonder where I was?"
"I don't know. She didn't say anything about it. What a dear little thing
she is!"
"And she can say pretty cutting things."
"Oh, can she? Perhaps you'd better run down to the village before dark
and take her these flowers."
"I'm not going. I'd rather you should have the flowers." And Phil spoke
the truth this time.
Celia, who was altogether too young to occupy seriously the mind of a
lad of twelve, had nevertheless gained an ascendancy over him because
of her willful, perverse, and sometimes scornful ways, and because she
was different from the other girls of the school. She had read many
more books than Phil, for she had access to a library, and she could tell

him much of a world that he only heard of through books and
newspapers, which latter he had no habit of reading. He liked, therefore,
to be with Celia, not withstanding her little airs of superiority, and if
she patronized him, as she certainly did, probably the simple-minded
young gentleman, who was unconsciously bred in the belief that he and
his own kin had no superiors anywhere, never noticed it. To be sure
they quarreled a good deal, but truth to say Phil was never more
fascinated with the little witch, whom he felt himself strong enough to
protect, than when she showed a pretty temper. He rather liked to be
ordered about by the little tyrant. And sometimes he wished that Murad
Ault, the big boy of the school, would be rude to the small damsel, so
that he could show her how a knight would act under such
circumstances. Murad Ault stood to Phil for the satanic element in his
peaceful world. He was not only big and strong of limb and broad of
chest, but he was very swarthy, and had closely curled black hair. He
feared nothing, not even the teacher, and was always doing some
dare-devil thing to frighten the children. And because he was dark,
morose, and made no friends, and wished none, but went solitary his
own dark way, Phil fancied that he must have Spanish blood in his
veins, and would no doubt grow up to be a pirate. No other boy in the
winter could skate like Murad Ault, with such strength and grace and
recklessness--thin ice and thick ice were all one to him, but he skated
along, dashing in and out, and sweeping away up and down the river in
a whirl of vigor and daring, like a black marauder. Yet he was best and
most awesome in the swimming pond in summer--though it was
believed that he dared go in in the bitter winter, either by breaking the
ice or through an air-hole, and there was a story that he had ventured
under the ice as fearless as a cold fish. No one could dive from such a
height as he, or stay so long under water; he liked to stay under long
enough to scare the spectators, and then appear at a distance, thrashing
about in the water as if he were rescuing himself from drowning,
sputtering out at the same time the most diabolical noises-- curses, no
doubt, for he had been heard to swear. But as he skated alone he swam
alone, appearing and disappearing at the swimming-place silently, with
never a salutation to any one. And he was as skillful a fisher as he was
a swimmer. No one knew much about him. He lived with his mother in
a little cabin up among the hills, that had about it scant patches of

potatoes and corn and beans, a garden fenced in by stumproots, as ill-
cared for as the shanty. Where they came from no one knew. How they
lived was a matter of conjecture, though the mother gathered herbs and
berries and bartered them at the village store, and Murad occasionally
took a hand in some neighbor's hay-field, or got a job of chopping
wood in the winter. The mother was old and small and withered, and
they said evil-eyed. Probably she was no more evil-eyed than any old
woman who had such a hard struggle for existence as she had. An old
widow with an only son who looked like a Spaniard and acted like an
imp! Here was another sort of exotic in the New England life.
Celia had been brought to Rivervale by her mother about a year before
this time, and the two occupied a