The Place Beyond the Winds | Page 5

as she might have
of a story, were the Travers of the Far Hill Place.
Now it might seem strange to more social minds that people from a
distant city could come summer after summer to the same spot and yet
remain unknown to their nearest neighbours; but Kenmore was not a
social community. It had all the reserve of its English heritage
combined with the suspicion of its Indian taint, and it took strangers
hard. Then, added to this, the Traverses aroused doubt, for no one,
especially Nathaniel Glenn, could account for a certain big,
heavy-browed man who shared the home life of the Hill Place without
any apparent right or position. For Mrs. Travers, Glenn had managed to
conjure up a very actual distrust. She was too good-looking and
free-acting to be sound; and her misshapen and delicate son was, so the
severe man concluded, a curse, in all probability, for past offences. The
youth of Kenmore was straight and hearty, unless--and here Nathaniel
recalled his superstitions--dire vengeance was wreaked on parents

through their offspring.
With no better reason than this, and with the stubbornness he mistook
for strength, Glenn would have nothing to do with his neighbours, four
miles back in the woods, and had forbidden the sale of milk and garden
stuff to them.
All this Priscilla had heard, as children do, but she had never seen any
member of the family from the Far Hill Place, and mentally relegated
them to the limbo of the damned under the classification of "them, from
the States." Their name, even, was rarely mentioned, and, while
curiosity often swayed her, temptation had never overruled obedience.
The McAlpins, with all their opportunity and qualifications, found little
about the strangers from which to make talk. The family were reserved,
and Tough Pine, the Indian guide they had impressed into summer
service, was either bought or, from natural inclination, kept himself to
himself.
So, until the summer when she was fourteen, Priscilla Glenn knew less
about the Far Hill people than she did about the inhabitants of heaven
and hell, with whom her father was upon such intimate and familiar
terms.
Once, when Priscilla was ten, something had occurred which prepared
her for following events. It was a bright morning and the McAlpin boat
stopped at the wharf of Lonely Farm. While old Jerry went to the
farmhouse with a package, Jerry-Jo remained on guard deeply
engrossed in a book he had extracted from a box beneath the seat. He
appeared not to notice Priscilla, who ran down the path to greet him in
friendly fashion.
The boy was about fifteen then, and all the bloods of his various
ancestors were warring in his veins. His mother had been a full-blooded
Indian from Wyland Island, had drawn her four dollars every year from
the English Government, and ruled her family with an iron hand; his
father was Scotch-Irish, hot-blooded and jovial; Jerry-Jo was a
composite result. Handsome, moody, with flashes of fun when not

crossed, a good comrade at times, an unforgiving enemy.
He liked Priscilla, but she was his inferior, by sex, and she sorely
needed discipline. He meant to keep her in her place, so he kept on
reading. Priscilla at length, however, attracted his attention.
"Hey-ho, Jerry-Jo!"
"Hullo!"
"Where did you get the book?"
"It's for him up yonder."
And with this Jerry-Jo stood up, turned and twisted his lithe body into
such a grotesque distortion that he was quite awful to look upon, and
left no doubt in the girl's mind as to whom he referred. He brought the
Far Hill people into focus, sharply and suddenly.
"He has miles of books," Jerry-Jo went on, "and a fiddle and pictures
and gewgaws. He plays devil tunes, and he's bewitched!"
This description made the vague boy of the woods real and vital for the
first time in Priscilla's life, and she shuddered. Then Jerry-Jo
generously offered to lend her one of the books until his father came
back, and Priscilla eagerly stepped from stone to stone until she could
reach the volume. Once she had obtained the prize she went back to the
garden and made herself comfortable, wholly forgetting Jerry-Jo and
the world at large.
It was the oddest book she had ever seen. The words were arranged in
charming little rows, and when you read them over and over they sang
themselves into your very heart. They told you, lilting along, of a road
that no one but you ever knew--a road that led in and out through
wonders of beauty and faded at the day's end into your heart's desire.
Your Heart's Desire!
And just then Jerry-Jo cried:

"Hey, there! you, Priscilla, come down with that book."
"Your Heart's Desire!" Priscilla's eyes were misty as she repeated the
words.