The Place Beyond the Winds | Page 9

was on sacred ground. I just
happened here, you see, and I could not help the laugh; it was the only
compliment I could pay for anything so lovely--so utterly lovely."
Priscilla melted at once and fear fled. Not for an instant did she connect
this handsome fellow with the crooked wrongdoer of the Hill Place.
Jerry-Jo's long-ago description had been too vivid to be forgotten, and
this stranger was one to charm and win confidence.
"Will you--oh! please do--let me play for you? You dance like a nymph.
Do you know what a nymph is?"
Priscilla shook her head.
"Well, it's the only thing that can dance like you; the only thing that

should ever be allowed to dance in the woods. Come, now, listen sharp,
and as I play, keep step."
Leaning against a strong young hemlock, Dick Travers placed his
fiddle and struck into a giddy, tuneful thing as picturesque as the time
and occasion. With head bent to one side and eyes and lips smiling,
Priscilla listened until something within her caught and responded to
the tripping notes. At first she went cautiously, feeling her way after the
enchanted music, then she gained courage, and the very heart of her
danced and trembled in accord.
"Fine! fine! Now--slower; see it's the nymph stepping this way and that!
Forward, so! Now!"
And then, exhausted and laughing madly, Priscilla sank down upon a
rock near the musician, who, seeing her worn and panting, played on,
without a word, a sweet, sad strain that brought tears to the listener's
eyes--tears of absolute enjoyment and content. She had never heard
music before in all her bleak, colourless life, and Dick Travers was no
mean artist, in his way.
"And now," he said presently, sitting down a few feet from her, "just
tell me who you are and what in the world prompts you to worship, so
adorably, that hideous brute over there?"
Between fourteen and twenty lies a chasm of age and experience that
ensures patronage to one and dependence to the other. Travers felt aged
and protecting, but Priscilla grew impish and perverse; besides, she
always intuitively shielded her real self until she capitulated entirely.
This was a new play, a new comrade, but she must be cautious.
"I--I have no name--he made me!" She nodded toward the grinning
skull. "On bright sunny afternoons in spring, when flowers and green
things are beginning to live, he lets me dance, once in a great while, so
that I can keep alive!"
Priscilla, with this, gave such a beaming and mischievous smile that
Travers was bewitched.

"You----" But he did not put his thought into words; he merely gave
smile for smile, and asked:
"Did he teach you to dance?"
"No. The dance is--is me! That's why he likes me. He's so dead that he
likes to see something that is alive."
"The whole world would adore you could it see you as I just have!"
Then Travers, with the artist's eye, wondered how dark hair could
possibly hold such golden tints, and how such a dark face could make
lovely the blue, richly lashed eyes. He knew she must be from Lonely
Farm--Jerry-Jo used to speak of her; lately he had said nothing, to be
sure, but this certainly must be the child who had once cried over a
book of his. Poor, little, temperamental beggar!
"Come up and deliver!" Travers gave a laugh. "I'm Robin Hood and I
want you to explain yourself. Why do you bow down before that brazen
and evil-looking brute?"
Priscilla hugged her knees in her clasped hands, and said, on the
defence:
"He's the only god that answered my prayer. I tried father's God and--it
didn't work! Then I fixed up this one, and--it did!"
"What was it you wanted?"
"I wanted to learn things! I wanted to go to school. I prayed to have
father's heart softened, but it stayed--rocky. Then I began to worship
this"--the right hand waved toward the bleached and grinning
skull--"and my wish came true. I told the schoolmaster. Do you know
Mr. Anton Farwell?"
"I've heard of him."
"I told him I wanted to learn, and after he got through laughing he said
he'd been sent by my god to teach me all I wanted to know; but of

course he can't do that!"
"Do what?" Travers was fascinated by the child's naïvety.
"Teach me all I want to know. Why, I'm going to suffer and know
many things!"
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Travers; "you won't mind if I laugh?"
"I don't think there's anything to laugh at!" Priscilla held him sternly.
"Have you ever suffered?"
The laugh died from Travers's face.
"Suffered!" he repeated. "Yes! yes!"
"Well, doesn't it pay--when you get what you want and know things?"
"Why, see here,