Home > Authors Index > Abbie Farwell Brown > John of the Woods > This page
John of the Woods, a fiction by Abbie Farwell Brown |
||
Chapter 9. The Animal Kingdom |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER IX. THE ANIMAL KINGDOM Presently Gigi and the dog came to a clearing in the forest. All about was as wild as anything they had passed. But here, quite alone, stood a little hut made of logs and branches twisted together. The first thing that Gigi saw, after the hut itself, was an old man in a coarse gray gown, sitting on a stump, reading a book. His head was bare, and he had a long white beard. His feet were bare, too, and he wore leather sandals. A rope was tied about his waist. Gigi had sometimes seen men so dressed plodding along the highroad or begging from the townsfolk. If he thought about them at all, he believed them to be some rival sort of performers, like the Tumblers themselves. It seemed very queer to see one of the Gray Men here in the lonely forest,--and with such strange companions! Gigi stared and stared again, rubbing his tired eyes to make sure that they saw aright. On the old man's knees was curled, asleep, a comfortable white cat. Three little kittens played with the knotted ends of his girdle, swarming up and down the gray gown of the reader. On his shoulder perched a squirrel, busily eating a nut which he held in his little paws. Close by, a brown and white deer grazed about the door of the little hut. A great black raven hopped gravely about the old man's feet, now and then picking up a bug. Lying peacefully asleep in front of the hut door, like a yellow mat of fur, a fox was stretched. In and out among the rose-bushes of a tiny garden which was planted beneath the window of the hut, hopped several brown hares, seeming much at home. The old man's head nodded forward on his book. He could sleep soundly, it seemed, with all these little live things swarming about him. Even as his gray locks swept the page, a thrush fluttered down and lighted gently on the bald crown, beginning to sing so sweetly that Gigi held his breath. All this the boy saw in that first glimpse before he and the dog parted the bushes and came out into the clearing. In that instant everything changed. The dog gave a sharp bark of pleasure. The old man let the book fall from his hand, and sat staring. The animals leaped from their slumbers and scuttled away in every direction, some into the hut, some into the neighboring bushes, some melting as if by magic into the forest. The squirrel and the thrush took shelter in the treetops. Only the raven, with ruffled feathers, remained at the old man's side, turning a fierce little eye upon the newcomer. By this time Gigi had thrown himself from the dog's back, and stood feebly leaning against a tree. Released from his burden, the dog bounded forward, and was soon leaping upon the old man's shoulders, covering his face and hands and feet with eager kisses. "Down, Brutus, down!" said the old man, in a tongue which Gigi could not understand. "Where hast thou been so long, good dog? And what new pet hast thou brought for my colony?" He looked towards Gigi with keen, kind eyes. "Come hither, my lad," he said in the same tongue. But Gigi only stared, not understanding. He was growing afraid of this queer old man, who spoke a strange language and had wild animals for his friends; who read, too, in a great black book! Gigi had heard of wicked wizards and sorcerers, and he believed that he saw one now. He turned about and tried to run away. But his poor head grew dizzy, and before he knew it he had fallen, and lay sobbing and shivering, unable to rise. Presently he felt the dog's gentle tongue licking his face. A moment after, kind, strong arms lifted him and bore him into the little hut. The old man laid Gigi on a cot beside the window, and after laying his hand on the boy's head and wrist, went away and returned with something in a cup. "Drink this, my child," he said. And this time Gigi understood. He drank and felt better. Then the old man asked him in the tongue which Gigi knew, "Are you hungry, lad?" The boy nodded, and his eyes must have told how nearly starved he was. The old man went swiftly to a little cupboard in the wall, and soon came back with bread and milk in an earthen bowl. "Eat," he said, lifting Gigi's head on his arm. "Eat this good bread, my son, and drink the warm milk of my friend the doe, which I had just set aside, not expecting you. Then you shall sleep here on my pallet. And soon we shall be right smiling and happy all!" The kind old eyes beamed on Gigi while he devoured his breakfast like a starved animal, without a word of thanks. When he had finished, the kind old hands brought water and bathed the tired body, bound up the bleeding hands and feet with refreshing ointment, and laid Gigi back again to rest upon the cot beside the rose-screened window. There Gigi lay and slept; slept and dreamed; dreamed and went over again by fits and starts the strange adventures of the past two days. But strangest of all, though by far the pleasantest, was that picture which he had seen when he came out into the clearing upon the back of Brutus. And this picture, with queer variations, filled the foreground of Gigi's dreaming. _ |
||