Little Peter, A Christmas Morality for Children of any Age

The pine forest is a wonderful place. The pine-trees stand in ranks like the soldiers of some vast army, side by side, mile after mile, in companies and regiments and battalions, all clothed in a sober uniform of green and grey. But they are unlike soldiers in this, that they are of all ages and sizes; some so small that the rabbits easily jump over them in their play, and some so tall and stately that the fall of them is like the falling of a high tower. And the pine-trees are put to many different uses. They are made into masts for the gallant ships that sail out and away to distant ports across the great ocean. Others are sawn into planks, and used for the building of sheds; for the rafters and flooring, and clap-boards and woodwork of our houses; for railway-sleepers, and scaffoldings, and hoardings. Others are polished and fashioned into articles of furniture. Turpentine comes from them, which the artist uses with his colours, and the doctor in his medicines; which is used, too, in the cleaning of stuffs and in a hundred different ways. While the pine-cones, and broken branches and waste wood, make bright crackling fires by which to warm ourselves on a winter's day.

But there is something more than just this I should like you to think about in connection with the pine forest; for it, like everything else that is fair and noble in nature, has a strange and precious secret of its own.

You may learn the many uses of the trees in your school books, when men have cut them down or grubbed them up, or poked holes in their poor sides to let the turpentine run out. But you can only learn the secret of the forest itself by listening humbly and reverently for it to speak to you. For Nature is a very great lady, grander and more magnificent than all the queens who have lived in sumptuous palaces and reigned over famous kingdoms since the world began; and though she will be very kind and gracious to children who come and ask her questions modestly and prettily, and will show them the most lovely sights and tell them the most delicious fairy tales that ever were seen or heard, she makes very short work with conceited and impudent persons. She covers their eyes and stops their ears, so that they can never see her wonderful treasures or hear her charming stories, but live, all their lives long, shut up in the dark fusty cupboard of their own ignorance, and stupid self-love, and self-satisfaction, thinking they know all about everything as well as if they had made it themselves, when they do not really know anything at all. And because you and I dislike fusty cupboards, and because we want to know anything and everything that Nature is condescending enough to teach us, we will listen, to begin with, to what the pine forest has to tell.

When the rough winds are up and at play, and the pine-trees shout and sing together in a mighty chorus, while the hoarse voice of them is like the roar of the sea upon a rocky coast, then you may learn the secret of the forest. It sings first of the winged seed; and then of the birth of the tiny tree; of sunrise and sunset, and the tranquil warmth of noon-day, and of the soft, refreshing rain, and the kindly, nourishing earth, and of the white moonlight, and pale, moist garments of the mist, all helping the tree to grow up tall and straight, to strike root deep and spread wide its green branches. It sings, too, of the biting frost, and the still, dumb snow, and the hurrying storm, all trying and testing the tree, to prove if it can stand firm and show a brave face in time of danger and trouble. Then it sings of the happy spring-time, when the forest is girdled about with a band of flowers; while the birds build and call to each other among the high branches; and the squirrel helps his wife to make her snug nest for the little, brown squirrel-babies that are to be; and the dormice wake up from their long winter sleep, and sit in the sunshine and comb their whiskers with their dainty, little paws. And then the forest sings of man—how he comes with axe and saw, and hammer and iron wedges, and lays low the tallest of its children, and binds them with ropes and chains, and hauls them away to be his bond-servants and slaves. And, last of all, it sings slowly and very gently of old age and decay and death; of the seed that falls on hard, dry places and never springs up; of the tree that is broken by the tempest or scathed by the lightning flash, and stands bare and barren and unsightly; sings how, in the end, all things shrink and crumble, and how the dust of them returns and is mingled with the fruitful soil from which at first they came.

This is the song of the pine forest, and from it you may learn this lesson: that the life of the tree and of beast and bird are subject to the same three great laws as the life of man—the law of growth, of obedience, and of self-sacrifice. And perhaps, when you are older, if you take care to avoid that spirit of conceit and impudence which, as we have already said, gets people into such trouble with Nature, you may come to see that these three laws are after all but one, bound for ever together by the golden cord of love.

Once upon a time, just on the edge of the pine forest, there lived a little boy. He lived in a big, brown, wooden house, with overhanging eaves and a very deep roof to it, which swept down from the high middle gable like the wings of a hen covering her chickens. The wood-sheds, and hay-barn, and the stable where the brown-eyed, sweet-breathed cows lay at night, and the clean, cool dairy, and the cheese-room with its heavy presses were all under this same wide sheltering roof. Before the house a meadow of rich grass stretched down to a stream, that hurried along over rocky limestone ledges, or slipped away over flat sandy places where you might see the little fishes playing at hide-and-seek or puss in the corner among the bright pebbles at the bottom. While on the shallow, marshy puddles by the stream side, where the forget-me-not and brook-lime and rushes grow, the water-spiders would dance quadrilles and jigs and reels all day long in the sunshine, and the frogs would croak by hundreds in the still spring evenings, when the sunset was red behind the pine-trees to the west. And in this pleasant place little Peter lived, as I say, once upon a time, with his father and mother, and his two brothers, and Eliza the servant-maid, and Gustavus the cowherd.

He was the youngest of the children by a number of years, and was such a small fellow that Susan Lepage, his mother, could make him quite a smart blouse and pair of trousers out of Antony's cast-off garments, even when all the patches and thin places had been cut out. He had a black, curly head, and very round eyes—for many things surprised him, and surprise makes the eyes grow round as everybody knows—and a dear, little, red mouth, that was sweet to kiss, and nice, fat cheeks, which began to look rather cold and blue, by the way, as he stood on the threshold one evening about Christmas time, with Cincinnatus, the old, tabby tom-cat, under his arm. He was waiting for his brother Antony to come home from the neighbouring market-town of Nullepart. It was growing dusk, yet the sky was very clear. The sound of the wind in the pine branches and of the chattering stream was strange in the frosty evening air; so that little Peter felt rather creepy, as the saying is, and held on very tight to Cincinnatus for fear of—he didn't quite know what.

'Come in, little man, come in,' cried his mother, as she moved to and fro in the ruddy firelight, helping Eliza to get ready the supper. 'You will be frozen standing there outside; and we shall be frozen, too, sitting here with the door open. Antony will get home none the quicker for your watching. That which is looked for hardest, they say, comes last.'

But Peter only hugged Cincinnatus a little closer—thereby making that long-suffering animal kick spasmodically with his hind legs, as a rabbit does when you hold it up by the ears—and looked more earnestly than ever down the forest path into the dimness of the pines.

Just then John Paqualin, the charcoal-burner, came up to the open door, with a couple of empty sacks across his shoulders. Now the charcoal-burner was a great friend of little Peter's, though he was a queer figure to look at. For his red hair hung in wild locks down over his shoulders, and his eyes glowed red too—as red as his own smouldering charcoal fires—and his back was bent and crooked; while his legs were so inordinately long and thin, that all the naughty little boys in Nullepart, when he went down there to sell his sacks of charcoal, used to run after him up the street, shouting:—

'Hurrah, hurrah! here's the grasshopper man again! Hey, ho! grasshopper, give us a tune—haven't you brought your fiddle?'

But when Paqualin got annoyed, as he sometimes did, and turned round upon them with his glowing eyes, they would all scuttle away as hard as their legs could carry them. For, like a good many other people, they were particularly courageous when they could only see the enemy's back. You may be sure our little Peter never called the charcoal-burner by any offensive names, and therefore, having a good conscience, had no cause to be afraid of him.

'Eh! but what is this?' he cried, in his high cracked voice as he flung down the sacks, and stood by the little lad in the doorway. 'Remember my ears are so quick I can hear the grass grow. Just now I heard the best mother in the world call her little boy to go indoors, and here he stands still on the threshold. If you do not go in do you know what will happen, eh?'

'No; what will happen? Please tell me,' said Peter.

'WHAT WILL HAPPEN? PLEASE TELL ME.'

Page 10.

The charcoal-burner stretched out one long arm and pointed away into the forest, and sunk his voice to a whisper:—

'The old, grey she-wolf will assuredly come pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat over the moss and the stones, pit-a-pat over the pine-needles and the fallen twigs and branches, pit-a-pat out of the wood, and—snap!—like that, catch your poor Cincinnatus by the tail and carry him off to make into soup for her little ones. Picture to yourself poor Cincinnatus in the wolf's great, black, steaming soup-pot, and all the wolf-cubs with their wicked, little mouths wide open, sitting round, with their wooden spoons in their hands, all ready to begin.'

Peter retreated hastily into the kitchen, cat and all, and took up his stand rather close to his mother.

'Is it true, mother?' he said. 'But where do the wolves buy their wooden spoons, do you think—in the shop at Nullepart?'

'Nay, how should I know?' said Susan Lepage, as she stooped down and kissed the child, and then looking up kindly nodded to the charcoal-burner. 'You must ask the old she-wolf herself if you want to know where she buys her spoons, and her soup pot too for that matter. She is no friend of mine, little one.'

After a moment's pause, she added:—

'You will stay to supper, John Paqualin? My husband and sons will be in soon, and there is plenty for all, thank God. You will be welcome.'

But Paqualin shook his head, and the light died away in those strange eyes of his.

'Welcome?' he said. 'The pretty, false word has little meaning for me. And yet perhaps in your mouth it is honest, Susan Lepage, for you are gentle and merciful as a saint in heaven, and the child, here, takes after you. But, for the rest, who welcomes a mad, mis-shapen, half-finished creature on whom Nature herself has had no mercy? Master Lepage will come in hungry. Will he like to have his stomach turned by the sight of the hump-backed charcoal-burner? No, no, I go home to my hut. Good-night, little Peter. I will tell the grey wolf to look elsewhere for her supper.—Ah! I see wonderful things though sometimes, for all that I live alone and in squalor. The red fire and the white moon tell me stories, turn by turn, all the night through.'

And with that he swung the empty sacks across his back again and shambled away into the growing darkness.

'A good riddance,' muttered Eliza, as she set the cheese on the table. 'It is an absolute indignity to ask a respectable servant to wait at table on a wild animal like that.'

But Susan Lepage sighed as she turned from the doorway.

'Poor, unhappy one,' she said. 'God gave thee thy fair soul, but who gave thee thy ungainly body?'

Then she reproved Eliza for her conduct in various matters which had nothing in the world to do with her remarks upon the charcoal-burner. Even the best of women are not always quite logical.

Meanwhile little Peter had sat down on his stool by the fire. For a little while he sat very still, for he was thinking over the visit of his friend John Paqualin. He felt rather unhappy about him, he could not quite have said why. But when we are children it is not easy to think of any one person or one thing for long together. There are such lots of things to think about, that one chases another out of our heads very quickly. And so Peter soon gave up puzzling himself about the charcoal-burner, and began counting the sparks as they flew out of the blazing, crackling, pine logs up the wide chimney. Unfortunately, however, he was not a great arithmetician; and though he began over and over again at plain one, two, three, he always got wrong among the fifteens and sixteens; and never succeeded in counting up to twenty at all. Nothing is more tedious than making frequent mistakes. So he got off his stool, and began hopping from one stone quarry in the kitchen floor to the next. Suddenly he became entangled in Eliza's full petticoats—she was whirling them about a good deal, it is true, being in rather a bad temper—and nearly tumbled down on his poor, little nose.

'Bless the child, what possesses him?' cried Eliza.

Peter retired to his stool again, in a hurry; and after thinking for a minute pulled a long bit of string, with a cross-bar of stick at the end of it, out of the bulging side pocket of his short trousers, and drew it backwards and forwards, and bobbed it up and down just in front of Cincinnatus' nose. But Cincinnatus would not play.

Cincinnatus sat up very stiff and straight, with all his four paws in a row and his tail curled very tight over them, blinking his yellow eyes at the fire. For Cincinnatus was offended! Even cats have feelings. And on thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that he had not been treated with sufficient respect.

'Soup-pots and wooden spoons—fiddledee-dee,' he said to himself in the cat-language. 'Why pervert a child's mind with such inane fictions?'

For you see Cincinnatus was not a common cat; being first cousin once removed, indeed, to the Sacristan's cat at Nullepart—who knew all the feast and fast days in the church calendar as well as the Sacristan himself, and had not eaten a mouse on a Friday for I cannot say how long. When you have a scholar in the family it obliges you to be dignified.

And so poor little Peter, as nothing and nobody would help to amuse him and pass away the time, pressed his two fat, little hands together in a sort of despair, and gave a terrible sigh.

'Bless the child, what possesses him?' cried Eliza again. 'Ah, my heart! How you made me jump!'

'What is the matter, Peter?' asked his mother.

'Oh! I don't believe Antony will ever come home,' said the boy, while the great tears began to run down over his chubby cheeks. 'And I am so tired of waiting. And I want so badly to know whether they have dressed the stable in the big church at Nullepart; and whether we shall really go there on Sunday, to see the dear baby Jesus, and the blessed Virgin, and good St. Joseph, and the donkeys and cows, you told me about. I have never seen them yet. And I want so dreadfully to go.'

Then his mother took up Peter in her arms, and sat down in the wooden chair in the chimney-corner, and held him gently on her lap.

'There, there,' she said, as she stroked his pretty hair, 'what cause have you to fret? The stable will be dressed all in good time; and the donkeys and cows certainly won't run away before Sunday. And St. Joseph and the blessed Virgin will be glad that a little lad like you should come and burn a candle before them—never fear. If the day is fair we will certainly all go to church on Sunday. What is to be will be, and Antony's coming late or early can make no difference. Patience is a great virtue, dear, little one—you cannot learn that too soon.'

But Cincinnatus sat up very stiff, though he was growing slightly sleepy; and still winked his yellow eyes at the fire. He was not at all sure that it was not incumbent upon him to spit at the charcoal-burner next time he saw him. It was an extreme measure certainly, and before adopting it he would have been glad to take his cousin the Sacristan's cat's opinion on the matter. Social position brings its responsibilities. Yet all the same, it is a fine thing to have a scholar in the family.

Now, Peter's father was a person of some consequence, or, to speak quite correctly, thought himself of some consequence, which, as you will probably find when you grow older, often comes to much the same thing. He had his own piece of land, and his own herd of cows, which the boys, in the spring time, would help Gustavus to drive, along with the cows of their neighbours, to the wide, grass lands that border the forest on the west, where the blue salvias, and gentians, and campanulas, and St. Bruno's white lilies grow in the long grass. But years ago Peter's father had been a soldier in the French army, and had fought in great battles, and had been in Italy, and even across the sea to Africa. He could tell surprising stories of sandy deserts, and camels, and lions, and Arabs, and a number of other remarkable things that he had seen during his travels. And when he went down, as he frequently did, and sat in the wine shop at Nullepart, everybody treated him with deference and distinction, and called him not plain Lepage, but Master Lepage, and listened respectfully to all that he had to say.

Then Master Lepage was very well pleased, and he would take his pipe out of his mouth, and spread out his hands like some celebrated orator, and give the company the benefit of his views upon any subject—even those he did not very well understand. For the great thing is to talk, if you want to make an impression upon society—the sense of that which you say is quite a secondary consideration. Lepage was a handsome man; with a bright, grey eye, and a nose like a hawk's beak; and a fine, grey moustache, the ends of which curled up till they nearly touched his eyebrows. He held himself very erect, so that even in his blue blouse and peg-top trousers, with a great, brown umbrella under his arm, he still looked every inch a soldier.

But Master Lepage, notwithstanding his superior knowledge of the world, did not always contrive to please his friends and companions. For he was—so he said—a philosophic politician; and, like most other philosophers and politicians, he sometimes became both tedious and irritable. On such occasions his voice would grow loud, and he would thump the table with his fist till the plates danced and the glasses rattled again; and the more the person with whom he was conversing smiled and apologised, while he differed from him in opinion, the louder his voice would grow, and the more he would thump the table, and stamp and violently declare that all who did not agree with him were idiots and dolts, and traitors.

He had two fixed ideas. He venerated the republican form of government, and he despised the Prussians. If one of his sons was idle, loitering over his work or complaining that he had too much to do, Master Lepage would say to him sternly:—'Sluggard, you are unworthy to be the child of a glorious republic.'

Or if one of the cows kicked, when Gustavus was milking her, he would cry out:—'Hey then, thou blue imbecile, recollect that thou art the cow of a free citizen, and do not behave like a cut-throat Prussian!'

And during the long evenings of all the winters that little Peter could remember—they were not so very many, though, after all—when the supper was cleared away and the hearth swept, his father, after putting on a big pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, and drawing his chair close up to the table so that the lamp-light might fall full on his book, would read to himself the history of the famous Roman Republic. And always once or twice, during the course of the evening, he would lay down the book and take off his spectacles, and as he rubbed the glasses of them with his red pocket-handkerchief, would sigh to himself and say quite gently:—'Ah! but those were times worth living in! They had men worth looking at in those days.'

The elder of little Peter's brothers was named Antony. He was a smart, brisk young fellow. He was always in a little bit of a hurry and full of business. He liked to go down to the town to market. He liked to drive a sharp bargain, and when he had nothing else to do he would roam away to the railway station, and hang over the blue wooden railings at the back of the platform, staring at the crowded passenger or heavily laden freight trains going through to Paris, or over the frontier into Switzerland. And if he ever happened to catch sight of any soldiers on the trains, his eyes grew bright and his face eager, and he would whistle a stirring march as he walked home through the forest, and would chatter all the evening about the glorious fun he meant to have when the time came for him to serve his term in the army. And, at that, Master Lepage would look up from the pages of his Roman history book, and nod confidentially to his wife, and say:—

'Eh! our Antony is a fine fellow. He will help some day to thrash those rascally Prussians.'

But she would answer rather sadly:—

'That will be as the Lord pleases. There is sorrow and sin enough in the world already, it seems to me, without war to make it greater.'

Then Lepage would shrug his shoulders with an air of slight disgust, and say:—

'My wife, you are no doubt an excellent woman. But your mind is narrow. Only a secular education, and, above all, a careful study of ancient history, can enable us to speak intelligently on these great questions.'

Then he would wipe his spectacles and return once again to the campaigns of the Romans.

Paul, the second boy, was very different to his brother. He was tall and lanky, with quiet, brown eyes and straight, black hair. He had a great turn for mechanics, and made little Peter all manner of charming toys—mill-wheels that turned all splashing and sparkling in the clear water of the stream; or windmills, to set up in the garden, and scare the birds away from the fruit with their clatter, and many other pretty ingenious things. Paul did not talk much about himself; he was a quiet, silent fellow, but he was always busy with his fingers making little models of all the machinery he could see or get pictures of, and, though his father was not quite so partial to him as to Antony, he would sometimes say:—

'Eh! our Paul, too, will distinguish himself, and bring credit upon his family and country.'

Now on the particular evening that I was telling you about in the last chapter, Antony did not come in till quite late. The rest of the family had had their supper, and Eliza was grumbling to Gustavus as she rummaged about in the back kitchen.

'Why can't people be punctual?' she said. 'It would vex a saint to be kept muddling about till just upon bed-time unable to complete the day's work and wash up the plates and dishes. Those who come in late should go to bed supperless if I had my way.'

'Umph,' said Gustavus—which was a remarkably safe answer, since it meant chiefly nothing at all.

Master Lepage sat studying the story of the gallant Horatius, how he and two others defended the falling bridge over the river Tiber against all the host of Clusium and the allied cities. Paul, with a pocket-knife and a number of bits of wood on the table before him, was making a model of a force-pump. And Susan Lepage sat in the chimney corner knitting, little Peter on a stool at her feet resting his head against her knees. He was getting so sleepy that his eyes would shut though he tried very hard to keep them open. Sometimes his poor, little head nodded over all on one side; and then he woke up with a great start, dreaming that he had tumbled out of the old pear-tree in the garden, bump, on to the ground. And the dream was so vivid that it took him quite a minute and a half to remember where he was, and to realise that he was sitting on his own little stool in the kitchen, instead of lying on the asparagus bed under the pear-tree. But sleepy or not, Peter was determined not to go to bed till he had heard the news from Nullepart.

The longest waiting must needs end at last. There was a sound of brisk footsteps, the door was thrown open, and Antony entered the kitchen, with the rush and bustle of a healthy, young whirlwind.

Peter was wide awake in a moment. He jumped up and caught hold of the skirt of his brother's blouse.

'Oh, tell me, tell me,' he cried, 'have they dressed the stable in the church, and can I go on Sunday and see it?'

Now, it is always a great mistake to rush at people with questions when they are full of their own affairs; and so little Peter found in this case. For Antony had some money to pay over to his father, and a great many things to say on his own account; and then, too, he was very hungry and wanted his supper, so he pushed poor Peter aside rather roughly, and told him to get out of the way and mind his own business, and intimated generally that he was an inconvenient and superfluous person.

Peter retired to his stool again feeling very small. Between sleepiness and disappointment he was very much inclined to cry. Perhaps, indeed, he would have done so, had not Cincinnatus got up and rubbed gently against his legs, with a high back and a very upstanding tail, purring very loud, too, and saying as plain as cat-language could say it:—

'Console yourself. I, Cincinnatus, regret what has occurred. I am your friend. Confide in me. All will yet go well.'

For Cincinnatus was a cat of feeling, and never lost an opportunity of making himself agreeable if he could do it without loss of dignity. However, when Antony had transacted his business, and eaten his supper, and bragged a little about his own performances of one sort and another, he became a trifle ashamed of having behaved so roughly to his little brother. He did not say so, for few people have courage to make a public confession of their faults. But he described, with great animation, how the workmen and the good sisters were busy in the church; how bright everybody said the Virgin's blue mantle would be, how there was real straw in the stable, how charmingly natural the cattle and the donkey looked, and how ingeniously a lamp would be arranged—just like the star, in fact—to shine above the manger. Peter felt satisfied again. But he was still a little hurt; so he sat quiet and rubbed Cincinnatus' head in silence, though there were a hundred and one questions he was longing to ask.

'You will come with us, mon ami?' said Susan Lepage, looking across at her husband, who had just laid down his book, and was wiping his spectacles with his red handkerchief.

'Your sons will take good care of you,' he answered. 'As for me, I will keep house.'

'It is the first time we take our little Peter,' she said, and there was a pleading tone in her voice.

The little boy loved both his father and mother; though perhaps he loved his mother best, for he was rather afraid of his father sometimes. But now for some reason he grew very bold. He jumped up and trotted across the kitchen, and climbed up on his father's knee.

'Oh, it will be so beautiful,' he said—'And we shall all be so happy—do come, father, do come too.'

Master Lepage looked at him very kindly out of his shrewd, grey eyes, and gently pinched his cheek.

'No, no, my son,' he answered, 'go with your mother and your brothers. These shows are admirable for pious women and for the young. But you see I am no longer very young, and they no longer greatly interest me. Those who think deeply upon politics and philosophy outgrow the satisfaction that others derive from such devout illusions. Every age has its appropriate pastimes. Go, my children. As for me, I will remain at home, read the newspaper, and pursue my studies in ancient history.'

'Cannot you think of something better than the doings of those unhappy, old heathens for one day in the week, mon ami?' asked his wife.

Little Peter looked up at her quickly. She had laid aside her knitting, and coming across the room placed her hand lightly on her husband's shoulder.

Master Lepage made a grimace, moved a little in his chair, and smiled good-humouredly at her.

'Ah! my dear, you are the best of women,' he said.

'Then why will you not oblige me?'

Lepage pressed his lips together and put up his eyebrows.

'There are points,' he said, 'on which compliance would be a mere manifestation of weakness. We will not discuss the situation. About those small matters upon which we do not, unfortunately, quite agree, it is wise to maintain silence. There are your three sons—an escort worthy of a Roman matron! Be contented, then. I remain at home.'

Susan Lepage turned away, and calling to Eliza bade her clear the table.

'Indeed, is it worth while? It will be breakfast time directly,' replied Eliza, who was still in a bad temper at Antony having been late for supper.

Susan Lepage looked up at the cuckoo clock in the corner.

'It is late,' she said. 'Come, come, Peter, we will go upstairs; it is long past your bedtime.'

But the boy did not want to go to bed. He felt a little disturbed and unhappy, and wanted Lepage more than ever to go with the rest of the family on Sunday to church at Nullepart. So he rubbed his black head against his father's shoulder coaxingly:—

'Mother wants you to go, and we all want it. Do please go with us to the church on Sunday.'

Master Lepage took the child and stood him down on the floor in front of him.

'Go to bed, when you are told to,' he said. 'Obedience was a virtue greatly prized by those grand old Romans.'

'GO TO BED WHEN YOU ARE TOLD.'

Page 34.

'Out of the mouth of babes—' murmured Susan Lepage, gently.

For some reason this observation appeared to incense her husband.

'Ten thousand plagues!' he burst out vehemently. 'Twenty thousand cut-throat Prussians! This is a conspiracy. Can I not stay at home when I please? Can I not sit peaceably in my own kitchen, without cabals and flagrant acts of insubordination? The rights of a husband and father are supreme and without limit, I tell you—read the domestic history of the ancient Romans.'

Susan Lepage waited till her husband had finished speaking; and then taking poor, frightened, little Peter by the hand, she said calmly:—

'Do not trouble your father any more, my child. He has his reasons for remaining at home, and doubtless they are good ones.'

Perhaps it was a dream—for Peter was very tiredand sleepy, and it came to him when he was snugly tucked up in his little bed, just before his mother put out the candle and left him alone with a faint glimmer of starlight coming in at the uncurtained window at the end of the room. Perhaps it was a dream; but certainly he seemed to hear Master Lepage's voice saying softly:—

'Forgive me, my wife. I was over hasty. Your path appears to lie in one direction and mine in another, at present; but let us both be tolerant. Who knows but that they may yet meet in the end!'

Then someone stooped down over the little boy's bed and kissed him. Yes, it must have been his father, for on his forehead he felt the rough scrape of a thick moustache.

'I am going to Nullepart on Sunday,' cried little Peter.

'Pfui! what a traveller,' answered the charcoal-burner. 'And how do you go? In a coach and four, on the back of a fiery dragon, in the giant's seven-league boots, or flying through the air with the wild ducks, there, crying "Quack, quack, quack, we are all going south because the snow is coming? "'

'I shall walk, of course, like a big boy,' said little Peter. 'But the snow isn't coming just yet, is it?'

'They all say it will be here in a day or two.'

John Paqualin shook his head, and looked up at the sky. He was sitting on the rough, wooden bench set against the southern wall of his hut, with his back bent, and his elbows resting on his thin knees. Little Peter climbed up on to the bench beside him. It was rather difficult, you see, because the bench was a very high one, to suit the length of the charcoal-burner's long legs.

'Who are they?' asked the boy, as soon as he had settled himself comfortably. He tried to lean forward with his elbows on his knees like his companion; but his short legs were dangling, and his feet were far off the ground, and he did not find it altogether easy to keep his balance.

'Who are they?' he asked.

'Oh, the earth spirits, who live underground, and the air spirits, who wander up and down the sky. Look at the great arc of white light they are setting up in the north-east as a signal. And the wild ducks, flying overhead. And the moaning in the pine-trees. And Madelon, the old sow there; see how she runs about with her mouth full of grass, wanting to make herself a lair, because she sees the storm-wind coming. They are all telling what will happen. They are wiser than men. They know beforehand. Men only know afterwards.'

Paqualin paused a moment, and sat staring at Madelon, the old black sow, with her floppety ears, as she ran to and fro, and grouted about in the heaps of charcoal refuse and in the tumble-down garden fence—half smothered in tall withered grass and weeds—grunting and barking the while like one distracted.

'Everything in the world talks to me,' he continued, speaking slowly. 'All day long, all night long, the air is full of voices.'

Peter wriggled himself a little further back on the bench, for, in the excitement of conversation, he had slipped very near the edge of it and was in great danger of falling head first on to the ground.

'I don't hear them,' he said presently.

Paqualin laughed. His laugh was cracked and shrill, like his voice; and Peter was always a trifle startled by it somehow.

'Never hear them, little Peter,' he cried, 'never hear them. A few men will call you a poet, but most men will only call you mad, if you do.'

'What is mad?' asked Peter. He felt very much interested. 'Is it a good or a bad thing?'

The charcoal-burner looked round at the boy sharply, with his mouth a little open. His strange eyes were glowing dull red. He waited a minute before replying.

'Eh,' he said, 'what an innocent! Why, it is a good thing, of course. An excellent, splendid, glorious thing. Look at me, little Peter. I'll tell you a secret. Can you keep it? Here—quite close—I'll whisper—I am mad—yes, that's the secret. A grand one. See all the blessings it brings me. I live alone in the wood and burn charcoal.'

'Yes,' said Peter, 'I should like that.'

'I have no wife or child to bother me. On feast-days, when I was a lad, the pretty girls never plagued me to dance with them, or asked me to steal kisses.' The charcoal-burner laughed again—'I am saved from all sins of pride and vanity. Think what a gain!—for as I go down the street, the very children tell me my faults, crying, "Look at the grasshopper legs, look at the crook-back;" and the women shut their eyes and turn their heads away, saying, "Heaven avert the bad omen! What a frightful fellow!" Such observations, little Peter, are sharp discipline; and teach humility more thoroughly than any penance the priest can lay on you. Oh, yes! no doubt it is a capital thing to be mad. It saves you a deal of trouble—nobody cares for you, nurses you when you're sick, feeds you when you're hungry, mourns for you when you die.'

Paqualin laughed again, and getting up stretched his long, ungainly limbs, and shook himself till his hair hung like a red cloud about his stooping shoulders.

'Ah! ha, it's splendid,' he cried, 'all alone with the spirits and voices, with the beasts, and the trees, and the rain, and the starlight. No one to love you but the fire when you feed it with branches, or the swine when you drive them back to their stye in the twilight.'

Now, to tell the truth, poor little Peter was becoming rather confused and nervous, with all this wild, incomprehensible talk of the charcoal-burner's. He had never seen his friend in this strange humour before. And he felt as much alarmed and embarrassed as he would have done if that well-conducted animal Cincinnatus had suddenly turned upon him, with bristling hair and a great tail, spitting and swearing, in the middle of their innocent games of play. He sat very still, staring anxiously at his companion.

But when Paqualin threw himself down on the bench again, and putting his lean, brown face very close to little Peter's, said to him with a sort of cry:—

'Think of it, think of it, child, nobody, day nor night, all through the long years of life, nobody ever to love you!'—the boy's embarrassment changed into absolute fear, and he scrambled down off the bench in a great hurry, hardly able to keep from sobbing.

'If you please, John Paqualin, I should like to go home to my mother,' he said; and then he trotted away as fast as he could along the black cinder-path across the little garden.

'Mother, mother,' echoed the charcoal-burner. 'Sweet, fair wife, and sweet mother! Have pity, dear Lord, on those who may have neither.'

Then he got up, and walked after the child, in his awkward way, calling gently to him:—

'Here, little mouse, come here. Don't run away so fast. There is nothing to hurt you.'

Peter had nearly reached the garden gate; but there in the opening stood Madelon, the sow, grunting and snorting, her great jaws working, and her wicked, little eyes twinkling.

'Come, come,' called Paqualin again, coaxingly. 'There are no more disquieting secrets to tell you. Never fear. See now, I have a box of nuts indoors, under my bed—beauties—beauties; will you try them? Cr-r-rack go the shells, out pop the nice kernels—crunch, crunch, crunch, between sharp, white, little teeth eating them all up. Eh! nuts are appetising, are they? You will not run away just yet, then, will you, dear little mouse.'

Now Peter would have felt a great deal safer at home it is true; but in the first place, there stood the hideous Madelon blocking the way, and he was very much afraid of her. And then in the second place, he did not wish to be uncivil to his old friend the charcoal-burner. So, finally, he went back, and climbed up the high bench again.

'I will not have any of those nuts, though, please,' he said decidedly. For he wished Paqualin to understand that it was not greediness but friendship that made him return.

'No nuts!' cried the charcoal-burner, smiling kindly at him. 'Eh, what a proud, little soul.'

And then John Paqualin really became delightful. And as he and the little boy sat together in the shelter of the high pine-trees, and of the brown, wooden wall of the tumble-down dwelling-house behind them, he told many most interesting stories. For, you see, the charcoal-burner, perhaps from living so much alone, perhaps from being what some persons call 'mad,' knew a number of things which you could not find in the pages of the very largest Encyclopædia of Universal Information—though they really are every bit as true as half the information you would find there. He knew all about the elves who live in the fox-glove bells; and the water-nixies who haunt the stream side; and about the gnomes who work with tiny spades and pickaxes, searching for the precious metals underground. And he could tell where the will-of-the-wisp gets the light for his lantern, with which he dances over bogs and marshy places, trying to lead weak-minded and unscientific travellers astray; and he knew all about the pot of fairy gold that stands just where the base of the rainbow touches the earth, and which moves away and away as you run to find it, shifting its ground forever, so that those who will seek it in the end come home hot, and breathless, and angry, and empty handed, for all their pains. And he could also tell of the old black dwarf who lives in a cave in the heart of the forest, which no one can ever find, though they may search for it for a year and a day; and who, being a mischievous and ill-conditioned dwarf, bewitches the cows so that they go dry; and the hens so that they steal their nests and lay their eggs in all manner of holes and corners, instead of in the hen-roosts like right-minded, well-conducted fowls; and who rides the horses all night long in the stable, so that when the carter goes in, in the dewy morning, to give them their fodder, he finds them trembling and starting and bathed in sweat; and who turns the cream sour in summer, or sits on the handle of the churn—though you can't see him—so that though the good housewife turns and turns, till her arms and back ache, and the heat stands in drops on her forehead, the butter will not come and the day's work is well-nigh wasted.

And Paqualin could tell the story, moreover, of the dirty little boy, Eli, who insisted on eating raw turnips and cabbages, and distressing his friends and relatives by picking bits out of the pig pail, instead of sitting up to table like a little gentleman, and who utterly refused to have his hair combed or his face washed:—

'And, at last, one night,' said the charcoal-burner, 'as a punishment for all his nasty ways, the fairies came and turned him into a great black crow, which flew out of the bedroom window in the chilly dawn. You may often hear him now, little Peter, croaking in the tree-tops, or see him skulking about the farmyard and gardens looking out for scraps and refuse.'

'How long ago was he turned into a crow?' asked Peter.

'Eh, many and many a year ago,' answered the charcoal-burner. 'I saw him only yesterday, and he has grown quite old and grey. But the time of his probation will not be over yet awhile, for bad habits are slow to die, though quick enough to breed in us, little Peter. I throw him a crust of bread now and again, the poor old villain. I've a sort of fellow feeling for him, you see, for I am an ugly, old vagabond too.'

'Bless the child, there he is at last! Ah, my poor heart, how it beats with all this running.'

The speaker was Eliza. She stood on the other side of the tumble-down garden fence, with her hand pressed to her side, and a shawl over her head. She was breathing very hard. Eliza was one of those persons who like to make the most of an injury.

'Come home, Peter, come at once,' she went on. 'Don't you know it's half an hour past dinner-time? Here have I been trapesing half over the country to find you—a pretty occupation for a respectable, young, servant woman like me, too. All the men were out, and nothing would do but that I must go racing about like a wild creature, wasting good shoe leather in looking for you. Ah! my poor heart.'

Eliza leant up against the fence and panted a little.

As Peter got down off the bench, Paqualin bent forward and patted the boy's curly head.

'Run away, little mouse,' he said, 'but come again some day and see me.'

'Am I to wait here all night,' cried Eliza, 'for you, Peter? Have you not had enough yet of the society of his highness the charcoal-burner? No, no, don't speak to me,' she added, addressing Paqualin. 'I have no desire to hold any communication with you. Why, merely seeing you as you pass makes me squint for an hour afterwards. Come along, child.'

And seizing Peter's fat, pudgy hand in her large, red one, Eliza marched him off at a sharp pace down the forest path.

'Hey ho, hey ho, life is a bit long for some of us,' said the charcoal-burner.

Little Peter woke up very early on Sunday morning, feeling excited and glad. He sat up on end in bed, but he had to rub his eyes very hard and get the sleep out of them before he could remember exactly what there was to be so very glad about. When he did remember, he was so much delighted that he was compelled to express his feelings in some rather violent manner. He went on all fours and burrowed very quick, like a rabbit, head first, down under the clothes to the bottom of the bed, and then rushed up again, with very red cheeks, puffing, and pushing his curly hair out of his eyes. But it really was not light yet—only the rushlight his mother burnt at night glimmered feebly in the corner. Peter could hear Master Lepage snoring peacefully in his bed on the other side of the wooden partition which divided the big room into two unequal halves—the small half for little Peter and his little bed, and the large half for his father and mother and their large bed. It would be a long while yet before his mother got up and called him to her to help dress and wash him, for Gustavus, the cowherd, had only just gone downstairs from his attic, clumpety-clump with his big, heavy boots over the stairs, and he always got up long before anybody else.

Peter wondered what he could do to amuse himself till it was time to dress. And then it struck him as just possible that when Gustavus went down into the kitchen he might have left the door open, and that in that case Cincinnatus, the cat, might have stepped upstairs and be waiting outside on the landing—it had happened so once before on a very delightful and never to be forgotten occasion. Peter waited a moment and held his breath listening, for it seemed to him extremely adventurous to be on the move so very early in the morning. He was not quite sure whether the little, hairy house-bogies and hobgoblins who undoubtedly, so Eliza said at least, wander about the empty rooms and chase each other up and down the silent passages and stairways every night, with impish frolic and laughter, when we are all safe in bed, might not still be holding their revels; and he knew, at least Eliza said so, that it was extremely unlucky for any person to see them, for they don't like to be looked at by mortal eyes, and will come and sit on your pillow, and tickle your nose with a feather out of the bedding, and squat on your chest, till you feel as though you lay under the weight of a mountain, and treat you in a number of other odious and disturbing ways. It made the cold shivers run down Peter's back as he sat up there, in his little, white night-shirt, even to think of coming face to face with the hairy goblins and bogies.

But then, on the other hand, the society of Cincinnatus would be so very delightful. Peter slipped one sturdy, bare leg down over the side of the bed. Ah! how cold the smooth boards of the floor felt! However, the other leg very soon followed. Then he crept across the room very quietly, avoiding the oak chest, and the chairs, and the corner of the high cupboard, with his mother's initials and the date of her wedding-day carved on the doors of it; and, when he reached the door, paused, listening at the keyhole. Oh, dear me, there really was something outside on the landing moving about stealthily on small, soft feet. Little Peter's heart stood still. Was it dear, old Cincinnatus, or a dreadful, roundabout, hairy hobgoblin?

At last he plucked up courage to put his lips close to the keyhole, and whisper in a rather trembling voice:—

'Pussy, puss, Cincinnatus, oh, please, is that you?'

'Miau,' answered Cincinnatus, quite composedly and comfortably.

In a great hurry little Peter opened a crack of the door.

'Oh! come in quick, please, Cincinnatus,' he said.

But cats of quality never permit themselves to be hurried. Cincinnatus came just half-way through the door, then he stopped and rubbed himself—very tall—up against the side-post and purred; and then, stretching out his fore legs as far as ever he could, sharpened his claws, crick, crack, crick, crack, on the boards of the bedroom flooring.

'Oh! do be quick, Cincinnatus,' said the little boy under his breath again; and to hasten matters, he gave the cat a poke in the ribs with his cold bare toes.

'Miau,' cried Cincinnatus quite sharply, jumping on one side, for he was taken rather by surprise. Subsequently he added in the cat language:—'Manners, my good child, manners! Let us before all things cultivate a polite address and a calm, unagitated exterior.'

Meanwhile Peter had succeeded in shutting the door quietly, and that, to his great relief, without catching a single glimpse of one of the blobbety-bodied, spindle-legged house-bogies. He pattered across the room as fast as ever he could, and jumped into his warm bed again.

'He is young and inexperienced,' murmured Cincinnatus reflectively. 'I am magnanimous. I scorn to bear malice.'

And he, too, jumped into the warm bed.

Now, this was really charming. Little Peter pushed up the bedclothes in front, making them into a snug, little, dark cavern, inside which there was just room enough for himself and Cincinnatus.

'See,' he said, 'we will play at robbers. I will be the captain and you shall be my first lieutenant.'

But unfortunately, Cincinnatus did not seem to care very much about that particular game. He had arrived at an age and temper of mind at which material comfort is far more valuable than pleasures derived from a lively exercise of the imagination. Perhaps you do not quite understand what that means? Well, so much the better. For my part, I hope you never may understand it. There are a number of things in this world that it is very much the best to be ignorant about if you can possibly manage it. Cincinnatus, anyway, understood it well enough, so he tucked his fore legs under his chest, until nothing was visible of them but just the furry elbows, and laid his tail neatly along his soft side, and settled himself down on the warm sheet, with his eyes more than half shut, purring all the while as loud as if he had got a small steam-engine inside him.

'That's not the way to play at robbers,' said little Peter.

But Cincinnatus only purred a trifle louder. It was rather provoking. Still, Peter was too glad of the cat's comfortable company, and was, moreover, really too sweet-tempered a boy to get cross and angry. So he just lay down on his stomach, resting his chin in one hand, while with the other he gently rubbed Cincinnatus about the ears; and amused himself by thinking of the nice, new clothes that lay folded up on the chair at the bottom of his bed, and of the representation of the stable, and the manger in which the Infant Saviour was cradled, that he hoped to see in the great church in the town, before the day was done. And meanwhile, the pale dawn broadened over the dark stretches of the great pine forest, and the cows lowed as Gustavus drove them out to pasture, and Eliza bustled down stairs to begin dusting and sweeping, and making ready the savoury Sunday breakfast.

And at last his mother, with her sweet, pale face, got up and washed and dressed him, listening as tenderly, as only mothers know how, to his happy, prattle, and his simple morning prayer.

'Ask the dear Lord to send a special blessing to us all to-day,' she said.

'May I ask Him to send a blessing to my friend John Paqualin, too?' asked Peter. 'He told me yesterday he should never have anybody to love him, and that it saved him a great deal of trouble. But he doesn't look as if it made him happy, does he, mother?'

'Alas, no, poor soul,' said Susan Lepage. 'Yes, pray for him, also, little one, pray that the long disgrace and lonely sorrow of his life here may be counted unto him for righteousness hereafter, and I will say Amen.'

It must have been quite half-past eight o'clock before they were all ready to start for Nullepart. Eliza was going too, you see, and she was furiously busy up to the very last moment. Consequently she was rather late, and rushed out of the house after the rest of the party, pinning her blue shawl, and giving sundry pats to the crown of her stiff, white, muslin cap, to make sure it sat quite straight over her plaits of hair behind.

'Eh, but you are smart, Eliza,' said Gustavus, opening his eyes very wide, as he rested the two pails of water he was carrying on the ground for a moment, and rubbed his elbows, which ached a little with the weight.

'Imbécile! do not detain me!' cried Eliza, haughtily—though, in truth, she was prodigiously gratified by the cowherd's observation. 'Don't you see how breathless and flurried I am with all the work? Bless me, where's my prayer-book? Oh! thank you, yes, Gustavus, tied up in my pocket-handkerchief. Of course—I knew where it was—at least, I should have found out for myself directly. Good-bye, Gustavus, take care of yourself; and remember the evening's milk is to be set on the left-hand shelf, two from the bottom.'

Eliza pursed up her mouth and nodded, as she walked away with a very impressive swinging of petticoats.

'Poor young man, his head is completely turned,' she said to herself. 'But then, what wonder? My appearance in my fête day clothes has always been a subject of remark and respectful admiration!'

'Farewell, my wife; enjoy to the full the emotions called forth by the pious exhibition you are about to witness. They are becoming to your sex. Boys, take good care of your mother; and conduct yourselves in all things as worthy sons of our glorious Republic.'

Master Lepage raised his soft felt hat from his head, as he spoke, with an elegant flourish; but whether in compliment to his wife or in honour of the democratic form of government, I really cannot say.

At that moment the charcoal-burner came hurriedly from the narrow forest path, that led from his hut, on to the open space outside the farmhouse. Madelon, the sow, ran beside him, shaking her lean sides as she ran, and grunting now and then, apparently with pleasure at being taken out walking. Sometimes she bundled up against her master's long, thin legs, nearly knocking him over; sometimes she stopped and forced her ugly snout into a tuft of grass or weeds by the wayside. The charcoal-burner's red hair streamed out behind him as he came rapidly along; his strange eyes were dull and vacant as those of a sleep-walker.

'I have a message,' he cried hoarsely—'a message to you from the beasts, and the birds, from the pine-trees, and the storm-clouds and the voices. All night long they have told it me, over and over again.'

Paqualin, a wild, ragged, unkempt figure, came up close to Master Lepage, who stood there erect and superior as a general officer on parade, surrounded with his family and servants—Gustavus had left his pails of water and joined the little company—in their Sunday best, and all animated with pleasant expectation of a holiday, in which amusement promised to be agreeably mingled with spiritual edification.

'Well, well, out with it quickly then, my good fellow, this wonderful message of yours,' Lepage said, in a bantering, patronising tone. 'You see my wife and my sons here are just ready to start on a long walk. I cannot have them delayed.'

'They must not go, or you must go with them,' cried the charcoal-burner. He stretched out his hands like a man in the dark groping for something he cannot find. 'My head is troubled,' he went on. 'I cannot tell you plainly; but I have an aching in all my bones which foretells misfortune. And I say, they must not go.'

'Pooh,' said Lepage. 'Your head is troubled, just so. But when people's heads are troubled they had best keep at home and not trouble their neighbours into the bargain with all their crazy fancies. Calm yourself, Paqualin. And as for you,' added Lepage, nodding encouragingly to his wife and the boys, 'forward, march. Do not let this untoward little incident affect the pleasures of the day.'

But Susan Lepage looked kindly and compassionately at the charcoal-burner, and then turning to her husband, said:—

'Have a moment's patience with him, mon ami; let us at least hear what he has to say.'

'Yes, give me time,' cried Paqualin imploringly. 'There are so many of you staring at me—Ah! I begin to remember. You must go with them if they go, for the snow is coming, Master Lepage. The storm hung out its streaming, white flag in the north-east yesterday, and the wild ducks flew south; there were signs in the earth and in the heavens, and in my ears the sound of many voices. Do not let your wife and children go. The snow will be here before evening, and the way will be difficult to find, and the house door will stand open long into the night before the feet of those you love cross the threshold.'

The charcoal-burner spoke as though he was so certain of the truth of that which he said, and his voice sounded so sad, that poor little Peter felt quite dismayed. Even Eliza had no opprobrious observation to make, and as for Gustavus, he stood with his big mouth wide open, staring as if he saw a ghost.

Master Lepage, however, remained quite unmoved; and his composure was very reassuring.

'Well, well, my good fellow,' he said, 'I for one need no further proof that your head is very much troubled, so much so indeed that if I had my way you should find a lodging for a time in the Maison Dieu at Nullepart—an excellent institution, which is calculated to cure troubled heads, or at all events to restrain the possessors of them from being inconvenient to other people. But the worst of it is,' Lepage added, rather angrily, 'that this superstitious nonsense is infectious. You, for instance, my wife, begin to look quite disconcerted.'

Lepage folded his arms, and nodded his head argumentatively, quite as though he had been addressing an audience in the wine shop.

'Now I put it to you,' he said, 'the day is mild and even sunshiny at present. And which, pray, is likely to be the best weather prophet? I, Francis Louis Lepage, householder, citizen, veteran, and I may add philosophic-politician and student of ancient history, or that poor half-wit—unsound, as anyone can see, both in mind and body?'

'Of course the grasshopper's afraid of the snow,' chimed in Antony, switching at Madelon, the sow, with the little stick he held in his hand. 'It puts his fiddle out of tune.'

Then Antony laughed rather loud, as people do sometimes when they have made a joke they are not sure is a very good one.

'For shame, Antony,' said his mother quickly. And John Paqualin turned on the lad, his eyes glowing like live coals.

'Ah! it is noble and generous in a handsome fellow like you to taunt me and scoff at me! Heaven pay you back in your own coin.'

Eliza gave a scream, and seized Gustavus by the arm as though she required protection from some most fearful danger.

'For the love of the saints, ma'am, let us go on, and get out of the way of this wild animal,' she said, in a very loud whisper. 'He looks wicked enough to commit a crime. Keep off, Gustavus! What are you thinking about, catching hold like that of a respectable, young, servant woman?'

'Why it was you who caught hold of me, Eliza,' answered the cowherd mildly.

Paqualin, meanwhile, looked round the little group with a sort of despair in his poor ugly face.

'It is all useless,' he said; 'you will not listen to or believe me. I only get jeered at. You all despise me.'

'YOU ALL DESPISE ME.'

Page 66.

He turned away with a bitter cry, and shambled off into the forest.

'Good-bye, dear John Paqualin, good-bye.—No, I won't hush, Eliza. I love him, he is a very kind friend to me.—Good-bye, dear John Paqualin,' little Peter called after him.

He felt very very sorry for the poor charcoal-burner.

'Whoof,' went Madelon, the sow, making a run at Cincinnatus—who sat washing his face on the clean flags just outside the door of the farm-house—and taking him so by surprise that he leapt up, with a prodigious tail, on to the window ledge, without even waiting to scratch. Then she cantered off, grunting and shaking her great bristly, floppety ears, after her master.

'Next time I see the charcoal-burner, it will undoubtedly be my duty to spit at him,' said Cincinnatus to himself in the cat-language. 'After that which has just occurred, I feel it is quite unnecessary to take any second opinion upon the subject.'

'Forward, march,' cried Master Lepage gaily. 'Enjoy yourselves. Let no thought of that unfortunate being's prognostications disturb you. The day will be charming.'

And so, after all, they started for Nullepart.

Now, undoubtedly, it is extremely easy to most persons not to believe a thing if they do not wish to believe it. And very soon our friends, wending their way along the soft moist forest path, in the languid December sunshine, began to forget about John Paqualin and his alarming warning.

'It was all spite,' said Eliza, tossing her head, white muslin cap and all, with a great show of dignity. 'He hates me because I won't receive his advances and always keep him at a proper distance. It was just a trick to deprive a poor, hard-working, young woman of a well-earned holiday.'

'I think he was wrong about the weather,' remarked Paul quietly. 'It's generally colder before snow.'

'He ought to be shut up in the madhouse, as my father suggested,' said Antony, who was still smarting from the reproof his mother had given him. 'I'd have all those sort of fellows kept under lock and key. There ought to be a law about it. They've no right to be about loose.'

'You are young, my son,' said Susan Lepage, 'and the young, too often, are thoughtless and cruel. Perhaps life will teach you, among other lessons, to be merciful if you would obtain mercy.'

Antony's handsome face grew very sulky. 'You're always scolding me for something or other,' he said crossly.

Meanwhile our little Peter was very happy. He had been sorry for the charcoal-burner, it is true; but he would have been very much more sorry not to go to Nullepart. A light breeze ruffled the dark branches of the pine-trees; here and there a scarlet or yellow leaf still hung on the brambles that grew on the skirts of the wood; the little birds looked at him merrily with their round, bright eyes, as they flew chirping to and fro among the trees and bushes. As to the snow, Peter did not give it a thought, as he ran, just like a little dog, first a long way on in front of the rest of the party, and then dawdled ever so far behind them—looking at the quaint little huts, and houses, and castles that the pine needles make where they fall and gather on the small twigs and branches at the base of the younger trees; and then, seeing that his mother and brothers had got on a long way ahead of him, scuttled up to them again in a great fuss and hurry, with very red cheeks, and a curious bumping at his heart, what with excitement and exercise, and just a trifle of fright, too, lest the old dwarf whom John Paqualin had told him about should suddenly nod and grin at him from under the pine boughs, saying:—

'Hey, my fine fellow, so we've met at last!' But I suppose the black dwarf was plotting mischief at home within the recesses of his mysterious cavern on that particular Sunday morning; for though he kept a very sharp look-out, little Peter saw no trace of his naughty, mocking face, even where the path was narrowest and the pine-trees thickest.

Now the town of Nullepart is an exceedingly ancient place, as you will gather from its name if you are anything of a scholar. It lies down in a remote valley along the banks of a river, with hills on either hand clothed below with oak, and beech, chestnut, and walnut, and, at their summits, crowned with pine-trees, that make a dark, ragged, saw-like edge against the sky. Some of the houses in the main street are built of stone, and roofed with fine, red, fluted tiles; but the major part of them are of wood, like the farm-house in the forest, with deep eaves, and quaint gables and stairways, and galleries. And I am sorry to say that the good people of Nullepart are somewhat old-fashioned in their habits, and do not pay quite as strict a regard to cleanliness as might be desired; and permit their ducks, and chickens, and pigs to walk about the crooked streets along with the foot-passengers, in rather too friendly and confidential a manner.

GOING TO CHURCH.

Page 72.

But little Peter, never having seen any other town, thought Nullepart a very fine place indeed; and quite believed that nowhere else in the world were there such grand houses, or such inviting shops, or so many people, or half so much chatter and bustle. You see the justice of our opinions is very much dependent upon the extent of our experience—a fact which few persons always manage to bear in mind, at least where their own opinions are concerned— with the opinions of their neighbours it is, of course, different.

Little Peter clung rather tight to his mother's hand on one side, and to his brother Paul's on the other, for he was somewhat afraid of being lost in the crowd and never found again. Antony did not offer to hold the little boy's hand. He walked on the other side of his mother, with his cap set jauntily over one ear and his handsome face all smiles again. He nodded and said good-day to all his acquaintances, and stared hard at all the pretty girls when he passed them, as a young man should who has a good opinion of himself and who intends some day to be a soldier.

But if little Peter thought Nullepart street dangerously full of people, what did he think when passing under the carved porch, and pushing aside the heavy, leathern curtain that hung across the doorway, he entered the church itself, still clinging tightly to his mother's hand?

He could see nothing but trousers and petticoats, the broad backs of men, and the comfortable backs of women—it would be uncivil to call them broad, too, you know; you should select your adjectives carefully in speaking of ladies—and the straight backs of lads, and the slim, neat backs of young girls all around him; while the close, heavy air of the church was full of the hum of many voices, and the shuffling of many feet over the stone pavement.

'Ouf, how hot!' said Eliza, in a loud whisper, unpinning her blue shawl. 'Heaven forgive me, but it's like being in a saucepan with the lid on. Why, there's my cousin Ursula Jacqueline Lambert. Ah, my dear cousin! how have you been this long while? Yes, it is seldom we meet. And time passes and leaves its mark behind it. Not that I change much—no, the saints be praised, I keep my looks. But I see you have altered. Well, it cannot be helped. Your husband is a good, faithful soul, and I daresay he doesn't observe it. There's the advantage of having married an old man. His eyes grow dim just in time—now with me....'

But Peter did not hear any more of Eliza's conversation, for his mother moved forward into the middle of the nave of the church, from whence it was possible to see the high altar, with its lights and flowers, and the great picture behind it, of which the people of Nullepart are very proud, for it was painted by a famous artist and is worth a great deal of money, and is, moreover, so dark with age, and, perhaps, with a proportion of dirt as well, that it affords an immense amount of interesting conversation, as nobody has ever yet discovered what subject it represents.

Priests in rich vestments stood before the altar, their backs looking like those of great gold and silver beetles; and there were boys with tall candles, and boys chanting; and the plaintive sound of the organ; and many persons kneeling on low chairs or on the rough pavement saying their prayers. Susan Lepage knelt down too; and little Peter stood bare-headed close beside her. The church, somehow, seemed very different to what he had expected. It was very large and high, and the painted windows up in the roof let in but scanty light. It seemed to Peter a very mysterious place; and he felt a wee bit frightened.

At last Susan rose again from her knees.

'Now for thy pleasure, little one,' she said, looking lovingly at the child. 'Where is the stable, Antony?'

'It is there,' he answered, pointing to the southern aisle of the church. 'I've just been to see; but the crowd is so thick about it we must wait awhile—we can't get through yet.'

Susan Lepage sat down on one of the low, rush-bottomed chairs, and took Peter on her lap.

'All in good time,' she said. 'Antony will let us know when to be moving. Meanwhile, we will rest. Your poor, little legs must be tired.'

Presently a stout, genial-looking, old gentleman, in a black cassock and funny, little, black cape, came up to them. He wore a black skull-cap, too, for the church was draughty, and his head was bald, save just at the back, where his short, bristly, white hair stood out like a neat trimming round the edge of his cap.

'Well, well, Susan Lepage, it isn't often that we see you here, now,' he said. 'Don't move, don't move, my good woman. Ah, yes! I know the walk is long and fatiguing; you would come oftener if you could. The spirit is willing, as it is written, but the flesh is weak. Yet you do well to come to-day, and bring these fine lads, your sons, with you. The good God remembers those who remember Him. But where is the husband?'

Peter looked at his mother as the priest asked this question, and it seemed to him that for some reason she seemed troubled and sad.

'Ah, my father, he has remained at home to keep house. We live, as you know, in a lonely place.'

The priest smiled and shook his head.

'Exactly,' he said, 'I understand. Politics have a word to say in the matter, though, haven't they?'

But Susan Lepage did not smile in return.

'Alas, my father!' she said.

Peter stared at both speakers wonderingly. He did not understand what they meant. But then it must be admitted there are a good many things we do not quite understand at five years old.

'Do not vex yourself,' answered the priest kindly. 'It is written that the faithful wife may save her husband. All times are in the hands of God. That which He has ordained cannot fail to be accomplished.'

Then he laid his hand gently on little Peter's round, black head, saying:—

'And this is your youngest, the autumn child, who brings the blessing to the house?'

'Yes,' she said. 'He has come for the first time to burn a candle before the Infant Jesus. But the worshippers are so many that as yet we have been unable to get a sight of the stable.'

Just then Eliza bustled up.

'Ah,' she exclaimed, 'one thing is certain, my poor cousin's temper is sadly soured with age. I made myself agreeable to her, in the assurance that she would at least ask me in to dinner.—Forgive me, your reverence, I did not observe that you were conversing with my mistress'—Eliza curtsied to the priest.—'But not a bit of it. She has treated me with marked coldness, and not so much as hinted at an invitation. It seems to me—'

'My daughter,' said the priest, 'lower your voice. We do not discuss these things so shrilly in this sacred place. Turn your thoughts to religion. Think here of your own sins, not of the shortcomings of others.'

Eliza got very red in the face.

'Believe me, I was not thinking of myself, your reverence,' she answered, quickly, 'but of my mistress. I wished to save her the expense of my dinner at the inn, by dining with my relations.—We ought to be going to the Red Horse soon, ma'am,' she added, 'or there will be no room for us.'

'Oh! but I haven't seen the stable yet,' cried little Peter, quite out loud, forgetting that he was in church. 'I don't want any dinner. But I can't go home till I have seen the stable, please.'

The little boy had jumped down off his mother's lap and stood there with the big tears in his eyes, and with the corners of his mouth quivering. It seemed to him a terrible thing to have come this long way full of expectation and hope, and then to be disappointed after all.

But the priest took his hand kindly, and led him towards the southern aisle of the church, where the crowd was, while Susan Lepage and Paul and Antony followed behind them.

'Room, my friends; have the amiability to make room,' said the priest, 'for a little lad who comes from a considerable distance to see this pious and instructive representation for the first time.'

Then little Peter felt quite proud and distinguished, for the people, at the request of the priest, moved aside to the right hand and the left, making a narrow lane for him to pass along to the gilded railings in front of the chapel, where the stable was dressed. Once there, he stood quite still, staring with very round eyes, for the sight seemed to him very beautiful and strange, and his heart was filled with wonder and awe.

In a rough, rocky cave, on the straw in a wooden manger, lay the image of the Infant Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, with a golden circle above his baby head. On one side knelt the Virgin Mother, in a white robe and blue mantle, with her hands clasped meekly on her heart; and, as she bent towards her Babe, she seemed to little Peter to look at him with mild and loving eyes. On the other side stood St. Joseph, in a brown habit, leaning upon his staff. And in the dusky background the boy could just make out the form of an ass and some cows. While above the entrance of the cave shone a bright star.

'Ah, how beautiful!' said Susan Lepage softly.

'It should have been finer had we had more money,' answered the priest with a sigh. 'Not that I complain. The parish has been generous, and the good sisters have done their best. Still, I myself greatly desired to have the Three Kings offering treasures. It would have been an effective incident—but our means are limited. They would have been too expensive for us.'

And little Peter was puzzled and could not quite comprehend what the priest meant; for he had often heard his father say that kings were old-fashioned rubbish, worth nothing at all, and that a republic was worth ten thousand of them any day in the week.

'Kneel down, my son,' said the priest to Peter presently:—'and pray to be kept pure, and innocent, and devout, so that, when your earthly warfare is accomplished—be it late or soon—you may behold the face of the Saviour in Heaven as you now behold this poor, unworthy image of Him on earth.'

Then he turned and left them.

Each of the boys bought a candle from the old woman who sat on the chapel steps, and stuck them in the round iron frame standing just by the gilded rails, and lighted them with the long taper she gave them. And Eliza bought one, too, though she was a little disposed to haggle with the old woman and accuse her of overcharging. But Susan Lepage bought three candles, and set them in the frame and lighted them. 'For,' she said, 'we must remember those who are absent—whether by choice or by misfortune—when we are in the house of God.'

Do you know what the snow is and where it comes from?

The Dictionary says it is 'a frozen moisture, which falls from the atmosphere in white flakes.' But that description doesn't seem to make us know very much more about it somehow.

Some people say the snow is caused by the angels shaking the feather beds up in Heaven; but that, both scientifically and spiritually too, appears to me an improbable solution. Other people, again, say it is all the Time Spirit plucking his geese. And who are the Time Spirit's geese?—Well, if you really want to know, they are all the little poets, and little painters, and little musicians, and little players and all the little inventors of little theories, and little writers of little books, who spend their time in diligently trying to persuade themselves and others that they are great writers of great books, and discoverers of a universal panacea for the healing of the nations; and that, in short, they are not any of them geese at all, but as fine swans as you can see on any river or pond in the three kingdoms. And they come cackling, and hissing, and sidling, and waddling up to the Time Spirit every year—specially in the spring and about Christmastide—in great flocks, and all cry out together:—

'Is it possible to deny, O Time Spirit, that we are every one of us swans?'

And then, I am sorry to say—for though it is perfectly right and just, it isn't the least bit agreeable, as some of us know to our cost—the Time Spirit turns up his sleeves and sets to work with a will, and catches them, though they mostly make a terrible noise and fluster, and plucks them one by one—big feathers first and then small—and sends them away looking sadly bare and foolish, and thereby leaving the world in no doubt whatsoever that they are only geese after all. And some wise persons, who have a perfect right to speak on the matter, think that why we have had so much more snow than usual the last few winters, is because—what with higher education and women's colleges, and one thing and another—the flocks of geese grow larger and larger, so that the poor Time Spirit is getting worn to fiddle strings with everlasting plucking, and it seems not unlikely we may soon have snowstorms nine months in the year.

But what if a real swan does come among the geese, once in a way?—Ah! that is quite another matter. For the Time Spirit discovers it in a very few minutes, and jumps up and pulls down his sleeves, and slips off his hat—he has to wear one, you know, to keep the goose down from lodging in his hair—and draws his heels together with a snap and makes a bow from the waist, like an accomplished courtier, and says:—

'All hail to you, my master or my mistress!'—as the case may be.—'For you the stars shine by night, and the sun rises at morning. All the world is yours, or shall soon be, if you have patience, and faith, and daring, and are true to the voice of the dæmon within.'

But there is yet another explanation of the snowfall besides this, and it is, perhaps, after all, the most reasonable one to believe in. For when the nights are long and the days are short, and the sunlight is feeble as a sick man's smile, the North Wind wakes from his summer sleep and calls to his brother the East Wind, and they go forth over the earth driving the heavy-laden snow-clouds before them, and the pale snow-fairies who do their will. Down from the ice floes, and the dim, silent, polar wastes, over land and sea, with a shout like the roar of a battle, and a laugh like the crackle of thunder, while the hills grow white with fear under his tread, and the forests bow themselves and shriek in his fierce breath as the planks and rigging of a ship shriek in a storm at sea, the North Wind comes. He was born hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the Ice Age, when the glaciers crawled out from the heart of the mountains, mile-long, grey-green monsters, over what are now fertile meadows and sunny plains—before man or beast, so vigorous was the keen-toothed frost, roamed over the surface of the earth. His eyes are blue and clear; and they dance as you may see the sky dance on a sharp winter's night; and his white beard hangs low on his chest, which is broad and firm as a hill-side; and he is in the full vigour of a lusty manhood still, and it promises to be a very long while yet before his eye grows dim or his limbs grow weak with age. Some think, indeed, that as he saw man first born into the world, he may live to see him die off it again—to see this great ball, which so long has been our human dwelling-place and home, rolling silent out into immeasurable space, a dead planet, locked in the arms of everlasting frost.

But be that as it may, on the fair Sunday morning, when our friend little Peter, his mother, and brothers, and Eliza, were going through the pine forest to the church at Nullepart, the North Wind was up and walking southward, southward over Europe, with the great, grey snow-clouds hurrying on before, for he had hard work to do. And, as the day wore on, he gathered the clouds from east and west, and packed them together in a vast, dusky mass over the town, and the forest and the limestone crags and gorges, and the wide, flat meadows where the cows pasture in summer, and over little Peter's home. And then he bade the snow-fairies bestir themselves, and prick the clouds as full of holes as the top of a flour-dredge, and wrap all the country in a robe of spotless white.

Now, it happened that among the snow-fairies there was one who was very young and tender-hearted. Indeed she was not really a snow-fairy at all, but a child of the soft South Wind, who, when all her sisters flew away—as the swallows fly in autumn—to the tropics, overslept herself and got left behind by mistake. And she had joined the snowfairies because she was dull and lonely, and could find no other playfellows, and nothing to do. But, for all that, she did not care to help them in their work, for she had not been brought up to it, you see, and it seemed to her a sad, chilly business. So instead of laughing and playing and flitting about, and easing the great lumbering clouds of their burden, she sat down by herself in a hollow of one of them and cried, and cried. For she could not help thinking of all the sheep on lonely hillsides; and of the small birds seeking food and finding none in the snow-buried fields, and lanes, and hedges; and of little neglected children, of whom, alas! there are always so many, in bare cottage or dreary, city cellar, with no warm clothes, or food, or firing; and of wayfarers on barren heaths and bleak moors; and of the beggars, and vagabonds, and outcasts, the sorry throng of refuse humanity, that tramps the high roads of every country of the civilised world, with neither home, nor hope, nor money, and as she thought of their frost-nipped hands, and bleeding feet, and scanty rags, she cried as if her little heart would break.

But the snow-fairies were vexed with her, and scolded and flouted her, for it is, as you all know, a great nuisance to have somebody crying and sobbing and making a fuss, when you yourselves feel quite happy and comfortable. And at last, in their irritation against her, they made such a noise and clamour, and so pushed and plagued and hustled the poor little creature, that the squabbling and commotion reached the ears of the North Wind himself, and he asked what in the name of common-sense was the matter. Then the snow-fairies all pointed at her, and all began chattering at once, as you may hear a flock of starlings chattering in the tops of the beeches at sunset, on a mild March day. But the North Wind told them to go about their business; and he took up the little fairy and stood her in the hollow of his great hand, and asked her quite gently—for the stronger a man is the gentler he can be, as you will very likely find out some fine day—why she was so sad.

Then, though she was horribly frightened and blushed up to the tips of her pretty ears, as a modest young maiden should, she looked the great North Wind bravely in the face and told him her little story—how she had been left behind, how she loved the sunshine and the summer, and how she grieved for the misery and famine that winter brings, too often, on man and bird and beast.

'And I don't see why it should all happen,' she said; 'or why there cannot be summer all the year.'

Still, though she spoke up so courageously, the poor, little fairy trembled, for she thought that the North Wind would be angry, as the snow-fairies had been, and that he might crush her tiny life into nothingness in the grasp of his great hand. But the North Wind did nothing of the kind. He looked at her till his clear, dancing eyes grew dim and misty; and when, at last, he spoke his voice was low and sweet and sad as church bells that the sailor hears far out at sea, as he sails at evening in sight of some fair, foreign coast.

'Ah, my child!' he said, 'all those who have once been happy, young and old, wise and foolish, mortal and immortal, mighty princes, prophets, psalmists, all living creatures, nay, the very earth herself, all that my eyes have looked on through unnumbered centuries, have asked and still ask that question in some form or other; but the answer is not granted yet. And so, knowing that till the end it may not be told us, we grow humble and grow wise; and learn that it is best to do the work that is appointed us without doubt or hesitation, careless whether it be known or unknown, pleasant or unpleasant, hard or soft, kind or cruel even, so that we get it well and honestly done. As for you, you have lost your way and have wandered from the business set for you to do, and therefore you are filled with sadness, and fears, and questionings. But have patience for a while, and have faith, too, that the mysterious purposes of the Almighty, your Master and mine, will certainly be made plain at last.—Meanwhile, go and help your cousins the snow-fairies. And then, because, though you are honest and brave, you still are frail and tender, when the night of my winter reign is over, I will give you back into the keeping of my kinsman the South Wind, who will find less sharp and cutting work for you to do.'

And all this, though you may not at first see exactly how, has a great deal to do with the story of our friend, little Peter; and therefore, even at the risk of your thinking it somewhat dry and puzzling, it has seemed to me well to set it down for you to read here.

For when little Peter and his mother and brothers came out of the church at Nullepart, the sun had been hidden some time behind thick clouds. Fierce gusts of wind rushed down the street, blowing off hats, and blowing about petticoats, and making window-shutters rattle, and doors slam.