John of the Woods Part 5

"Do all animals know you?" asked Gigi, wondering.

"With time I can make friends with them all," said the Hermit, smiling.

"One has but to love and understand and be patient. See!"

He gave a peculiar call. Instantly there came tumbling into the hut, until it nearly overflowed, a strange medley of creatures,--hares, mice, birds, kittens, squirrels. Last of all peered into the doorway a deer and her little speckled fawn.

The dog sat quite still, not moving a muscle. He had been trained not to frighten his more timid neighbors.

"Follow the example of Brutus, my son," said the Hermit gently. "Make no sudden movement and do not speak. They know my voice, and they will learn yours. But you are still a stranger to them, and must expect them to be shy."

The animals crowded lovingly about the Hermit, some springing upon his shoulders and knees, the birds flitting about his head.

Gigi thought he had never seen so wonderful a sight. "Oh!" thought he, "if I could only do this, what money might I not take from a crowd on market-days!"

After talking to his pets and caressing them tenderly, the old man dismissed them to the outdoor suns.h.i.+ne, so that he was alone with Gigi, who could then be free to move and speak once more.

"The beloved innocents!" said the Hermit, with a sigh. "Who could ever willfully injure one of them. G.o.d's creatures?--But now, my son, tell me about yourself," he broke off. "Who are you? Whence do you come?

Whither are you going?"

"I do not know," said Gigi simply, in answer to all three questions.

And then he told his story as he had told it to Mother Margherita.

The old man listened pitifully. "Poor little lad!" he said. "Men have been cruel to you, also. You have no home, no friends, no past, and no future. What shall we do with you?"

"Oh, let me stay with you!" cried Gigi, clasping his hands. "You are so good and wise. Teach me! Teach me to be good and wise, too. Take me into your animal kingdom, and teach me to make them all my friends.

I could do such tricks with them,--far better than tumbling. I should grow rich!"

The old man shook his head. "That cannot be," he said. "I cannot teach men to grow rich. Nor would I see my animals made ridiculous for money. I came here to be a hermit. I vowed to have nothing more to do with human folk, only with the animals whom they persecute. But I never thought that a child would seek my roof."

Pie looked at Gigi doubtfully. The boy returned the look, and the brown spot on his eyelid trembled piteously. The Hermit blinked.

"Yes, you are a poor little animal, too," he said at last. "You are ignorant and innocent as they. I cannot turn you away. Perhaps I can teach you better things than tricks. Perhaps I can make you a disciple and a Christian. If you are teachable, I can make you wise with the knowledge of herbs and healing. If I send back to the world which I have left one man useful, tender, strong, and good, perhaps he may be able to do more than I have done to stay the march of evil."

Gigi did not understand the words at all, but the tone was kind. He pushed the bandage from his head, looked up at the Hermit, and smiled his own strange smile. "I think you will not beat me," he said. The brown spot on his eyelid gave him the wink of mischief.

"Beat you!" The old man's face broke into an answering smile, and he rocked to and fro with pleasure in Gigi's little joke. Then he bent forward suddenly, and stared into the boy's face with a keen look.

"The wicked eye of him!" he said, talking to himself. "How like it is!

Strange, strange! About nine years old, he is. Nine years ago--" He paused, gazing at Gigi, and murmuring under his breath. "What are you wearing about your neck?" he asked suddenly.

Gigi put his hand to a tiny silver chain which just peeped above his green doublet, and drew out a flat piece of silver of strange shape, and with one side carved deeply with a notched Cross.

"Where did you get this?" asked the Hermit, strangely excited.

"I do not know," said Gigi, wondering. "I have worn it always. Not even Cecco dared take it from me. I have heard him say so. But I do not know why!"

"The lost one!" cried the Hermit, embracing Gigi, with tears in his eyes. Then, crossing himself, he added piously, "Dear little lad! We are in the Lord's hands. Gigi, you shall stay with me until the time is come. But you wear the Cross, a blessed emblem. I shall call you no more by that heathen Gypsy name. You shall bear the beloved Christian name of John, to which perhaps you have as good a right as any. Ah! I will not tell you more. I will wait until I see if you be worthy indeed. If not--his son shall never know!"

All this Gigi did not understand. But he was happy to know that he might stay. And he began his new life as one of the Hermit's animal kingdom by hugging close old Brutus, his first four-footed friend, who had brought him safely to this haven.

XI

THE PUPIL

_But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee_.--HOLY WRIT.

Gigi the Gypsy was now become John; no longer an outcast and a wanderer, but a happy little Christian boy. Surely no child ever lived so strange a life as he. Surely no boy ever had such queer playmates, or studied in so wild a school.

First of all he had to become acquainted with his oddly-mixed family of two-footed and four-footed brothers. Brutus was his friend from the beginning. The great dog seemed to have adopted for his very own the boy whom, led by some kindly angel, he had found that night in the forest. But the other creatures were shy at first. They ran at the sound of John's shrill boyish voice, and shrank from his quick movements. They hid in the bushes when he came das.h.i.+ng and dancing into the clearing after a romp with Brutus, and it would take some patience to coax them back again.

John saw that this troubled the good old Hermit, whom he loved better every day, and he tried to imitate his teacher's gentle voice and manner and his soft tread. The little tumbler was himself light as a feather, and graceful as the deer, his new-found sister. He was quick to learn and naturally gentle, though his cruel life had made him careless and rough. Soon he had made friends with all the Hermit's pets, so that they knew and loved him almost as well as they did the master of this forest-school.

In his green doublet and hose, clumsily patched with pieces of gray serge from the Hermit's own cloak, John rambled about the wild woods, looking like one of the fairy-folk of whom legends tell. Often he went with the wise old man, who gave him lessons of the forest which he knew so well. John learned to steal on tiptoe and surprise the ways of the wood-folk,--the shy birds and the shyer little brothers who live in the moss and mould. He grew wise in the lore of flowers and herbs, and could tell where each one grew and when it blossomed, and which ones, giving their life-blood for the sake of men, could cure disease and bring comfort to the ailing. At night they watched the moon and the far-off, tiny stars. These, too, became friends, many of them known to John by name. He loved each one, for the Hermit said that they also were his brothers and sisters, like the birds and beasts and fishes; all being the children of that Father who had made this beautiful world to be the home where all should live together.

But the book of Nature was not all that John studied in these days. He learned to read also the written language of men, and studied the wise and holy words which have kept goodness before men's sight since knowledge began. Until now John had never opened a book or held a pen.

But the Hermit taught him wisely and well, and soon he was in a fair way to become a scholar.

A busy life he led, what with his studies indoors and out and his duties about the hut,--for the Hermit taught him to be deft in all tasks, however simple and homely. John could cut up firewood or cook a porridge with as happy a face as he wore when he played with Brutus or sang the morning hymn of praise at the good Hermit's side.

One thing his teacher would not have him forget. He must practice his tumbling every day. For the Hermit said, "No skill once learned will ever come amiss, my son. You spent years and suffered hardly to gain this agility. It seems to me not frivolous nor undignified, but a beautiful thing, to keep one's body lithe and graceful even as are the free-natured animals. Then practice, John; and some day even this skill may not come amiss."

So the boy practiced daily in front of the cabin. He danced and tumbled; he turned somersaults and stood on his head; he leaped with a pole and swung nimbly as a monkey from the limbs of the overhanging trees. And the circle of animals watched him gravely, marveling no doubt at the strange antics of their brother; but, being now used to his voice and manner, neither annoyed nor shocked by anything which he might do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The circle of animals watched him.]

When the day was over, John would throw himself on a soft bed of moss under a tree, beside the Hermit seated on a log. Then they would read or talk, and tell stories of what they had seen in the world of men.

Brutus would be curled down between them. Blanche and her kittens, big and little, would play with John's hair as he lay there. The squirrel, perched on the boy's doubled-up knees, would chatter and crack nuts.

The brown hares would run to and fro over his feet, while the doe and her little fawn nibbled the gra.s.s close by, listening to the sound of the human voices as though they liked it.

What a happy home it was! John wondered if ever any boy was so lucky as he.

XII

THE BEAR

John had grown to love the little four-footed brothers dearly, and they were great friends of his. But still the Hermit seemed to have a charm about him which John lacked, and which drew even the strange new creatures to him and made them trust him from the first. John longed to learn this secret. But when he asked the old man about it he looked at the boy kindly and said,--

"It will come, my son, with time. Love, live, and learn."

John had been with the Hermit some months, when happened an adventure that interested him more than anything which had befallen. He was walking one day with the old man in a part of the forest far distant from their hut. They were looking for a rare and wonderful herb which the sage needed to distill a certain precious balm.

"This should be the spot," said the old man, going toward a heap of rocks around which grew a tangle of shrubs and creepers. "The plant which I seek is shy, and hides in the shadows of sheltered places.