V
The Collarless Stranger
Oh, sympathy! the noblest gift of God to man. The greatest bond there is twixt man and man. The strongest link in any friendship chain. The single lasting hold in kinship's claim. The only incorrosive strand in marriage bonds. The blazing torch where genius lights her lamp. The ten times noble base of noblest love. More deep than love--more strong than hate--the biggest thing in all the universe--the law of laws. Grant but this greatest gift of God to man--this single link concatenating grant, and all the rest are worthless or comprised.
Each year the ancient springtime madness came more strongly on Yan.Each year he was less inclined to resist it, and one glorious day oflate April in its twelfth return he had wandered northward along to alittle wood a couple of miles from the town. It was full of unnamedflowers and voices and mysteries. Every tree and thicket had avoice--a long ditch full of water had many that called to him."_Peep-peep-peep_," they seemed to say in invitation for him tocome and see. He crawled again and again to the ditch and watchedand waited. The loud whistle would sound only a few rods away,"_Peep-peep-peep_," but ceased at each spot when he camenear--sometimes before him, sometimes behind, but never where he was.He searched through a small pool with his hands, sifted out sticks andleaves, but found nothing else. A farmer going by told him it was onlya "spring Peeper," whatever that was, "some kind of a critter in thewater."
Under a log not far away Yan found a little Lizard that tumbled out ofsight into a hole. It was the only living thing there, so he decidedthat the "Peeper" must be a "Whistling Lizard." But he was determinedto see them when they were calling. How was it that the ponds allaround should be full of them calling to him and playing hide and seekand yet defying his most careful search? The voices ceased as soon ashe came near, to be gradually renewed in the pools he had left. Hispresence was a husher. He lay for a long time watching a pool, butnone of the voices began again in range of his eye. At length, afterrealizing that they were avoiding him, he crawled to a very noisy pondwithout showing himself, and nearer and yet nearer until he was withinthree feet of a loud peeper in the floating grass. He located the spotwithin a few inches and yet could see nothing. He was utterly baffled,and lay there puzzling over it, when suddenly all the near Peepersstopped, and Yan was startled by a footfall; and looking around, hesaw a man within a few feet, watching him.
Yan reddened--a stranger was always an enemy; he had a naturalaversion to all such, and stared awkwardly as though caught in crime.
The man, a curious looking middle-aged person, was in shabby clothesand wore no collar. He had a tin box strapped on his bent shoulders,and in his hands was a long-handled net. His features, smothered in agrizzly beard, were very prominent and rugged. They gave evidence ofintellectual force, with some severity, but his gray-blue eyes had akindly look.
He had on a common, unbecoming, hard felt hat, and when he raised itto admit the pleasant breeze Yan saw that the wearer had hair like hisown--a coarse, paleolithic mane, piled on his rugged brow, like a massof seaweed lodged on some storm-beaten rock.
"F'what are ye fynding, my lad?" said he in tones whose gentleness wasin no way obscured by a strong Scottish tang.
Still resenting somewhat the stranger's presence, Yan said:
"I'm not finding anything; I am only trying to see what that WhistlingLizard is like."
The stranger's eyes twinkled. "Forty years ago Ah was laying by a pooljust as Ah seen ye this morning, looking and trying hard to read theriddle of the spring Peeper. Ah lay there all day, aye, and monyanither day, yes, it was nigh onto three years before Ah found it oot.Ah'll be glad to save ye seeking as long as Ah did, if that's yermind. Ah'll show ye the Peeper."
Then he raked carefully among the leaves near the ditch, and sooncaptured a tiny Frog, less than an inch long.
"Ther's your Whistling Lizard: he no a Lizard at all, but a Froggie.Book men call him _Hyla pickeringii_, an' a gude Scotchman he'dmake, for ye see the St. Andrew's cross on his wee back. Ye see thewhistling ones in the water put on'y their beaks oot an' is hard tosee. Then they sinks to the bottom when ye come near. But you takthis'n home and treat him well and ye'll see him blow out his throatas big as himsel' an' whistle like a steam engine."
Yan thawed out now. He told about the Lizard he had seen.
"That wasna a Lizard; Ah niver see thim aboot here. It must a beena two-striped _Spelerpes_. A _Spelerpes_ is nigh kin to aFrog--a kind of dry-land tadpole, while a Lizard is only a Snake withlegs."
This was light from heaven. All Yan's distrust was gone. He warmed tothe stranger. He plied him with questions; he told of his getting theBird Book. Oh, how the stranger did snort at "that driveling trash."Yan talked of his perplexities. He got a full hearing and intelligentanswers. His mystery of the black ground-bird with a brown mate wasresolved into the Common Towhee. The unknown wonderful voice in thespring morning, sending out its "_cluck, cluck, cluck, clucker_,"in the distant woods, the large gray Woodpecker that bored in somehigh stub and flew in a blaze of gold, and the wonderful spotted birdwith red head and yellow wings and tail in the taxidermist's window,were all resolved into one and the same--the Flicker or Golden-wingedWoodpecker. The Hang-nest and the Oriole became one. The unknownpoisonous-looking blue Hornet, that sat on the mud with palpitatingbody, and the strange, invisible thing that made the mud-nests insideold outbuildings and crammed them with crippled Spiders, were bothidentified as the Mud-wasp or _Pelopaeus_.
A black Butterfly flew over, and Yan learned that it was a CamberwellBeauty, or, scientifically, a _Vanessa antiopa_, and that thisone must have hibernated to be seen so early in the spring, and yetmore, that this beautiful creature was the glorified spirit of thecommon brown and black spiney Caterpillar.
The Wild Pigeons were flying high above them in great flocks as theysat there, and Yan learned of their great nesting places in the farSouth, and of their wonderful but exact migrations without regard toanything but food; their northward migration to gather the winged nutsof the Slippery Elm in Canada; their August flight to the rice-fieldsof Carolina; their Mississippi Valley pilgrimage when the acorns andbeech-mast were falling ripe.
What a rich, full morning that was. Everything seemed to turn up forthem. As they walked over a piney hill, two large birds sprang fromthe ground and whirred through the trees.
"Ruffed Grouse or 'patridge', as the farmers call them. There's a pairlives nigh aboots here. They come on this bank for the Wintergreenberries."
And Yan was quick to pull and taste them. He filled his pockets withthe aromatic plant--berries and all--and chewed it as he went. Whilethey walked, a faint, far drum-thump fell on their ears. "What'sthat?" he exclaimed, ever on the alert. The stranger listened andsaid:
"That's the bird ye ha' just seen; that's the Cock Partridge drummingfor his mate."
The Pewee of his early memories became the Phoebe of books. That dayhis brookside singer became the Song-sparrow; the brown triller, theVeery Thrush. The Trilliums, white and red, the Dogtooth Violet, theSpring-beauty, the Trailing Arbutus--all for the first time gotnames and became real friends, instead of elusive and beautiful, butdepressing mysteries.
The stranger warmed, too, and his rugged features glowed; he saw inYan one minded like himself, tormented with the knowledge-hunger, asin youth he himself had been; and now it was a priceless privilege tosave the boy some of what he had suffered. His gratitude to Yan grewfervid, and Yan--he took in every word; nothing that he heard wasforgotten. He was in a dream, for he had found at last the greatestthing on earth--sympathy--broad, intelligent, comprehensive sympathy.
That spring morning was ever after like a new epoch in Yan's mind--nothis memory, that was a thing of the past--but in his mind, his livingpresent.
And the strongest, realest thing in it all was, not the ruggedstranger with his kind ways, not the new birds and plants, but thesmell of the Wintergreen.
Smell's appeal to the memory is far better, stronger, more real thanthat of any other se
nse. The Indians know this; many of them, in time,find out the smell that conjures up their happiest hours, and keep itby them in the medicine bag. It is very real and dear to them--thathandful of Pine needles, that lump of Rat-musk, or that piece ofSpruce gum. It adds the crown of happy memory to their reveries.
And yet this belief is one of the first attacked by silly White-men,who profess to enlighten the Red-man's darkness. They, in theirignorance, denounce it as absurd, while men of science know its simpletruth.
Yan did not know that he had stumbled on a secret of the Indianmedicine bag. But ever afterward that wonderful day was called back tohim, conjured up by his "medicine," this simple, natural magic, thesmell of the Wintergreen.
He appreciated that morning more than he could tell, and yet he did acharacteristic foolish thing, that put him in a wrong light and lefthim so in the stranger's mind.
It was past noon. They had long lingered; the Stranger spoke of themany things he had at home; then at length said he must be going."Weel, good-by, laddie; Ah hope Ah'll see you again." He held out hishand. Yan shook it warmly; but he was dazed with thinking and withreaction; his diffidence and timidity were strong; he never rose tothe stranger's veiled offer. He let him go without even learning hisname or address.
When it was too late, Yan awoke to his blunder. He haunted all thosewoods in hopes of chancing on him there again, but he never did.