A Daughter of the Forest

He finished his soliloquy before an open window, through which he could see the summit of the bare mountain that crowned the centre of the island, and was itself crowned by a single pine-tree. Though many of its branches had been lopped away, enough were left to form a sort of spiral stairway up its straight trunk and to its lofty top.

“What a magnificent flagstaff that would make! I’d like to see Old Glory floating there. Believe I’ll suggest it to the magician – that’s what this woodlander is – and doubtless he’ll attend to that little matter! Shades of Aladdin!”

Adrian was so startled that he dropped into a chair, the better to sustain himself against further Arabian-nights-like discoveries.

It was a flagstaff! Somebody was climbing it – Margot! Up, up, like a squirrel, her blond head appearing first on one side then the other, a glowing budget strapped to her back.

Adrian gasped. No sailor could have been more fleet or sure-footed. It seemed but a moment before that slender figure had scaled the topmost branch and was unrolling the brilliant burden it had borne. The stars and stripes, of course. Adrian would have been bitterly disappointed if it had been anything else this agile maiden hoisted from that dizzy height.

In wild excitement and admiration the watcher leaned out of his window and shouted hoarsely:

“Hurrah! H-u-r-rah! H-u-r – !”

The cheer died in his throat. Something had happened. Something too awful to contemplate. Adrian’s eyes closed that he might not see. Had her foot slipped? Had his own cry reached and startled her?

For she was falling – falling! and the end could be but one.

CHAPTER VI

A ONE-SIDED STORY

Adrian was not a gymnast though he had seen and admired many wonderful feats performed by his own classmates. But he had never beheld a miracle, and such he believed had been accomplished when, upon reaching the foot of that terrible tree, he found Margot sitting beneath it, pale and shaken, but, apparently, unhurt.

She had heard his breathless crashing up the slope and greeted him with a smile, and the tremulous question:

“How did you know where I was?”

“You aren’t – dead?”

“Certainly not. I might have been, though, but God took care.”

“Was it my cheers frightened you?”

“Was it you, then? I heard something, different from the wood sounds, and I looked quick to see. Then my foot slipped and I went down – a way. I caught a branch just in time and, please, don’t tell uncle. I’d rather do that myself.”

“You should never do such a thing. The idea of a girl climbing trees at all, least of any, such a tree as that!”

He threw his head back and looked upward, through the green spiral to the brilliant sky. The enormous height revived the horror he had felt as he leaped through the window and rushed to the mountain.

“Who planned such a death-trap as that, anyway?”

“I did.”

“You! A girl!”

“Yes. Why not. It’s great fun, usually.”

“You’d better have been learning to sew.”

“I can sew, but I don’t like it. Angelique does that. I do like climbing and canoeing and botanizing, and geologizing, and astronomizing, and – ”

Adrian threw up his hands in protest.

“What sort of creature are you, anyway?”

“Just plain girl.”

“Anything but that!”

“Well, girl, without the adjective. Suits me rather better;” and she laughed in a way that proved she was not suffering from her mishap.

“This is the strangest place I ever saw. You are the strangest family. We are certainly in the backwoods of Maine, yet you might be a Holyoke senior, or a circus star, or – a fairy.”

Margot stretched her long arms and looked at them quizzically.

“Fairies don’t grow so big. Why don’t you sit down? Or, if you will, climb up and look toward the narrows on the north. See if Pierre’s birch is coming yet.”

Again Adrian glanced upward, to the flag floating there, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Excuse me, please. That is, I suppose I could do it, only seeing you slip – I prefer to wait awhile.”

“Are you afraid?”

There was no sarcasm in the question. She asked it in all sincerity. Adrian was different from Pierre, the only other boy she knew, and she simply wondered if tree-climbing were among his unknown accomplishments.

It had been, to the extent possible with his city training and his brief summer vacations, though unpracticed of late; but no lad of spirit, least of all impetuous Adrian, could bear even the suggestion of cowardice. He did not sit down, as she had bidden, but tossed aside his rough jacket and leaped to the lower branch of the pine.

“Why, it’s easy! It’s grand!” he called back and went up swiftly enough.

Indeed, it was not so difficult as it appeared from a distance. Wherever the branches failed the spiral ladder had been perfected by great spikes driven into the trunk and he had but to clasp these in turn to make a safe ascent. At the top he waved his hand, then shaded his eyes and peered northward.

“He’s coming! Somebody’s coming!” he shouted. “There’s a little boat pushing off from that other shore.”

Then he descended with a rapidity that delighted even himself and called a bit of praise from Margot.

“I’m so glad you can climb. One can see so much more from the tree-tops; and, oh! there is so much, so much to find out all the time! Isn’t there?”

“Yes. Decidedly. One of the things I’d like to find out first is who you are and how you came here. If you’re willing.”

Then he added, rather hastily: “Of course, I don’t want to be impertinently curious. It only seems so strange to find such educated people buried here in the north woods. I don’t see how you live here. I – I – ”

But the more he tried to explain the more confused he grew, and Margot merrily simplified matters by declaring:

“You are curious, all the same, and so am I. Let’s tell each other all about everything and then we’ll start straight without the bother of stopping as we go along. Do sit down and I’ll begin.”

“Ready.”

“There’s so little, I shan’t be long. My dear mother was Cecily Dutton, my Uncle Hugh’s twin. My father was Philip Romeyn, uncle’s closest friend. They were almost more than brothers to each other, always; though uncle was a student and, young as he was, a professor at Columbia. Papa was a business man, a banker, or a cashier in a bank. He wasn’t rich, but mamma and uncle had money. From the time they were boys uncle and papa were fond of the woods. They were great hunters, then, and spent all the time they could get up here in northern Maine. After the marriage mamma begged to come with them, and it was her money bought this island, and the land along the shore of this lake as far as we can see from here. Much farther, too, of course, because the trees hide things. They built this log cabin and it cost a great, great deal to do it. They had to bring the workmen so far, but it was finished at last, and everything was brought up here to make it – just as you see.”