CHAPTER V

THE LAKE HAS A NAME

The aunt was not in the living room when Rico entered, so he went to the kitchen door and opened it. There she stood, but before Rico had time to take a step nearer, she raised her finger in warning: "Hush! don't open and shut all the doors as if there were four of you coming. Go into the other room and keep still. Your father was brought home in a wagon, and he is sick upstairs."

Rico went to the bench by the window, where he sat motionless for fully half an hour. Then he decided that he would go up quietly and look at his father; it was past supper time, and perhaps the sick man might be needing something. He heard the aunt walking about the kitchen, so he silently slipped behind the stove and up the narrow stairway into his father's room.

In a moment he was again in the kitchen, saying faintly, "Come, aunt!"

She was about to take him by the shoulders to shake him, when she caught sight of his frightened face. She shrank from him, exclaiming, "What has happened?"

"If you will go to my father," said Rico, "I will see if the grandmother can come over. My father must be dead."

"I will run for the pastor!" cried the aunt, and rushed out ahead of the trembling boy.

Later he heard his aunt tell the pastor that for several weeks his father had been working down in the St. Gall district on a railroad. He had received a bad wound on his head while blasting stone. The journey home, part of which had to be taken in an open wagon, had proved too much for him.

The following Sunday the man was buried. Rico was the only mourner to follow the coffin. A few neighbors joined him through sympathy, and thus the procession moved through Sils. Here Rico heard the pastor read aloud during the service, "The dead man was called Enrico Trevillo and was born in Peschiera on Lake Garda."

It seemed to Rico that he was hearing something he had known very well but had not been able to recall. He understood now why he had always had the lake in mind when he and the father had sung his favorite song:

"Una sera In Peschiera."

As Rico was returning alone from the funeral, he noticed that the grandmother and Stineli were waiting in the yard. When he drew near they beckoned him to come to them.

The grandmother gave the boy and girl some bread, saying: "Now go and take a walk together. Rico had better not be left alone to-day."

She looked pityingly after the boy as the children walked away. When she could see them no longer, she repeated softly:

"Whatever in His care is laid Shall have a happy end."