Chapter 3

There Gigi lay and slept; slept and dreamed; dreamed and went over again by fits and starts the strange adventures of the past two days. But strangest of all, though by far the pleasantest, was that picture which he had seen when he came out into the clearing upon the back of Brutus. And this picture, with queer variations, filled the foreground of Gigi's dreaming.

X

THE HERMIT

_They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea_.--HOLY WRIT.

For three days Gigi lay on the pallet of the good Hermit, near to death. And for three days the great dog lay on guard by his side. The Hermit went softly to and fro, taking tender care of the boy and giving him medicine made from wonderful herbs which he had found in the woods. Often he knelt in a corner of the hut, before a rude wooden Cross, and said prayers; this seemed to give him strength for his work and hope for its result. So that when he rose, his face would be bright and happy.

This was he doing the third morning when Gigi awoke, feeling better. The ache was gone from his limbs and the dizziness from his head. He awoke with a long sigh, and for the first time since he lay down on the Hermit's pallet he looked around him with interest. At first he did not know where he was.

The hut was small and bare. In one corner was a cupboard where the Hermit kept his scanty supply of food and the medicines which he distilled. Against the wall was a bench, beside a table made of a tree-stump, and on the table lay a great black book. Opposite the bed was the Cross of wood fastened to the wall, and below it the good Hermit knelt with bowed head. Gigi wondered what he was doing. He himself knew no prayers.

Gigi's eyes wandered to the door, which stood open. On the sill the cat and her kittens were playing. Outside he could catch a glimpse of various animals frisking about the dooryard. Birds sang merrily in the trees overhead and in the bushes just outside the window. The raven hopped into the doorway and stood looking saucily at Gigi, with head on one side. It was all so peaceful, so quiet, so different from anything which Gigi had known, that he thought it must be a dream. He sighed again, and turned over, stretching out his arm. In doing so he touched the hairy neck of Brutus, who was still sleeping by his bed. Instantly the dog sprang up and began to lick the boy's face. At the same moment, with a pious gesture, the Hermit also rose and came toward the cot, smiling kindly.

"You are better, my son?" he asked, laying a cool hand upon Gigi's forehead. "Ah, yes! You will soon be quite yourself."

Gigi stared up at him contentedly. "Who are you?" he asked. He had never been taught manners, and he could no longer hide his curiosity.

"I am a Hermit," answered the old man. "I live here alone with my animals, as you see. I pass the days in prayer and meditation, studying the Lord's Holy Book and the living works of His hands."

"Why do you live away from men?" asked Gigi again.

The Hermit's face grew sad.

"Men are wicked and cruel, child," he said. "Men hurt and kill one another. They love to slay the innocent animals for sport. In their kingdoms is no love. I have made myself here an animal kingdom, where all is love and peace."

"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 sunshine, 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. God'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 dashing 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.

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 grass 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. Yonder is a cave, where first I made my dwelling when I came to the forest, before I built the hut in which we now live. And at the entrance, I remember, grew the herb of grace, which more than once has done me service in healing the hurts of my pets."

The Hermit plunged eagerly forward to the rocks. John followed close behind. At the entrance to the cave the old man stooped to pluck the herb which they had come so far to seek, and John, clambering beside him, bent curiously to peer into the cave. Suddenly a sound from within made him start. The Hermit paused in his task, and both stared motionless into the blackness of the cave. Presently the sound came again,--a deep growl ending in a whine.

"Some animal in pain," whispered the Hermit to John. "Stay you here, my son. I will discover what it may be."

"Nay, father!" pleaded the boy. "It may be some fierce creature; it may hurt you. Do not go!"

The old man turned beaming eyes upon him. "Never yet have I been hurt by an animal," he said gently. "My body bears only the scars of human hands. I am not afraid. But do you stay here, my son. You have not yet quite learned the language of dumb things."

"I shall go with you!" said John to himself. He seized the staff which the Hermit had dropped, and followed close upon his heels.

Soon their eyes became more used to the darkness of the cave, with which the Hermit was already familiar. Presently out of the shadows in a far corner they spied two red eyes glaring upon them. Behind the eyes bulked a huge, apparently shapeless form. It half rose as they drew near, and again they heard the growl of anger. But as the creature made a sudden movement, the growl turned into a howl of agony, and it rolled back into the corner, whimpering.

John plucked the Hermit by his robe. "It is a bear!" he said. "I have met them sometimes upon the highways, traveling with mountebanks. And the men told me that they were very fierce and hard to tame. Be careful, my father! Go not near, I beseech you!"

But the old man paid no heed to his words. Bending forward, he made a strange sound in his throat, a soothing, cooing noise. The bear heard it, and ceased to whine. They saw the ugly head rear up and look at the Hermit wildly. Again he made the sound, and stooping without fear brought his face close to the bear's great body. The animal did not move.

Presently the Hermit turned to John. "The poor beast has a wounded paw," he said. "An arrow has hurt it badly."

He unfastened from his girdle a cup which he always carried in his wanderings.

"Here, my son," he said, "fill this at the spring which we passed yonder. The creature suffers from thirst."

John hesitated. "Is it safe to leave you here alone with this wild beast?" he asked.

The Hermit smiled. "Quite safe," he said. "Do you think I need your protection? Brother Bear will soon know me for his friend."

When John returned he found the Hermit sitting on the floor of the cave, with the bear's paw resting on his knee. The animal was quiet, save for a whimpering now and then. John could see his little red eyes fixed upon the Hermit with a curious look of wonder and appeal. He seemed unable to move, and the Hermit touched the beast quite naturally, as if he were a great kitten. The bear stirred and turned his eyes when John entered.

"Thanks, son," said the Hermit, taking the cup from the boy's hand; and, turning again to' the bear, he held it to the animal's mouth. "Drink, brother," he said.

Eagerly the bear lapped up the water.

"Now, my son," said the Hermit to John, "go you to the entrance of the cave and pluck me a handful of the healing herb-leaves. I must bind up this suffering paw."

"Surely, father," begged John, "you will not try to touch the creature's wound. He will tear you to pieces!"

The old man turned reproachful eyes upon him. "Son," he said, "I have tried to teach you obedience. Go, get me the leaves."

Without more words John hastened to do as he was bid. When he returned with a handful of the plant, he found that the Hermit had bathed the wounded paw of the now quiet animal. He had torn a strip of linen from the shirt which he wore under his gray robe, and was making this into a bandage. Soon he had crushed the leaves and had bound them upon the foot of the bear, who lay still and gentle under his hands. John stared, amazed.

"Now we will go home," said the Hermit softly, "and you, John, shall return with food for this poor hungry brother. You will soon make him your dear friend also. For, you see, he asks only love and patience. Men have been cruel to him. But we will be kind to our Brother Bear."

Thus John learned a new lesson of courtesy to the wilder, bigger beasts. That same day he made the long journey a second time, bringing the bear his dinner, with a comb of wild honey which the Hermit had found on the way home. And he had the joy of seeing the creature act no longer like an enemy, but like a timid friend.

Day after day John went and ministered to the sick animal. At last, there came a joyous time when the bear rose to greet him on his approach. The injured paw was healed. And when John left the cave that night, the bear hobbled at his heels, even to the clearing where the Hermit lived. He would not go farther at that time. He sat down on his haunches outside the border of tall trees, and when John tried to coax him he looked at the hut doubtfully. At the sight of Brutus he made lumberingly away.

A few evenings later, the bear came of his own accord to beg for his supper; and at last this became a custom. Soon he also was accounted a member of the animal kingdom, and became good friends with them all. In time John taught him many tricks, such as he had seen the mountebanks do with their traveling bears. But unlike them, John taught only by kindness; and his bear learned the faster.

XIII

A FOREST RAMBLE

"Father," said John one summer afternoon, when his tasks for the day were quite finished, "Brutus and I are going for a long walk."

"Very well, my son," answered the Hermit, "I will bide here and read my book, for the heat has made me somewhat weary. But see that you return before sunset."

"Yes, father," said John.

Slinging over his shoulder a little basket in which to fetch home any strange plants which he might find in the forest, John whistled to Brutus, and the pair trotted away together as they loved to do. The Hermit looked after them, and smiled.

"John is a good boy," he said. "One day he will be a fine man. May the Saints help me to make him worthy of his father and of the name he bears." Then he turned to his beloved book.

John and Brutus went merrily through the forest, the boy singing under his breath snatches of the cheerful hymns that he and the Hermit loved. The dog ran ahead, exploring in the bushes, sometimes disappearing for long minutes at a time, but ever returning to rub his nose in John's hand and exchange a silent word with him. They were not going for any particular errand to any especial spot. They were just rambling wherever the forest looked inviting; which is the nicest way to travel through the woods,--especially if one of you can be trusted to find the way home, however wavering may be the trail that you leave behind. It was what John loved to do more than anything in the world.

The woods were cool and green and full of lovely light. It was so still and peaceful, too! The tiny queer noises all about, which once, before he knew the kingdom of the forest, had frightened him so much, now filled John with the keenest joy. Often he paused and listened eagerly. He liked to feel that he was surrounded everywhere by little brothers, seen and unseen. With a word to Brutus, which made the dog lie down and keep perfectly quiet, John would steal forward softly and peer through a screen of bushes, or into a treetop, and watch the housekeeping of some shy brother beast or bird. Once he flung himself flat on the ground, and lay for a long time eagerly watching the antics of a beetle. A little later, with Brutus patiently beside him, he sat cross-legged for ten minutes, waiting to see how a certain big yellow spider would spin her web between two branches of a rose-bush.

They wandered on and on. A great golden butterfly rose before them from a bed of lilies, and together he and Brutus ran after it; not to capture and kill it, oh no! for to John the wonder of the flower with wings lay in the life which gave it power to move about and pay calls upon the other blossoms that must be always stay-at-homes. John chased it gaily, as one brother plays with another. And when it lighted on a rose-bush or a yellow broom-flower, or poised on a swaying blade of grass, he crept up and admired its lovely colors without touching the fragile thing. But at last, as if suddenly remembering an errand which it had forgotten, the butterfly soared quickly up and away over the treetops and out of sight.

"Good-by, little brother!" called John after it. "I wish I could fly as you do and look down upon the kingdom of the forest! Then indeed I would learn all the secrets of our friends up in the treetops there, who hide their nests so selfishly. Oh, I should so love to see all the little baby birds! To be sure, some that I have seen in the ground-nests are ugly enough. Oh, the big mouths of them! Oh, the bald skins and prickly pin-feathers! Ha! ha!" John laughed so heartily that Brutus came running up to see what the joke was. "O Brutus!" cried John. "I think I know why the father and mother birds build their nests so high. They are ashamed to have any one see their funny little ones before they are quite dressed!"

Brutus looked up in John's face and seemed to smile. The boy and the dog often had talks together in this wise.