Part 4

Pincher brought the horses to a walk, and drove them so carefully that there was hardly a tinkle of harness or bells as they climbed the steep snowy way. Far off and softly came the silvery peal from the tower of the little church below them. They wound round a projecting wall of the mountain—and there on the side of the great cliff, blazing with a myriad colored lights that hung on its huge boughs like some wonderful fruit, was the ancient fir-tree that had weathered centuries of storm and shine, holding up all its splendor to the dark skies, and answering the distant stars with emerald and ruby and topaz and sapphire sparks.

There was a shout from every voice, and then silence again. Essie burst into tears.

“What in gracious you crying for?” asked Will, leaning back to whisper.

“Oh! it’s so beautiful,” said Essie. “I can’t bear it.”

“It is so beautiful,” said Ally, hugging her. “Oh, Essie! look again! and look again!”

And they looked again, and again; and they drove slowly up the way to see it from all sides, making night glorious, and turned and drove slowly back. And all the time the Christmas bells rang out below, and the great tree held out its proud branches clad in living rainbows. Then, with many cries of joy, they went down and left its last sparkle round the cliff behind them.

“Hold on!” cried a voice they knew. “If you would hear something to your advantage, hold on!” And after a little delay, Uncle Billy and Charlie came round the cliff, lugging a big box along, with as much of the paraphernalia of the battery as they could bring, and got it in one of the sleighs. Then after going back up the height for the rest, they piled into the sleigh with the children, and Uncle Billy took the reins and drove down the hill, as Will said, as if a comet were after them, while all of them sang at the top of their sweet shrill voices, “When shepherds watched their flocks by night.”

“Oh! do you suppose,” said Janet, when they had finished singing, “that what the shepherds saw was more beautiful than that tree full of jewels?”

“Of course it was,” said Essie; “angels are more beautiful than anything—up in the dark sky—angels that the glory shone round!”

“Well, children,” said Old Uncle when the sleighs stopped at the door, “how do you like my sort of a Christmas-tree?”

“O Uncle! Old Uncle! we like it; there was never anything so fine! It was just—just—”

“So I think,” said he; “that fills my idea of a Christmas-tree. Not looking out for gifts, but just making the tree show forth praise. Still I suppose you youngsters would like a surprise or two, and Santa Claus would be disappointed if he found no stockings at the chimney-side. Hang them all up and see what will happen.”

And all of a sudden Old Uncle was swarmed over by a multitude of red sleeves and mittens, and cold cheeks and warm kisses, that took him as much by surprise as in a minute or two it did the owners of the sleeves and mittens and cheeks—to think they had ventured it!

XI.

AUNT ROSE AND THE CHILDREN.

THE happy winter wore away. And one March day, under the lee of a rock, they found what looked like a little purple rose, the first hepatica, blooming in the wind and frost and raw air. The brooks were breaking their ice chains then, and racing away; and there was a sound of frogs singing, like silver bells; and look! here was a robin, and there went the flash of a blue-bird’s wing. The buds that had pushed off the leaves last fall were swelling; the air was full of wings, full of song; the rocks were white with saxifrage, the grass slopes were thick with violets; and then came the rich pungent lilac scent every time the old trees shook their purple plumes in the wind; and after that the world looked as if it had spread its wings in the flowering of the apple-orchards; then came the bramble-roses, and summer was warm on all the hills.

“I don’t know how there can be anything more beautiful than summer in this valley between the hills,” said Aunt Rose. “How I wish all the children in the dark crowded city could have such air and sunshine!”

“Oh, Aunt Rose, I wish so too!” said Essie.

“Is it very dark and crowded there?” asked Ally.

“Ally,” said Aunt Rose, “once I saw a street so narrow that it was hardly more than a gutter, and the quarreling women in the high old rickety houses on either side could hit each other with their brooms. And there were little starved-looking children there among those women.”

“Oh! couldn’t we take some of them up here to have some of our summer?” asked Janet.

“Old Uncle wouldn’t like it,” said Jack.

“No, Old Uncle wouldn’t,” said Essie. “He thinks there’s plenty of children here now.”

“I don’t know that,” said Aunt Rose, reflecting a little while. “Once we had Fresh Air children here, a good while ago, and it didn’t disturb him.”

“Perhaps, then, he wouldn’t mind,” said Essie.

The thought of the children in the city was such a sad one to them all that Aunt Rose was sorry she had spoken of them. For there had been some melancholy in the season any way for Essie and Ally, as Bobbo, Ally’s cat, had disappeared; and Essie’s best doll, the one that always went to bed with her, had lost her head in crossing a brook while her little mother stopped on the stepping-stone to show her the picture of herself in the pool just there.

It was in this melancholy time, when Essie and Ally were sitting in the garret one rainy day, and Essie had been telling Ally her dreams concerning the Children of the Hill—who were, to her imagination, not little darlings who had been laid to rest up there, but a sort of angel-people—that Aunt Susan had come up and had cried over the tiny shirt she took from the old bureau-drawer and Ally had tried to comfort her.

“Some day,” little Ally had said, when Aunt Susan had gone down, “some day I am going up to find the Children of the Hill, and ask them to give back Aunt Susan’s baby.”

And it was the very next morning but one that Ally was not to be found—as you read in the beginning of the story—and the whole house and place and Valley were in commotion, and no one knew where to find her.

XII.

THE FLIGHT ON A STREET-CAR.

IT was in this same lovely summer-time, far down in that dark, crowded city of which Aunt Rose had told the Children of the Valley, that one night a little girl, with a little baby in her arms, was standing in the doorway of a house that looked ready to fall on her.

A trickle of dirty water ran down the middle of the cobble-stones in front. The night was hot; men were asleep on their carts drawn up beside the walls, women were asleep hanging half out of the windows above for a breath of coolness, and other women had made some sort of bed on the pavement for their sick babies, and had stretched themselves on the hard stones beside them. The little girl’s home was in one room far up near the top of the house, a room that had no window in it, and out of it her mother had been carried to her grave the day before. The dark, small, airless place had grown dreadful with stifling heat; and she had taken the small baby brother in her arms, and crept down the long flights of stairs. Almost every other step was missing, and rats slipped along beside her.

It seemed heavenly to get down into the open air, foul and hot as that sort of open air was. She stepped out on the cobble-stones, picking her way through the gasping people there, no one noting her or caring about her.

She had heard some of the women in the house say that she and the baby were to be sent to an Institution. She did not know what that meant, but felt in it something of a vague horror. It would be a dreadful fate for her and for the little new baby. A resolve to run away from it had filled her whole being. She had heard cruel stories of places where poor children, like her, were sent—probably they were Institutions.

One of the more tender-hearted people who had been there that morning had given her some silver pieces. She had clutched and hidden them, and now she was wondering how far away they would take her.

She wandered on from one to another of the feebly-lighted lanes and alleys, hushing the baby, giving it her finger to suck, shifting it from shoulder to shoulder, and throwing back a swift glance of terror now and again lest anyone followed; for her fears had grown so that it seemed as if the whole alley, the whole city, were in a conspiracy to send her to the terrible Institution.

At last, cautiously, stopping to look, to listen, slinking into doorways if any came along, slipping far outside every knot of roistering or quarreling men, so small and dark herself as to seem only a part of the shadows, she came out upon the broader street that led into a square. Down a cross-street she saw the lights of a street-car flash along. It was going somewhere—away from this. She walked backward to make sure no one watched while she got out one of her silver pieces, then turned and ran swiftly, noiselessly.

A car, coming along at that moment, was stopping for someone to get off; and she clambered up the steps in the instant, disposed herself and the baby at one end of the seat, and held out her silver piece to the conductor as if she rode in cars every day of her life, although disturbed by his sharp glance.

The motion of the car was delightful. It soothed the baby off to sleep; and the wind of its movement was so refreshing that she could have gone to sleep herself. She passed the time wishing the car was never going to stop, and hearing the wheels sing over and over to some tune of the alleys: “She’ll never go back no more. She’ll never go back no more.”

She was in a happy land between dreaming and waking, when the car came to a stop, and a rude voice called, “End er the line!”

It filled her with consternation for a moment. Far off a church bell struck. It seemed an act of Providence that the car in waiting just beyond was starting for somewhere farther on, and she ran again and climbed aboard.

She had no idea where she was going; but it was into distance, away from the city, on and on.

She crept out when by and by the car turned into its stable; and after strolling on a bit farther, she lay down on a piece of grass and went so sound asleep in the warm night that she did not even hear the baby cry.

XIII.

SALLY’S VOYAGE.

IT was broad daylight when the little girl awoke, and saw a policeman bending over her.

“Oh, yep!” she cried, springing up at once and adjusting the baby. “I’m on me way to de country wid de kid. I’se got de stuff;” and she would have showed him a piece of her silver if she had not feared he might take it from her. The sight of the policeman gave her a great scare—it seemed as though it were impossible to escape from the city bounds. But after a kindly word and laugh he went another way; and she presently saw a little shop where she bought some milk, and fed the baby with a great deal of gurgling on his part and of endearment on hers, refilled the bottle, and then took a look about her. There was water not far away, and ships and steamboats, and a crowd of masts and funnels.

A bold idea struck her. She went down on one of the long wharves, still shouldering the baby that had fallen asleep again, walked aboard the boat where she saw the most commotion, and sat down behind a lot of barrels. It was a freight steamer, and not twenty minutes afterward it cast off and was out in the stream and plowing its way steadily out to sea.

She knew that she could not escape discovery. But she did not believe the men would throw her overboard, and she fancied that maybe they would give her something to eat. Really she was not thinking much of anything excepting that they must get away, get away from that dreadful Institution. Poor little girl, who would have been so comfortable with the clean clothes, good food, and kind treatment of the very Institution from which she was running away, if she had only known it!

Suddenly the baby set up his tune. And then you may be sure there was an uproar, and a throng of bearded faces over her, and a chorus of loud voices round her. She was bidden out on the deck, and stood there in the ragged gown that was her only garment, with her bare feet, looking at the sailors with wild but fearless eyes, out of a tangle of hair, and clutching the baby.

“Hushy, hushy, hushy,” she said to the whimpering little thing, as she patted its back. “It’s Sally’s byby, it’s Sally’s byby. Dey sha’n’t nab Sally’s byby!”

And the long and the short of it is that they didn’t try to “nab Sally’s byby.” But they gave Sally a good breakfast, and a good dinner, and a bunk that night to sleep in, and passed the baby round, and altogether treated Sally like a princess. One of them gave her a large silk handkerchief, several of them gave her silver dollars, and the cook made the baby a little slip out of his own old shirt.

They did counsel among themselves, indeed, as to the possibility of adopting her and the baby as mascots. Sally overheard them, and became filled with new fright; for that meant going back and forth to the city, and perhaps being found by some of the Institution’s agents.

To such an extent did this new fear go that, although she knew she was leaving kind friends, the moment she could escape observation after they were at the wharf in the distant port, Sally quietly slipped ashore and made off.

XIV.

SALLY’S HILL JOURNEY.

SALLY had been a little Fresh Air child one year; and so, being very bright and sharp with her eyes, and quite capable of putting two and two together, she was not unfamiliar with the ways of getting about.

She soon found her way to the station, people gazing after her with her baby on her shoulder. She felt so much more respectable than before the cook of the steamer took out his big needle and thread in her behalf that she did not mind the curious eyes as she skimmed along.

At the station she got some crackers, and some fresh milk for the baby, in a dreadful hurry, lest this time it should be the sailors who would be after her.

At the ticket-office, after answering many inquisitive questions, she bought with her silver dollars a ticket that would take her a long way on the train that was going farthest from the city she had left in the first place.

But she was not without alarm, when, as she sat munching her crackers, the train began to back and fill, ran a mile or so, and then stood still a long while. She walked up and down in the aisle, looking out of windows anxiously at every turn, over the broad water where boats rocked pleasantly, and singing in a low voice to the restless baby on her shoulder:

“Buy my pipers, pritty loidy, I don’t darst go home, that’s true; I won’t git no supper, loidy, If ye don’t, and if I do.”

At last another train came along, some people hurried in, and then Sally’s train went puffing and blowing on its way; and the joggle jolted the baby to sleep, and by and by Sally too. She roused herself to give the conductor her ticket—the man looking at her searchingly; but when he came back to question her he found her asleep again.

It was a long, refreshing slumber that Sally had; and when at last the little old conductor told her this was the place to which her ticket took her, she skipped off the car, happy-hearted to think of all the long distance that lay between her and the city and the ship. She edged through the little throng always waiting at a station, who if they thought at all about her thought she belonged to some poor French Canadians, and hurried down the first road she saw. Then spying a foot-path leading up a hill, among low bushes, to a wood, she was over the fence in no time, and following it up and out of sight.

Then at last Sally breathed freely. She never thought of being afraid in the green afternoon wood. She kept the half-visible path by a kind of instinct.

On and on, and up and up, Sally went. Then down and down on the other side, she made her way, sometimes in deep green gloom, and creeping under heavy branches; sometimes where a shimmer of leaves let her see a pale blue sky overhead. Once a young fawn looked at her through the boughs and fled away in a fright that made her laugh—as if anything need be afraid of her! Once a brood of little brown partridges scurried away under foot like a parcel of dead leaves. Once she stooped to smooth two little hairy things cuddled in a grassy hollow in the lee of a big, warm rock, who evidently did not like it; and it was well for Sally that their mother, who would not have liked it either, was off foraging and rolling in a berry-patch—for they were bear’s cubs.

All the way along Sally was conscious of a delicious sort of air, a scent of earth and flowers and spicy leaves that comforted her soul, although burrs and boughs and twigs and pebbles discomfited her feet, tough little feet though they were.

By and by the trees grew thin. She came out on a bright and open spot where a spring bubbled up and ran away in a tiny brook. A wooden trough, hollowed out of an old tree, stood beside the spring, half full of water in which the sun had lain all day.

As she sat down, Sally dabbled her fingers in the trough. The water was warm. In a moment she had off the baby’s poor little slip, and then gave him the most refreshing bath the little creature had ever had in his life. After it, she laid him down to kick and sprawl and crow and gurgle on a bed of soft warm moss, while she washed her own face and hands, and dipped her head in the spring, where the water made a glossy curl of every lock of her hair.

This done, Sally took the bottle of milk out of the big silk handkerchief, tasted it to find if it were still sweet, and proceeded to give the baby his supper. She put the bottle afterwards in the edge of the running water to keep cool, and then wrapped him over and over in the soft handkerchief, having spread his little gown on a bush to dry, and laid him down on the grass. She rambled about a little while, picking and eating berries. Afterward she lay down beside him, putting her arm over him. Tired out with her long tramp and all her cares and fears, Sally slept till the baby woke her in the broad sunlight of the next morning. She ran for the bottle in the brook; but alas the little drop of milk was sour. She stayed long enough to wash the bottle; and then, without stopping for any of the tempting berries, she took up her march again.

The baby was crying lustily for his breakfast, when Sally saw the smoke of a farmhouse and with some hesitation drew near it. A man, coming from the barn, was just carrying in a foaming pail of milk.

“Oh, if youse’d gimme de full of de bottle!” cried Sally.

“What for?” said the man gruffly.

“For de byby,” answered Sally.

“Why don’t you have your own milk?” said the man. “There, hold your dipper.”

But Sally hadn’t any dipper; and at that moment a thin, colorless woman appeared at the door, a look of wonder and then another of pity and sweetness sweeping over her face; and Sally and the baby were in the kitchen directly afterward.

“Where’d you come f’m?” the woman asked Sally.

“Down below,” said Sally, who had no notion of telling.

“Whar’ you goin’?”

“Goin’ on.”

“Got any mother?” twisting one of Sally’s curls.

“Naw.”

“Nor father, either, I s’pose?”

“Naw.”

“My land! Wal, you hev somethin’ ter eat, an’ then I’ll see.” And Sally had a breakfast that made her think of these people as one thinks of those in kings’ palaces—only Sally had never heard of kings’ palaces.

While she was “topping off,” as the good woman called it, with pancakes and maple-syrup, her new friend fed the baby, and then brought a basin of warm water and soap with soft towels, and washed him carefully and rubbed his back, while he stretched and kicked and laughed. She got a little cotton nightgown that she had laid away in camphor, and put it on him. “Oh!” she said, “he’s good enough to eat!” She took him out to show him to her husband. “Father!” she said. “He’s jest the image of our little John!”

“Can’t help it ef he is,” said the man, who evidently knew what she wished. “We can’t afford ter be a-keepin’ of tramps. She said she was goin’ on. You jes’ let her go on!”

The woman knew it was no use to say more. She came in with tears on her face. But she had Sally make herself decent, and she gave her a cotton gown that had once been pink and was now a rosy white. In it, though it was a little too long, Sally looked quite quaint. It had been the gown of the poor woman’s dear and only daughter, who had died before the little John had died. And then this good, kind soul did up Sally’s scratched and blistered feet in some ointment, with bandages, and dressed them up in a pair of little old shoes she had always kept. After that she put up a luncheon of fried bread and a piece of pie for Sally, and filled the milk-bottle, and Sally shouldered the baby and made off.

But turning for a look at the place where she had met so much kindness, Sally saw the woman crying, and she went back.

“Youse ain’t no need ter feel bad,” she said, as she put her arms round the kind friend’s neck. And then suddenly, in a great fear of she knew not what, she scampered off as fast as her feet would let her. They were very tired and lame little feet now.

XV.

THAT DAY WHEN ALLY WAS LOST.

THE morning had deepened into late forenoon before—going a little way, and resting a little while, and going on again, and stopping a moment to cry, and talking to the baby—Sally gave herself up to rest.

She had come to a place of velvet grass, a glen, that although shut in with green hills, yet gave her a sense of being high in clear sweet air. A stream trickled over some upper cliff in a thin waterfall that gave a murmuring sound. And as the baby was fretting, Sally thought it might be time for his second dinner; and almost before he had finished it, braced by the mountain air and weary with her walk, she fell as sound asleep as the baby did.

Sally opened her eyes an hour or two afterwards to behold, bending over her, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

It was a golden-haired child with big blue eyes shining out of a flushed and smiling, wondering face.

Sally had heard somewhere, she did not know where, but very vaguely, of such a place as Heaven, of such a thing as an angel. Now she lay there on the soft warm grass, and looked up at the velvet blue sky, and smelled the wind wandering by laden with the breath of the wild sweet-brier, and remembered the wings of the low-darting birds, the murmur of the waterfall, and she came to the instant conclusion that this was Heaven, and that so her mother was not far off.

“Say! Be youse an angel?” she whispered.

“Oh, I’m Ally!” answered the little creature. “I’ve come to find you. You’re one of the Children of the Hill, I suppose, and here’s the baby, the very baby! Come with me quick! Aunt Susan wants the baby!”

“What!” cried Sally in alarm. “It ain’t Heaven den?”

“Why, no,” said Ally. “It’s Green Ridge. It’s the basin where we have picnics.”

“Who’s Aunt Susan?”

“Why, she’s—she’s Aunt Susan at the house. She’s real sweet. And she wants the baby.”

“Is it de ’Statution down there?’

“It’s the farm,—Old Uncle’s farm,” said Ally, “and Uncle Billy’s farm.”

“Oh, de farm-school!” cried Sally, sure now of evil mischance. “Well, I ain’t goin’, and you can tell ’em so!”

“Oh, but I want you to! I live down there—I’m one of the Children of the Valley. We have beautiful times. We learn lessons, a little while mornings, and then we have beautiful times. We’re all learning to swim, and we had fireworks the Fourth of July. And there’s Essie and Janet and Jack and”—just then old Brindle went across a pasture down below. “You aren’t afraid of cows, are you?”

“I ain’t afraid o’ nothin’,” said Sally defiantly.