Chapter XVII: A Day Has Come (2)

And then they waited for instructions. But the odd thing was that their uncle waited too. There was this moment's hesitation. They looked to him. The old fixed habit asserted itself: a grown-up must surely know more than they did. How could it be otherwise? In this case, however, the grown-up seemed in doubt. He looked at them. It _was_ otherwise.

"It's so long since I played this kind of hide-and-seek," he murmured. "I've rather forgotten--"

He stopped short. There certainly was a difficulty. Nobody knew in what direction to begin.

"It's a snopportunity," exclaimed Judy. "I'm sure of that!"

"We just look--everywhere!" cried Tim.

A light broke over their uncle's face as if a ray of sunshine touched it. His mind cleared. Some old, forgotten joy, wonderful as the dawn, burst into his heart, rose to fire in his eyes, flooded his whole being. A glory long eclipsed, a dream interrupted years ago, an uncompleted game of earliest youth--all these rose from their hiding-place and recaptured him, soul and body. He glanced at the children. These things he had recaptured, they, of course, had never lost; this state and attitude of wonder was their natural prerogative; he had recovered the ownership of the world, but they had possessed it always. They knew the whole business from beginning to end--only they liked to hear it stated. That was obviously his duty as a grown-up: to stick the label on.

"Of course," he whispered, deliciously enchanted. "You've got it. It's _the_ snopportunity! The great thing is to--look."

And, as if to prove him right, a flock of birds passed sweeping through the air above their heads, paused in mid-flight, wheeled, fluttered noisily a second, then scattered in all directions like leaves whirled by an eddy of loose, autumn wind.

"Come on," cried Tim, remembering perhaps the "dodgy" butterfly and trying to imitate it with his arms and legs. "I know where to go first. Just follow me!"

"And there'll be signs, remember," Uncle Felix shouted as he followed. "Whoever finds a sign must let the others know at once."

They began with the feeling that they would discover the Stranger in a moment, sure of the places where he had tried cleverly to conceal himself, but soon began to realise that this was no ordinary game, and that he certainly knew of mysterious spots and corners they had never dreamed about. It was as Tim declared, "an enormous hide." Come-Back Stumper's cunning dive into bed was nothing compared to the skill with which this hider eluded their keen searching. There was another difference too. In Stumper's case their interest had waned, they felt they had been cheated somehow, they knew themselves defeated and had given up the search. But here the interest was unfailing; it increased rather than diminished; they were ever on the very edge of finding him, and more than once they shrieked with joy, "I've got him!"--only to find they had been "very hot" but not quite hot enough. It was, like everything else upon this happy morning, endless.

It continued and continued, as naturally as the rivulet that ran for ever downhill to find the sea, that nothing, it seemed, could put a stop to, much less an end. The feeling that time was passing utterly disappeared; weeks, months, and years lay waiting somewhere near, but could be left or taken, used or not used, as they pleased. To take a week and use it was like picking a flower that looked much prettier growing sweetly in the sunny earth. Why pick it? It came to an end that way! The minutes, the hours and days, morning, noon and night as well, the very seasons too, offered themselves, and--vanished. They did not come and go, they were just "there"; and to steal into one or other of them at will was like stealing into one mood after another as the heart decreed. They were mere counters in the gorgeous and unending game. They helped to hide the mysterious Stranger who was evidently in the centre round which all life lay grouped so marvellously. They hid and covered him as moods hide and cover the heart that wears them--temporarily. Uncle Felix and the children used them somewhat in this way, it seems, for while they looked and hunted in and out among them, any minute, day or season was recoverable at will. They did not pass away. It was the seekers who passed through them. To Uncle Felix, at any rate, it seemed a fact--this joyous sensation of immense duration, yet of nothing passing away: the bliss of utter freedom. He gasped to realise it. But the children did not gasp. They had always known that nothing ever really came to an end. "The weather's still here," he heard Judy calling across the lawn to Tim--as though she had just been looking among December snowdrifts and had popped back again into the fragrance of midsummer hayfields. "The Equator's made of golden butterflies, all shining," the boy called back, having evidently just been round the world and seen its gleaming waist....

But none of them had found what they were looking for....

They had looked in all the difficult places where a clever player would be most likely to conceal himself, yet in vain; there was no definite sign of him, no footprints on the flower-beds or along the edge of the shrubberies. The garden proper had been searched from end to end without result. The children had been to the particular hiding-places each knew best, Tim to the dirty nook between the ilex and the larder window, and Judy to the scooped-out trunk of the rotten elm, and both together to the somewhat smelly channel between the yew trees and a disused outhouse--all equally untenanted.

In the latter gloomy place, in fact, they met. No sunlight pierced the dense canopy of branches; it was barely light enough to see. Judy and Tim advanced towards each other on tiptoe, confident of discovery at last. They only realised their mistake at five yards' distance.

"You!" exclaimed Tim, in a disappointed whisper. "I thought it was going to be a sign." "I felt positive he'd be in here somewhere," said Judy.

"Perhaps we're both signs," they declared together, then paused, and held a secret discussion about it all.

"He's got a splendid hide," was the boy's opinion. "D'you think Uncle Felix knows anything? You heard what he said about signs...!"

They decided without argument that he didn't. He just went "thumping about" in the usual places. He'd never find him. They agreed it was very wonderful. Tim advanced his pet idea--it had been growing on him: "I think _he_ knows some special place we'd never look in--a hole or something." But Judy met the suggestion with superior knowledge: "He moves about," she announced. "He doesn't stop in a hole. He flies at an awful rate--from place to place. That's--signs, I expect."

"Wings?" suggested Tim.

Judy hesitated. "You remember--at breakfast, wasn't it?--ages and ages ago--all had wings--those things--"

She broke off and pointed significantly at the figure of Uncle Felix who was standing with his head cocked up at an awkward angle, staring into the sky. Shading his eyes with one hand, he was apparently examining the topmost branches of the tall horse-chestnuts.

"He couldn't have got up a tree, could he, or into a bird's nest?" said the girl. She offered the suggestion timidly, yet her brother did not laugh at her. There was this strange feeling that the hider might be anywhere--simply anywhere. This was no ordinary game.

"There's such a lot," Tim answered vaguely.

She looked at him with intense admiration. The wonder of this marvellous game was in their hearts. The moment when they would find him was simply too extraordinary to think about.

Judy moved a step closer in the darkness. "Can he get small, then--like that?" she whispered.

But the question was too much for Tim.

"Anyhow he gets about, doesn't he?" was the reply, the vagueness of uncertain knowledge covering the disappointment. "There are simply millions of trees and nests and--and rabbit-holes all over the place."

They were silent for a moment. Then Judy asked, still more timidly:

"I say, Tim?"

"Well."

"What does he really look like? I can't remember quite. I mean--shall we recognise him?"

Tim stared at her. "My dear!" he gasped, as though the question almost shocked him. "Why, he touched me--on the head! I felt it!"

Judy laughed softly; it was only that she wanted to remind herself of something too precious to be forgotten.

"_I_ kissed him!" she whispered, a hint of triumph in her voice and eyes.

They stood staring at one another for a little while, weighing the proofs thus given; then Tim broke the silence with a question of his own. It was the result of this interval of reflection. It was an unexpected sort of question:

"Do you know what it is we want?" he asked. "I do," he added hurriedly, lest she should answer first.

"What?" she said, seeing from his tone and manner that it was important.

"We shall never, never find him this way," he said decisively.

"What?" she repeated with impatience.

Tim lowered his voice. "What we want," he said with the emphasis of true conviction, "is--a Leader."

Judy repeated the word after him immediately; it was obvious; why hadn't she thought of it herself? "Of course," she agreed. "That's it exactly."

"We're looking wrong somewhere," her brother added, and they both turned their heads in the direction of Uncle Felix who was still standing on the lawn in a state of bewilderment, examining the treetops. He expected something from the air, it seemed. Perhaps he was looking for rain--he loved water so. But evidently he was not a proper leader; he was even more bewildered than themselves; he, too, was looking wrong somewhere, somehow. They needed some one to show them how and where to look. Instinctively they felt their uncle was no better at this mighty game than they were. If only somebody who knew and understood--a leader--would turn up!

And it was just then that Judy clutched her brother by the arm and said in a startled whisper, "Hark!"

They harked. Through the hum of leaves and insects that filled the air this sweet June morning they heard another sound--a voice that reached them even here beneath the dense roof of shrubbery. They heard words distinctly, though from far away, rising, falling, floating across the lawn as though some one as yet invisible were singing to himself.

For it was the voice of a man, and it certainly was a song. Moreover, without being able to explain it exactly, they felt that it was just the kind of singing that belonged to the kind of day: it was right and natural, a fresh and windy sound in the careless notes, almost as though it was a bird that sang. So exquisite was it, indeed, that they listened spellbound without moving, standing hand in hand beneath the dark bushes. And Uncle Felix evidently heard it too, for he turned his head; instead of examining the tree-tops he peered into the rose trees just behind him, both hands held to his ears to catch the happy song. There was both joy and laughter in the very sound of it:

My secret's in the wind and open sky;
There is no longer any Time--to lose;
The world is young with laughter; we can fly
Among the imprisoned hours as we choose.
The rushing minutes pause; an unused day
Breaks into dawn and cheats the tired sun.
The birds are singing. Hark! Come out and play!
There is no hurry; life has just begun.

The voice died away among the rose trees, and the birds burst into a chorus of singing everywhere, as if they carried on the song among themselves. Then, in its turn, their chorus also died away. Tim looked at his sister. He seemed about to burst--if not into song, then into a thousand pieces.

"A leader!" he exclaimed, scarcely able to get the word out in his excitement. "Did you hear it?"

"Tim!" she gasped--and they flew out, hand in hand still, to join their uncle in the sunshine.

"Found anything?" he greeted them before they could say a word. "I heard some one singing--a man, or something--over there among the rose trees--"

"And the birds," interrupted Judy. "Did you hear them?"

"Uncle," cried Tim with intense conviction, "it's a sign. I do believe it's a sign--"

"That's exactly what it is," a deep voice broke in behind them "--a sign; and no mistake about it either."

All three turned with a start. The utterance was curiously slow; there was a little dragging pause between each word. The rose trees parted, and they found themselves face to face with some one whom they had seen twice before in their lives, and who now made his appearance for the third time therefore--the man from the End of the World: the Tramp.

THE LEADER

IV

He was a ragged-looking being, yet his loose, untidy clothing became him so well that his appearance seemed almost neat--it was certainly natural: he was dressed in the day, the garden, the open air. Judy and Tim ran up fearlessly and began fingering the bits of stuff that clung to him from the fields and ditches. In his beard were some stray rose leaves and the feather of a little bird. The children had an air of sheltering against a tree trunk--woodland creatures--mice or squirrels chattering among the roots, or birds flown in to settle on a hedge. They were not one whit afraid. For nothing surprised them on this marvellous morning; everything that happened they--accepted.

"He's shining underneath," Judy whispered in Tim's ear, cocking her head sideways so that she could catch her brother's eye and at the same time feel the great comfort of the new arrival against her cheek.

"And awfully strong," was the admiring reply.

"So soft, too," she declared--though whether of mind or body was not itemized--"like feathers."

"And smells delicious," affirmed Tim, "like hay and rabbits."

Each child picked out the quality the heart desired and approved; almost, it seemed, each felt him differently. Yet, although not one whit afraid, they whispered. Perhaps the wonder of it choked their utterance a little.

The Tramp smiled at them. All four smiled. The way he had emerged from among the rose trees made them smile. It was as natural as though he had been there all the time, growing out of the earth, waving in the morning air and sunlight. There was something simple and very beautiful about him, perhaps, that made them smile like this. Then Uncle Felix, whom the first shock of surprise had apparently deprived of speech, found his voice and observed, "Good-morning to you, good-morning." The little familiar phrase said everything in a quite astonishing way. It was like a song.

"_Good_-morning," replied the Tramp. "It is. I was wondering how long it would be before you saw me."

"Ah!" said Judy and Tim in the same breath, "of course."

"The fact is," stammered Uncle Felix, "you're so like the rest of the garden--so like a bit of the garden, I mean--that we didn't notice you at first. But we heard--" he broke off in the middle of the sentence--"That _was_ you singing, wasn't it?" he asked with a note of hushed admiration in his voice.

The smile upon the great woodland face broadened perceptibly. It was as though the sun burst through a cloud. "That's hard to say," he replied, "when the whole place is singing. I'm just like everything else--alive. It's natural to sing, and natural to dance--when you're alive and looking--and know it."

He spoke with a sound as though he had swallowed the entire morning, a forest rustling in his chest, singing water just behind the lips.

_"Looking!"_ exclaimed Uncle Felix, picking out the word. He moved closer; the children caught his hands; the three of them sheltered against the spreading figure till the four together seemed like a single item of the landscape. "Looking!" he repeated, "that's odd. We've lost something too. You said too,--just now--something about--a sign, I think?" Uncle Felix added shyly.

All waited, but the Tramp gave no direct reply. He smiled again and folded two mighty arms about them. Two big feathery wings seemed round them. Judy thought of a nest, Tim of a cozy rabbit hole, Uncle Felix had the amazing impression that there were wild flowers growing in his heart, or that a flock of robins had hopped in and began to sing.

"Lost something, have you?" the Tramp enquired genially at length; and the slow, leisurely way he said it, the curious half-singing utterance he used, the words falling from his great beard with this sound as of wind through leaves or water over sand and pebbles--somehow included them in the rhythm of existence to which he himself naturally belonged. They all seemed part of the garden, part of the day, part of the sun and earth and flowers together, marvellously linked and caught within some common purpose. Question and answer in the ordinary sense were wrong and useless. They must _feel_--feel as he did--to find what they sought.

It was Uncle Felix who presently replied: "Something--we've--mis-laid," he said hesitatingly, as though a little ashamed that he expressed the truth so lamely.

"Mis-laid?" asked the Tramp. "Mis-laid, eh?"

"Forgotten," put in Tim.

"Mis-laid or forgotten," repeated the other. "That all?"

"Some_body_, I should have said," explained Uncle Felix yet still falteringly, "somebody we've lost, that is."

"Hiding," Tim said quickly.

"About," added Judy. There was a hush in all their voices.

The Tramp picked the small feather from his beard--apparently a water-wagtail's--and appeared to reflect a moment. He held the soft feather tenderly between a thumb and finger that were thick as a walking-stick and stained with roadside mud and yellow with flower-pollen too.

"Hiding, is he?" He held up the feather as if to see which way it fluttered in the wind. "Hiding?" he repeated, with a distinct broadening of the smile that was already big enough to cover half the lawn. It shone out of him almost like rays of light, of sunshine, of fire. "Aha! That's his way, maybe, just a little way he has--of playing with you."

"You know him, then! You know who it is?" two eager voices asked instantly. "Tell us at once. You're leader now!" The children, in their excitement, almost burrowed into him; Uncle Felix drew a deep breath and stared. His whole body listened.

And slowly the Tramp turned round his shaggy head and gazed into their faces, each in turn. He answered in his leisurely, laborious way as though each word were a bank-note that he dealt out carefully, fixing attention upon its enormous value. There was certainly a tremor in his rumbling voice. But there was no hurry.

"I've--seen him," he said with feeling, "seen him--once or twice. My life's thick with memories--"

"Seen him!" sprang from three mouths simultaneously.

"Once or twice, I said." He paused and sighed. Wind stirred the rose trees just behind him. He went on murmuring in a lower tone; and as he spoke a sense of exquisite new beauty stole across the old-world garden. "It was--in the morning--very early," he said below his breath.

"At dawn!" Uncle Felix whispered.

"When the birds begin," from Judy very softly.

"To sing," Tim added, a single shiver of joy running through all three of them at once. The enchantment of their own dim memories of the dawn--of a robin, of swallows, and of an up-and-under bird flashed magically back.

The Tramp nodded his great head slowly; he bowed it to the sunlight, as it were. There was a great light flaming in his eyes. He seemed to give out heat.

"Just seen him--and no more," he went on marvellously, as though speaking of a wonderful secret of his own. "Seen him a-stealing past me--in the dawn. Just looked at me--and went--went back again behind the rushing minutes!"

"Was it long ago? How long?" asked Judy with eager impatience impossible to suppress. They did not notice the reference to Time, apparently.

The wanderer scratched his tangled crop of hair and seemed to calculate a moment. He gazed down at the small white feather in his hand. But the feather held quite still. No breath of wind was stirring. "When I was young," he said, with an expression half quizzical, half yearning. "When I first took to the road--as a boy--and began to look."

"As long ago as that!" Tim murmured breathlessly. It was like a stretch of history.

The Tramp put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I was about your age," he said, "when I got tired of the ordinary life, and started wandering. And I've been wandering and looking ever since. Wandering--and wondering--and looking--ever since," he repeated in the same slow way, while the feather between his great fingers began to wave a little in time with the dragging speech.

The wonder of it enveloped them all three like a perfume rising from the entire earth.

"We've been looking for ages too," cried Judy.

"And we've seen him," exclaimed her brother quickly.

"Somebody," added Uncle Felix, more to himself than to the others.

The Tramp combed his splendid beard, as if he hoped to find more feathers in it.

"This morning, wasn't it?" he asked gently, "very early?"

They reflected a moment, but the reflection did not help them much. "Ages and ages ago," they answered. "So long that we've forgotten rather--"

"Forgotten what he looks like. That's it. Same trouble here," and he tapped his breast. "We're all together, doing the same old thing. The whole world's doing it. It's the only thing to do." And he looked so wise and knowing that their wonder increased to a kind of climax; they were tapping their own breasts before they knew it.

"Doing it everywhere," he went on, weighing his speech as usual; "only some don't know they're doing it." He looked significantly into their shining eyes, then finished with a note of triumph in his voice. "We do!"

"Hooray!" cried Tim. "We can all start looking together now."

"Maybe," agreed the wanderer, very sweetly for a tramp, they thought.

They glanced at their Uncle first for his approval; the Tramp glanced at him too; his face was flushed and happy, the eyes very bright. But there was an air of bewilderment about him too. He nodded his head, and repeated in a shy, contented voice--as though he surrendered himself to some enchantment too great to understand--"I think so; I hope so; I--wonder!"

"We've looked everywhere already," Tim shouted by way of explanation--when the Tramp cut him short with a burst of rolling laughter:

"But in the wrong kind of places, maybe," he suggested, moving forward like a hedge or bit of hayfield the wind pretends to shift.

"Oh, well--perhaps," the boy admitted.

"Probly," said Judy, keeping close beside him.

"Of course," decided Uncle Felix; "but we've been pretty warm once or twice all the same." He lumbered after the other three, yet something frisky about him, as about a pony released into a field and still uncertain of its bounding strength.

"Have you really?" remarked their leader, good-humouredly, but with a touch of sarcasm. "Good and right, so far as it goes; only 'warm' is not enough; we want to be hot, burning hot and steaming all the time. That's the way to find him." He paused and turned towards them; he gathered them nearer to him with his smiling eyes somehow. "It's like this," he went on more slowly than ever: "A good hider doesn't choose the difficult places; he chooses the common ordinary places where nobody would ever think of looking." He kept his eyes upon them to make sure they understood him. "The little, common places," he continued with emphasis, "that no one thinks worth while. He hides in the open--bang out in the open!"

"In the open!" cried the children. "The open air!"

"In the open!" gasped Uncle Felix. "The open sea!"

The Tramp almost winked at them. He looked like a lot of ordinary people. He looked like everybody. He looked like the whole world somehow. He smiled just like a multitude. He spoke, as it were, for all the world--said the one simple thing that everybody everywhere was trying to say in millions of muddled words and sentences. The wind and trees and sunshine said it with him, for him, after him, before him. He said the thing--so Uncle Felix felt, at any rate,--that was always saying itself, that was everywhere heard, though rarely listened to; but, according to the children, the thing they knew and believed already. Only it was nice to hear it stated definitely--_they_ felt.

And the tide of enchantment rose higher and higher; in a tide of flowing gold it poured about all three.

"That's it," the Tramp continued, as though he had not noticed the rapture his very ordinary words had caused. "Sea and land and air together. But more than that--he hides deep and beautiful."

"Deeply and beautifully," murmured the writer of historical novels, all of them entirely forgotten now.

"Deep and beautiful," repeated the other, as though he preferred the rhythm of his own expression. He drew himself up and swallowed a long and satisfying draught of air and sunshine. He waved the little wagtail's feather before their eyes. He touched their faces with its tip. "Deep, tender, kind, and beautiful," he elaborated. "Those are the signs--signs that he's been along--just passed that way. The whole world's looking, and the whole world's full of signs!"

For a moment all stood still together like a group of leafy things a passing wind has shaken, then left motionless; a wild rose-bush, a climbing vine, a clinging ivy branch--all three kept close to the stalwart figure of their big, incomparable leader.

And Judy knew at last the thing she didn't know; Tim felt himself finally in the eternal centre of his haunted wood; in the eyes of Uncle Felix there was a glistening moisture that caught the sunlight like dew upon the early lawn. He staggered a little as though he were on a deck and the sea was rolling underneath him.

"How ever did you find it out?" he asked, after an interval that no one had cared to interrupt. "What in the world made you first think of it?" And though his voice was very soft and clear, it was just a little shaky.

"Well," drawled the Tramp, "maybe it was just because I thought of nothing else. On the road we live sort of simply. There's never any hurry; the wind's a-blowing free; everything's sweet and careless--and so am I." And he chuckled happily to himself.

"Let's begin at once!" cried Tim impatiently. "I feel warm already--hot all over--simply burning."

The Tramp signified his agreement. "But you must each get a feather first," he told them, "a feather that a bird has dropped. It's a sign that we belong together. Birds know everything first. They go everywhere and see everything all at once. They're in the air, and on the ground, and on the water, and under it as well. They live in the open--sea or land. And if you have a feather in your hand--well, it means keeping in touch with everything that's going. They go light and easy; we must go light and easy too."

They stared at him with wonder at the breaking point. It all seemed so obviously and marvellously true. How had they missed it up till now?

"So get a feather," he went on quietly, "and then we can begin to look at once."

No one objected, no one criticised, no one hesitated. Tim knew where all the feathers were because he knew every nest in the garden. He led the way. In less than two minutes all had small, soft feathers in their hands.

"Now, we'll begin to look," the Tramp announced. "It's the loveliest game on earth, and the only one. It's Hide-and-Seek behind the rushing minutes. And, remember," he added, holding up a finger and chuckling happily, "there's no hurry, the wind's a-blowing free, the sun is warm, everything's sweet and careless--and so are we."

THE COMMON SIGNS

V

"But has he called yet?" asked Tim, remembering suddenly that it wasn't fair to begin till the hider announced that he was ready. "He's got to hoot first, you know. Hasn't he?" he added doubtfully.

"Listen!" replied the man of the long white roads. And he held his feather close against his ear, while the others copied him. Fixing their eyes upon a distant point, they listened, and as they listened, their lips relaxed, their mouths opened slowly, their eyebrows lifted--they heard, apparently, something too wonderful to be believed.

To Uncle Felix, still fumbling in his mind among unnecessary questions, it seemed that the power of hearing had awakened for the first time, or else had grown of a sudden extraordinarily acute. The children merely listened and said "Oh, oh, oh!"; the sound they heard was familiar, though never fully understood till now. For him, it was, perhaps, the recovery of a power he had long forgotten. At any rate he--heard. For the air passed through the tiny fronds of the feather--through the veined web of its delicate resistance--round the hollow stem and across the fluffy breadth of it--with a humming music as of wind among the telegraph wires, only infinitely sweet and far away. There were several notes in it, a chord--the music that accompanies all flying things, even a butterfly or settling leaf, and ever fills the air with unguessed melody.

It opened their power of hearing to a degree as yet undreamed of even by the all-believing children. Their feathers became wee, accurate, tuning-forks for all existence. They understood that everything in the whole world sang; that no rose leaf fluttered to the earth, no rabbit twitched its ears, no mouse its tail, no single bluebell waved a head towards its bluer neighbour, without this exquisite accompaniment of fairy music.

"Listen, listen!" the Tramp repeated softly from time to time, watching their faces keenly. "Listen, and you'll hear him calling...!"

And this fairy humming, having so marvellously attuned their hearing, then led them on to the larger, louder sounds; they pricked their ears up, as the saying goes; they noticed the deeper music everywhere. For the morning breeze was rustling and whispering among the leaves and blades of grass with a thousand happy voices. It was the ordinary summer sound of moving air that no one pays attention to.

"Oh, that!" exclaimed Uncle Felix. "I hadn't noticed it." He felt ashamed. He who had taught them the beauty of the self-advertising Night-Wind, had somehow missed and overlooked the wonder--the searching, yearning beauty--of this meek, incomparable music: because it was so usual. For the first time in his life he heard the wind as it slipped between the leaves, shaking them into rapture.

"And that," laughed the Tramp, cocking his great head to catch the murmur of the stream beyond the lawn, "if the dust of furniture and houses ain't blocked your ears too thickly." They stooped to listen. "Like laughter, isn't it?" he observed, "singing and laughing mixed together?"

They straightened up again, too full of wonder to squeeze out any words.

"It's everywhere," said Uncle Felix, "this calling--these calling voices. Is that where you got _your_ song from?"

"It's everywhere and always," replied the other evasively. "The birds get their singing from it. They get everything first, of course, then pass it on. The whole world's music comes from that, though there's nothing--_nothing_," he added with emphasis, "to touch the singing of a bird. He's calling everywhere and always," he went on as no one contradicted him or ventured upon any question; "only you've got to listen close. He calls soft and beautiful. He doesn't shout and yell at you."

"Soft and beautiful, yes," repeated Uncle Felix below his breath, "the small, still voices of the air and sea and earth." And, as he said it, they caught the murmur of the little stream; they heard singing in the air as well. The blackbirds whistled in one direction, the thrushes trilled and gurgled in another, and overhead, both among the covering leaves and from the open sky, a chorus of twittering and piping filled the chambers of the day. Judy recalled, as of long ago, the warning bugle-call of an up-and-under bird; Tim faintly remembered having overheard some swallows "discussing" together; Uncle Felix saw a robin perched against a sky of pearly grey at the end of an interminable corridor that stretched across whole centuries.... Then, close beside the three of them, a bumble-bee, a golden fly, and a company of summer gnats went by--booming, trumpeting, singing like a tiny carillon of bells respectively.

"Hark and listen," exclaimed the Tramp with triumph in his voice, and looking down at Tim particularly. "He's calling all the time. It's the little ordinary sounds that give the hints."

"It's an enormous hide; I mean to look for ever and ever," cried the delighted boy.

"I can hear everything in the world now," cried Judy.

"Signs," said Uncle Felix, after a pause. This time he did not make a question of his thought, but merely dropped the word out like a note of music into the air. His feather answered it and took it further.

The Tramp caught the word flying before it reached the ground:

"Deep, tender, kind and beautiful," he said, "but above all--beautiful." He turned his shaggy head and looked about him carelessly. "There's one of them, for instance," he added, pointing across the lawn. "There's a sign. It means he's passed that way! He ain't too far away--may-be."

They followed the direction of his eyes. A dragon-fly paused hovering above the stream, its reflection mirrored in the clear running water underneath. Against the green palisade of reeds its veined and crystal wings scattered the sunlight into shining flakes. The blue upon its body burned--a patch of flaming beauty in mid-air. They watched it for a moment. Then, suddenly--it was gone, the spot was empty. But the speed, the poise, the perfect movement, the flashing wings, above all the flaming blue upon its tail still held them spellbound. Somehow, it seemed, they had borrowed that speed, that flashing beauty, making the loveliness part and parcel of themselves. Swiftly they turned and stared up at the Tramp. There was a rapt look upon his tangled face.

"A sign," he was saying softly. "He's passed this way. He can't be hiding very far from here." And, drawing a long, deep breath, he gazed about him into endless space as though about to sing again.

The dragon-fly had vanished, none knew whither, gone doubtless into some new hiding-place; it just gave the hint, then slipped away upon its business. But the wonder and the beauty it had brought remained behind, crept into every heart. The mystery of life, the reality that lay hiding at the core of things, the marvel and the dream--all these were growing clearer. All lovely things were "signs." And there fell a sudden hush upon the group, for the Thing that Nobody could Understand crept up and touched them.

Abruptly, then, lest the wonder of it should prove more than they could bear perhaps, a blackbird whistled with a burst of flying laughter at them from the shrubberies. Laughter and dancing both were part of wonder. The Tramp at once moved forward, chuckling in his beard; he waved his arms; his step was lighter, quicker; he was singing softly to himself: they only caught stray sentences, but they loved the windy ringing of his voice. They knew not where he borrowed words and tune: "The world is young with laughter; we can fly.... Among the imprisoned hours as we choose.... The birds are singing.... Hark! Come out and play.... There is no hurry.... Life has just begun...."

"Come on!" cried Tim. "Let's follow him; we're getting frightfully warm!"

He seized Judy and his uncle by the hands and cleared the rivulet with a running leap. The Tramp, however, preferred to wade across. "Get into everything you can," he explained in mid-stream with a laugh. "It keeps you in touch; it's all part of the looking."

He led them into the field where the blackbird still went on whistling its heart out into the endless summer morning. But to them it seemed that he led them out across the open world for ever and ever....

It grew very marvellous, this game of hide and seek. Sometimes they forgot it was a game at all, forgot what they were looking for, forgot that they were looking for anything or any one at all. Yet the mighty search continued subconsciously, even when passing incidents drew their attention from their chief desire. Always, at the back of thought, lay this exquisite, sweet memory in their hearts, something they half remembered, half forgot, but very dear, very marvellous. Some one was hiding somewhere, waiting, longing to play with them, expecting to be found.

It may be that intervals went by, those intervals called years and months; yet no one noticed them, and certainly no one named them. They knew one feeling only--the joy of endless search. Some one was hiding, some one was near, and signs lay scattered everywhere. This some one lay in his wonderful hiding-place and watched their search with laughter in his eyes. He remained invisible; perhaps they would never see him actually; but they felt his presence everywhere, in every object, every tree and flower and stone, in sun and wind, in water and in earth. The power and loveliness of common things became insistent. They were aware of them. It seemed they brushed against this shining presence, pushing for ever against a secret door of exit that led into the final hiding-place. Eager to play with them, yet more eager still to be discovered, the wonderful hider kept just beyond their sight and touch, while covering the playground with endless signs that he was near enough for them to know for certain he was--there. For among the four of them there was no heart that doubted. None explained. None said No.... Nor was there any hurry.

"_I_ believe," announced Tim at length, with the air of a sage about him, "the best way is to sit still and wait; then he'll just come out like a rabbit and show himself." And, as no one contradicted, he added confidently, "that's _my_ idea." His love was evidently among the things of the soil, rabbits, rats and hedgehogs, both hunter and adventurer strong in him.

"A hole!" cried Judy with indignation. "Never! He's in the air. I heard a bird just now that--"

"Whew!" whistled Uncle Felix, interrupting her excitedly. "He's been along here. Look! I'm sure of it." And he said it with such conviction that they ran up, expecting actual footprints.

"How do you know?" Tim asked dubiously, seeing no immediate proof himself. All paused for the reply; but Uncle Felix also paused. He had said a thing it seemed he could not justify.

"Don't hesitate," said the Tramp, watching him with amusement. "Don't think before you speak. There's nothing to think about until you've spoken."

Uncle Felix wore an expression of bewilderment. "I meant the flowers," he stammered, still unsure of his new powers.

"Of course," the other chuckled. "Didn't I tell you 'tender and beautiful,' and 'bang out in the open'?"

"Then you're right, Uncle; they _are_ signs," cried Judy, "and you _do_ like butter," and she danced away to pick the dandelions that smothered the field with gold. But the Tramp held out his feather like a wand.

"They're our best signs, remember," he cried. "You might as well pick a feather out of a living bird."

"Oh!"--and she pulled herself up sharply, a little flush running across her face and the wind catching at her flying hair. She swayed a moment, nearly overbalancing owing to the interrupted movement, and looking for all the world like a wild young rose tree, her eyes two shining blossoms in the air. Then she dropped down and buried her nose among the crowd of yellow flowers. She smelt them audibly, drawing her breath in and letting it out again as though she could almost taste and eat the perfume.

"That's better," said the Tramp approvingly. "Smell, then follow," and he moved forward again with his dancing, happy step. "All the wild, natural things do it," he cried, looking back over his shoulder at the three who were on their knees with faces pressed down against the yellow carpet. "It's the way to keep on the trail. Smell--then follow."

Something flashed through the clearing mind of the older man, though where it came from he had less idea than the dandelions: a mood of forgotten beauty rushed upon him--

"O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew--"

and he ran dancing forward after the great Tramp, singing the words as though they were his own.

Yet the flowers spread so thickly that the trail soon lost itself; it seemed like a paper-chase where the hare had scattered coloured petals instead of torn white copy-books. Each searcher followed the sign of his or her own favourite flower; like a Jack-in-the-Box each one bobbed up and down, smelling, panting, darting hither and thither as in the mazes of some gnat--or animal-dance, till knees and hands were stained with sweet brown earth, and lips and noses gleamed with the dust of orange-tinted pollen.

"Anyhow, I'd rather look than find," cried Tim, turning a somersault over a sandy rabbit-mound.

The swallows flashed towards Judy, a twittering song sprinkling itself like liquid silver behind them as they swooped away again.

"I expect," the girl confessed breathlessly, "that when we do find him--we shall just die--!"

"Of happiness, and wonder," ventured Uncle Felix, watching a common Meadow Brown that perched, opening and closing its wings, upon his sleeve. And the Tramp, almost invisible among high standing grass and thistles, laughed and called in his curious, singing voice, "There is no hurry! Life has just begun!"

"Then we might as well sit down," suggested Uncle Felix, and suiting the action to the word, chose a nice soft spot upon the mossy bank and made himself comfortable as though he meant to stay; the Tramp did likewise, gathering the children close about his tangled figure. For one thing a big ditch faced them, its opposite bank overgrown with bramble bushes, and for another the sloping moss offered itself invitingly, like a cushioned sofa. So they lay side by side, watching the empty ditch, listening to the faint trickle of water tinkling down it. Slender reeds and tall straight grasses fringed the nearer edge, and, as the wind passed through them with a hush and whisper, they bent over in a wave of flowing green.

"He's certainly gone that way," Judy whispered, following with her eyes the direction of the bending reeds. She was getting expert now.

"Along the ditch, I do believe," agreed Tim. There were no flowers in it, and few, perhaps, would have found beauty there, yet the pointing of the reeds was unmistakable. "It's chock full of stuff," he added, "but a rat could get along, so I suppose--"

"The signs are very slight sometimes," murmured the Tramp, his head half buried in the moss, "and sometimes difficult as well. You'd be surprised." He flung out his arms and legs and continued laughingly. "When things are contrary you may be sure you're getting somewhere--getting warm, that is."

The children heard this outburst, but they did not listen. They were absorbed in something else already, for the movements of the reeds were fascinating. They began to imitate them, swaying their heads and bodies to and fro in time, and crooning to themselves in an attempt to copy the sound made by the wind among the crowded stalks.

"Don't," objected Uncle Felix, half in fun, "it makes me dizzy." He was tempted to copy them, however, and made an effort, but the movement caught him in the ribs a little. His body, like his mind, was not as supple as theirs. An oak tree or an elm, perhaps, was more his model.

"Do," the Tramp corrected him, swaying as he said it. "Swing with a thing if you want to understand it. Copy it, and you catch its meaning. That's rhythm!" He made an astonishing mouthful of the word. The children overheard it.

"How do you spell it?" Judy asked.

"I don't," he replied; "I do it. Once you get into the"--he took a great breath--"rhythm of a thing, you begin to like it. See?"

And he went on swaying his big shoulders in imitation of the rustling reeds. All four swayed together then, holding their feathers before them like little flying banners. More than ever, they seemed things growing out of the earth, out of the very ditch. The movement brought a delicious, soothing sense of peace and safety over them; earth, air, and sunshine all belonged to them, plenty for everybody, no need to get there first and snatch at the best places. There was no hurry, life had just begun. They seemed to have dug a hole in space and curled up cosily inside it. They whispered curious natural things to one another. "A wren is settling on my hair," said Judy: "a butterfly on my neck," said Uncle Felix: "a mouse," Tim mentioned, "is making its nest in my trousers pocket." And the Tramp kept murmuring in his voice of wind and water, "I'm full of air and sunlight, floating in them, floating away... my secret's in the wind and open sky... there is no longer any Time--to lose...."

A bright green lizard darted up the sun-baked bank, vanishing down a crack without a sound; it left a streak of fire in the air. A golden fly hovered about the tallest reed, then darted into another world, invisibly. A second followed it, a third, a fourth--points of gold that pinned the day fast against the moving wall of green. A wren shot at full speed along the bed of the ditch, threading its winding length together as upon a woven pattern. All were busy and intent upon some purpose common to the whole of them, and to everything else as well; even the things that did not move were doing something.

"I say," cried Tim suddenly, "they're covering him up. They're hiding him better so that we shan't find him. We've got too warm."

How long they had been in that ditch when the boy exclaimed no one could tell; perhaps a lifetime, or perhaps an age only. It was long enough, at any rate, for the Tramp to have changed visibly in appearance--he looked younger, thinner, sprightlier, more shining. He seemed to have shed a number of outward things that made him bulky--bits of beard and clothing, several extra waistcoats, and every scrap of straw and stuff from the hedges that he wore at first. More and more he looked as Judy had seen him, ages and ages ago, emerging from the tarpaulin on the rubbish-heap at the End of the World.

He sprang alertly to his feet at the sound of Tim's exclamation. The sunlit morning seemed to spring up with him.

"We have been very warm indeed," he sang, "but we shall get warmer still before we find him. Besides, those things aren't hiding him--they're looking. Everything and everybody in the whole wide world is looking, but the signs are different for everybody, don't you see? Each knows and follows their own particular sign. Come on!" he cried, "come on and look! We shall find him in the end."

COME-BACK STUMPER'S SIGN

VI

The steep bank was easily managed. They were up it in a twinkling, a line of dancing figures, all holding hands.

First went the Tramp, shining and glowing like a mirror in the sunshine--fire surely in him; next Judy, almost flying with the joy and lightness in her--as of air; Tim barely able to keep tight hold of her hand, so busily did his feet love the roots and rabbit-holes of--earth; and finally, Uncle Felix, rolling to and fro, now sideways, now toppling headlong, roaring as he followed like a heavy wave. Fire, air, earth, and water--they summarised existence; owned and possessed the endless day; lived it, were one with it. Their leader, who apparently had swallowed the sun, fused and unified them in this amazing way with--fire.

And hardly had they passed the line of shy forget-me-nots on the top of the bank, than they ran against a curious looking object that at first appeared to be an animated bundle of some kind, but on closer inspection proved to be a human figure stooping. It was somebody very busy about the edges of a great clump of bramble bushes. At the sound of their impetuous approach it straightened up. It had the face of a man--yellowish, patched with red, breathless and very hot. It was Come-back Stumper.

He glared at them, furious at being disturbed, yet with an uneasy air, half comical, half ashamed, as of being--caught. He took on a truculent, aggressive attitude, as though he knew he would have to explain himself and did not want to do so. He turned and faced them.

"Mornin'," he grunted fiercely. "It's a lovely day."

But they all agreed so promptly with him that he dropped the offensive at once. His face was _very_ hot. It dripped.

"Energetic as usual," observed Uncle Felix, while Tim poked among the bushes to see what he had been after, and Judy offered him a very dirty handkerchief to mop his forehead with. His bald head shone and glistened. Wisps of dark hair lay here and there upon it like the feathers of a crow's torn wing.

"Thanks, dear," he said stiffly, using the few inches of ragged cambric and then tucking the article absent-mindedly into a pocket of his shooting coat. "I've been up very early--since dawn. Since dawn," he repeated in a much louder voice, "got up, in fact, with the sun." He meant to justify his extreme and violent activity. He glanced at the Tramp with a curious air of respect. Tim thought he saluted him, but Judy declared afterwards he was only wiping "the hot stuff off the side of his dear old head."

"Wonderful moment,--dawn, ain't it, General?" said the Tramp. "Best in the whole day when you come to think of it."

"It is, sir," replied Stumper, as proud as though a Field-Marshal had addressed him, "and the first." He looked more closely at the Tramp; he rubbed his eyes, and then produced the scrap of cambric and rubbed them again more carefully than before. Perhaps he, too, had been hoping for a leader! Something very proud and happy stole upon his perspiring face of ochre. He moved a step nearer. "Did you notice it this morning?" he asked in a whisper, "the dawn, I mean? Never saw anything like it in me life before. Thought I was in the Himalayas or the Caucasus again. Astonishin', upon me word--the beauty of it! And the birds! Did you hear 'em? Expect you usually do, though," he added with a touch of unmistakable envy and admiration in his tone.

"Uncommon," agreed the Tramp, "and no mistake about it. _They_ knew, you see." They no longer called each other "Sir" and "General"; they had come to an understanding apparently.

"Umph!" said Stumper, and looked round shyly at the others.

Stumper was evidently under the stress of some divine emotion he was half ashamed of. An unwonted passion stirred him. He seemed a prey to an unusual and irrepressible curiosity. Only the obvious fact that his listeners shared the same feelings with him loosened his sticky tongue and stole self-consciousness away. He had expected to be laughed at. Instead the group admired him. The Tramp--his manner proved it--thought of him very highly indeed.

"Never knew such a day in all me life before," Stumper admitted frankly. "Couldn't--simply couldn't stay indoors."

He still retained a trace of challenge in his tone. But no one challenged. Judy took his arm. "So you came out?" she said softly.

"Like us," said Uncle Felix.

"Of course," Tim added. But it was the Tramp who supplied the significant words they had all been waiting for, Stumper himself more eagerly than any one else. "To look," he remarked quite naturally.

Stumper might have just won a great world-victory, judging by the expression that danced upon his face. He dropped all pretence at further concealment. He put his other arm round Tim's shoulder, partly to balance himself better against Judy's pushing, and partly because he realised the companionship of both children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it would have suited him admirably.

"Yes," he growled, "I came out--to look. But when I got out--I clean forgot what it was--who, I mean--no, _what_," he corrected himself again, "I'd come out to look for. Can't make it out at all." He broke off in a troubled way.

"No?" agreed Judy sympathetically, as though _she_ knew.