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"I sleep not," said Jonas's mother, broad awake in an instant, and drawing the drowsy little ball into her arms in swift alarm. "Tell thy story quickly." "As ye know," began the boy hurriedly, "I went down to the Fields of David at sunset to spend the night with shepherd Eli. And as I passed through the gate old Nathan hailed me.
'They've been carrying on this game, thought Jonas in a brown study, 'for the last two or three weeks. I never saw my father take so much notice of him as he has in that time. What! You're legacy hunting, are you, Mister Chuff? Eh? But Chuffey was as little conscious of the thought as of the bodily advance of Mr Jonas's clenched fist, which hovered fondly about his ear.
Rollo laughed a good deal at Jonas's account of the three Northmen, and Jonas told him that they sometimes made some splendid curiosities, which would be beautiful for a shelf in his museum, if they would only keep. "What are the curiosities?" said Rollo. "O, all kinds of stars, and spangles, and snow-flakes, of a great many beautiful forms, and icicles, and frost work.
Jonas's apprenticeship passed on pretty much according to universal rule; that is, he did the drudgery of the house as well as learned the trade, and received kicks and cuffs from the journeymen. But in five years his servitude was out, and he was a journeyman himself.
"Hoisting sail," I said to myself. "Two big lug-sails. It is the Saucy Lass old Jonas's lugger, and it looks big through the fog." Just then in the coming grey dawn I saw another patch rise up, following a creaking noise, and I could make out that it was a third sail, when I knew that it could not be the Saucy Lass, but must be a stranger.
In this way he got, after a time, more than twenty different kinds, and when they were all neatly varnished and labelled, it made a very curious collection; and it was very useful, too, sometimes; for whenever the boys found any kind of a tree in the woods which they did not know, all they had to do, was to cut a branch of it off, and bring it to the museum, and compare it with Jonas's specimens.
Amos was boring holes with an auger, and the farmer was cutting the holes thus made into a square form with a chisel. Josey was there, too, and Amelia. They were building a house of the blocks which had been sawed off from the ends of the timbers. When, however, they heard the sound of Jonas's flail, they left their play, and came along to the barn to see him.
From all of which it will be seen that Jonas's house needed to make no apology for its presence; he had owned land there among the first; it was the others who were the innovators and the newcomers; and as to his way of housekeeping it simply clung a little closer to nature. It was, in fact, the most natural thing in the neighborhood. As he continued to live there he liked it more and more.
He was there in the hall; he and Judge Pike had been having a long talk; they'd been in some speculations together, and it had all turned out well. It's very strange, but they say now that Uncle Jonas's heart was weak he was an old man, you know, almost eighty, and he'd been very anxious about his money.
Plaintively from below rose Na-che's voice in a slow sweet chant. Jonas's baritone hesitatingly repeated the strain, and after a moment they softly sang it together. "Oh, this is perfect!" murmured Enoch. "Perfect!" Then he drew Diana's hand to his lips. How long they sat in silence listening to the wistful notes that floated up to them, neither could have told.
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