Danny

“ Danny!
_She waits; there is complete silence. She rises, walks over to the kitchen door, and flings it wide open.
(Shouting_) Danny! (No reply.) He's gone ... They've all gone ... They've left me ... (Losing control, beating her hands wildly on her Bible) Oh, Lord, help a poor old woman ... They've left me! (Tottering to the sun-room) Danny ... where are you?... Danny ... I'm going to be murdered ... I'm going to be murdered!... Danny ... (Her voice rising, until she is shrieking hysterically) Danny! Danny! Danny! ”

“ On the opposite side of the room the wall was cracked and broken. In one place a crevice yawned, wide enough to let a man creep through into the darkness beyond. Leaning through this, Danny strained his eyes to try and pierce the gloom. There was nothing to see, but against his hot face he felt a cool wind blowing. It was altogether different from the heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the passage and crypt. Instead of the mouldy smell that had reached his nostrils, Danny was conscious of the pungent, salty odour that is borne on a sea breeze! ”

“ A little figure, falling and running and falling again, Danny advanced among the writhing trees. Of course, he moved with the wind. Even stronger creatures were forced to do the same. Into the cold hollow he was driven, and the wonder never died how far he ran in the few brief moments he could run at all—almost a quarter of a mile across the hillside. By this time the dead grass stems were already shrouded by the snow. ”

“ The last stroke of eleven had scarcely died away when there was a scraping, scrabbling sound from the very heart of the oak, seemingly coming from beneath Danny’s hand. He started, and his heart seemed to miss a beat, and then race on. Something within him seemed to say “Run, run,” and his legs almost obeyed, but his will was stronger than his instinct, and remembering that he was a Cub and must not give in to himself, he stood his ground, only drawing a little into the shadow. He watched the tree intently—was he at last to see a hobgoblin? ”

“ Danny threw all caution to the winds. For two rounds he tore after and into the boy who dared not meet him at close quarters. Rivera was struck again and again; he took blows by the dozens to avoid the perilous clinch. During this supreme final rally of Danny's the audience rose to its feet and went mad. It did not understand. All it could see was that its favorite was winning, after all.
"Why don't you fight?" it demanded wrathfully of Rivera.
"You're yellow! You're yellow!" "Open up, you cur! Open up!" "Kill'm, Danny! Kill 'm!" "You sure got 'm! Kill 'm!" ”

“ His heart beating fast with excitement, Danny pressed forward through the damp darkness. There was a silent horror about this place. Mildew stood on the walls. Black creatures scurried away beneath his feet, afraid of the light. How often Danny had longed to find a secret passage! But now that he had really found one he shrank from going into the unknown darkness. If only there were another chap to talk to, to feel near! ”

“ DAN (sitting beside her on the sofa, full of high spirits) : Don't you be a silly old 'oman, you look as pretty as a picture— strawberries and cream in your face, and not a day over forty; and when I've made you a nice cup of tea you'll be twenty-five in the sun and eighteen with your back to the light, so you think yourself lucky!
MRS. BRAMSON (as he digs her in the side) : Oh, Danny, you are a terror! (To the others) He's been at me like this all the way. I must say it keeps me alive.
DAN (as she hands him her hat and cape) : But you feel dead. I get you. ”

“ But Danny was protean. That was why he was the coming champion. He could change from style to style of fighting at will. He now devoted himself to infighting. In this he was particularly wicked, and it enabled him to avoid the other's straight-left. Here he set the house wild repeatedly, capping it with a marvelous lockbreak and lift of an inside upper-cut that raised the Mexican in the air and dropped him to the mat. Rivera rested on one knee, making the most of the count, and in the soul of him he knew the referee was counting short seconds on him. ”

“ He looked like the very spirit of Christmas as he stood in the doorway of Uncle Bill’s house, the snow thick on him, his red muffler making a bright patch of colour, his arms full of holly and mistletoe, and a great bulging kit-bag, slung across his back.
35
The little room of the cottage looked dull and dismal. Only a tiny fire burned feebly in the great open fireplace. Bill and his wife, looking pale and ill, sat one each side, in silence. But Danny’s appearance seemed to work a miracle. He had brought the spirit of youth to the house. ”

“ Gillian whipped round contritely. “Danny, I forgot them!” she apologised, and tweaking a black curl went to a bureau and produced a square cardboard box. Danny tucked it under his arm with murmured thanks and a duck of the head, and crossing the room noiselessly went out, closing the door behind him softly. Craven came slowly to her. She moved to give him place before the easel. Craven looked at the small alert brown face, the odd black eyes dancing with almost unearthly merriment, the red lips curving upward to an enigmatical smile, and his wonder and admiration grew. ”

“ Then he felt his gaze drawn away from those vague, alluring distances. It was one of those pulls which psychologists have failed to explain with any great clarity; but every human being recognizes them. Danny followed the impulse.
He had not seen the figure squatting there on his spurs at the shady end of the little depot, for he had been looking off to the north. But as he yielded to the urge he knew its source—in those other eyes. ”

“ With beating heart, he crept down the kitchen garden and between the gooseberry bushes. Through the hedge he crawled, and out on to the mossy turf. It was soaking wet with dew. The pale moonlight shone down on the Abbey, giving it a mysterious air, and casting very black shadows. Suddenly Danny remembered his dream. So it was coming true! There was a “traitor” in the Abbey ruin. And he must prove himself to be the gallant crusader of his dream. ”

“ Danny's spirit flamed for one brief moment. But in the very next his head dropped, and he turned away.
[Pg 19] "This is going too far," the wretched little fellow heard Biddie Burton exclaim sharply.
"What is 'going too far'?" a new voice asked out of the darkness, and Willard McKenzie advanced into the group. "What is 'going too far'?" he repeated, glancing from one to another. No answer being volunteered, his keen glance quickly singled out the shamed tenderfoot.
"What have they been up to, Danny?" he asked.
Danny turned and faced him.
"Nothing that makes any difference," he said. ”

“ And the influence which more than all else was to help Danny become a top hand, which was to set up in his heart the great ambition, which was to hold itself up as a blazing ideal, came early in his novitiate as a horse hunter—came in a fitting setting, on a day richly golden, when the air seemed filled with a haze of holy incense, holy with the holiness of beauty. It was one of those mountain days when the immensity of nature becomes so obvious and so potent that even the beasts leave off their hunting or their grazing to gaze into wondrous distances. ”

“ Bill was a woodcutter, and lived in a little tiny old cottage on the edge of a wood, about five miles from Danny’s home. As Danny listened to his mother reading the letter aloud a thought came into his mind. At first he tried to send it away, and not to see it, but a voice within him said, “You’re a Cub, and when good ideas come to you, you ought not to tell them to go away. It is giving in to yourself. If you are selfish, you will not enjoy your Christmas.” ”

“ A quick step carried him across the vestibule within sight of the dining-room doorway. He flung his soft hat in the general direction of a cathedral bench, loosed the carelessly arranged bow tie, and with an impatient jerk unbuttoned the soft shirt at his full throat. Of all things, from conventions to collars, Danny detested those which bound. ”

“ He was scarcely conscious of his movements, but his quirt fell, his spurs raked the sides of his pony, and the sturdy little animal, young and not yet fully developed, doing his best in making up the ridge, labored effectively, perhaps drawn on by that same raw desire which went straight to the roots of Danny's spirit and came back to set the fires glowing in his eyes. ”

“ Camilla came out of the pantry and gazed at Danny with sparkling eyes, while Pearlie, on the verge of tears, vainly tried to awaken in him some sense of the shame he was bringing on her. Camilla hurried to the pantry again, and brought another cookie. "I believe, Mrs. Francis, that Danny is hungry," she said. "Children sometimes act that way," she added, laughing. ”

“ Danny had to pass the doorway of the ruined guard-room, terrible with the tradition of the black dog. As he went by the door he turned his head toward it in the darkness. At that instant he thought he heard something stir. He gasped, but could not scream. He stretched his arms fearfully toward the sound. There was nothing. All was still once more; only the receding footsteps dying away. Danny thought he had deceived himself. ”

“ In the twilight that of which I talked made pictures come and go that gave her understanding never glimpsed before, and, slipping on her knees, she buried her face, shudderingly, in my lap.
"Is it I, Danny? Is it women like me who could do something and don't?" she said, after a long, long while. "Oh, Danny, is it I?"
[Illustration: "Is it I, Danny? Is it women like me who could do something and don't?"]
"It is all of us." My fingers smoothed the beautiful brown hair. "Every woman of to-day who thinks there's a halo on her head ought to take it off and look at it. ”

“ This was splendid, to be taken for a fairy! “Yes,” said Danny, laughing; and taking the aged man’s cold, gnarled old hand, he led him through the wood to his uncle’s house.
“Shure,” cried his aunt as she opened the door. “I do believe he’s afther bringing us Faither Christmas himself.”
Danny soon explained, and Bill and Bridget gave the old stranger a warm welcome. “They do say,” exclaimed Bridget, “that if you welcome a stranger on Christmas Eve, he may be an Angel.” ”

“ They were like her lips.
He looked up.
"What about Dan?" he asked.
"Oh, Danny—" She smiled.
"He is my friend, and your husband. If he knew—"
"Danny won't mind, dear," she said.
Her words carried conviction. Somehow he knew that Dan wouldn't mind. ”

“ No layin' down. If you lay down, we got instructions to beat you up in the dressing rooms. Savve? You just gotta fight."
The house began to applaud. Danny was crossing the ring to him. Danny bent over, caught Rivera's right hand in both his own and shook it with impulsive heartiness. Danny's smile-wreathed face was close to his. The audience yelled its appreciation of Danny's display of sporting spirit. He was greeting his opponent with the fondness of a brother. Danny's lips moved, and the audience, interpreting the unheard words to be those of a kindly-natured sport, yelled again. ”

“ They hesitated a moment while they took in the quiet, dignified scene within. Portly old Judge Sledge was sitting well forward in his office chair with his spectacles pushed back upon his bald head, while Doctor Cranfield and several gentlemen whom Danny knew only by sight were grouped about him. All were in the attitude of listening intently to a man who stood before them—Mr. Gordon.
Danny's quick glance took in all this, including the background of khaki-clad Whippoorwills, plastered against the wall beyond. ”

“ Ye owe him one for that, Danny, an’ of course you owe him nothin’ for ridin’ fifty mile through the rains an’ swimmin’ the Staked Crossin’ in a ragin’ flood to bring the doctor to poor little Danny, that wouldn’t be with us now but for him.”
“Be quiet, woman,” said Dan, fiercely. “Is it wi’ that in my heart ye’d send me out to meet a man I may have to shoot or be shot by? ’Tis a nice choice, too.”
He finished his breakfast and stood up. “Ye’ll stay by the woman an’ watch her careful,” he said. “Will ye manage that all right? Keep her to her bed, or make her lie down on the sofy. ”

“ Even now it was exhaustion, rather than cold, that halted him; but the cruel cold would seek him out soon enough in the snow-wet covert. He no longer cried out to his mother. Such had been the first impulse of his terror; but now the darkness and the silent refuge were left. No sound came from him, but the tears were freezing on his cheeks as he thrust apart the slender waving limbs.
Brief though it was, little Danny had fought a good fight. Many older children would not have come so far. The mountain strain is a strain of warriors, and it manifests itself in babes. ”

“ The woman decided to look for another messenger-office, and Danny, triumphant, resumed his seat on the paving-stones.
Then came another messenger, returning from a trip.
"What's the matter, Danny?" he asked. [Pg 87]
"Got the plant picketed," asserted Danny. "Nobody can't go in or come out."
"I'm goin' in," said the other boy.
"You!" exclaimed Danny scornfully, as he suddenly caught the boy and swung him over on to the stones.
"No, I ain't, Danny," the boy hastened to say, for Danny gave every evidence of an intent to batter in his face.
"Sure?" asked Danny. ”

“ None spoke to Danny. A kind of awe fell on them in their dealings with the lad. They let him alone. It was as if he had been the instrument in greater hands.
"He hadn't a lazy bone in him, hadn't Bill. Aw, well, God will be aisy on the poor chap."
"You have to summer and winter a man before you know him. And leave it to me to know Kisseck. I've shared work, shared meat with him this many a year."
"And a fine big chap, and as straight as the backbone of a herring. Aw, well, well, well." ”