IV.
WHEN Bonnyboy was twenty years old his father
gave up, once for all, his attempt to make a
carpenter of him. A number of saw-mills had been
built during the last years along the river down in
the valley, and the old rapids had been broken up
into a succession of mill-dams, one above the other.
At one of these saw-mills Bonnyboy sought work,
and was engaged with many others as a mill hand.
His business was to roll the logs on to the little
trucks that ran on rails, and to push them up to
the saws, where they were taken in charge by another
set of men, who fastened and watched them
while they were cut up into planks. Very little
art was, indeed, required for this simple task; but
strength was required, and of this Bonnyboy had
enough and to spare. He worked with a will from
early morn till dewy eve, and was happy in the
thought that he had at last found something that
he could do. It made the simple-hearted fellow
proud to observe that he was actually gaining his
father's regard; or, at all events, softening the
disappointment which, in a vague way, he knew that
his dulness must have caused him. If, occasionally,
he was hurt by a rolling log, he never let any one
know it; but even though his foot was a mass of
agony every time he stepped on it, he would march
along as stiffly as a soldier. It was as if he felt his
father's eye upon him long before he saw him.
There was a curious kind of sympathy between
them which expressed itself, on the father's part, in
a need to be near his son. But he feared to avow
any such weakness, knowing that Bonnyboy would
interpret it as distrust of his ability to take care of
himself, and a desire to help him if he got into
trouble. Grim, therefore, invented all kinds of transparent
pretexts for paying visits to the saw-mills.
And when he saw Bonnyboy, conscious that his eye
was resting upon him, swinging his axe so that the
chips flew about his ears, and the perspiration rained
from his brow, a dim anxiety often took possession
of him, though he could give no reason for it.
That big brawny fellow, with the frame of a man
and the brain of a child, with his guileless face and
his guileless heart, strangely moved his compassion.
There was something almost beautiful about him,
his father thought; but he could not have told
what it was; nor would he probably have found
any one else that shared his opinion. That frank
and genial gaze of Bonnyboy's, which expressed
goodness of heart but nothing else, seemed to Grim
an "open sesame" to all hearts; and that unawakened
something which goes so well with childhood,
but not with adult age, filled him with tenderness
and a vague anxiety. "My poor lad," he
would murmur to himself, as he caught sight of
Bonnyboy's big perspiring face, with the yellow
tuft of hair hanging down over his forehead, "clever
you are not; but you have that which the cleverest
of us often lack."
