Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon (best new books to read txt) 📕

you are satisfied that many things can be contained in one, will I require your solution. And as for traps, it is always the solver of riddles who lays his own trap, by looking all round the question and never straight at it. Put on your thinking-cap, I beg, while I go on babbling.)

On the March day following the brothers' talk (continued Martin) Lionel was missing. It was some time before his absence was noticed, for Hobb was in his distant garden, and Ambrose among his books, and Heriot had ridden north to the market-town to buy stuff for a jerkin, and Hugh had run south to the sea to watch the ships. So Lionel was left to his own devices, and what they were none tried to guess till evening, when the brothers met again and he was not there. Then there was hue and cry among the hills, but to no purpose. The child had vanished like a cloud. And the month wore by, and their hearts grew heavier day by day.

It was in the last week of March that Hugh one morning came red-eyed to his brothers and said, "I am going away, and I will not come back until I have found Lionel. For I can't rest."

"None of us can do that," said Ambrose, "and we have searched and sent messengers everywhere. You are too young to go alone."

"I am nearly fourteen," said Hugh, "and stronger than Heriot, and even than you, Ambrose, and I can take care of myself and Lionel too. There are more ways than one to seek, and I'll go my way while you go yours. But I will find him or die." And he looked with defiance at Ambrose, and then turned to Hobb and said doggedly, "I'm going, Hobb."

Hobb, who himself sought the hills unwearingly day after day, and then sat up three parts of the night attending to the duties of the Burgh, said, "Go, and God bless you."

And Hugh's mouth grew less set, and he kissed his brothers, and put his knife in his belt, and took food in his wallet, and walked out of the Burgh. He followed the grass-track to the north, and had walked less than half-an-hour when the wind took his cap and blew it into the middle of a pond, where it lay soddening out of reach. So he took off his shoes and walked into the pond to fetch it out, stirring up the yellow mud in thick soft clouds. But as he stooped to grab his cap, something else stirred the mud in the middle, and a body heaved itself sluggishly into view. At first Hugh thought it must be the body of a sheep that had tumbled into the water, but to his amazement the sulky head of an old man appeared. He was barely distinguishable from the mud out of which he had risen.

"Drat the boys!" said the muddy man. "Will they never be done with disturbing the newts and me? Drat em, I say!"

"Who are you?" demanded Hugh, staring with all his might.

"Jerry I am, and this is my pond. Why can't you leave me in peace?"

"The wind took my cap," said Hugh.

"Finding's keepings," said the muddy man, taking the cap himself, "and windfalls on this water is mine. So I'll keep your cap, and it's the second wind's brought me this March. And if you're in want of another you'd best go to where Wind lives and ask him for it, like t'other one. But he said he'd ask for a toy farm instead."

"A toy farm?" shouted Hugh.

"Go away and don't deafen a body," said Jerry, and prepared to sink again. But Hugh caught him by the hair and said fiercely, "Keep my cap if you like, but I won't let you go until you tell me where my brother went."

"Your brother was it?" growled the muddy man. "He went to High and Over, dancing like a sunbeam."

"What's High and Over?"

"Where Wind lives."

"Where's that?"

"Find out," mumbled the muddy man; and he wriggled himself out of Hugh's clutch and buried himself like a monstrous newt in the mud. And though Hugh groped and fumbled shoulder-deep he could not feel a trace of him.

"But," said he, "there's at least a name to go on." And he got out of the pond and went in search of High and Over. And his brothers waited in vain for his return. And the heaviness of four hearts was now divided between three, and doubled because of another brother lost.

But on the first of April, which was Lionel's birthday, Lionel came back. Or rather, Hobb found him in a valley north of his garden hill, when he was wandering on one of his forlorn searches. And when he found him Hobb could not believe his eyes. For the child was sitting in the middle of the prettiest plaything in the world. It was a tiny farm, covering perhaps a quarter of an acre, with minute barns and yards and stables, and pigmy livestock in the little pastures, and hand-high crops in the little meadows; and smoke came from the tiny chimney of the farmhouse, and Lionel was drawing water from a well in a bucket the size of a thimble. And all the colors were so bright and painted that the little farmstead seemed to have been conceived of the gayest mind on earth. But through his amazement Hobb had no thought except for the child, and he ran calling him by his name, but Lionel never looked up. And then Hobb lifted him in his arms, and embraced him closely, but the child did not respond.

Then Hobb looked at him anxiously, and was so shocked that he forgot the strange blithe little farm entirely. For Lionel was as wan and wasted as though he had been through a fever, and his rosy face was white, and his merry eyes were melancholy. And suddenly, as Hobb clasped him, he flung his arms round