"Ha!" cried Doby, trying to keep one eye on the loophole and the other on his father's face. "When the Spanish discovered America, they claimed the whole continent. If they had known about this place, they would have set up a flag here. But the French explorers really did find it and their flag is the one that covered it." Here he caught a hint from his father's questions and his mother's recovered calm. "'Twas a race of traders who followed the explorers." He now became eager to examine the stranger. "A half-breed trader! That's what he is!"
"He is so queer-looking," was the mother's objection to him.
Doby was quick with his surmises. "If these French traders made friends with the Indians and sometimes lived with them in their wigwams, and copied all the clever things the Indians knew about living in the open, they would become half Indians themselves. This odd old man is a voyageur. I know he is!"
"But," faltered the mother, "if he is friendly to the Indians, he may not be safe for us to know."
Mr. Holman was sure of his harmless character. "The French never incited the Indians to cruelty. Their influence was all for peaceful barter. He wants to buy any pelts we have for sale and to trade with us."
The mother's New England habits made her long for any kind of a trader to dicker with. No matter how outlandish his garb nor how strange his manner, a peddler was a peddler, and as such she was glad to see him.
So they opened wide the door and called a welcome.
As Doby examined the voyageur at close range, he thought, "I never did see such a wild-looking man," yet the stranger's joyous face, his quick gestures, and his lilting music drew the boy to him irresistibly.
For Doby's pleasure, after the greetings were over, the guest sang the words of his song and then he piped it, as a plover might have done. He whistled the tune and then he trotted it. He changed to calls of feathered songsters and to other measures and to different steps.
Whatever the melody or whatever the dance; whether he sang or whistled or piped, he was a constant swirl of music and laughter and motion. Into Doby's sober life he came as a figure of purest joy, never to be forgotten--a faun of the forest--a creature of fantasy.