class="left">  The Fire at Widow Detover's

BONNIE PRINCE FETLAR

BONNIE PRINCE FETLAR

CHAPTER I THE BOY WITH THE PALE EYES

One day early this last summer I was feeling rather puzzled and surprised.

I am a black Shetland pony brought up mostly in cities and lovely open country places, and here was I shut up in a wild hilly spot miles from any human being except a few settlers.

I wasn't worried. I am a middle-aged pony and have seen enough of life to know that it does not pay to get stirred up about mysteries for invariably time straightens them all out.

I was just curious and amused and a little bored. No one was going to hurt me. I was sure of that. I am worth a great deal of money, but why I had been toted from down South to New York, and from New York to a Canadian stock farm and from the stock farm away up here to this out-of-the-way place in the woods was a problem to me.

I didn't like being shut up this fine day, and I didn't understand the reason for it. In the distance were children, a whole flock of them giggling and carrying on and probably crazy to get on my back, but they were being kept away from me.

"Well," I thought, "I'd better take a little nap while I'm waiting for this tangle to straighten itself out," and I was just turning my head to the wall of my log-house stable and drooping my head when there was a slight noise from the direction of the doorway.

At first I was not going to look round. I thought, "Oh! it's only one of the calves from the barnyard. They've been gaping at me ever since I came. What's the use of looking at them. Not one of them understands a Shetland pony."

However, I did at last turn my head. Anything to pass away the time in this dull place. To my surprise, it was not a calf but a boy that stood in the doorway, evidently a city boy for he was smartly dressed and not clad in overalls like the children in the distance, or poor clothes like the children in the few log cabins we had passed on the way to this lonely place.

He was a white-faced lad with light brown hair and pale eyes. I never saw such eyes before except in the head of a cat. They were greenish in hue and they grew bigger and darker as he stared at me. He seemed to be looking right through me at something in the background, and, if I hadn't known there wasn't a thing in the cabin except a couple of deer mice that he couldn't possibly see, I would have looked behind me to find out what he was staring at.

His expression was all right. I divide boys into two classes—kind and cruel. This lad was good-hearted whatever else he might be, and he wouldn't hurt a pony.

If he was from the city he spoke my language, and I advanced a bit toward him and stretched out my neck agreeably.

To my amazement he gave a leap backward.

"Oh! excuse me," he stammered, "I'm a bit cut up. I've had a long trip—I didn't know but what you were going to bite."

I curled my lip in a pony smile. Who was he and where did he come from, not to know that a Shetland pony is the soul of good nature. How different he was from those brown-faced young ones outside who looked as if they feared neither man nor beast.

Well, I could do nothing more. It was for him to make the advances, and I examined him more carefully.

He was very much excited. His hands were clenched, his young breast was heaving, and he had red spots over his cheek bones. I believed that he had run up here because he thought he was going to cry.

I have had many young masters and my rôle is to keep quiet at first and see how they treat me. So I just took a nip of hay, and gave him time to get his nerves together for they seemed to be at pretty loose ends.

He was shuddering now. What was the trouble? I looked over my shoulder and saw that someone had been killing a sheep and had hung up its streaked skin on the logs. Well, men have to eat sheep and if they kill them mercifully I suppose there is no harm in it, but what a sensitive lad this must be. I rather liked this tenderness in him. It's hard to die, even if you're only a sheep.

I whinnied sympathetically, and he said quite nicely and as if I were a person, "You have a very good place here."

I tried not to curl my lip again. If he could have seen the handsomely appointed quarters I had been used to—the paved floors and fine stalls! Poor lad! where had he been brought up to think this rough log cabin of some early backwoodsman a suitable place for a Shetland pony?

However I was not complaining. I was comfortable enough in the mild July weather. I have been used to roughing it in a nice way with some of my rich masters, but I certainly wouldn't like to put in a winter here with those daylight chinks between the big logs.

I wished the boy would let me out. What a stupid he was not to take me for a good gallop. Advancing very cautiously lest I should frighten him again, I pressed a shoulder against the half door of the cabin.

He understood. Very cautiously he lifted the bar, and creeping like a house mouse, not leaping like my deer mice, I placed myself beside him. Now he could see that I wasn't a lion or a tiger to eat him up.

"Pony-Boy," he said in a trembling voice, "what do you want?"

"I want exercise, you young snail," I tried to tell him by starting slowly up the gentle slope of the barnyard, and then turning to look round at him.

The sheep were pasturing away up on the hill. I would lead him toward them for I guessed that he would not be afraid of them. Those lively children in the distance would probably jolly the life out of him.

His green eyes glistened. He understood me once more, and a most beautiful smile broke over his face. That smile was like the opening of a window in his boy soul. He was a queer acting lad, but he had—Oh! I'm only a pony and I can't describe it. Anyway it was something that makes us animals worship certain people. If he chose, he could be my master. I would certainly be his slave.

I tossed my head and acted quite frisky. "Come on, boy," I tried to say to him, "be a sport. Have a little run. 'Twill bring some color to your pale cheeks."

"Stop a minute," he called suddenly, "I want to get my bearings."

I stared at him as he stood—delicate, eager, his pale eyes glistening with some new emotion.

"We are on the borders of a long beautiful lake," he said, "which is shaped like an hour-glass."

I didn't know what an hour-glass was, but I guessed that it was like the egg-glasses I have seen cooks use when I've been looking in kitchen windows to watch them time the boiling of eggs.

"We are at the waist of the glass," he said, "and all round us are vast hills clad with forests. Here a clearing has been made,