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-----以下忽略，为内容填充-----
e could there be? I like it, daddy."
The man drew a troubled breath, and stirred restlessly. The teasing pain in his side was very bad to-night, and no change of position eased it. He was ill, very ill; and he knew it. Yet he also knew that, to David, sickness, pain, and death meant nothing—or, at most, words that had always been lightly, almost unconsciously passed over. For the first time he wondered if, after all, his training—some of it—had been wise.
For six years he had had the boy under his exclusive care and guidance. For six years the boy had eaten the food, worn the clothing, and studied the books of his father's choosing. For six years that father had thought, planned, breathed, moved, lived for his son. There had been no others in the little cabin. There had been only the occasional trips through the woods to the little town on the mountain-side for food and clothing, to break the days of close companionship.
All this the man had planned carefully. He had meant that only the good and beautiful should have place in David's youth. It was not that he intended that evil, unhappiness, and death should lack definition, only definiteness, in the boy's mind. It should be a case where the good and the beautiful should so fill the thoughts that there would be no room for anything else. This had been his plan. And thus far he had succeeded—succeeded so wonderfully that he began now, in the face of his own illness, and of what he feared would come of it, to doubt the wisdom of that planning.
As he looked at the boy's rapt face, he remembered David's surprised questioning at the first dead squirrel he had found in the woods. David was six then.
"Why, daddy, he's asleep, and he won't wake up!" he had cried. Then, after a gentle touch: "And he's cold—oh, so cold!"
The father had hurried his son away at the time, and had evaded his questions; and David had seemed content. But the next day the boy had gone back to the subject. His eyes were wide then, and a little frightened.
"Father, what is it to be—dead?"
"What do you mean, David?"
"The boy who brings the milk—he had the squirrel this morning. He said it was not asleep. It was—dead."
"It means that the squirrel, the real squirrel under the fur, has gone away, David."
"Where?"
"To a far country, perhaps."
"Will he come back?"
"No."
"Did he want to go?"
"We'll hope so."
"But he left his—his fur coat behind him. Didn't he need—that?"
"No, or he'd have taken it with him."
David had fallen silent at this. He had remained strangely silent indeed for some days; then, out in the woods with his father one morning, he gave a joyous shout. He was standing by the ice-covered brook, and looking at a little black hole through which the hurrying water could be plainly seen.
"Daddy, oh, daddy, I know now how it is, about being—dead."
"Why—David!"
"It's like the water in the brook, you know; THAT'S going to a far country, and it isn't coming back. And it leaves its little cold ice-coat behind it just as the squirrel did, too. It does n't need it. It can go without it. Don't you see? And it's singing—listen!—it's singing as it goes. It WANTS to go!"
"Yes, David." And David's father had sighed with relief that his son had found his own explanation of the mystery, and one that satisfied.
Later, in his books, David found death again. It was a man, this time. The boy had looked up with startled eyes.
"Do people, real people, like you and me, be dead, father? Do they go to a far country?
"Yes, son in time—to a far country ruled over by a great and good King they tell us."
David's father had trembled as he said it, and had waited fearfully for the result. But David had only smiled happily as he answered:
"But they go singing, father, like the little brook. You know I heard it!"
And there the matter had ended. David was ten now, and not yet for him did death spell terror. Because of this David's father was relieved; and yet—still because of this—he was afraid.
"David," he said gently. "Listen to me."
The boy turned with a long sigh.
"Yes, father."
