“I think she didn’t want you to go,” the little boy answered, “I don’t understand it. She doesn’t often cry.”
So there was more than one person who wanted him to help and was confident of his success. And even Half-Breed Jake and Laughing Mary seemed to feel that he was in some way involved in the matter. Should he go or stay? Time was passing.
The grinning porter looked at him doubtfully, then picked up his stool and climbed up the steps of the last car. The long train, with its shining brass rails, hooded vestibules and sleepy passengers peering from the windows, looked as though it had come from another world than this wild, wooded country where such strange things could come to pass. The brakeman glanced inquiringly over his shoulder and shouted,
The bell began to jangle, the wheels creaked and groaned, the heavy cars slowly gathered headway—there was still time to run and catch the last step, but Hugh did not move. The line of cars, with a final echoing whistle, slid away into the morning mist and disappeared behind the shoulder of a hill, leaving him behind, committed at last to his adventure.
Linda Ingmarsson was standing at the door when Hugh and Carl came up the path. She did not seem to be at all surprised to see him.
“I met Jethro Brown at the station,” he explained briefly. “He told me, oh, quite a lot of things. I decided not to take the train, to go into the woods instead.”
“I think I know what he told you,” she said. “It is a mad plan. You ought not to go.”
“But I’m going,” returned Hugh, and she smiled.
“Yes, I believe you are going,” she answered, “and perhaps I would not stop you if I could.”
The children came clattering in and Ingmarsson appeared by the door, so there was no more discussion just then. Later, however, when the various members of the family had set off to work or to school, Linda came up to Hugh’s room bringing an armful of things for him, a pack such as hunters carry, heavy boots, thick wool socks, a mackinaw coat.
“You will need all these,” she said. “It may be that you will be gone some time.”
She advised him as to which of his own possessions were the most necessary to take with him and showed him how to pack them in the smallest possible space.