THE INDIAN FAIRY

THE INDIAN FAIRY

I

“Katie has been complaining again of the queer noises in the cellar,” said Rob’s mother, as she passed the coffee cup to her husband across the breakfast table.

“It must be rats,” said Rob’s papa. “We will get a trap.”

“It is very strange,” said Mamma again, “the girls declare that the noises seem to come from the old well. That is what all our servants have said for years. You know some of them have been so frightened that they gave us notice, because of the noises in the well. They think it is bewitched.”

“What is ‘bewitched,’ Mamma?” asked Rob.

“Pooh, pooh!” said Rob’s papa. “It is only rats, I know, and the noises do not come from the well, but from the wall. There must be a rat’s nest in the wall close by the well. I have heard about those noises ever since I was a little boy. Sometimes I used to think that I heard them myself, and I fancied all sorts of queer things. But of course it was nothing but rats.”

Rob had been listening with round eyes, and now he cried eagerly, “O Papa! I did not know that there was a well under the house. How did it come there, and what is it for?”

“Oh, yes, there is an old well,” said his papa. “It has been down there longer than I can remember, for it is even older than the house,—older than the city, too, I daresay. It was an Indian spring, and my great-grandfather built the house over it, so as to have fresh water always conveniently at hand. It is covered now with a trapdoor, so that no one can fall in by mistake. That is why you never saw it, Rob.”

“An old Indian spring!” cried Rob excitedly, “and we drink that very same water every day! How splendid!” He sipped some water from his glass and smacked his lips.

“Oh, no,” said his papa laughing. “This is ordinary spring water bought at the store. Our old well has not been used for years and years. Since the city has been built up so closely around our house, which was one of the first ones here on the Hill, we have not dared to use the well water, because it might not be clean. I daresay the well is quite dry by this time. I have not looked into it for years.”

“O Papa! I want to look down into the well!” cried Rob.

“Well, you shall do so some time,” said his papa as they rose from the table. “But I am in a hurry now. Good-by, Mamma. Good-by, Rob. I will buy a trap on my way down town to-day, and we will put an end to the noises in the cellar which trouble Katie.”

Now of course Rob was very anxious to see that well, for he loved everything that had to do with Indians. He thought that he could not wait for his father to show it to him. He ran into the kitchen and began to bother Katie.

“Katie, Katie,” he begged. “Please come into the cellar and show me the old well. I want to look down into it.”

“The Saints preserve us!” cried Katie, lifting up her hands in horror. “What for do ye want to be lookin’ into the well? No, me b’y! It’s I that will be kapin’ away from that same, and thank ye kindly. ’Tis bewitched it is, what with the funny little noises a-comin’ out of it day and night.”

“What funny little noises, Katie?” asked Rob. “Papa says it is rats. He is going to buy a trap to catch them.”

“Rats! A trap!” sniffed Katie scornfully. “’Tis no rats at all do be makin’ them quare little noises. ’Tis bewitched, I tell ye. ’Tis stark bewitched, that well. And I wouldn’t go near it at all for the promise of a new bonnet.”

“What does ‘bewitched’ mean, Katie?” asked Rob again.

Katie wagged her head and mysteriously made the sign of the cross.

“Oh, who will be tellin’ ye that? If it was in the owld country I’d say it was Fairies or maybe the Leprechaun himself. But I never heard tell o’ Fairies in this land, at all. Maybe ’tis something worse. But oh! The funny little noises!”

“What noises, Katie?” begged Rob.

“Oh, the little whinin’ and sobbin’, like one wantin’ to get out. ’Tis no rats live in the owld well. Would rats be whimperin’ and beggin’ like?”

“Begging, Katie!” cried Rob. “Oh, what do they say? Please, please tell me quickly.”

“La, no! Master Rob,” said Katie, looking sidewise at the little boy, “your Mamma wouldn’t want me to be frightenin’ ye with tales the likes o’ these.”

“But I’m not frightened, Katie,” said Rob eagerly. “I’m just interested.”

“H’m,” said Katie doubtfully, glancing at the clock. “Whisht! Master Rob! ’Tis a quarter to nine, and time for you to be startin’ for school, or you’ll be late.”

And indeed, Rob had to run all the way, and reached school barely in time.

Rob’s papa did not forget to bring home a rat-trap that night, and after dinner he said,—

“Now, Rob, I am going down cellar to set the trap, and if you want to come with me I will show you the old well.”

Of course Rob wanted to go. So Rob’s papa took a lighted candle in one hand, and the rat-trap nicely baited with cheese in the other, and they descended the steep cellar stairs together. It was very dark in the cellar, and the candle made queer flares on the walls and ceiling, and lighted up corners which Rob had never before seen. In the very darkest and dimmest corner of all, away in the back cellar, Rob’s papa paused, and then Rob saw that in the floor there was a trapdoor with an iron ring, quite like the Arabian Nights!

“It is from somewhere hereabout that Katie says she hears the noises,” said Papa. “We will set the trap on the floor, close beside the wall, and I warrant we shall catch a big rat before many nights are over.” So he set the trap with the spring ready to catch the first greedy rat who should try to steal the cheese.

“Now let us look into the well,” said Rob’s papa. “I haven’t lifted this cover for years. Ugh! It is heavy enough!” He tugged at the iron ring and presently the cover flew back. Down below yawned a great black hole, very deep and seemingly quite empty.

“Here, Rob, take hold of my hand,” said his papa, “and you can look down.” Rob held tightly to his father’s hand, and bending over, peered into the well. The candle which his father held flickered and flamed and shot a shaft of light down into the strange hole.

“I can’t see anything,” said Rob, disappointed. “I don’t think there is any water there. But—but I think I hear something! A queer little noise like water trickling, or somebody whispering very softly.”

“The spring may be bubbling yet,” said his father. “Katie, O Katie!” he called upstairs. “Please bring me a tin pail and a ball of stout twine. We will see whether the Indian spring has run dry or not.”

“The Saints preserve us!” Rob heard Katie cry in the kitchen above, as she went about to do as she was bid. And again Rob thought he heard a murmuring in the well.

“There is the queer noise again, Papa!” he cried. “It sounds like some one talking a long way off.”

“Pooh, pooh!” said Papa. (He was always saying, “Pooh, pooh” at Rob’s queer notions.) “Run and get the pail and the cord, Sonny. Katie is afraid to come near the well. Ah! Now we shall soon know.”

He tied the cord to the handle of the pail, while Rob held the candle and they watched the pail descend. Down, down it went, until it disappeared into the blackness. “Well, well!” said his father. “Ten, twenty, I must have paid out thirty feet of cord already. I had forgotten that the well was so deep. Hello! There was a splash; hear it, Rob?”

Rob heard,—a quick splash, and again the queer little noise, a tinkle, a trickle, a rustle, a whisper.

“O Papa,” he cried, “let me draw up the pail, please.”

“Well, be very careful, Son,” said his father. And Rob began to pull on the cord, while his father held tightly to his jacket so that he should not fall down into the deep, black hole. The pail was rather heavy. It bumped against the sides of the well, tinkling and jingling as it came up. Rob thought that it jerked and wobbled strangely. But perhaps his hand was not quite steady, he was so excited. At last the pail came in sight, full of water. They drew it over the edge, Rob stooping eagerly to see. Filled to the brim it was, and running over.

“Clear water, as cold as ice,” said Rob’s Papa, dipping in his finger. “Let us take it upstairs and see it in a better light. I would not have believed that the old spring was still bubbling.”

Very carefully Rob carried the pail of water up the cellar stairs. “Katie, O Katie!” he called. “See the water from the old well! From thirty feet down in the darkness it came.”

“The Saints preserve us!” cried Katie. (She was always saying that.) “I wouldn’t touch water from the witch-well for any money ye could offer.”

“It is clear and bright as glass,” said Rob’s papa.

“O Papa! Let me drink some,” cried Rob. “I should so love to taste water from a real Indian spring.”

“O Mr. Evans! Don’t let the b’y taste it!” begged Katie, clasping her hands. “It will kill him, the p’isen water!”

“No, Rob,” said Mr. Evans, “I think Katie is right. It might be dangerous to drink the water. But it looks delicious. What a pity that we cannot use spring water from our own ancestral well, instead of buying it at the store as every one else must!”

“Please, Papa—just one little sip?” begged Rob.

“No, not one little sip, Son. Here, Katie, empty the pail of water into the sink,” said Mr. Evans firmly.

Tremblingly Katie took the pail and went with it to the sink. But she had not turned half the water away when she gave a scream.

“Ow! The whimperin’ and cryin’! Hark till it!” she shrieked. And indeed, it seemed to Rob that the water sobbed and moaned as it ran down the sink spout. Suddenly he had an idea.

“It is too bad to let the beautiful fresh Indian spring water run into the horrid old sewer,” he said. “Please, Papa, come with me and let me pour it back into the well.”

“Pooh, pooh!” laughed Mr. Evans. “What an idea! You are as silly as Katie, Rob. I don’t want you to get strange ideas into your head. But—well, come along, since you are so anxious that the famous water should not be wasted. I want to cover up the well tightly, so that no one can fall in.”

Downstairs they went once more, Rob carrying the pail half full of water, which he poured back into the well. With a glad splash it joined the hidden spring far, far below, and again Rob felt sure that he caught the sound of a whispering voice, tinkling, trickling, sighing, sobbing, as if it were trying to say something to him, perhaps to thank him. He bent over the well, listening eagerly. But his father pulled him back by the hand.

“Come, Rob,” he said. “I want to put the cover in place, and then we must go upstairs. It is time that you were in bed.”

So they let down the cover with a bang! and Rob went away with his father out of the dark cellar and into the gaslight. But the sound of those queer little noises followed after him, upstairs and upstairs, and even after he was in bed.

II

The queer little sounds followed Rob upstairs, and even after he was in bed he could hear them echoing from far below in the cellar. At first they were only little trickly sounds, like water seekling afar off. But by and by, when the house was very still, because everybody except Rob had fallen sound asleep, the noises grew louder and plainer. They grew into a soft murmur, sometimes a sob, sometimes the whisper of a little silver voice. And at the same time there was a gentle knocking. Rob listened and listened as hard as ever he could, and he said to himself,—

“Surely, Katie is right. There is something strange about the cellar, and I think it comes from the old well. What can it be?”

Finally the voice sounded so loud and so plain that Rob could hear distinctly what it was saying, and it seemed to be talking to him.

“Let me out; ah, let me out!” cried the silvery, trickly voice, and again Rob heard the knocking. “Good little boy, you who would not let the water of the Indian spring be wasted, come and free me from my prison of so many years.”

A prisoner! Some one was shut up in the old well! Rob sat up in bed. He must set the prisoner free. He was not a bit frightened at the thought of going down all alone into the cellar, for he knew that there was nothing more to be afraid of in the dark than in the daylight. He got up and thrust his feet into a pair of slippers and put on his bath robe. Then very softly, so as not to waken anybody in the house, he crept downstairs: down to the floor where his father and mother slept,—he could hear them breathing as he passed the door; down past the library where the books lived and all night long told silent stories to one another in the moonlight; down to the empty dining-room, and through to the kitchen. Here Rob found a candle on a shelf and lighted it. Then, taking this in one hand and holding up his trailing bath robe with the other, he stole down the cellar stairs. The voice was calling now louder than ever, and with it sounded the knocking, which certainly came from the old well.

“Let me out, O kind boy!” sobbed the silvery, tinkling voice. “Let me out. Oh! I thought I was free to-day, but alas! Here I remain yet a prisoner, for how many more long years? O kind little boy, the first one to do me a good turn, let me out, let me out!”

Rob hastened to the corner in which was the old well. And as he drew near, the voice became plainer and plainer, and the knockings louder and louder. He set the candle down on the floor beside the rat-trap which his father had baited that afternoon, and his heart beat fast as he bent over the cover of the well and seized the iron ring in both hands. Should he be able to lift it?

One—two—three! Rob strained hard, but the cover would not budge. One—two—three, again! It was so heavy for a little boy to lift. One—two—three! Once more! Rob felt the cover move a tiny bit. The noises down in the well had ceased suddenly. It was very still. Rob could hear his heart thumping like the screw of a steamboat. Now, for one last time! One—two—three! The cover came up suddenly, so suddenly that Rob nearly went over backward. There below yawned the great black hole of the well.

“Oh!” said Rob, drawing a long breath.

“Oh!” Was it an echo, or a soft little voice, far, far below?

Rob took up the candle and peered down into the well. But he could see nothing. “Is any one down there?” he asked. At first there was no answer, and then there came a tinkly, trickly sound like water bubbling, which turned at last into a whispered “Yes!” There certainly was some one in the old well!

“Who are you?” said Rob, tingling all over with excitement.

“Oh, little friend, kind boy,” said the voice, “I am the Fairy of the Indian spring, shut up here for years and years, unable to get out. I have called and called, but you are the first who has come to aid me.”

“What can I do to help you?” asked Rob eagerly.

“Let down the bucket as you did this afternoon,” said the voice. “Let down the bucket and draw me up.”

The pail with the ball of twine lay close beside the well, where Rob’s papa had forgotten it that afternoon. Rob set the candle down on the floor and began to lower the pail into the well. Yard after yard after yard the hungry throat swallowed the cord. Finally he heard the pail splash as it reached the water. He waited a moment. The pail bobbed about and then grew heavy on the cord. Then the silver voice cried, “Draw up, draw up, kind boy!”

Rob pulled on the cord eagerly,—pulled and pulled without looking down into the well, until the pail tinkled against the bricks of the cellar floor. In the flare of the candle-light Rob saw that it was full of water. But that was not all! Standing with feet braced across the top of the pail, clinging to the cord, was the strangest little figure about six inches high; a little figure dressed all in brown, with black hair and bright eyes. When the pail rested on the cellar floor he leaped off and stood before Rob, bowing, with one hand laid upon his head.

And then Rob saw that it was a tiny Indian. His brown dress was soft like deerskin, and his leggings were fringed. His limp black hair fell over a face of red-bronze, with high cheek-bones and pouting lips. In his hair he wore a tiny blue feather, perhaps from a blue jay’s wing, and in his hands he carried the sweetest little toy bow, while a quiver of inch-long arrows hung on his shoulders. His feet were covered with moccasins, and he was the exact copy of a Wild West Indian; only he looked like one seen through the wrong end of an opera-glass.

“Oh—you must be an Indian Fairy,” cried Rob, with his eyes bulging.

“Yes, Friend,” said the tiny one. “I am an Indian Fairy, the Fairy of the Indian spring. And you have brought me up for the second time this day, though you did not see me the first time. This is the second time during fifty years that I have left the well. Ah, must I go back again?” Despite the warlike appearance of the little man his silvery voice began to tremble.

“Tell me all about it,” said Rob soothingly.

“I am the Fairy who lived by the spring years, and years, and years ago, before the White Men came to Shawmut,” said the Fairy.

“What is Shawmut?” asked Rob, wondering.

“Shawmut is the Indian name of this place,” said the Fairy. “It means the Place of Springs, and it was so named because of the many bubbling springs on the hillside above the river. Oh! there were many, many of us. I had dozens of brothers. But my spring was in the fairest spot. This water was the sweetest and clearest of any. Heigho! How often the great braves used to kneel here for a refreshing draught when they returned from the hunt or from war! They never saw me, for I hid in the moss about the spring. But I loved to look at them, they were so big and wonderful.”

“Oh, what did they look like?” asked Rob eagerly, for Rob loved to hear about Indians.

“They dressed as I do,” said the Fairy. “But sometimes their faces were painted green or red or blue. And I could see no good in that. Sometimes they wore tassels of hair at their belts. Ugh! I did not like that fashion. Sometimes their hands were red, and when they went away the waters of my spring were stained. Ugh! Neither did I like that. But they were brave and strong and noble. I loved the Red Men, for they lived out of doors in the sweet sunlight, as I did. They loved the fresh air and the blue sky and the green grass. They would have no stifling roof over their heads to shut out the sky; no four walls to keep off the fresh air. Ugh! I cannot breathe in a house. I stifle! I choke!”

“Then how did you come to be shut up in this house?” asked Rob, wondering very much.

“Listen. The White Men came to Shawmut; White Men with cows and dogs, women and children. They built houses on the Hill, near the bubbling springs, and planted corn. They drove away the Red Men, and I loved them not, for they were different. They wore ugly dark garments, hats and short cropped hair. They lived in close wigwams, and cared nothing for fresh air and blue sky. Neither did they love the trees, but cut them down to burn, and mowed the flowers for their ugly ploughed fields. The woods and the streams meant nothing to them but places wherein they might hunt and fish, which they did gloomily. For they were solemn folk and sad. They thought it wicked to laugh merrily, as the brook laughs, or to smile like the flowers. Even the little children dared not be too gay, but were afraid of their fathers!”

“That must have been a horrid time for children,” said Rob.

“Alas! It was indeed a sad time for everybody,” went on the Fairy. “The brave Red Men were gone. Even the rabbits and squirrels were gone. The Hill was peopled with solemn and ugly folk, who dared not be happy, and it was no longer beautiful as before. Yet I could not go away and leave my spring, my dear spring, which ran sweet and clear as ever. It was the favorite fountain of the Puritans, and crouching down under the moss and ferns I watched them come and go, gloomily, filling their buckets and pitchers. But I loved them not, and I hoped that the Red Men would come back and drive them away. But the Red Men never came again.”

“And what happened next?” asked Rob, much interested.

“Years went by, and the Hill became crowded with the White Men’s ugly wigwams. The springs still bubbled, but it was a sad song that they sang, for everything was changed. But that was not the worst. Came a day when a man built a house over my very spring! He shut in the bubbling water under a roof, between four ugly walls, where the blue sky could no longer shine upon it nor the fresh air visit it freely! Alas! Would that I had escaped before then. I might have gone earlier, though it would have been sorrowful to desert my lonely spring. But I had not guessed what was about to happen until it was too late. I had not thought that even a White Man could be so cruel as to wall up a living spring. I was asleep under the moss and ferns when they raised the roof over me. Alas! I did not even waken at the sound of their wicked hammers. But when I opened my eyes it was too late. There was a screen between me and the sky!”

“Why did you not run away?” asked Rob sympathetically.

“Oh, you do not understand,” answered the Fairy with a sad little smile. “I might have escaped at any time before the roof covered me. But as soon as there was a roof above my head, and four walls rose around me, I was under the magic spell of the White Men. I could not go away, even though the doors and windows were yet yawning holes. I must remain, even as the well must remain, until some one should take pity on me and set me free.”

“And could you find no one to do that in all those years?” cried Rob.

“Alas! No. The people who lived in the house were dull folk who did not believe in Fairies. For many years and many years I have remained shut up in the darkness of this cellar, pining in the deserted well. It is quite useless and forgotten. Long ago the ferns and mosses died, and I have no green thing left to love, nothing beautiful to see.”

“Poor Fairy!” said Rob, and the tears stood in his eyes.

“I have cried, I have called, I have knocked on the walls of the well,” said the Fairy, “but no one has seemed to hear my voice. Or if folk heard they have not understood. Years ago some one who stepped as you step, whose voice sounded like yours—I never saw his face—used to come sometimes and listen at the well, and I heard him wish and wonder. But that was all.”

“It must have been my father!” exclaimed Rob, remembering what had been said at the breakfast table.

“But he could not understand what I tried to tell him,” went on the Fairy. “He wondered and walked about, but he always went away without doing anything. It was as if I spoke a foreign language. But you see I do not. You understand me quite well, is it not so?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Rob. “And yet it is very strange. It is not language such as others speak. It is like trickling water that makes words.”

The Fairy laughed. “It is not language at all,” he said. “But you know it. There were women, too; women with loud voices and a curious twist to their tongues. They heard my voice, some of them seemed even to understand what I cried. For I heard them exclaim and wonder and talk of the Fairy Folk. The first time that this happened I was hopeful. Surely, I said to myself, they know the Fairies. They say that they come from a Green Land where many Fairies live. Surely, surely they will love the Little Men of another country. They will understand why I long for green grass and blue sky and fresh air. They will help me to escape. But no! They were cowards. They screamed and fainted when I spoke from the old well. They must have had wicked hearts, for they feared the Fairies. They dared not come near, but complained to the master and mistress, and would not live in the same house with me.”

“Silly things!” said Rob. “Katie was one of them.”

“So to please them the well was covered,” sighed the Fairy, “and then it was worse than ever. Think how dark, how lonely, how ugly a home it was for an Indian Fairy who loved the free, open life of outdoors! Oh, for the green woods, the sunshine and blue sky! The song of birds and the odor of flowers! Oh, to feel the soft green moss, and taste the dew fresh in the morning! Please let me out, kind boy, that I may know those joys again!”

“Dear Fairy,” said Rob hesitatingly, “I am so sorry, but to find all these things, save the sky and air, one must now seek far from here. The White Men have driven them away, just as they drove the Indians, the squirrels, and the rabbits. There is no green grass, there are no flowers, no moss, no ferns on all the Hill.”

“What do you tell me!” cried the Fairy. “My Hill is no longer beautiful?”

“It is beautiful,” said Rob. “At least, the White Men call it so. But the wigwams are thick and very tall, shutting out the sunlight from the paths between. And these paths are dusty, hard streets, with neither grass nor trees nor flowers.”

“Oh, why do White Men try so hard to make the world ugly?” wailed the poor Indian Fairy. “How can they live away from the woods and the flowers and the beautiful, beautiful green grass! Where shall I go? What shall I do?”

Rob thought and wondered, and thought again. And at last he had an idea. “There is a green country not so very far from here,” he said. “One goes there in an electric car,—but you don’t know what a car is. Never mind. I went there yesterday and brought away some beautiful ferns, growing in the mossy earth.”

“Oh, that I might see them!” cried the Fairy eagerly. “One sniff of leafy mould, one breath of the woods lingering about the tufted moss! To lie once more in the shadow of a fern and feel its freshness on my face! Where is this woodsy wonder?”

“It is upstairs in my bedroom,” answered Rob. “Will you come with me?”

The Fairy hesitated, looked at the pail of water resting beside the well, and brightened with a sudden thought.

“Yes!” he cried. “I know what may be done. You can set me free, kind boy, you only, of all the folk who have come to the Indian spring since the Red Men left it. The spell which binds me to the spring and chains me beneath the roof can only be broken when the water is set free again to mother earth. Yesterday I came near to being emptied into the horrible sewer. You heard my cry as the first of the water was lost. You saved me. For had the pail been emptied then I must have followed. And to what a fate!”

“It empties at last into the ocean,” said Rob.

“And that would have been the end of me,” shivered the Fairy. “Salt water is the one thing which would destroy me utterly. But come now. I know how I may be freed. Take the pail of water and bring me with it to the blessed clump of ferns.”

Rob agreed; he took up the candle in one hand and the pail of water in the other. Lightly as a bird the Fairy sprang upon the rim of the pail, clinging to the cord. And so they went together up out of the cellar, through the empty kitchen and dining-room; very softly up the stairs, past the library of silent-talking books; up and up, very, very creepily past the bedroom door ajar, whence Rob heard the sound of his father and mother snoring peacefully; up and up and up, tiptoeing so as not to wake Katie, to Rob’s own chamber. And there on the window-seat stood a big flower-pot with the beautiful ferns which the day before Rob had dug up in the woods. The Fairy smelled them as soon as he entered the room.

“Ah!” he cried, laying both little hands on his breast, “How good that is! Dear boy, empty the water quickly from the pail into the earth brought from the woods, and I shall be free to lie under my dear ferns once more.”

Rob emptied the pail into the flower-pot. And as the last drop of water trickled from the bucket, with a glad cry that sounded like the tiniest of Indian war-whoops, the Fairy leaped into the moist little dell which the ferns made, and curled up against one of the stalks, hugging it lovingly.

“Dear fern!” he cried. “Dear woodsy fern! How sweet you smell. Dear moss, how soft you are! Dear fragrant earth, made of dead leaves and all the ripe finished things of the forest! Oh, I am myself once more. Dear boy, you have made me very happy.”

“And you will live here with me in my chamber, always and always, dear Fairy?” begged Rob eagerly. “That will be so good! I shall be happy indeed to have you for my little neighbor. And I will never, never tell any one about you, nor let them disturb your green home.”

The Fairy looked at Rob and sighed. “Little friend,” he said, “I love you dearly. I would gladly make you happy. But I have yet one more thing to ask of you. Think of it! Even now I am shut under a White Man’s roof,—I, an Indian Fairy! So many years in a foreign wigwam, walled in a dark, skyless well! Oh! Let me go back to the green wood. Let me be free once more like the rabbits and the squirrels. Will you set me free, even though it means that you will never see me again?”

Rob looked at the Fairy and his lip trembled. “I hoped”—he began. But he took a long breath and said to himself, “I will not be selfish. I will be kind and do as I would be done by.” Then he spoke aloud. “Tell me how I may set you free, dear Fairy, and I will do it.”

“Ah, my kind friend!” cried the Fairy, “I knew you would be generous! This, then, you shall do for me. I will sleep to-night in your chamber, and to-morrow, when the sun is high, you shall take up the ferns out of the flower-pot, these ferns all moist with the water of the Indian spring. You shall take them up, and me with them,—though you will not see me after daylight,—and carry them to the woods whence you took them. And when you set them back in the ground of the forest where they grew, then I shall be free, free, free! Oh, dear boy, will you do this for me?”

“Yes, I will do this for you,” said Rob gravely.

“Thanks, thanks!” cried the Fairy. “And now, the night is almost done. I think I feel the daylight coming. You will see me no more. But I shall be sleeping soundly under the fern. And do you likewise go to rest in your little bed. Look! You are shivering with cold! But to-morrow do not forget your promise.”

“I will not forget,” said Rob, feeling indeed very cold and shivery. He crept away to his little bed, and was soon sound asleep, warm and comfy.

III

It was late when Rob woke the next morning. At first he thought that the adventure with the Indian Fairy must have been a dream. But as soon as he sat up in bed he saw the tin pail on the floor beside the window-seat, and the fern moist and green in the flower-pot. So he knew that it must all have been true. But he could not see the Fairy himself, though he knew that the little fellow must be snugly curled up under the green fronds of the fern.

When he came down to the breakfast table his father and mother were talking earnestly about something.

“It is a wonder he wasn’t killed!” said his Mamma, shuddering. “Why did you ever show him that dreadful well?”

“I shall have the cover screwed down,” said Mr. Evans. “It really isn’t safe. Hello, Son! You walked in your sleep again last night, did you know it? I suppose you don’t remember. But Mamma found one of your slippers outside the library door this morning, and Katie found the other on the cellar stairs. And Rob! The cover of the old well was open! However did you lift it?”

“I don’t remember how I lifted it,” said Rob, quite truthfully, and he looked dazed.

“Well, we can’t have this, you know,” said his father. “I shall have to lock your door every night. But we will have that old well screwed up hereafter. Perhaps that will satisfy Katie, though I think she will not be troubled with any more noises in the wall. She says that there was a big, big rat dead in the trap this morning.”

And indeed, nobody ever heard any more noises in the cellar after Rob helped the Indian Fairy to escape. That very morning, right after breakfast,—for it was a Saturday and there was no school,—he dug up the ferns which he had planted in his flower-pot, and put them in a little basket with the earth around their roots. Then he started to take the electric car which would carry him out of town to the woods.

“Where are you going, Rob?” asked his Mamma, seeing him with cap in hand.

“I am going to take my ferns back to the woods,” Rob answered. “I think it is cruel to keep things that love the sunshine and the fresh air shut up in a house. I am sure that the ferns would much rather be back in the woods, don’t you think so, Mamma?”

“Well, I am sure I never thought of that!” said his Mamma. “But you may go if you will be back in time for dinner.”

ROB AND THE INDIAN FAIRY

So Rob took the ferns to the woods and set them back in their first home under a big gray rock, the prettiest little spot in the world for a Fairy to dwell! But he saw nothing more of the Indian Fairy, though he looked and looked; and after he had started for home, went back there again three separate times to look, because he hated to part from his little new friend. But the last time he heard, or thought he heard, a very tiny, far-off, trickly voice say,—

“Farewell, my friend! Farewell! I am free, free, free! And you shall always be happy when you come to the woods, even if you never see me. For I will make this charm about you, because you were kind. Farewell, farewell!”

And this was the last that Rob ever heard of the Indian Fairy, though he went often and often to that same place in the woods; but the Fairy charm did indeed prove true, and Rob was always very, very happy as soon as he came into the woods, happier than he was anywhere else.