Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/49

 and out through the wooded gloom of the Upper River.

Only now and then Lonely could hear a low little burst of laughter and calling, a muffled shout or two. Through the clear, opalescent air he caught sight of the smoke from their bonfire. He watched it drift and fade and melt down the river valley. A dog barked in the distance, dismally. The sun mounted higher and higher in the cloudless sky.

Laska Alice, do you know what you 've up and done?" sternly demanded Lonely.

The innocent young lady thus contemplatively addressed continued to clutch at a dandelion head with ineffectual fingers, bubbling and crooning with untimely joy.

Laska Alice," repeated the boy, meditatively, "I think you 've been my finish, all right!"

And he looked down at her studiously, but with no resentment in his vacant eyes, as he remembered, half bitterly, that this was the town where he had dreamed that trumpeters in green tights like the trapeze performers at the circus, were to ride out and greet him, and for