Page:The Story of Opal.djvu/111

 CHAPTER X

How Brave Horatius is Lost and Found again, but Peter Paul Rubens is Lost Forever. 

wonders where is Brave Horatius. He comes not at my calling. Two days he is now gone. For him I go on searches. I go the three roads that go the three ways from where they have meeting in front of the ranch house. On and on I go. To the Orne and Rille I go. I go adown their ways. I call and call. Into the woods beyond the rivière —into the forêt de Saint-Germain-en-Laye I go. I listen. The sounds that were in time of summer are not now. Brave Horatius is not there. I call and call. Then I come back again. I go to the house of the girl who has no seeing. I go on. I go across the fields of Auvergne and Picardie. But I have no seeing of my Brave Horatius.

I come back again. The man that wears gray neckties and is kind to mice—he does keep watch by the mill. But these two days he has had no seeing of Brave Horatius. I have wonders where can he be. Every time I see the chore boy he does sing, "There was a little dog and his name was Rover, and when he died, he died all over—and—when—he—died—he—died—all—over." The last part he does wail in a most long way. I