Page:Young Hunters of the Lake.djvu/262

246 "Yes, yes, yes! My beloved history! That is true! Oh, it was cruel, cruel! After I had worked so many years and so faithfully! My beloved history! It is gone, never to return!" And the tears ran down the cheeks of the man.

"Uncle Pierre, you must give up your lonely life here," said Giant, after a pause. "You must come home with me."

At this suggestion the hermit, for the man was nothing less, shook his head vigorously. He was certainly queer—talking sometimes quite rationally and at others in a rambling fashion. He told how he had come to make his home in the mountains, how he had once visited a large city and purchased three parrots and brought them to the wilderness, and how one parrot had died and another had been shot.

"The third is still with me," he continued. "But I am tired of him—he is driving me crazy."

"He shall never bother you again—if only you will come home with me," said Giant. "You must come home—mother wants to see you. All your books are there. Don't you remember how you used to love those books, Uncle Pierre?"

"Yes! yes!" The man's eyes began to glisten. "And so you want me to go home? You look like a good boy, Guillaume."