David leaned toward her. “What do you see when you look off at the mountain like that?”

“It’s like I could see him. He would take his little books up there and walk the high path. I never have showed you his path. It was his, and he would walk in it, up and down, up and down, and read words I couldn’t understand, reading like he was singing. Sometimes I would climb up to him, and he’d take me in his arms and carry me like I was a baby, and read. Sometimes he would sit on a bank of moss under those trees — see near the top by that open spot of sky a right dark place? There are no other trees like them. They are his trees. He would sit with me there and tell me the stories of the strange words; but we never told mother, for she said they were heathen and I mustn’t give heed to