Yes, that was the proper thing, and he pictured a harrowing scene of weeping relatives around, himself as central figure, all ceasing their wailing and gasping with wonder as he made known the mighty secret of his life—­delicious! it was almost worth dying for.

So he kept the place to himself and loved it more and more.  He would look out through the thick Hemlock tops, the blots of Basswood green or the criss-cross Butternut leafage and say:  “My own, my own.”  Or down by some pool in the limpid stream he would sit and watch the arrowy Shiners and say:  “You are mine, all; you are mine.  You shall never be harmed or driven away.”

A spring came from the hillside by a green lawn, and here Yan would eat his sandwiches varied with nuts and berries that he did not like, but ate only because he was a wildman, and would look lovingly up the shady brookland stretches and down to the narrow entrance of the glen, and say and think and feel.  “This is mine, my own, my very own.”

VII

The Shanty

He had none but the poorest of tools, but he set about building a shanty.  He was not a resourceful boy.  His effort to win the book had been an unusual one for him, as his instincts were not at all commercial.  When that matter came to the knowledge of the Home Government, he was rebuked for doing “work unworthy of a gentleman’s son” and forbidden under frightful penalties “ever again to resort to such degrading ways of raising money.”

They gave him no money, so he was penniless.  Most boys would have possessed themselves somehow of a good axe and spade.  He had neither.  An old plane blade, fastened to a stick with nails, was all the axe and spade he had, yet with this he set to work and offset its poorness as a tool by dogged persistency.  First, he selected the quietest spot near the spring—­a bank hidden by a mass of foliage.  He knew no special reason for hiding it, beyond the love of secrecy.  He had read in some of his books “how the wily scouts led the way through a pathless jungle, pulled aside a bough and there revealed a comfortable dwelling that none without the secret could possibly have discovered,” so it seemed very proper to make it a complete mystery—­a sort of secret panel in the enchanted castle—­and so picture himself as the wily scout leading his wondering companions to the shanty, though, of course, he had not made up his mind to reveal his secret to any one.  He often wished he could have the advantage of Rad’s strong arms and efficacious tools; but the workshop incident was only one of many that taught him to leave his brother out of all calculation.

Mother Earth is the best guardian of a secret, and Yan with his crude spade began by digging a hole in the bank.  The hard blue clay made the work slow, but two holidays spent in steady labour resulted in a hole seven feet wide and about four feet into the bank.