“How stately they are—­how like old Vikings!” he said.  His imagination was the oldest mental characteristic of this over-guarded, repressed boyhood.

Leila turned, surprised.  This was beyond her appreciative capacity.  “Once I heard Uncle Jim say something like that.  He’s queer about trees.  He talks to them sometimes just like that.  There’s the biggest pine over there—­I’ll show it to you.  Why! he will stop and pat it and say, ’How are you?’—­Isn’t it funny?”

“No, it isn’t funny at all.  It’s—­it’s beautiful!”

“You must be like him, John.”

“I—­like him!  Do you think so?” He was pleased.  The Indian horseman of the plains who could talk to the big tree began to be felt by the boy as somehow nearer.

“Let’s play Indian,” said Leila.  “I’ll show you.”  She was merry, intent on mischief.

“Oh! whatever you like.”  He was uninterested.

Leila said, “You stand behind this tree, I will stand behind that one.”  She took for herself the larger shelter.  “Then you, each of us, get ready this way a pile of snowballs.  I say, Make ready!  Fire! and we snowball one another like everything.  The first Indian that’s hit, he falls down dead.  Then the other rushes at him and scalps him.”

“But,” said John, “how can he?”

“Oh! he just gives your hair a pull and makes believe.”

“I see.”

“Then we play it five times, and each scalp counts one.  Now, isn’t that real jolly?”

John had his doubts as to this, but he took his place and made some snowballs clumsily.

“Make ready!  Fire!” cried Leila.  The snowballs flew.  At last, the girl seeing how wildly he threw exposed herself.  A better shot took her full in the face.  Laughing gaily, she dropped, “I’m dead.”

The game pleased him with its unlooked-for good luck.  “Now don’t stand there like a ninny—­scalp me,” she cried.

He ran to her side and knelt down.  The widespread hair affected him curiously.  He touched it daintily, let it fall, and rose.  “To pull at a girl’s hair!  I couldn’t do it.”

Leila laughed.  “A good pull, that’s how to scalp.”

“I couldn’t,” said John.

“Well, you are a queer sort of Indian!” She was less merciful, but in the end, to her surprise, he had three scalps.  “Uncle Jim will laugh when I tell him,” she said.  “Shall we go home?”

“No, I want to see Uncle Jim’s big tree.”

“Oh! he’s only Uncle Jim to me.  Aunt don’t like it.  He will tell you some day to call him Uncle Jim.  He says I got that as brevet rank the day my mare refused the barnyard fence and pitched me off.  I just got on again and made her take it!  That’s why he’s Uncle Jim.”

John became thoughtful about that brevet privilege of a remote future.  He had, however, persistent ways.  “I want to see the big pine, Leila.”

“Oh! come on then.  It’s a long way.  We must cut across.”  He followed her remorselessly swift feet through the leafless bushes and drifts until they came upon a giant pine in a wide space cleared to give the veteran royal solitude.  “That’s him,” cried Leila, and carelessly cast herself down on the snow.