But wait!  Pearl sat still and listened.  There was something doing.  It was a Welsh rhapsodie that he was playing.  It was all there—­the mountains and the rivers, and the towering cliffs with glimpses of the sea where waves foam on the rocks, and sea-fowl wheel and scream in the wind, and then a bit of homely melody as the country folk drive home in the moonlight, singing as only the Welsh can sing, the songs of the heart; songs of love and home, songs of death and sorrowing, that stab with sudden sweetness.  A child cries somewhere in the dark, cries for his mother who will come no more.  Then a burst of patriotic fire, as the people fling defiance at the conquering foe, and hold the mountain passes till the last man falls.  But the glory of the fight and the march of many feet trail off into a wailing chant—­the death song of the brave men who have died.  The widow mourns, and the little children weep comfortless in their mountain home, and the wind rushes through the forest, and the river foams furiously down the mountain, falling in billows of lace over the rocks, and the sun shines over all, cold and pitiless.

“Why, Pearlie Watson, what are you crying for?” Mrs. Francis whispered severely.  Pearl’s sobs had disturbed her.  Danny lay asleep on Pearl’s knees, and her tears fell fast on his tangled curls.

“I ain’t cryin’, I ain’t cryin’ a bit.  You leave me alone,” Pearl blubbered rudely, shaking off Mrs Francis’s shapely hand.

Mrs. Francis was shocked.  What in the world was making Pearl cry?

The next morning Mrs. Francis took out her little red book to enter the result of her experiment, and sat looking long and earnestly at its pages.  Then she drew a writing pad toward her and wrote an illuminative article on “Late Hours a Frequent and Fruitful Cause of Irritability in Children.”

CHAPTER VII “ONE OF MANITOBA’S PROSPEROUS FARMERS”

Mr. Samuel Motherwell was a wealthy farmer who lived a few miles from Millford.  Photographs of Mr. Motherwell’s premises may be seen in the agricultural journals, machinery catalogues, advertisements for woven wire, etc.—­“the home of one of Manitoba’s prosperous farmers.”

The farm buildings were in good repair; a large red barn with white trimmings surmounted by a creaking windmill; a long, low machine shed filled with binders, seeders, disc-harrows—­everything that is needed for the seed-time and harvest and all that lies between; a large stone house, square and gray, lonely and bare, without a tree or a shrub around it.  Mr. Motherwell did not like vines or trees around a house.  They were apt to attract lightning and bring vermin.

Potatoes grew from the road to the house; and around the front door, as high as the veranda, weeds flourished in abundance, undisturbed and unnoticed.

Behind the cookhouse a bed of poppies flamed scarlet against the general sombreness, and gave a strange touch of colour to the common grayness.  They seemed out of place in the busy farmyard.  Everything else was there for use.  Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held up their brazen faces in careless indifference.