"Then, what is it to be a tramp?"

"Why, it's just to--to tramp," explained Mrs. Holly
desperately;--"walk along the road from one town to another,
and--and not live in a house at all."

"Oh!" David's face cleared. "That's all right, then. I'd love to
be a tramp, and so'd father. And we were tramps, sometimes, too,
'cause lots of times, in the summer, we didn't stay in the cabin
hardly any--just lived out of doors all day and all night. Why, I
never knew really what the pine trees were saying till I heard
them at night, lying under them. You know what I mean. You've
heard them, haven't you?"

"At night? Pine trees?" stammered Mrs. Holly helplessly.

"Yes. Oh, haven't you ever heard them at night?" cried the boy,
in his voice a very genuine sympathy as for a grievous loss.
"Why, then, if you've only heard them daytimes, you don't know a
bit what pine trees really are. But I can tell you. Listen! This
is what they say," finished the boy, whipping his violin from its
case, and, after a swift testing of the strings, plunging into a
weird, haunting little melody.

In the doorway, Mrs. Holly, bewildered, yet bewitched, stood
motionless, her eyes half-fearfully, half-longingly fixed on
David's glorified face. She was still in the same position when
Simeon Holly came around the corner of the house.

"Well, Ellen," he began, with quiet scorn, after a moment's stern