H

I L LNO

I S

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

PRODUCTION NOTE
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign Library
Brittle Books Project, 2012.

COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION
In Public Domain.
Published prior to 1923.

This digital copy was made from the printed version held
by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
It was made in compliance with copyright law.
Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Main Library,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
by
Northern Micrographics
Brookhaven Bindery
La Crosse, Wisconsin
2012

Q

,s:

;t

Fqe

l.

.

*f*

77

.

*

* *~ #

+'*.L

+

*

* ~

r

t ~*

f

*

*

~
a

.

-

*r4*~

4

#oo Cls

*e

Vo#l*#m

*

v
*

Je 0510
*

LIRAY

Clas
ZAL

i

bc ILLINOS

NVRIYO

t

3C1r ,

?r

*

-Volume

+tiQ(SAK
r*r
'

Je 05-lOM!'

#Ji
/+

~
~

*
(4r

u

*ITT

~.*
~

4*
t
,i11

*14*"

$

,*

~,#,

7*

*
#j,

*
r
# .l*'%r,* #.1/
:d*f i*Wi/

34.
4

'i

A."

A .

4ra.

ea?

I

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

THE

WONDERFUL WHEEL

BY

MARY TRACY EARLE

NEW YORK v
THE CENTURY CO.
1896

Copyright, 1896,
byTHE CENTURY CO.

THE DEVINNE PRESS.

TO
FOUR LITTLE FIDDLERS

54-

a

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL
CHAPTER I
A HOODOO

POTTER

HE little fiddler was the only
child in Potosi who did not run

from Giacomo Barse, the potter. She ran to him and with
him, for she was his own baby.
Giacomo was tall and thin, with strange
flashing black eyes, and a black mustache so
long that he draped it over his ears when he
worked. Sometimes the fiddler climbed onto
a crock behind him and caught the ends of it
at the back of his head, and played he was her
horse; and then he usually threatened to put
her on the wheel with the clay, and make her
over into something less troublesome.
The fiddler knew all about how the clay
whirled on the wheel, growing tall and slender

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

or broad and short under his hands; but the
other children knew nothing of it, for they
never passed the pottery except at full speed.
Giacomo did not know that people told the
children he was a " Hoodoo," and he wondered
why they only ran the faster when he called
to them to come in and play with his baby,
and he would make little water monkeys for
them on the wheel. When the fiddler was
wandering around outside the door, they even
ran from her; but Giacomo and his little fiddler were used to playing alone together, and,
on the whole, they liked it just as well as if
people had played with them.
It did not seem as if any one should have
been afraid of the potter, simply because he
made queerly-shaped jugs and vases, and mugs
which poured the water out where you were
not expecting it, or even because he painted
his pottery buildings in stripes of red and
white and blue, as no houses were ever painted
before, and the palings of his high garden
fence alternately green and yellow, and his
hand-cart a purple, royal enough for any king
who needed one; there had been a time, in
fact, when Potosi people were rather proud of
Giacomo's queerness, and joked him about his

A HOODOO POTTER

love of bright combinations of color,-" artistic
effects," he called them; but in the three years
since his wife had died, and he had been taking care of his baby, people had stopped joking
with him, or even talking to him when they
could help it, and they no longer whispered
behind his back that he was "just a little
cracked," but they used that other word, which
frightened the children. So Giacomo was left
with his baby and his thoughts for company;
and he had such an unusual baby and such
unusual thoughts that he scarcely stopped to
ask why he was left with them, except once
in a while, when the baby screamed because
the children ran away from her.
One day the potter started across Potosi,
trundling an enormous green vase in the
purple hand-cart, while the baby ran ahead
and behind and around him all at once. The
vase was one of those which people put beside their doorsteps and plant with flowers,
and it was of unusual size, deep and bowl-like,
having been ordered for a certain large century
plant which was owned by a rich man living
on the beach. Giacomo was making the best
time he could with his cart and his vase and
his baby, for some of the great white thunder-

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

heads that are always sleeping round the
horizon of Potosi in August had risen swiftly
since he had started, and a sweet storm-wind
was already rustling across Potosi Point, clearing the air for a gush of rain.
"Hurry on there, you little fiddler, I '11
catch you," he began calling, and then the
baby flew in front of him like a little quail,
lifting her shoulders as if they were wings,
while Giacomo pursued at a measured trot,
with the great vase jarring securely along on
its side in the cart. Yet no matter how steady
the vase nor how swift the baby, vases and
babies are not good companions with which
to outrun a shower, and before they were
nearly to the beach the big drops began to
fleck the road and to splash into their faces.
The splashes took the little fiddler unaware,
and she resented them, and came running
back to Giacomo with her confident hands
upstretched.
" I don't like those -- those rains to hit me,"
she cried. " See, I 'm not heavy, you can lift
me - you carry me."
Giacomo looked at the cart, which needed
his two hands, looked at the vase, and looked
at the baby. Then, draping the ends of his

A HOODOO

POTTER

mustache over his ears, he stooped, and all at
once the little fiddler was no longer beseeching him from the ground, but was sitting in
the inside of the vase, while he looked at her
through its great round mouth. It took her
several thoughts to decide whether it was a
laughing or a crying matter, but she finally
agreed with Giacomo, and laughed.
"What are you going to do with me?" she
asked.
"I 'm going to give you a carriage ride,"
said the potter; "but if you don't stop sticking your head out, and crawling round and
trying to roll the vase out of the cart, I '11 put
you on my whizzing-wheel with the clay when
we get home and make a pint cup of you,you see if I don't."
The little fiddler drew back and her lip
quivered. "No, no, papa," she protested vehemently, "a quart cup ! a quart cup ! I don't
want to be a mean little pint cup ! "
" You take care, then, if you don't want to
be a pint cup," said the potter threateningly,
and picked up the handle of the cart and bent
himself over it and ran.
They sped through the great slant sheets
of rain, and the people who saw them thought
I*

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

that Giacomo was hurrying because for once
he did not have his baby with him; and they
never guessed that the little fiddler was curled
up inside the vase, staring out in fascination
at the slender, nimble, drenched figure of her
father, smiling and nodding at her while he
pursued her, headlong through the rain.
Just as he passed under one of the tall pinetrees which stood by the road, there came a
blinding flash of lightning, and then the little
fiddler felt herself thrown forward with a
The pine-tree
strange thrill into the dark.
had been struck and shivered, and one of its
great branches had crashed down upon Giacomo, and he lay under it stunned and helpless, not even knowing enough to be glad that
his last effort had sent the cart flying into
safety, with the fiddler lying white and still,
but uninjured, in the vase.
Some frightened men came running out
from a house near by, and pulled the heavy
branches from Giacomo and looked at his
ashen face.
" Reckon he 's dead," one of them ventured,
"might ha' knowed he'd come to some such
end." They hesitated a moment, fearing to
touch him. Then one of them bent down and

A HOODOO POTTER

felt over the potter's heart, but looked more
frightened as he drew his hand away. " Boys,"
he gasped, "he's a-livin'. Might ha' knowed
a hoodoo could n' be killed like that." They
looked at one another questioningly. " Reckon if he 's lived through that he can take care
of hisse'f," they decided, yet they still stood
and looked at him, feeling very contemptible
in having determined to leave him where he
lay. Suddenly one of them gave a little whoop
of relief. " If there don't come ole Doctor,"
he cried, "an' he can do with Barse jus' what
he has a mind ter."
The doctor came rushing along, leaning forward against the rain. "What's this?" he
cried, stopping short. " Man stunned by lightning and got a broken leg? Dump that vase
out of the hand-cart and put him in. Here,
take hold
no !" For the little fiddler had
come to herself, and was lifting her little
pinched face, with its great eyes like Giacomo's,
to look out of the vase. Even the doctor
gazed at her a moment as if she were something unreal. She stared back curiously, and
then began to cry.
" Huh !" said the doctor. He was disgusted
with himself, and it did not seem as if even his

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

gold watch could pacify that wrathful voice.
One good thing, its sound was rousing the
potter. Giacomo lifted his head, and, seeing
the people standing helpless between him and
his baby, he tried to rise, but fell back with a
whispered word to the child.
" Here, what you all waiting for ?" demanded the doctor. "Come, my little lady,
we 've got to put your papa in your place, and
I '11 carry you and you can play he 's your
baby, riding - how 's that ? " he motioned to
one of the men to take one side, and they
whisked the vase, baby and all, out of the cart,
and set it down on the ground. Then they
put Giacomo into the cart, while the baby
grew angrier and angrier as she tried to climb
up the bulging, slippery sides of the vase.
"You bad, bad, me'chantsmen," she screamed,
" you sha'n't do that to my papa ! You sha'n't !
You sha'n't !"
"Be still," Giacomo cried out faintly to her.
"Be still - or I '11 make you - when we get home."

into a pint cup

That awful threat was almost reassuring at
a time like this, and the little fiddler was calmed
by it to waiting with more composure until she
was stowed away in her father's arms -- for

A HOODOO POTTER

he would have it so--and they were being
wheeled off toward the pottery.
One of the men went inside and helped the
doctor put Giacomo to bed and dress his leg,
but as soon as that was done he started away,
"What ?" cried the doctor, who had followed
him out of doors, " you 'dassent' stay and take
care of him- what you afraid of? Where
are the rest of the men ? What 's become of
them ? "
"They dassent come into the pottery," said
the man. "There's queer things goes on there.
I 'm not skeery, I don't mind very much myself in the daytime, but there ain't no money
would hire me to stay here at night,- not in
the same room with that man and that there
wheel. That there wheel don't belong to
Barse," he added in a lower tone. "Barse
rents hit from the devil."
" Stuff! " said the doctor.

" I've seed hit myself, through the winder,
by night," said the man, nodding his head.
" So you 're willing to let a man with a
broken leg lie alone in a house with a helpless child to take care of?" said the doctor.
" Be off, then; I reckon there are better people than you in Potosi."

Io

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

The man winced. "Well," he said, doggedly, turning a sidelong glance toward the
doctor, as he started away, "if you find man,
woman or child that '11 stay all night with
Barse in that pottery, I '11 eat the first crow
that 's cooked for me. They 're all like me,
they 've seed."
,The doctor marched back into the house.
"Barse," he said, "do you have any people
anywhere that you could send for to come and
take care of you ? "
"Not a soul of my own," said the potter,
"but I 've got a creole sister-in-law up on Cypress Creek, and I reckon she 'd come. I
have n't seen her since my wife died, and she 's
got a lot of kids to look after, but there 's a
mother-in-law in the case, and I reckon they
could be left with her. I don't know anything
better than to send up there and see. 'Arriette
Rousselle's her name, Antoine Rousselle's wife."
"I '11 send," said the doctor, "and in the
mean time I '11 keep an eye on you, unless
somebody calls me away."
He went out, and when he came back he
brought something with him for Giacomo and
the baby to eat. " Odd place this," he said,
and began nosing around among the vases and

A HOODOO POTTER

II

pitchers and flower-pots and water-coolers, or
ollas- " monkeys," they call them in Potosi.
They were of every queer form and color that
had ever come into Giacomo's queer head; but
before the doctor had half looked through the
odd useful things, and the still odder attempts
to make everything under the sun out of clay,
there was a call outside the pottery, and he was
summoned to go to another urgent case. He
came and stood a moment by the potter's bed.
It was just sundown. The storm had cleared
away and a golden light streamed in through
the window and glowed on the eccentric medley of the room. Everything was rather dusty,
yet it had a certain neatness of its own, for the
furniture and the shelves were all painted,
brightly painted, and even the potter's wheel,
which stood by the window, looking claydaubed and innocent, had had its coating in
the potter's craze for adorning everything in
reach. The doctor found himself looking at
the baby to see if she was painted, too, but she
was not. She was a dark, elfin little thing, even
now, when she had crawled up beside her
father and fallen fast asleep.
" Is she likely to be quiet all night? " asked
the doctor.

12

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

" Yes," said Giacomo, "or if she is n't I '11
sing to her."
" I suppose your sister '11 get in about ten
o'clock," said the doctor, " and I guess you '11
get along all right till then, but I '11 send somebody else around if I come across anybody-that's free to come."
Giacomo smiled bitterly. "You '11 not find
anybody that 's free," he said, "and if you
could tell me why, I'd like to know. But if
you 'll just light that lamp over there and set
it on the wheel before you go, I reckon we '11
make out even if my sister don't come."
The doctor lighted the lamp. "I'll be in
early in the morning," he said. " Good-night
and good luck to you," and he took Giacomo's
hand. When he had gone Giacomo held up
his hand and looked at it.
"Did n't know I was lonesome," he said.
"Ridiculous how good it felt to have my hand
crunched like that."
Late that night the messenger who had
gone to Cypress Creek drove back within
pointing distance of the pottery. " Dat is de
place," he said to the small girl who sat beside him.
"W'y doan' yo' drive up moah close?"

A HOODOO POTTER

13

asked the girl. They were speaking French
just then, but they had a soft, slurred accent
which caressed the word, whether in French
or English.
The man shrugged his shoulders. "I 'ave
been moah close at oddah time," he answered,
"an' I t'ink, as yo' 'ave to go inside, it make
not ver' much mattah wheah yo' staht." He
had said little to her on their way coming, but
the little had made her wonder, and at this
she wondered still more. She climbed down
from the wagon, took her bundle from the
man, and turned toward the pottery.
"Attendez !" the man cried out, "waid a
minute. I 'ave not de wish to scare yo', but listen, do not touch de wheel,-it is of the devil."
"
W'at ? I do not understand," said the girl.
The man gave a dry little laugh. " I made
a little joke," he said. " W'en he is sick like
dis, dere will be not'ing at all of strange."
The girl stared at him, her eyes growing
big in the dark, then she faced back toward
the pottery, walked up to the door and knocked.
" Come in," called a voice.
As she opened the door she heard the rattle
of the wagon wheels rolling away over the
hard shell road. She caught her breath and

14

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

went into the low, shadowy room. The little
lamp shone out feebly on a confusion of halfseen forms, that all seemed pointing toward
the strange white face of the potter lifted from
the pillow, the long black mustache draped
back into the darkness.
"Who are you ?" asked Giacomo sharply.
"I am Clothilde Rousselle," the girl answered, "an' my mama she say, tell Uncle
Giacomo yo' are fourteen year old, an' yo' 'ave
grow ver' much since he see yo'."
" Come here," said Giacomo; and when she
had come close enough for scrutiny, he looked
her over. "Yes," he said, " I reckon you 're
the same Clothilde that was n't much bigger
than this when I saw you," and he made a
motion toward the fiddler, whom Clothilde had
not noticed, sleeping beside him.
"Oh, is it de baby? " she cried eagerly.
"Walk round the bed softly so you can see
her," said Giacomo. "Why did your mother
send you instead of coming herself? You've
grown, but you 've not grown enough; I
wanted a woman."
" Mama say," said Clothilde in a low voice
as she leaned ecstatically over the baby's dark
head, " mama say to tell yo' dat wid my gran'-

A HOODOO POTTER

r5

modder so sick it is imposseeb' dat she come,
an' dat I 'ave grow so grande I work like a
woman."
" But do you know how to take care of a
baby?" asked the potter, looking over her
grave little figure with growing approval.
" Home we 'ave always babies," said Clothilde proudly.
" Humph," said Giacomo, " in a big family
people never know how to take care of children, they don't have time. What I want to
know is if you can sing a baby to sleep, and
make her laugh when she wants to cry, and if
she 's sick make her think it 's fun to take her
medicine, and when you have to work make
her think you 're doing it just to entertain her,
-that's what I mean by taking care of a baby.
Can you do that? "
" I doan' know, me, 'bout de medicine," said
Clothilde, " because it is ver' bad in de mouth,
an' dey know it; but all dose odder t'ing, yas,
I can do dose."
"All right," said Giacomo, "then you '11 do
better than most women. Now you just go
into that room and go to bed and get rested,
for the little fiddler will give you a lively day
to-morrow."

16

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

" Uncle Giacomo," asked Clothilde, hesitating a little, "w'at was dat yo' call her? We
hear yo' name her Louise?"
Giacomo laughed lightly. "Oh, that was at
first, when she was christened," he explained.
" Then when she began to creep, she scuttled
about so quick, like a fiddler crab, that your
aunty called her ' Troululu,' and I sometimes
call her that and sometimes say it in plain English, little fiddler. There, go quick, she 's fussing as if our talking was about to wake her."
Clothilde lighted a queer pottery lamp that
her uncle pointed out to her, and crept on tiptoe into the adjoining room. As she closed
the door and lifted the lamp to see around her,
she shrank back from somebody standing by
the window. Then she noticed a stiffness in
the figure, and, going up to it, she found that
it was made from jars of different sizes, the one
on top having a bland crockery face, which
smiled at her wherever she went. Finally, she
lay down on the bed without undressing, and
left her little lamp lighted close at hand. But
whenever she closed her eyes, she saw her
Uncle Giacomo's strange face, and whenever
she opened them, the crockery man smiled at
her, and, between them, she could not sleep.

CHAPTER II
THE SANTA CLAUS GIRL

T would not be the neighbors
on Cypress Creek who would
leave a man with a broken leg
alone in his house with a baby
to take care of. That was the
first thought Clothilde had when she woke in
the morning, for just when she was not remembering about it, she had dropped asleep
after all.
Everything was quiet in the next room, so
she did not stir; but pretty soon she heard a
clear little voice say, "Papa! "
"Yes, little fiddler," said Giacomo, "what
is it?"
"Papa, there is a big white dream in the
corner that troubles me. Tell it, 'Go away
dream, you 're no good.' "
"Go away dream, you 're no good," repeated the potter solemnly. "Now you just
2
17

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

watch and you '11 see it climb right out of that
window over there where the sun comes in."
" won't go, Papa," the fiddler announced
It
a moment later, in a voice with half a sob in it.
" That big white dream won't go, he says,"here the fiddler's tone sank to a gloomy squeak,
-"'

I won't go till Papa sings Tournez

toujours. "

"Why, this is morning, Troululu, and what
do you think happened in the night?"
" I don't know," said the little fiddler, sitting
up very straight. " What?"
" Somebody that you 're going to like very
much came to see you."
"Santa Claus?" asked the fiddler with
eagerness. Santa Claus was the only friend
who was left them at the pottery.
"Well, Santa Claus did n't stay, you know
he never does," said Giacomo; "but he sent
you his love, and he left you a nice, nice, big
cousin to play with."
" And won't she run away when I go up to
her ? " asked the fiddler.
A passing anger twitched the potter's face.
"No, she '11 not run away from you," he said.
"Santa Claus would n't bring a girl that ran
away."

THE SANTA CLAUS GIRL

19

"Where is she ? " demanded the little fiddler,
and began clambering excitedly across her father to drop from the bed on his side, where
she would land in the middle of the room.
"A-h-h," groaned the potter through set
teeth.
"Can I help yo', Uncle Giacomo?" asked
Clothilde's voice at the door.
" Come in, Clothilde," said Giacomo, "come
in, and get acquainted with your little fiddler;
you know you 're the Santa Claus girl that 's
come to play with her."
Clothilde opened the door and stood a little
shyly on the threshold. Troululu had come
round the bed and stood with her hand on the
footboard, looking a little shyly at Clothilde.
Presently she advanced a step. " Did Santa
Claus say I could play with your hair ?"
"Yas," said Clothilde, and her grave, brown
cheeks suddenly began to dimple. " Yas, my
mama-- I mean Santa Claus say my hairs

are not so beautiful that the baby may not
play wid dem."
The fiddler came up and passed her little
hand gently over Clothilde's bent head. " Yo'
can take hole of dem," said Clothilde generously, "it does n' hurt."

20o

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

" Let her take her own time," said Giacomo;
"she '11 hurt you fast enough without being
asked to. But now, if you locked the door
last night unlock it again, for the doctor promised he would come in early to see how I was
getting on, and then the fiddler will take you
out to the kitchen and show you the coffeepot. You can make coffee, can't you? I 'm
'most starved for some."
"Oh, yas," said Clothilde, " I can make it,"
and she left the room with the little fiddler
running joyously in advance and pulling her
by the hand. Giacomo dropped his head back
in the pillow with a weary sigh. A sense of
relaxation stole over him, and when Clothilde
and the baby came back with a cup of coffee,
Clothilde pulled the child out of the door again
with a " sh-sh," for the potter was asleep.
He started awake when he heard the
doctor's footsteps outside, and the doctor
opened the door and found him waiting with
a look of quiet in his brilliant eyes.
"Well, Barse, your sister came all right,
did she ? " the doctor said at once.
Giacomo shook his head. " She had better
sense," he declared. " She sent me something
that knows how to take care of a baby better
than any woman. Listen, will you!"

THE SANTA

CLAUS GIRL

21

The doctor listened, and heard a duet of
tinkling childish laughter in the little yard behind the pottery.
"Now, I sent those two out to make me
some coffee a while ago," Giacomo went on,
"
and there 's the coffee, I reckon, standing
down by the door, but how was I to get it?
They brought it in while I was asleep, I suppose, and now they 're playing. But don't
you know that if a woman had come here she 'd
have found something that needed scrubbing
about the house, and now she would be scrubbing, and scolding the baby for getting in her
path. My mother and my wife always scrubbed
if I was sick, and I know that my sister-inlaw would; but there 's something out in the
yard this morning that has a woman's sense
where it is needed and then is content to be
a child."
"You 're in luck, Barse," said the doctor,
feeling a little curious to see that "something"
in the yard. "Who is it out there, and what
do you call her?"
"
My little fiddler calls her a Santa Claus
girl," said Giacomo.
" Good enough," said the doctor. "And
now for that leg."
" Papa ! Papa ! Papa ! "screamed the fiddler,
2*

22

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

bursting into the room, " Come quick, quick,
quick ! My bad birds have all flown up in the
trees. Come and catch them quick, quick,
quick ! Come tell them, ' Go back, birds; you
must n't fly away, you're m'ckants."
Clothilde followed in excitement. " Dey 'ave
go," she cried, "but I can get dem, me. I try
to keep her, but she t'ink it is only you who
can catch dem."
" Did you open the cages again, you little
fiddler ?" asked Giacomo.
"I did n't open them on purpose, papa,"
said the fiddler, sobbing. " I did it unfortunately. I said to the birds,' Come out, birds,
and see my goodness,' and I made my goodness on my face for them, and then they were
bad mechants birds and flew up into the trees."
" If yo' tell me w'ere is deir seeds," said
Clothilde, "I will give dem some fresh seeds
and some water in deir cages, and I will put
myself into de trees, and w'en dey are afraid
of me dey may go home."
" That 's the idea," said the doctor. "Here,
get your uncle - is it your uncle ? - some
fresh coffee, and then I '11 help you catch the
birds."
" No, you sha'n't help catch them," cried the

THE SANTA CLAUS GIRL

23

fiddler. "My papa will catch them, and not
you. I don't like you, you man; I want you
to go away. You hurt my papa lesterday."
"Why, Troululu," said the potter, reproachfully, and then he drew her to him and whispered something to her.
"No, you sha'n't make me into a pint cup,"
the fiddler shrieked, " I 'm going to my Santa
Claus girl. I don't like you when you say
that," and she snatched herself away and ran
out of the room. She had never run away
from Giacomo before, for there had never been
anybody to run to. He drew his hand across
his eyes, as if he could not quite see what had
happened. " My being sick makes her a little
nervous," he explained. " Do you see that
gray bird high up there on the third shelf,
among those little water-monkeys and the frogmugs ? I wish you 'd hand it down. I reckon
it 's too high for Clothilde. It 's got the birdseed in it, and I keep it up there out of the
baby's way; but she 's getting so she can climb
'most to the top of everything. I 've found
her as high up as that blue clay angel, putting
one of her dresses on it."
"You 've got a lot of queer things in your
shop, Barse," the doctor said, looking about

24

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

him again as he reached up for the gray bird,
which proved to be a sort of bottle, for which
the head was a stopper. " I never was here
till yesterday, but people say, you know, that
you have an extraordinary potter's wheel."
" I have a very good wheel," said Giacomo,
"but it 's my experience that a wheel is just a
wheel at the best. The difference comes in a
man's ideas. Now, I have something extraordinary inside my head."
" Yes, I have heard people say that also,"
said the doctor, and he looked keenly at the
potter, but Giacomo was intent on the doorway. The doctor turned and saw the fiddler
coming in very slowly, with a cup of hot coffee
on a plate. Clothilde was close behind, and
she glanced up at the doctor with a smile.
" Here 's your coffee, papa; my Santa Claus
girl let me bring it," cried the fiddler. "She's
a good Santa Claus girl, and you 're a good
papa, and that 's a good man, and I 'm a good
Troululu. See my goodness! "- and she
gathered up her face into a little smirk that
made the doctor and her father laugh.
Clothilde had seen the coffee safely into her
uncle's hands and was peering down for a
glimpse of the goodness, when she started out

THE SANTA CLAUS GIRL

25

and flew into the yard. The doctor followed,
and saw her make a passing dive for a stick near
the doorway, and rush with it at a cat which
crouched in the sun with gleaming eyes, guarding something yellow between its paws. The
cat sprang away from her and darted like a
long, gray flash along the ground and through
a hole in the palings. Clothilde came back
to the doctor, with a limp, fluttering canary
in her hands.
"I would like dat cat to be kill," she cried.
"Let 's see
The doctor took the bird.
said. " Perhaps
what 's happened to it," he
it has a leg broken, too, like your uncle. You
have n't told me yet if Barse is your uncle."
"Yas, he is de brudder-in-law of my mudder,"
said Clothilde.
"Well," said the doctor, "the bird 's leg is
broken, and a good deal worse broken than
your uncle's. I don't believe I want to dress
that little leg without a consultation -- let 's
take it into the house."
"I say, Barse," he began, "an old patient
like you always has to wait for attention if
there is a fresh accident. Look here, a cat
had grabbed this little fellow, and would n't
have left anything of him if your niece had n't

26

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

been so quick. Now, see this little leg. That's
a bad compound fracture, with more complications than the size of the patient warrants.
The merciful thing would be to kill the bird
at once."
"That 's Trascan, the knowingest one of
all," said the potter. " And he 's got a family
to take care of, too. Is he bound to die, anyway ?"
"Why, if that leg was amputated, and the
little thing had good care and good luck, he
would get well all right," the doctor answered.
" But what kind of a world do you think this
would be for a one-legged canary? Now, if
he were a crane or a stork-"
" I '11 agree to make it square with him
afterward," Giacomo declared. "If you '11
just leave enough of him for a start I '11 make
a new bird of him, and he '11 enjoy it. It 's
lots better to be mended than killed, when you
have things depending on you, is n't it, old
fellow ?" and he stroked the bird's head with
one of his long, thin fingers.
And so the second patient was operated on,
and Giacomo had it brought back to him on
a little pad of cotton, and held it in his hand
while his own leg was examined and the doc-

THE SANTA CLAUS GIRL

27

tor was making him comfortable. The children, at the same time, were luring the other
birds back to their cages by means of much
seed and water and fruit, much clamoring of
the excited little fiddler below the trees, and
much climbing of the cool-headed Clothilde
through the branches. When order was restored all through the premises, and the doctor was about to go, he took Clothilde to one

side.
"Little Santa Claus girl," he said, "it seems
to me you are going to have a good deal to
look out for. You want to keep that baby
quiet, if you can, so that your uncle won't get
too nervous and excited. It 's bad for him to
have her shouting round him in the way she
does, and yet you can't take her very far out
of his sight or he 'll worry about that. You '11
just have to be as smart about it as you can,
and whenever I have time I '11 help you.
There's one thing you '11 soon see," he added,
" so I might as well tell you, that not another
soul in Potosi will come near you, and you
need n't expect people to be friendly if you
happen to come across them."
"W'y is dat? " asked Clothilde, looking at
him with round and solemn eyes.

28

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

" I don't quite know," said the doctor; " perhaps you can find out. Your uncle 's a queer
man, and they believe a lot of stuff about him
- and his wheel. You 've got a level head,
I can see that, and you 're not going to be
scared at nothing; but I thought I 'd tell you,
so that if anybody happens to talk any folderol to you, you '11 not believe it."
" It would not be posseeb'," said Clothilde,
drawing herself up, "to believe anyt'ing bad
of de own 'usband of my own tante--aunt.
I 'ave hear it and not believe it already."
"What?" exclaimed the doctor. "I told
Philipe Gomez not to frighten you last night.
Well,"- he put his hand on Clothilde's shoulder,-" he got the wrong girl, did n't he ? I see
Santa Claus makes his girls out of clear grit,
and it 's a good way." Then he gave her a
few directions for her duties as nurse. Fortunately he lived near enough to look in several
times a day as he passed, and there was little
she would need to do for Giacomo; yet, in
spite of the doctor's praise, when he left she
felt rather burdensomely weighted with her
cares and trusts.

CHAPTER III
" TOURNEZ

TOUJOURS "

FTER her first day with Clothilde, the little fiddler did not
wish to sleep. She was probably afraid that Santa Claus
would take in the night what
he had brought in the night, and when Giacomo told Clothilde to undress her, the baby
threw herself on the floor and cried in wrath.
"Well, well," said Giacomo, "after all, this
is the first day she ever had any one younger
than I am to play with. Just play horse once
more, Clothilde, and she '11 be ready for bed."
So Clothilde let the baby take the two long
braids of hair and drive her in and out among
the -flower-pots and urns and baking-dishes
on the floor, until the outside door opened unexpectedly, and the doctor walked in.
"What? What? " he began. "Working up
an excitement so as to have a bad night?
29

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

30

Here, you little fiddler, it 's time you were in
bed."
Clothilde stopped, her face flushed with
running and confusion. " It is uncle Giacomo
dat wish dat I always play de horse," she said.
"Yes," said the potter, cheerfully, "I told
her to take another turn. You know, doctor,
that my little girl never has had her fill of
playing in her life."
" No child ever had," said the doctor, "nor
grown person, either,- but say, she 's pulling
your niece's hair out."
The baby had been flicking Clothilde's
braids over her back, but when she found that
Clothilde really would not go on, she threw all
her weight on to the hair, and dragged vengefully. Clothilde was reaching around and trying to unclasp her hands.
"
Troululu!" called the potter, "you 're
hurting your Santa Claus girl, and she will go
away if you are n't good to her. Let go of her
hair, or I'11 put you on my wheel with the
clay -

"

" You 're too sick," said the fiddler, calmly.
She had learned in the course of the day that
he was sick.
"Troululu!" said the potter. "Doctor, I
reckon you 'd better take her off."

"'TOURNEZ TOUJOURS"

31

The doctor did it very promptly. It was a
long time since he had had any little girls, and
he was sure that they had never done things
like that. He held the baby's hands tight for
a moment. "Now, be good," he ordered, as
he let her go.
The fiddler seemed more to float away from
him than to run; she was so angry that her
feet scarcely touched the floor, and she drifted
off as if a wave were* buoying her, until she
stumbled against a great baking-dish and fell
into it, screaming at the top of her voice.
" Huh ! " said the doctor.
"Yes," said Giacomo, "she 's a little fiery,
but it 's 'come easy, go easy' with her tempers, and she 's been a good deal excited today. Clothilde will cheer her up; she seems
to know how to treat children, and I wish
you 'd see how Trascan 's getting along. He 's
been cheeping a good deal since you were
here, and I don't know whether he 's just
lonesome without his leg, or whether it's hurting him more than it ought."
The doctor picked the little bird tenderly
out of its nest of cotton, examined it by the
lamp, and pronounced that the trouble must
be lonesomeness, as there was nothing amiss.
"He was worse off than you were, Barse," he

32

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

said, "but he '11 get around the first. What
kind of a leg will you make him - pottery ?"
"I 'd like to," said Giacomo, "it 's about
the only thing I 've never made, but I reckon
I '11 have to use wood, because it 's lighter.
Look."
Clothilde's hands were sending a shadow dog
nosing from rounded form to form along the
wall, and the little fiddler had somehow known
it, and had raised her head and was peering
at it through her tumbled hair, and there was
silence in the room.
"I told you this morning that you were in
luck," said the doctor. "Now I don't suppose
I '11 be in again, so I '11 fix you up for the
night."
When everything had been done for his
comfort, the potter had still something to ask.
"If you 'd just bring my wheel up a little
closer," he said, " I reckon I '11 have to teach
Clothilde how to run it to-night."
"What?" said the doctor, " run the wheel
at night and teach Clothilde,- what for ?"
" It 's one of the ways I 've fallen into,"
said Giacomo, "and there '11 be no getting
the fiddler to sleep without it. That 's the
way she 's gone to sleep ever since her mother

" TOURNEZ TOUJOURS"

33

died. When she 's undressed I sing to her
and run the wheel. I 've made some mighty
original things when I was putting her to
sleep."
The doctor drew up the wheel. " I 'm not
in a hurry," he said; " I guess I '11 sit down
over in a corner, where your little crab won't
see me, and watch the working of it. I may
be wanting to recommend all the women with
babies to buy themselves potter's wheels."
"They would n't take the trouble to run
them," Giacomo scoffed; " they 'd rather scrub
or sew. I 'm not going to run it either-this month," he added, with a sigh; "but it
won't take Clothilde long to learn enough for
the fiddler, and I can do the singing. Come,
Troululu, climb up beside me, and we '11 teach
our Santa Claus girl to play Tournez toujours."
Clothilde went round slowly and stood by
the wheel. She was very grateful to the doctor for staying; for, with all her bravery, she
had given the wheel a wide berth in the daytime, and she did not know whether or not
she could have touched it at night, alone with
her uncle Giacomo's white face and his black
eyes and his long black mustache.
"Now, just put your foot on that treadle
3

34

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

under there," said the potter, "and keep kind
of stepping along until you get the wheel to
turning smoothly -no,
no, don't be so jerky,
just go up and down regularly - make believe your foot 's in a rocking-chair -- that 's
a little more like it - there, keep trying until
you can make it go pretty fast, for then it will
begin to whiz, and that 's what the fiddler
likes to hear, just the same as she likes to see
the whirling. When you get to going a little
better, you can take some of the soft clay out
of that tub covered up over there, and put it
on the very center of the wheel, and do what
you please with it; of course, you can't make
Anything at first, but I '11 teach you by and
by. Balks once in a while, don't it."
Clothilde stood treading away at the wheel,
which ran gustily, now fast and now slow, and
sometimes seemed to get out of its connection
with the treadle and would not go at all. Her
foot had stepped on the bar gingerly at first,
but nothing evil seemed to come from it. The
wheel was a very primitive one, and as Giacomo had partly made it himself, the bearings
of it were not as close and true as those of a
sewing-machine ; but otherwise treading it was
not much different from running a sewing-

" TOURNEZ TOUJOURS"

35

machine. Clothilde had seen that done once,
when a man came up Cypress Creek trying
to sell one. Nobody had money enough to
buy, but nobody called the man names on account of it. Gradually she gained skill and
confidence, and the motion grew almost smooth.
The potter began singing a song that went
round and round like the wheel, and as he
sang, his light, cautious fingers unfastened the
little fiddler's dress. The fiddler would not
stay still, but if it hurt him to have her creeping over him he did not say so, nor stop singing
the little French song with its recurrent burden:
" Tournez encore, tournez toujours."
It was a spinning-song, but it fitted very
well with a potter's wheel.
When the fiddler had unconsciously wriggled
out of most of her clothing, it was a problem
with Giacomo how, as he could not lift himself, he was to get her into her night-dress.
Finally he put his two hands inside the gown,
and, spreading it open, looked through the
white tunnel that it made, and changed the
song he was singing with the wheel.
Here 's the road, there 's the road,
Who 's on the way ?

36

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

I saw Santa Claus
Pass yesterday.
Here 's the gate, there 's the gate;
Toc! Toc! Toc!
Don't you hear Santa Claus
Stand there and knock?
Hurry in, scurry in,
Come through the gate;
You '11 just see him,
If you 're not too late !
"Where is he? " asked the fiddler, her black
head coming through the neck of the gown.
" Did he go?"
The potter buttoned the gown round her
throat, and smoothed it down about her. "Always goes," he said; "but I 'm going to tell
you some more about him, and you watch your
Santa Claus girl at the wheel, and see if he
comes and talks to her. I heard Santa Claus
say one night, that after long, long days,
when Christmas comes, he '11 bring a little
bit of a wheel, if he can find any little girl
that lies perfectly still at night while her
papa sings."
"And can I make water-monkeys, and

" TOURNEZ TOUJOURS"

37

pitchers, and vases, and - and everything on
it, like you do ?" asked the fiddler.
" Yes," said Giacomo, "if you are still, so
that he brings it to you."
The fiddler crept down beside him, and lay
like a mouse with her bright black eyes fixed
steadily on Clothilde, while Giacomo went
back to the swaying, monotonous "Tournez
encore, tournez toujours," until a softness stole
over her face, and sleep smiled through the
vigilance of her eyes.
"Tour--nez en-core,- tour--nez tou-jours,"-- Giacomo let the words fade slowly
on his lips, and nodded for Clothilde to tread
more gently on the wheel. The fiddler's soft,
regular breathing could be heard as the other
sounds died. Her eyes were closed, her lips
just parted, and her little brown hands clasped
beneath her chin.
The doctor tiptoed out from his corner.
Giacomo, too, had shut his eyes, and his face
looked pinched with weariness.
Clothilde
stood with her hand resting in a friendly way
right on the wheel; there was a sorrowful
look on her face. It seemed so lonesome to
think of Uncle Giacomo's having sung the
baby to sleep like that for three years, with
3*

38

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

nobody to see how beautifully he did it. The
doctor motioned toward the doorway, and she
went outside with him.
"I - er - there was something I wanted
to remind you of, Santa Claus," he began,
and then he put his hand on her shoulder.
"We'll have to straighten this thing out with
the people round here," he said. "Your
uncle is a good man. I would have spanked
that little crab."

CHAPTER IV
CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER

N the next few days the doctor
said a good deal in Potosi about
the potter and his baby and
Clothilde. He did not say that
if there was a hoodoo in the

family it was the baby, although he was inclined
to think so. He merely told the people that
Barse was a good man, and that there was
nothing unusual about his wheel, except that
he took the trouble to sing songs with it to
humor his spoiled baby and put her to sleep.
His hearers only shook their heads, and smiled
as if they knew a great deal more than the
doctor did; and when he asked them what they
meant, they would not explain beyond saying
that Barse might be like other people when he
was sick, but not when he was well. The doctor was too quick-tempered to question them
very far, and he usually ended by storming out
39

40

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

a fair torrent of " What ? What ? " and marching off without waiting for their troublesome
answers. His championship had the good
effect, however, of making those who met
Clothilde rather kindlier to her than they
would have been otherwise.
Clothilde's housewifery, though free from
the vice of scrubbing, was a trifle haphazard;
she and the fiddler had to make frequent trips
between the pottery and the butcher's and the
grocer's, for they got things one at a time
when they thought of them, forgetting various other needs which they soon remembered.
When the two messengers from the pottery
entered a street, the other children whisked
out of it so quickly that it seemed as if the
hot white road had absorbed them like drops
of water; but grown people were quite inclined
to make friends with Clothilde in a guarded
way, and to ask her even more questions than
the doctor wanted to ask them.
One day, Philipe Gomez, the man who.
had brought her down from Cypress Creek,
was lounging at the grocer's when she went
there, and he met her as an old acquaintance.
"'Ow is yo' uncle ?" he asked, leaning to-

CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER

41

ward her, and speaking in a confidential voice,
when the grocer had turned his back.
" He is ver' well," Clothilde answered stiffly
and distinctly.
"An 'yo' 'ave seed not'ing at all of strange? "
Clothilde pulled down the fiddler, who was
climbing across the counter after a cat. "I 'ave
seed not'ing strange but de peopl' heah," she
retorted. "I tink, me, dat de peopl' in Potosi
are de mos' strange an' de most' bad people
in all de world."
Gomez was not offended; he laughed at
her; and the grocer, who had heard, turned
around and laughed, too. "She may change
her mind as to who is strange and bad," he said.
Clothilde took her bag of rice and started
out with it, sweeping the baby up under one
arm, to be sure where she was. "W'en I
change my min'," she said, " it will be faw de
t'ing I see, an' not faw all de terreebl' foolishness dat peopl' talk. Be good, Troululu, or
I '11 put yo' on de w'eel w'en we get home an'-"
The lounging creole turned grave, and
started after her. " See heah," he said, " I
am a ver' good friend of yo'; I laugh, yas,
w'en yo' get so mad, but I t'ink yo' a mighty

42

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

brave little girl, an' I doan' want yo' gettin'
into troubl'. Yo' uncle may be like odder
peopl' w'en he is sick, but as I tole yo' at de
first, dat wheel is of de devil, an' doan' yo'
touch it."
Clothilde straightened her head until the
fiddler, who had slipped to the ground, caught
hold of her braids and began to drive her.
She paid no attention, she was trying to wither
Gomez with her superiority. "I am learning
to run de w'eel at night, me," she said.
Something which Clothilde knew as a very
wicked French oath came softly out of the
man's mouth. He stared at her a moment,
then pulled himself together, and made the
sign of the cross, and then stared again as the
fiddler whipped her away.
"Yo' had ought to cross yo'self, yas, w'en
yo' say a so bad word," Clothilde muttered;
but she knew well enough that he had not
crossed himself on account of the word, but
because he was afraid of her when she said
she was learning the wheel. Perhaps she felt
a little bit proud to think that a grown man
like that should be afraid of her, yet that night
when she trod the circling measure of " Tournez encore, tournez toujours," she kept remem-

CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER

43

bering the man's horrified face, and it made
her angry, and, in her turn, afraid. She had
no chance to forget it, for the next day when
she went on her errands, the same look was
in every pair of eyes she met, and no one who
could help it spoke her a single word. After
that, as she and the fiddler walked the roads,
even grown people shivered away in front of
them like dry leaves before a wind.
Clothilde was a friendly child, and she was
used to constant sociability with what neighbors there were on Cypress Creek, so that
being sent to Coventry in this way not only
exasperated her, but kept alive in her a dread
of she knew not what, and yet there was such
a fascination about the pottery that after her
first sharp resentment and nervousness wore
away, she came to have a keen enjoyment of
her isolation with Giacomo and the fiddler.
The fiddler was as active as all her little brothers and sisters in combination, and there
was not much chance to think of other people when she spent most of her time in running like a forest-fire in a gale to keep track
of her little cousin; but there would have been
enough to interest her even if Troululu had
been a quiet baby, for Giacomo was too rest-

44

THE WONDERFUL

WHEEL

less himself to lie idle all day, and, with clay
on a board before him, he gave hour after hour
to making the most wonderful things for the
children's delight.
If Troululu had been of a more passive nature, Clothilde would have been perfectly happy
merely to sit still and watch her uncle's deft

fingers molding, and pinching, and twisting
the clay, until suddenly some unexpected animal would step right out of a formless lump,
all living and perfect, it seemed to her, before
she saw how much more Giacomo could do to
it, and how much more alive and complete it
became. The fiddler liked to watch too for a
little while; but she soon tired of inaction and
began making improvements on her father's
work, adding extra ears and tails to the dogs,
and sticking the duck's bill into the howling
wolf's mouth until the two were squeezed together into the sticky lump out of which the
potter had made them. Giacomo only laughed
and modeled the clay into a new shape; but
Clothilde would rather romp till she dropped
than encourage such vandalism, so they would
up and away again.
"Where 's your nurse? " asked the doctor,
coming in and sitting down on a big inverted

CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER

45

crock. There were no chairs in the pottery,
for Giacomo had never been rich enough to
buy them when he had so many things which
would do as well.
" I think," said the potter, " that she and my
fiddler are building a tower out of flower-pots
back there in the yard.
I heard a sort of
smashing a while ago that sounded like flowerpots getting too high and toppling over."
" No value to you ?" asked the doctor. He
was very warm, and was fanning himself vigorously with his straw hat. August in Potosi
never lets you forget that it is August.
"They may be when I have less of 'em,"
said the potter.
" How 's that?" the doctor said, pricking
up his ears. He was very far from believing
any "folderol" about Giacomo, yet Giacomo
had queer ways of speaking and looking that
were always setting the doctor on the alert.
For the very inmost fold of the doctor's mind
held the thought that somewhere there must
be some kind of a reason for people's having
such strange ideas. " Some fire where there 's
so much smoke," was the motto wrapped round
the thought.
" One of those back rooms there," said Gia-

46

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

como, " is full to the ceiling with flower-pots-just plain, round, slanting flower-pots. They
won't all be sold in two life-times, here where
people grow their plants mostly out of doors."
"What did you make 'em for ?" asked the
doctor.
" I was mad;" said the potter. " It was when
the baby was first born, and one day I came in
and found my wife lying here and crying. You
see those two big green dragons fighting on
the top shelf? You 'd never guess it, but
they 're flower-pots, and my wife had been
lying here and looking at them, and when I
asked her what the trouble was she said we 'd
never have money enough to raise Louise-that's the fiddler - if I kept on making green
dragons instead of common sort of pots that
people would buy. Well, it was unreasonable
of me, for lying here now I 'velooked at those
dragons until I 'm tired of them myself,- I
can see now that their necks are too long,but to have my wife crying about 'em made
me mad, an' I just drew out my wheel and
rushed in on plain flower-pots. You ought
to have seen how fast I got to making 'em;
and I made 'em, and I baked 'em, and I stacked
'em up until, the day before the fiddler was

CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER

47

christened, I found my wife crying again. She
said she did n't see how the baby would ever
have a chance to play if all the rooms in the
pottery were stacked full of pots."
" Huh! " said the doctor, sympathetically.
" I've been mighty sorry for my wife since
I 've been lying here," Giacomo said. "I
don't believe, though, I ever did another thing
in my life to spite her, and I made that all
right with her, too."
" How? " the doctor questioned.
"Why, I told her we 'd just let the baby
play with the pots until she broke enough to
make room for herself. My wife got to laughing over that, and we never had any more disagreements at all. But if things in heaven
are fixed so that she can look down and see
what a hole Troululu is making in them she
must be mighty happy about it. It was those
pots that first got me into the habit of working nights, and then, little as she was, the fiddler took a fancy to seeing me, and so I 've
kept it up. How long do you suppose it 'll
be, doctor, before I can get at my wheel
again?"
"Several weeks yet," the doctor answered.
"Well, but I can't stand that, you know,"

48

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

said Giacomo. "Since I 've been here so
still my head has simply swarmed with new
shapes I want to try; they go along in front
of me like a procession all the while. I tell
you if I don't have a chance to work some of
them off on the wheel, something 's going to
break.- Oh, Clothilde !"
The door opened promptly, and Clothilde
put her head in. There was a flower-pot on
top of her head, and she looked like Joan of
Arc. "W'at yo' want, Uncle Giacomo?" she
asked.
Giacomo had lifted himself on his elbow,
and his black eyes were full of excited purpose. " You just draw that wheel up as close
as you can get it to me," he began; "and,
doctor, would you mind helping me to shift
over to the edge of the bed ? And you, Troululu, let go of Clothilde's dress and show me
your goodness; I 'm going to work. Now,
Clothilde, that 's right, bring over a big lump
of clay,- do you see, you 're going to be my
feet and stand and tread for me, and I '11 reach
over and make such things as you never saw
in your life."
"I
"What? what?" cried the doctor.
don't know about that." But nevertheless he

CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER

49

helped Giacomo toward the edge of the bed
and then drew away to watch.
Giacomo sat up. A bright spot came into
each of his cheeks, he pushed the disordered
mane back from his forehead, draped his moustache over his ears, and leaned forward reaching out his long thin hands for the clay. It
was in good condition, for Clothilde had kept
it moistened under his direction. At first he
kneaded and shaped it lovingly, then dropped
it on the center of the wheel. He had few
tools, and what he had he scarcely used, but
placed his two hands on the whirling clay and
forced it up between them into a cylinder, now
pushing in his hands toward the base; now
toward the top, to make a bulging form; now
pressing it down into cozy squat lines; now
lifting and inspiring it into slender curves.
He was romping with his skill. The clay
seemed to live as he handled it, and his eyes
grew brighter and brighter as the ideas that
he had been hoarding crowded to his supple
finger tips.
Clothilde and the doctor watched him silently, and Clothilde did not dare to look
across at the doctor, for the potter's joy in his
wheel made her shrink at heart. But Trou-

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

5o

lulu crept beneath the corner of the bed and
bobbed up between Clothilde and her father
like a toy on springs. Giacomo dropped the
clay and looked down at her, opening his arms
to let her come still nearer him.
"I did n't knock down the tower and break
all your pots on purpose, Papa," she declared;
" I did it unfortunately, because my bad Santa
Claus girl made them so high I could n't reach.
My Santa Claus girl was bad and I was good,
-

see my goodness! "

Her queer little face gathered itself into its
most alluring smile. The potter bent and
kissed her. "That 's a good Troululu!" he
said. "My little fiddler is the best of all the

girls."
"Yes," the doctor muttered to Clothilde,
"she 's afraid now of the pint cup. Smart
child - the little crab."
But Clothilde was thinking of other things.
"Is Uncle Giacomo well," she asked, " dat yo'
let him run de w'eel ? "

CHAPTER V
A WHITE GLOW IN THE DARK

N the night Clothilde was
startled from her sleep by a
banging of doors and chattering of windows. A great wind
was sweeping round the pottery, and sheets of rain washed against it.
Just as she wakened, a twisting dart of lightning cut the night in two with a crash, and
showed her the storm. Clothilde buried her
face in the pillows and stuffed her fingers in
her ears, but there are so many dreadful things
which may happen when one's ears are closed
that pretty soon she drew her fingers partly
away and listened. The windows had not
ceased struggling, and the rain dashed like
hail against them; but the intense darkness
was unbroken. The lightning had been one
of those sharp, single bolts which sometimes

I

51

52

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

come in a storm and seem to have a special
purpose in their coming.
As she lay there, no longer exactly afraid,
but very lonely in the passionate, black night,
Clothilde remembered the sound of slamming which had first awakened her. The
wind must have opened one of the doors, for
she had fastened them all before she went to
bed. She got up silently and slipped into her
dress. She was glad to have some reason for
going into her uncle's room, where the little
lamp would be shedding a soft fantasy of light
and shade across the pottery-strewn floor to
the crowded walls. She had put the lamp on
a shelf, in the middle of a row of puzzle mugs,
now that the wheel had been drawn up so
close to her uncle's bed. She smiled as she
recalled that first night when her heart had
knocked with fear at all the lurking shapes in
the room. They had become so familiar that
even without her uncle and the fiddler they
would be reassurance.
Though the beating of the rain covered every sound she made, she went tip-toeing to
the door and opened it inch by inch to be very
sure of not awakening the fiddler, who had a
way of starting up at the creak of hinges, or

A WHITE GLOW IN THE DARK

53

even at the gentle plash of bare feet on the floor,
though she was evidently sleeping through the
storm. Clothilde caught her breath tremulously as the door moved under her hand, for
it was opening into darkness.
"Wind blowed de lamp out," she told herself. She opened a little further, and there
came a faint light from another direction than
the lamp. " But !" she murmured, and softly
flung wide the door.
A weird pale vision filled the center of the
room. Her uncle's face was lifted from the
bed, and bent with shadowy eyes upon the
wheel, and the wheel shone. A light came
from it and spread up toward her uncle's face
and dimly out into the darkness. It was a
still, strange light that seemed to live upon
the wheel, and the wheel lived, too, and turned
swiftly and noiselessly with no foot to tread it,
and her uncle reached his long, thin hands
down toward the cold, living brightness, and
moved them in and out as if he were shaping
something out of the half-lighted air. His face
smiled above his hands.
Clothilde thought she was crying out, but
the words whispered between her lips. She
could not stir, nor do anything but look at the
4*

54

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

shining wheel, and at her uncle's white, white
face, with the great black shadows for his
eyes. Her heart stood so still that when at
last it bounded to its work, the first beat was
an unexpected blow, and she almost fell. She
clung to the casing of the doorway, while her
breath came hard and quick, and her head
whirled like the white whirling thing that she
saw though she had clenched her eyes. Suddenly she gathered herself together and made
the sign of the cross as the man had done.
Then she closed the door even more carefully
than she had opened it, ran across to her own
window, flung it up, and dropped outside. The
wind and the rain caught her and swept her
with them through the wildness of the night.
It was a long time before she began to
wonder where she was. On every side of her,
against the dark, she saw her uncle's face and
the ghostly, shining wheel. She shuddered
from head to foot as she thought how she had
turned it, and rested her hand on it, and
boasted that she could run it, and been angry
with the man who said it was of the devil.
She had even threatened to put the baby on
it and make her into a pint cup. The baby !
Giacomo sang her to sleep with the devil's

A WHITE GLOW IN THE DARK

55

wheel, and she must often and often have
wakened in the night and seen it shine like
that and not have been afraid.
Such a great sorrow came aching into Clothilde's throat, such a longing for her mother,
and all her little brothers and sisters, who had
never been sung to sleep to the whir of a shining wheel, that all the strength of fear went
out of her, and she took a few uncertain steps,
groping in the dark. There was a fence at
the side of the road; in reaching about her
she touched it, and, as if it were some sort of
protection, she sank down beside it, drenched,
shivering, and crying as if her heart would
break.
The more she cried, the more the hot tears
surged up into her eyes. She loved her uncle,
she loved the baby, she loved the queer old
pottery. She had even come to love the
wheel - and they all belonged to wickedness
and mystery, for the wheel shone by itself in
the dark. The people were right, and her
uncle was a hoodoo - the own husband of her
own aunt was a bad man, who made things do
what they could not do, and brought bad luck.
It was true that he had been like other people
while he had been sick, but now that he had

56

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

grown well enough to touch the wheel, the
wheel had begun to run without treading, and
to shine like the moon through mist. After a
while she put out her arms to the fence and
hugged herself close to it, and wondered what
her mama would say when she knew that
Uncle Giacomo was a hoodoo, and if her mama
would scold.her for running away and leaving
a hoodoo with a broken leg all alone in the
night.
When she thought of Giacomo's broken leg,
it made her remember the doctor, and a rush
of comfort went through her. She would go
to the doctor's house, and tell the doctor all
about it, and get him to send her back to Cypress Creek. But no, she could see her mama's
bright eyes look scornful, and could hear her
say: "So yo' had de fear to be hurt. Yo'
have not grow so grande as I t'ought yo' had,
po' littl' Clothilde ! " Yes, her mama would
say something like that, for way up on Cypress
Creek, where every one was good, nobody
would believe that the own husband of an own
sister was a hoodoo. But then Clothilde could
find the doctor, and take him with her to look
softly in and see the wheel, and perhaps he
could make her mama believe. She could

A WHITE

GLOW IN THE DARK

57

almost feel his warm hand on her shoulder,
and she knew what he would say to her when
she told him; it would be: "What? What?
Well, Santa Claus, I reckon I 'd better look
in and see that wheel."
The thought of the doctor made Clothilde
ashamed to have run so far, and cried so long
like a senseless thing in the dark. She felt
warm and brave again, and she jumped to her
feet, and strained her eyes for anything to tell
her where she was. The blackness was utterly without form. Her feet could feel the
hard road, and sometimes as she weaved to
one side in following it her hand found a fence,
sometimes only trees, once or twice the wall
of a house. She crept back from the houses,
for she was far too proud to take refuge with
any one but the doctor. She was so completely
bewildered that she did not know whether she
had turned toward the pottery or away from
it, so she could only follow along the road,
and hope to come against something that she
knew.
The road carried her up a great many little
hills and down into a great many little valleys
where small noisy streams of rain-water poured
curling across her feet. She had gone hither

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

and yonder in Potosi, but all of her errands
had carried her over level ground, and if she
had noticed the hills she would have known
that every step was taking her farther from
the pottery and from the doctor; but it happens that Cypress Creek runs through a broken country, and the little rises and descents
of the road felt so natural that she thought
nothing about them, and only wondered if she
would ever come to anything that she knew,
or if morning was going to be very much
longer in breaking through the dark. It had
stopped raining, but not a star crept out into
the night to keep her company. Even her
vision of Giacomo and the wheel faded out;
she was too tired to be afraid, she was only
heartsick and helpless, and all alone in a great
dense blackness that would not let her go.
She plodded up yet another hill and stopped
sharply at the top. There was light in front
of her, pale shimmering ranks of light shot
through with sudden stars. She stood and
gazed, her head lifted and her hands clenched.
As far as her eyes could search, the white
troops were hurrying toward her like vague
star-jeweled ghosts. Clothilde watched and
listened, stiff with fear. She thought that

A WHITE

GLOW IN THE DARK

59

they were the same as the shining of the
wheel, though down below her each one broke
into a million pearls, shattering itself with a
long moaning sough.
It was Pontomoc Bay that stretched before
her, with its phosphorescent breakers rolling
in upon the beach. Suddenly Clothilde knew
it and struck her hands together. " It is de
sea, de sea!" she cried aloud; "an de bon
Dieu make de light! Oh, sure, sure! Father
Henri tole me dat de bon Dieu make de
light !- An' dat is de way wid de w'eel," she
thought on eagerly.
"It is not dat Uncle
Giacomo is bad dat de light come faw him, it
is because he is so good to de baby dat de
bon Dieu sends light to his w'eel on de dark
nights w'en de win' blows out de lamp, jus' de
way dat brightness comes to de waves of de
sea w'en de stars is hid. I wish I had de sense
of dat littl' fiddler who mus' have seed de w'eel
many, many times in de night, an 'has never
had de t'ought to be afraid."
It was so good to believe in her uncle again
that Clothilde forgot that she was alone and
wet and tired and did not know her way.
The pottery must be somewhere at the other
end of the long road that she had come, and

6o

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

perhaps it would be morning soon. She
turned a happy face back into the darkness,
and groped her steps sturdily until a few stars
came out, and then the east turned gray.
She saw where she was, and flew like a bird
along the deserted streets. Her window was
open just as she had left it. She climbed
in noiselessly, and went to her uncle's door
and listened. There was not a sound to be
heard, so she took off her wet clothing and
covered herself up in bed, where she fell asleep
and dreamed many strange things until the
sun was high and the little fiddler was climbing up beside her.
" Hands, don't touch Clothilde," the fiddler
was saying as she patted Clothilde's face.
"You must be good, little hands, and not
wake up my Clothilde, 'cause my Clothilde is
so good."
Clothilde opened her eyes and drew the
little fiddler into her arms and hugged her
tight. "Yo', Troululu," she said; and the
fiddler printed a great big ecstatic kiss upon
her cheek.

CHAPTER VI
THE FIDDLER'S LITTLE ANGELS

FTER Troululu had wakened
Clothilde she went back to get
her handful of garments. Clo-

thilde slipped into her own
dress, and went into her uncle's
room before the little night-gowned figure had
returned.
"What for did you put on a fresh dress? I
want a fresh dress ! " the fiddler cried at sight
of her.
Clothilde blushed, wishing that anything
was ever unnoticed by those quick eyes. The
clothing she had worn the night before was
still wet from the rain. " In co'se yo' shall
have a fresh dress," she answered. "I t'ought
it was time, me, dat we be mo' clean. I 'ave
always hear dat Santa Claus like bes' de cleanes'
littl' girls."
"But his little angels are not clean," said
6z

62

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

Troululu. "They come down the chimney
with him and they get so b-black. Last night
I dreamed that three, four, nine, little angels
came down the chimney, and they had to turn
themselves - so - and shake off the black."
" But it is not Santa Claus who has the little
angels," Clothilde corrected eagerly, "it is
de bon Dieu."
"Who is the bon Dieu ?" asked Troululu.
Clothilde looked across at her uncle.
"The bon Dieu lives in heaven, and takes
care of all the little angels, Troululu," the
potter answered smiling; "but I think he
lends some of them to Santa Claus, Santa
Claus is so good."
Clothilde puckered her eyebrows.
Her
mother and Father Henri had taught her all
about the bon Dieu and the angels, and her
mother had told her about Santa Claus twice
- le fetit No'l, they called him. She had
told her first when she was very little, and
then again in a less delightful way when she
had grown "more grande"; this mixing him
up with the bon Dieu and the angels was
very puzzling to her, but Troululu was jumping up and down with an ecstatic face, and
there was not much time to think about it.

THE FIDDLER'S LITTLE ANGELS

63

"I 'm going to be good, good, good !" the
fiddler cried, " and then I '11 go to the chimney
and I '11 ask the bon Dieu and Santa Claus
to lend me some of their little angels, and then
when you want Clothilde to turn the wheel
I '11 play with my little angels, and they 'll not
run away, and we '11 be good, good, good, and
I '11 not pull their hair, and when I want them
to do anything I '11 say ' Thank you,' and ' If
you please !'"
" That 's a very good idea," said the potter.
Just then the doctor came in. " Tell him,
Papa," whispered the fiddler, " tell him about
my little angels."
" She 's going to be good, good, good, doctor," said Giacomo, "so that the little angels
of Santa Claus will come and play with her."
The doctor gave one of his sharp, downward glances at the fiddler. She was still in
her little white gown, and she was looking
shyly up at him through her black elf locks.
" Tell him," she whispered again, "that I won't
pull their hair, and I '11 say ' Thank you,' and
'If you please!'"
"Hu-uh," said the doctor softly, "what 's
got into the little crab ? "
Just her goodness," said Giacomo; "it
"

64

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

strikes in like that sometimes. Never mind
dressing her till you 've made the coffee, Clothilde; I was awake a good deal in the storm,
and I 'm most starved for some."
As Clothilde started for the kitchen Troululu looked wistfully at the long tangled braid
hanging down her back. "What for is your
hair all wet? " she cried suddenly.
Clothilde was just outside the open door,
and she pretended not to hear; but the doctor
muttered, "What ? " and looked after her and
frowned. Then he turned impatiently to the
potter. "You 've tired yourself out," he said.
" I knew how it would be when I saw how
you marched on thatwheel yesterday. There's
this much about it, Barse: if you don't want
to work yourself into a fever and be tied up
here a lot of extra weeks, you must put the
brakes on this restlessness of yours. And
there 's more than your getting well to be
thought of. No one ever seems to be within
shouting distance of this pottery when help is
needed, and yet if there was an eye at the
window all the time it could n't see more than
they all seem to know of what 's going on
here; and I '11 tell you this, Potosi folks don't
think it looks well for a man with a broken

THE FIDDLER'S LITTLE ANGELS

65

leg to have any desire to work. I believe
they '11 make it troublesome for you if you
don't lie quiet."
The bright red spots which had come into
Giacomo's cheeks the day before flamed
He gave his mussharply out of his pallor.
tache a twist above his ears. "I '11 work
when I please, and how I please, if all the
crazy fools in Potosi stand night and day at
my window," he cried. "No,- you've treated
me as a good man treats a human being, doctor, and I don't forget it, but you can't tell me
what they say or that they '11 make trouble
for me, if you want me to keep quiet. I '11
get up leg and all, and I '11 fight the whole
miserable cowardly outfit that never tells me
what it has against me, but would leave me
and my helpless baby alone here to die if it
was n't for you and for that one little girl,
that 's worth all the people in forty Potosis.
Have n't they talked to her too! Have n't I
seen the look on her face when she came in
sometimes ! And not a word has she said,
and not a word have I dared ask her, for I
knew that if she told me I 'd go wild like this,
and it would set me back. But when I get
well I '11 go out among them, and - after that
5

66

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

-- I '11 take my fiddler--" His voice had
grown hoarse, but his cheeks and eyes burned
clear. He put his hand to his throat, and sank
back against his pillows. " Great heavens,
doctor," he said, " do you think I 'm going to
keep on living in this hole, where other children run from my child as if she was an ill
omen, and all the pleasure of her little life has
to come from the harmless lies I tell her, and
the beautiful fancies of her little head, that I
have n't the heart to say are just lies too ? I
may be queer and cranky and half cracked, as
they used to call me, and I may care more for
my own thoughts and the working of them into
clay than I care for other people,- common
people,- but when it comes to my child - "
The doctor put a warm firm hand onto the
cold shaking ones which Giacomo had gripped
together above the bed-clothes. "There, I
know; that'll do, Barse," he said. "I hear
the children coming back with the coffee."
He stepped out into the little yard which
separated the kitchen from the pottery.
"Take the cup to your uncle," he told Clothilde, "and then leave the fiddler with him
and come back here. I want to talk to you."
He paused an instant undecidedly, and then

THE FIDDLER'S LITTLE ANGELS

67

lifted Troululu up between his hands. " Little
crab," he asked, "are you going to stay with
papa, and tell him all about your little angels?"
" Yes," the fiddler cried, with her goodness
still shining from her face, "and I 'm going to
get him to tell Santa Claus and the bon Dieu
that I want three, four, nine little angels all
with their fresh dresses on, and Santa Claus
must n't let them get black in the chimney.
Won't you tell him, doctor, you and papa and
Clothilde all tell him not to let them get black
in the chimney ! "
"That 's right," said the doctor; " and remember not to pull their hair." He set her
down, and she flew ahead of Clothilde, calling:
" Four, six, nine little angels, Papa; I want
nine ! "
Clothilde came back in a moment. "I t'nk,"
she said, solemnly, "dat de angel 'as truly
come, somesing make dat child so ver' good."
" Lucky," said the doctor. "But what I
want to ask you is why you were outside last
night in the storm? "
His brows were bent together, and he looked
both stern and troubled. Clothilde gave a little
gasp. "In de stohm ?" she echoed. "What
make yo' know? "

68

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

"Your hair," said the doctor, "and people.
I did n't believe the people till I saw the hair.
What foolery were you up to, getting your
uncle into more trouble ? "
Clothilde did not say anything for a long
time, and her head drooped until its wet tangled mane fell across her cheeks. " I was n'
foolin' no way, me," she said, at last; "but
'ow did peopl' know? "
" Saw you," returned the doctor. " Philipe
Gomez said he saw you running along the
road from the beach in the gray light this
morning, and last night his schooner anchored
out in the bay was struck by lightning, and
he lays it to you."
Clothilde lifted her face with her black eyes
wide and full of horror, but she could not say

a word.
The doctor was sorry for her and put his
hand on her shoulder. "You know I don't
believe such folderol," he said, " not any more
than I believe that your uncle's wheel lighted
itself up last night,-that's another thing Gomez said,--but I want you to tell me just
what possessed you to go outside at all. I
never thought to warn you not to do a thing
like that because-why who 'd think of a

THE FIDDLER'S LITTLE ANGELS

69

child's going out alone at night? And then
I supposed you had more sense. You see
it 's this way, little Santa Claus: these people
here are superstitious; I mean that they believe in ghosts and hoodoos and all sorts of
rubbish, and they 've got it fast in their heads
that your uncle and his wheel together can
make any sort of bad luck that they please,
and since you 've told that you can run the
wheel they think about the same of you, so
the minute you do anything queer they 're sure
you 're up to mischief. Did n't you understand
all that ? "
"Yas," Clothilde said slowly, " I knowed it."
"Then what in creation took you out in the
dark and the rain ? "
Clothilde hesitated again. It seemed as if
it would do more harm than good to tell what
she had seen, but the doctor kept looking at
her and she was ashamed not to meet his eyes.
"I was skeered of de wheel," she said in a
low, constrained voice.
The doctor's hand fell from her shoulder
and a muscle in his cheek jerked with vexation. " She 's just a creole like the rest," he
thought. " What skeered you ? " he asked.
The tone hurt Clothilde. She drew herself
5*

70

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

up and pushed the hair back over her shoulders. " I was skeered," she said, "because
de w'eel do shine by itse'f in de night."
"Stuff!" said the doctor, looking at her
sharply.
" It shine by itse'f in de night," Clothilde
"I know,
repeated with dogged firmness.
'cause de stroke of de t'under woke me; dere
was n' but one an' I was in my bed. De win'
was blowin' so hard I got up to see if Uncle
Giacomo was all right, an' I opened de door
softly not to wake 'im, an' dere was de w'eel.
It was shinin' like de white moon an' it was
turnin' by itse'f, an' Uncle Giacomo--oh, Uncle
Giacomo look so strange, an' all I could t'ink
me, was 'ow de people said dat it was of de
devil, an' I ran. I dropped out de window an'
I ran an' ran an' I did 'n know w'ere I went,
an' everyt'ing was black ontil I came to de
sea. It was shinin' like de w'eel, an' den I remember w'at Father Henri tell me dat de

bon Dieu gave de light to de sea 'cause he
say dere mus' be light, an' I knowed it was
jus' de same way wid de w'eel. An' I'm goin'
to tell everybody dat it is jus' cause Uncle
Giacomo is so good dat de bon Dieu lets 'im
'ave de light on his w'eel in de black night
w'en de win' blow out de lamp."

THE FIDDLER'S LITTLE ANGELS

71

The doctor breathed very softly to himself.
"Well," he said, "if there 's bound to be a
light on the wheel it 's healthier to have the
bon Dieu put it there than the devil, but it 's
queer it never does any of its shining for me."
" Yo' ain't never seed it w'en de win' blowed
out de lamp," Clothilde answered stiffly.
"That 's so, Santa Claus, that 's so," the
doctor said, " and I 'm glad you 've decided
it 's the bon Dieu,; but if you ever have a
chance to ask Barse about it without exciting
him, just remember every word he says and
tell me. You '11 do that much, won't you, to
help me straighten this thing out ?"
" In co'se I will," Clothilde answered, happy
to be obliging, "but dere is not'ing of crookedness to make straight; now I know how de
w'eel can shine w'en my uncle is so good an'
is de one person in de world w'at never scold
nobody."
" Huh!" said the doctor, and went suddenly
back into the pottery. Giacomo made a motion for him to be quiet.
The fiddler had her head in the fireplace,
and was peering up. "Thank you, Santa
Claus," she called, " thank you very much for
their fresh dresses; I '11 be very careful to
keep them clean." She drew her head out like

72

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

a flash, and caught sight of the doctor.
"Don't step on my little angels ! " she cried.
"Don't you see them ? - three, four, nine of
them right by your feet, putting away my
flower-pots ?"
The doctor looked this way and that, and
made a dive for the outer door. " Between
crabs and angels and wheels that shine like
the sea!--" he muttered. " Like the sea," he
repeated, pausing. "There 's an idea in that."

CHAPTER VII
THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

LOTHILDE'S heart ached
with the thought that she and
the doctor had almost quarrelled, and that he did not believe what she told him, and

she was weighted down with the knowledge
that Philipe Gomez said she had made the
lightning strike his boat. It had never seemed
so awful to hear other people, even Uncle
Giacomo, called "Hoodoo," as to have it
brought home to herself. She felt too small
and helpless and ignorant to be mixed up in
that way with things of which the bon Dieu
usually took all the charge. Who was Clothilde
Rousselle from far up Cypress Creek, to be
taking the lightning out of the hands of the
bon Dieu and sending it against the schooner
of Philipe Gomez? For a moment she shivered and buried her face in her arms, while
73

74

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

the sobs rose in her throat and she wished
Father Henri would come down and tell those
wicked Potosi people that she did not even
know how the bon Dieu sent the lightning
into the sky, for when she had asked Father
Henri, he had told her that as long as the bon
Dieu sent it, it was good to have it there, and
that she did not need to know how it came.
Father Henri and her mother, - the very
names were a great, quivering pain, just as they
had been last night, and all her thoughts broke
into a confusion of longing for her own, loving,
reverent people, who would never believe such
wicked things about the bon Dieu and about
her, and who would know it was the truth
when she said that the wheel shone in the
dark, because her uncle was so good.
" Oh, I want to go home," she moaned half
aloud, crushing herself against the wall to
ease the cruelty of homesickness, "I - want
- to go - home."
Just then her uncle called her. She brushed
her hands, and then her sleeves across her
eyes, gave her dress a shake, and went in.
" Don't you reckon it's time the fiddler had
a dress on ?" Giacomo asked. He was lying
back in bed, tapping restlessly on his empty

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

75

coffee-cup with his spoon. He saw the marks
of sorrow on Clothilde's face, and he looked
away, tapping a livelier measure. He needed
a little more strength before he tried to console her; just now he would only work himself
into another passion.
"Come, Troululu," said Clothilde.
The fiddler had a small wet cloth, and was
scrubbing up the soot that had spattered down
the chimney in the night. " I 'm not Troululu, I 'm a little angel," she said. " Don't
trouble me."
"Come, little angel," said Clothilde, wearily, " I have a fresh dress for you."
The fiddler lifted an imaginary drapery
from the side of her scant sooty gown. " See
my fresh dress that Santa Claus gave me?"
she said. "You only have little Troululu's
dress, and Troululu 's gone. I saw her running far off."
"Come, come," said the potter, "that 's a
beautiful way to play, but when Clothilde
says to come and be dressed you must go.
You can play that Santa Claus is putting a
new fresh dress on you- Clothilde is your
Santa Claus girl, you know. Go along."
"I won't," said the fiddler, looking with

76

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

critical pleasure at the blackness of her rag.
"I 'm busy. That 's the way little angels
talk; they say, ' I won't - don't trouble me.' "
" Troululu! " Clothilde gasped. It seemed
too much after the fiddler's morning had begun so beautifully that she should fall into
what Giacomo always called "her queer
ideas," for when one of them entered her head
it always stayed a long time. Clothilde was
so tired that her heart felt less pleased with
the fiddler than it had ever felt before. "Troululu," she said again, controlling her impatience, " w'at 'as gone wid all yo' goodness? "
The fiddler looked up and around her curiously. "There it is," she finally said, pointing to one of the high shelves. "I saw it
crawl into that little wee, wee water monkey,
and it can't get out."
" Get down that water monkey, Clothilde,"
Giacomo said with decision.
"The fiddler
must take her goodness out of it. I '11 not
have goodness stored away on a top shelf
when it 's so mighty scarce in the world. Do
you understand that, Troululu ? "
" I don't hear you, papa," the fiddler said.
" I 'm a little angel."
Clothilde climbed after the olla. With its

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

77

small opening to pour the water in, and its
tiny puncture for drinking the water out, it
seemed altogether reasonable that anything
as solid as goodness should find hard work to
escape when once inside. A smile was playing round the corners of Clothilde's mouth as
she picked her way down from the shelf and
handed Troululu the queerly shaped jar. It
was just the right size to keep a doll's drinking water cool and refreshing, and the opening to drink from was no bigger than the
point of a pin. The fiddler put her eye to
the larger hole.
" My goodness is in there," she announced.
" Oh, you bad me'chant goodness, get out!
Get out! Get out!-- Papa, it won't come
out. See how I shake the monkey, and it
won't come out! I can't be dressed while my
goodness won't come out."
The potter's black eyes kindled and he
draped his mustache behind his ears. It was
strange that the very morning when he was
planning to defy all Potosi for the sake of the
fiddler should be the first morning of her life
when his hands would have consented to
spanking her. "That 's about enough," he
said, looking at her steadily. "Wherever

78

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

your goodness is, let me see it this instant on
your face, and then go to Clothilde and be
dressed."
" But it won't come ow-out," the fiddler
wailed, giving him sidelong glances as she
stood stamping her bare feet and shaking the
olla wrathfully toward the floor. Clothilde
watched with a catch in her breath, wondering if after all these weeks her uncle was going
to ask her to bring the fiddler to him for punishment. The fiddler was bad, undoubtedly
she was very bad; but Clothilde shrank from
the thought of a spanking on top of all their
other troubles. Troululu swung the olla up
and down and shook it with all her strength.
Genuine fury had come into her voice, and she
screamed, " It 's bad, bad, meckant goodness,
and it won't come out! " Suddenly the olla flew
from her hands, and, striking a hard earthen
alligator that was lurking near the wall, flew
into a thousand flecks of clay.
"W'at!" Clothilde broke out in a high
shocked voice, "yo' call yo'se'f a angel an'
yo' do dat !"
"I 'm not an angel," said the fiddler timidly, "I 'm just Troululu." There was a
moment of absolute silence while she gazed

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

79

reproachfully at the fragments on the floor.
Then an enchanting sweetness came into her
face. She made one of her swift darts, captured nothing but thin air, and held it out
between her thumb and finger like a prize.
"Here 's my goodness! See!" she cried. "I
found it! See me put it on my face ! And
the little bad water monkey is all smashed so
my goodness can't get in there any more, and
you '11 see it all the days on my face - all the
weary days." She went up close to her
father. "What does it mean, Papa, 'weary
days'? and what does it mean ' weary nights'?
I hear you say that sometimes, 'weary days
and weary nights.' Tell me what it means? "
She was looking into his face, her naughtiness, and even her rapturous goodness, all forgotten in earnest questioning. He drew her
up beside him. "My baby, my baby," he
said softly, as he looked into her bright, wide
eyes, " I wish you would n't ever know."
"Won't I know when I 'm big?" the fiddler persisted. "That 's what you said before you called Clothilde. I heard you say it,
Papa: 'weary days and weary nights.' Do
you talk that way 'cause you have a broken
leg?"

80o

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

"Yes," Giacomo answered, " that 's about
the size of it; I reckon I talk that way cause
I 've got a broken leg."
"I t'ink dat Trascan 'ave say it too," said
Clothilde.
She was passing the time while
she waited for Troululu by giving Trascan his
seeds and water.
" He 's not going to say it any more," said
Giacomo.
"He 's going to be in luck, for
the doctor told me I could make him his new
leg to-day. Poor old fellow, the angels of
Santa Claus made me forget about him, but
now, when Troululu has her fresh dress, I 'm
going to make him a fresh leg. Skip now,
Troululu, Trascan 's talking over there to tell
you that he is tired of waiting."
Clothilde held out her arms, the fiddler
jumped into them from the bed, and all the
angels of Santa Claus seemed to be helping,
- the dress was on so quickly, the children's
breakfast made, and some bits of wood, a penknife, soft cords, and fine wires laid on the potter's little work-board; last of all Clothilde
brought Trascan and held him where he could
look on. He nestled in her hand, but his eyes
followed Giacomo alertly, as if he knew what
the sharp little knife was shaping from the

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

81

wood. Troululu sat on a pillow at her father's
elbow and bent her head between him and
the knife. Once in a while she drew back
out of the way when he told her he would have
to make her into a pint cup, but in a moment
her head was down again. Giacomo realized
that she had grown older in the few weeks of
his sickness, and that the threat which had
seen so much service was outworn.
" I '11 have to wait and do it to-night when
you are asleep, Troululu," he declared as a
new resort, and the fiddler edged away several
inches, and though her head kept leaning over
she drew it back once or twice of her own accord, and the potter smiled as he worked and
said to himself that she was the best child in
the world.
The sea breeze began to stir through the
warm air of the morning, the sunshine glinted
in through the fantastic figures in the pottery
windows, and once in a while a cart rattled
past along the hard, white road. "There,"
Giacomo said, holding a short, slender wooden
peg up to the light, and turning it round and
round with a severe eye for its dimensions,
" hand the old chap over and let me see if this
fits him."
6

82

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

Trascan cocked his black eyes in attention
while Giacomo tenderly bound, and strapped,
and fastened the fresh leg to what misfortune
had left him of the old. Then he was turned
right side up, and they all laughed at the visible start with which he recognized the new
support under him. It was a little too long,
and he hitched up one wing, and chirped critically as he tried to take a step. He began
to peck at the new leg and its fastenings.
" Never mind, never mind," said the potter.
"Just give me time, old fellow, and my name 's
not Giacomo if I don't make it right." He
laid the bird down again, and began readjusting the straps and shortening the little peg.
" And, besides, Trascan," he went on, " I have
n't told you that when I get it fitted I 'm going
to make toes for it. Of course, you think a
new leg without any toes is a pretty poor
present to give a bird. There, is that more
like ? "
The tiny wooden leg was tried, and re-fitted,
and re-tried until it reached a perfection which
seemed satisfactory to Trascan, then Giacomo
added some wire-claws, and Trascan perked
his head on one side, and hopped a few steps
rather uncertainly and stiffly, but with evident

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

83

pride. Suddenly the full knowledge of his renewal came to him. He spread his wings
and circled round and round the room like a
gleam of yellow light, perching at last on the
sill of the open window to sing out the whole
shrill rejoicing of his heart. The caged birds
in the yard were quick to answer him, and the
fiddler jumped up and down, adding her sweet,
piercing laugh to the carnival of life and gladness.
" No limp in his wings or his voice," said
Giacomo, leaning forward to watch the pulsing of song in his throat. " Put his cage outside with the door open, Clothilde. He 'll be
glad to go in and rest pretty soon, but we '11
leave him his liberty while he wants it. Poor
old boy, I never saw anybody so happy in my
life. No, no, Troululu, don't startle him."
The fiddler was stealing up toward the window like a kitten. " I 'm not doing anything,"
she said, " I just want to take him in my hand
so as to hear what he 's saying."
" No, no, not now!" the potter cried, and
Clothilde made a dash toward the fiddler.
The fiddler escaped with a squeal, and Trascan took flight through the window into the
radiant sunshine.

84

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

"Troululu !" said the potter.
"That does n't matter," the fiddler answered cheerfully; "he 's just flying over the
fence. He '11 come back pretty soon and say,
'Thank you, Papa, I like my fresh leg very
much !'
"
Clothilde went outside. "'E 'as lighted in
de top of a fig-tree in de empty yard," she
called back. " Oh, bud it is strange de way
he fall from de limb wid his beautiful leg, an'
den fly roun' an' roun' an' try again. Ah, bud
'e has de patience, dat Trascan, an', yas, he
'as already improve ver' much, he balance
more true. Bud I t'ink, me, it is ingratitude
to balance in some odder yard. Shall I climb
de fence an' skeer 'im back ?"
"No, no, leave him be," said Giacomo,
"he '11 come all right. He was frightened at
Troululu for a minute, but he knows who his
friends are. Let him have his fill of freedom
for this day."
" I should t'ink 'e would remember him 'boud
dat cat," said Clothilde. " Dat is de yard of
de cat."
" Better keep watch through the fence,
then," said Giacomo, "and if the cat comes in
sight you can climb over and drive Trascan

THE REBUILDING

OF TRASCAN

home. He 'll come of his own accord soon,
depend on him."
The children kept faithful watch, their round
eyes first at one and then at another of the
long, glimmering cracks between the palings;
but the cat did not come, and Trascan continued to experiment with his little wire toes
on the twigs of the alien fig-trees, and though
he sang cheerfully, and made great progress
in balancing, he showed no thought of coming
home. Perhaps he had noticed just how few
ripe figs were left on the trees in the potter's
yard since Clothilde came. Trascan was a
wise bird, and very fond of figs himself. Whenever he was firmly balanced he encouraged
himself by pecking one.
The doctor stopped in on his way home
from his morning round of visits and found
the house and the potter as still as he could
wish. "This is sense, Barse," he said, " this
is sense." There was scarcely a thing that
needed to be done, and he marched nervously
about the room, taking down one piece of pottery and then another, as he always did when
the baby was not in the way. " Queer place
you have here, Barse," he said, once in a
while, "queer place." By-and-by he took a
6*

86

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

strong crock and climbed on it toreach an upper
shelf where there was a pottery basket, made
like a coiling snake. While he was peering
about among some dusty pots back of the
basket, he spoke again in a matter-of-fact way
to the potter. " I heard something that interested me about your wheel," he said. "Two
or three people tell me they 've seen it shine
in the dark. It set me to wondering if you
rubbed phosphorus on it."
" No,' said Giacomo, simply; "I painted it
with luminous paint."
" Luminous paint ?" cried the doctor, turning square round and almost falling from the
crock before he could step from it. " What 's
luminous paint? "
" You make it by heating powdered oyster
shells and sulphur together in something airtight," Giacomo answered, looking pleased.
"They combine into a stuff that has the
trick of shining in the dark, after the sun has
shone on it, and you mix that stuff with varnish, and you have luminous paint. I happened to get hold of a paper one time that told
about its being made and used on match-boxes,
so that when you went into a room at night
you 'd see the match-box first thing, and the

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

87

paper thought it would be a good thing to use
on danger buoys at sea, and it popped into
my head at once that it would be a great
scheme to have some on the wheel. You see
I 've always had a hankering to use every sort
of paint I ever heard of, and about that time I
was spending hour after hour at night, running
my wheel and singing to the fiddler, - seemed
as if there never was such a child not to sleep,
after her mother died. She would have the
lamp lighted, and the brightness kept her
awake, and I thought the soft glow they said
this paint gave out would be just the thing to
quiet her, and so it was. Having my furnace
for the pottery, it was n't much trouble to
make it, either, and when it gets smeared with
the clay I put on a fresh coat. I suppose you've
never seen it shining, because since I 've been
sick I 've always kept a lamp at night."
The doctor was standing by the wheel, and
looking from it to Giacomo, and back again,
as if he had never seen either of them before.
" What ? " he exclaimed, "you did a thing like
that and did n't tell anybody? "
A flush came over the potter's face, and he
gave a little laugh. "To tell the truth," he
said, "I was n't so used to having folks down

88

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

on me as I am now, and I 'd been hacked so
much for the way I painted the pottery and
the handcart, and a lot of other things, that I
said nothing about this. I knew they 'd make
a lot of crazy jokes and fasten some sort of
a nickname on me that I would n't want the
fiddler to hear when she grew up, and so I
kept this to myself. It did n't show queer by
daylight, and there was no one but the fiddler
and me to see it at night. They called me
'Rainbow Barse' when I painted the house. I
reckon they 'd have called me 'Moony,' if they
had seen the wheel."
The doctor looked at him half laughing,
half pitying. Giacomo met the look steadily,
and his eyes began to question the doctor's.
"Oh, you've been a precious fool," the
doctor said. " You did n't want to be called
names, did you? And what sort of a name
do you suppose they 're calling you now for
the fiddler to grow up and hear? And the
worst of it is that you can begin now and go
on until doomsday telling these people that
you 've painted your wheel with 'luminous
paint,' and they '11 go on believing that your
paint and your wheel and you are all ' the
of
devil.' You have been a precious fool."

THE REBUILDING OF TRASCAN

89

Giacomo leaned back against his pillow.
He was very white and he said nothing for a
long time.
"Well ? " the doctor challenged him.
"They think I 'm a hoodoo," Giacomo said,
between his flattened lips. "That 's what
they 've been telling Clothilde, is it?"
"Yes, that 's what they 've told her," the
doctor said, " and they 're beginning to think
she 's one, too.
But she 's got something
She saw your
better than they have now.
wheel last night, and at first it scared her, and
then she made up her plucky little mind that
the bon Dieu put the light there because you
are so good."
The potter smiled faintly. " I wish you 'd
call her in here," he said.
" She '11 not believe in your precious paint,
any more than the rest of them will," the doctor said as he went to the door. He was feeling more exasperated than relieved by the
potter's simple explanation of a mystery which
he had hoped to hear denied. If the wheel
really shone, then Barse could never make a
soul believe that the paint did it unless he had
first done something uncanny to the paint.
The doctor shut the door behind him with a

90

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

swing. The fiddler was all alone in the yard,
peering through the palings. "What? " he
cried, hurrying out.
A flash of sunlit wings met him, and TrasClothilde's
can settled by the open cage.
head came out through the branches of a figtree in the empty yard just as the doctor
reached the fence.
" Duck back under the leaves," he whispered sharply. "There 's a cart passing in
the road, and they '11 see you ! Are you crazy,
climbing in other people's trees ? "
"W'at way
The black head disappeared.
did Trascan fly? " a soft voice questioned out
of ambush.
" Home," said the doctor, " and you follow
him. The cart 's gone by."
After a moment Clothilde tumbled lightly
over the high fence and came down on her
feet just at the doctor's side. " I did n' go faw
no foolin', mo' dan befo'," she said. "Uncle
Giacomo he build Trascan a new leg dis
mawnin' an' Trascan 'ad de queer idea to fly
into de trees in de yard of de cat, an' Uncle
Giacomo tole me to put myself into the trees
an' drive 'im back if de cat made herse'f in
sight."

THE REBUILDING

OF TRASCAN

91

" Did he tell you to make yourself in sight,
too ? " the doctor asked.
" Naw," Clothilde answered. She felt that
the doctor was not as seriously cross as he had
been earlier in the morning, and a spark of
mischief came into her eyes. " Do yo' reckon,"
she asked, " dat people would care ver' much
if I hoodooed dat ole cat ? She 's all dat owns
de empty place."
"There 's no telling what people will care
about when it comes to hoodoos," the doctor
answered gravely. " Come in. Your uncle
wants to tell you what puts the light on the
wheel. I decided to ask him about it myself,
and there 's nothing queer about it at all."
"In co'se dere is n'," said Clothilde,
stanchly, "w'en my uncle is so good."

CHAPTER VIII
THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

T

HE potter leaned from a crutch
and shaped a chubby red-clay

pitcher on his wheel, while Clothilde trod the pedal, contentedly humming, " Tournez entournez toujours." Whatever the rest
core,
of Potosi might be saying and thinking, the
weeks had slipped uneventfully out of sight at
the pottery, and Giacomo was getting well.
The doctor had not been in for several days,
and Giacomo shrugged his shoulders and felt
lonesome, though he did not need the doctor.
Almost the only thing that he could not do now
for himself was to turn the wheel when he
stood beside it. Clothilde knew that as soon
as he began to do this she would not be necessary any longer, and her heart was such a
blending of eagerness and regret that she
could not tell whether she wanted to go back
92

THE FLOWER-POTS

TAKE PART

93

to Cypress Creek or not. She was wondering
about it as she turned the wheel, and she was
questioning, too, why her uncle asked her to
turn it at all. The little song died away in a
slow breath.
" Uncle Giacomo," she said, " yo' tell me it
is jus' de paint dat make de w'eel shine in de
night, but yo' never say w'at make it turn itse'f
dat night I saw it. I reckon, me, dat de bon
Dieu could make it turn itse'f better dan de
paint."
The potter's face wrinkled under the eyes
into a smile. " I reckon you 're right, Clothilde," he answered. " The bon Dieu could
make it turn better than anything else could
if that was his way, but according to what
I 've seen, it 's his plan to give somebody the
idea of doing what he wants for himself. Now
just look here."
The wheel was still standing by the bed.
Giving his crutch to Clothilde, Giacomo sat
down on the edge of the mattress and stretched
his injured leg out straight along it. With
the foot of his sound leg he managed to reach
the pedal and to tread it. He looked across
at Clothilde. " I 'm pretty near as bad as the
fiddler," he said; "but when I 'm nervous

94

THE WONDERFUL

WHEEL

nothing puts me to sleep like running the
wheel; and that night when the storm came
up and I saw that it was n't waking you, I
knew the sound of the wheel would n't wake
you either, and when I found I could make it
go, and kind of play I was well and at work, I
was as happy as a youngster. One of the
shutters blew open and my lamp went out,
and it was just like old times with the wheel
whirling in the dark, and no light but its own.
I did n't hear you come to the door; and the
next day when the doctor brought you in, and
I told you about the paint, I supposed you 'd
seen my well leg down there treading the pedal,
so I did n't say anything about that. Now are
you satisfied that it 's all me,- and paint ? "
Clothilde nodded her puzzled head. " De
bon Dieu 'e make yo' t'ink it is all yo', any'ow," she said, "bud I t'ink me dat he he'p
yo' a heap, else w'y by daylight are yo' always
wantin' me to do de treadin' faw yo'?"
Giacomo got to his crutch again. "You 're
mighty hard to corner, Clothilde," he said,
laughing; "but if you notice you '11 see that
I work to better advantage by standing than
by trying to lie down and to sit up and to
stand all at the same time. That 's what you

THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

95

might call working three ways for Sunday,don't you think so, Troululu ?"
The fiddler did not notice. She was sitting
very quiet, grinding the empty coffee-mill,
and singing " Tournez loujours," while she
thought out some problems of her own. Giacomo's glance lingered on the little face that
was so vitally keen, and on the intelligence of
the big intense eyes, and he told himself that
he must find some new plan and place for living before she was old enough to understand
what people believed of him here. Clothilde's
stubborn faith that the bon Dieu had been of
direct help about the wheel showed only too
plainly how other folks would cling to their
ideas. Potosi people had disliked him in the
first place because he had been so unsociable,
and now that they thought him possessed of
evil magic, he might just as well give up and
go away. He wondered if in some new place
he could train himself to be enough like every
one else to make friends for the fiddler. His
good little wife would have made them,--it
was in that way that he and Troululu would
always miss her most of all. The fiddler
broke through his thoughts with a question
which startled him, it came so fitly.

96

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

" Papa," she said, "what does it mean, 'oodooed? Clothilde said that; she said, 'Would
peopl' care ver' much if I 'oodooed dat ole
cat ?'"
The fiddler's mimicry was unconscious but
perfect. Clothilde turned a deep crimson.
"I did n' know Troululu 'ear dat," she said.
"I say dat to de doctor cause 'e scold me faw
goin' into de empty yard to drive Trascan
'ome. Bud she 'ear everyt'ing, an' it look like
she goin' to remember her of everyt'ing clear
till she die. It was two t'ree weeks back I
say it."
" It 's a word we '11 not speak here," the
potter said. " I 've used it too, but I reckon if
we drop it altogether she '11 forget, if we don't
keep her in mind by forbidding her when she
says it. I don't want her to know that word."
"What does it mean, papa ?" the fiddler demanded, leaving her coffee-mill to come closer.
"Don't talk to Clothilde, talk to me."
"The best I can tell you is scared," said
Giacomo. "Clothilde wanted to know if people would mind if she scared the cat,- was n't
that it, Clothilde ?"
"Yas," began Clothilde; then she stopped
treading the wheel and lifted her hand. "W'at

THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

97

is dat ? " she asked. She was always the first
to notice any sound outside.
The potter bent his head and listened. They
could hear the distant rush of many feet, that
grew louder and nearer and mingled itself
with shouts and cries.
"What can have happened?" the potter
asked.
Something crashed against the window and
fell inside. It was a brick, and it answered
him. Another followed it, and another and
another. Giacomo swept the baby up under
his arm and ran with her to the room that was
stacked full of pots. "Stay there or they '11
kill you," he told her as he thrust her behind
the door. " Now help me get the wheel in
there, it 's what they 're after," he said, leaping back to Clothilde, "and you 'll stay with
them while I stand outside the door." They
ran across the room with the wheel between
them and shoved it in among the pots.
" Don' shut the door," cried Clothilde, "stan'
wid it open an' we '11 chunk dem wid de pots.
See, I '11 take de baby far back in one corner
w'ere we 'ave make a little place faw play, far
back."
She crawled off with the fiddler,
grinding over and between the pots.
7

98

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

Giacomo hurled a pot at a man who was
aiming a brick at him from the outer door,
and the man jumped back. There was a great
shout of " Hoodoo! Hoodoo! Hoodoo!" The
wind sometimes shrieked like that around the
pottery, but this was deeper and morefierce.
There were angry men outside, men who
were ready to strike down the potter if he
stood between them and his wheel, yet their
fear of the wheel and all that came from it
rose through their anger. Clothilde crawled
back to her uncle's elbow and would not be
sent away. Their thin pale faces were clear
and firm as white stone against the shadowy
background of the ranks of pots. The bricks
kept flying through the windows and the door,
shattering queer grinning idols and homely
baking-dishes and the slender terra-cotta vases
whose lines had haunted Giacomo until he
worked them out in clay; but whenever a man
came near to door or window, and a pot went
whizzing out at him, the man dodged aside
and then ran away from it as if he were
running from a ghost.
" That 's the advantage of being a hoodoo,"
Giacomo said between his teeth. "A-ah !"
A brick fell just short of him and crushed a

THE FLOWER-POTS

TAKE PART

99

pot which had rolled to his feet. " Stand well
behind me, Clothilde," he said, " or crawl back
and keep that child from screaming."
He glanced down at her an instant, and
while his eyes were turned a man bent into
the d,-rway ready to throw. Clothilde saw
him and sprang a step forward, flinging a pot.
"I don' stan' behin' nobody till deir bricks is
gone," she cried. "Yo' Philipe Gomez, yo'
dare to say I make de lightnin' strike yo' boat!
Yo' t'ink de bon Dieu let a little girl fire de
lightnin' w'en she don' even know 'ow it get
in de sky ?"
The man stood quite still, merely dodging
the pot. H is hands were empty, but he clenched
one of them and shook it at Clothilde. "Yo'
did turn de lightnin' ag'in' my schooner," he
cried; "I saw yo' comin' back from de sho'.
An' what faw did yo' learn to run dat w'eel
but to do harm, an' w'at faw did yo' go into de
empty yard dere but to put a hoodoo on de
place, so dat w'en a man sleeps dere overnight
he dies ? Yo' t'ink we don' know w'at go on,
but we know; we know w'en de doctor who
is yo' frien' take de man out an' bury 'im in de
Yo' was a
night w'en 'e t'ink nobody see.
harmless littl' girl w'en I brought yo' down

Ioo

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

from Cypress Creek, an' w'en I see yo' in de
store an' on de street I say, ' Pore littl' t'ing,
she goin' to 'ave bad luck,' an' I never t'ought
dat yo' would learn de knowledge of de w'eel
an' spread de bad luck worse dan ever he dared
spread it." He took a step toward them, making the sign of the cross. " Come on! Come
on! Come on!" he shouted to the men outside. " Are yo' skeered of de w'eel w'en yo'
Yo' got to he'p me
can cross yo'se'ves?
now to break de w'eel or dey 'll put de hoodoo onto everyt'ing !"
Clothilde rushed out from under Giacomo's
arm, her eyes flaming, a pot in either hand.
"Yo' dare to call dem strong men ag'in' my
uncle wid his leg not yet cure' !" she cried out.
Yo' dare to try to break his w'eel w'en de bon
"
Dieu put de light on it because my uncle is
so good ! Dat is wa't for de w'eel shine like
dat: it shine because my uncle sing to 'is baby
an' hurt nobody an' never scold. It is de bon
Dieu dat has de light an' de lightnin', an' 'e
put dem w'ere 'e please; an' if 'e put de lightnin' on yo' boat an' de still white light on de
w'eel, it is because 'e know de bad an' de
good-" She stopped a moment, for her words
stumbled on one another as they crowded

THE FLOWER-POTS

TAKE PART

IOI

through her lips, and her breath was troubled.
"An' de bon Dieu don' want no girls like
me to he'p 'im wid de lightnin'," she repeated,
"an' I don' know w'at lies yo' tell 'boud a dead
man, cause dere ain't not'ing in de empty place
but a cat, an' de bon Dieu put de light on
my uncle's w'eel because my uncle is so good."
"Come back here, Clothilde," the potter
called. He could not leave the wheel and the
baby, but the red spots which had not risen
before burned in his cheeks. "Come back
here, and don't move from behind me, and I '11
break the head of the man that comes a step
nearer, and they all know it. Don't waste
any words on them. We have pots here, and
they 're better than words. The wheel made
'em, and they '11 take care of the wheel. Ah,"
he cried to Philipe Gomez, "you think my
wheel belongs to the devil, and yet you try to
fight it when this room is full of the pots it
Come back here, Clothilde, and
has made.
you, Philipe Gomez, get outside my door."
Clothilde moved from between them, but
she did not go back. Gomez stood at bay,
courage and anger wrestling with the superstition that pulled back on him and made his
legs shake with fear. All the shouting had
7*

102

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

died away outside. The men dared not follow
Gomez into the house; their bricks were gone,
and they stood huddled by the windows listening, and the only sound that came to them
while Giacomo waited for Gomez to move or
to speak was the wild screaming of the fiddler
from back among the pots.
"What ?"
Every man of them turned with a start.
They had not seen the doctor coming down
the road, but he had seen their faces, and he
hurried in among them with a grim-looking
smile. "So you 've come," he said. "Thought
it was time to see if Barse had got well of his
hurt, did you ? Very neighborly you 've been
-- what put you in mind of this little surprise
party ? "
The men glowered back at him. There
were narrow-browed Creoles and lazy blueeyed poor whites of English blood, and roughfeatured foreign sailors who had run aground
in this tiny quiet harbor; but all their faces
had the same marks of passion half controlled
or paralyzed by fear of the potter's gift of
harm.
" You-all need n't start out to twit us, Doc,"
one of the poor whites answered sullenly; " it

THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

Io3

won't be healthy for you. You're a little too
took up with these-hyar hoodoos. You-all
did n't know you was seed when you stole out
by night an' buried the man that was hoodooed to death over yonder." He jerked his
thumb toward the empty house which was
hidden by the pottery. "You did n't know
that me an' Jim Tardy seed you when you
first went into the house. We was restin' an'
smokin' our pipes on yon side the empty yard,
an' we heard the groanin' an' slipped into the
bushes to listen, 'cause we reckoned there was
something wrong, an' we seed you-all come
out this door, an' come by, an' stop an' listen,
an' walk in like you owned the whole ground
an'war n't afeard. An' then we saw you come
a-slyin' out as white as a rag, an' we waited
till you come a-sneakin' back with a lot o'
things, an' there ain't one of us but thinks you
made a good fight to save the pore creetur,
an' you need n't be skeered for yoreself--"
"Stop!" the doctor said, in a loud, slow
voice. The taunting look had gone from his
face, and it was full of wrath. " Do you know
what you 've brought on yourselves ?" he
asked. "Do you know what was the matter
with the man I found in the house ?"

104

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

"Hoodooed," several voices muttered.
"Hoodooed !" the doctor echoed, and his
tone had a touch of pity; "yes, hoodooed, if
you like the word. The big black hoodoo
did it. It comes sometimes in this country to
clear the world of such poor fools as youonly, God help us, it don't stop with the fools.
Do you know why I stayed with that man all
day and told nobody, and buried him alone at
night? He had run away from a ship in
quarantine at the islands,-- he had just enough
strength to tell me,- and he rowed here with
the sickness coming on him, and crawled
ashore and found that empty house to die in.
I took care of him, and buried him, and purified the house and myself, and told only those
who had to know and could be trusted. They
thought as I did, that the danger would die
with him, and there would be no panic and no
fear. Much good it does to try to keep the
like of you out of danger. You've followed
and spied and watched a yellow-fever case.
You don't like the sound of it, do you? It 's
a little worse, I reckon, than you think Barse
can do with his wheel. You were too full of
your hoodoo business to be thinking of fever,
but now you '11 think of it-"

He paused.

THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

105

The crowd had scattered like leaves before a
storm. The scream of "Fever !" came back
to him from men rushing along the street and
swaying from side to side as if in a frenzy of
pain.
"Stop !" the doctor shouted; "'
you 've got
to hear me! Stop, all of you! Stop! Stop !"
Only cries and curses answered him as the
panic swept on, gathering new voices as blinds
were thrown open, and people came running
out of their sleepy, shadowy houses into the
glare of sunlight. Only one man out of the
mob had stayed. Philipe Gomez was standing with Giacomo and Clothilde at the pottery
door.
" If you 're keeping your head," the doctor
said to him, excitedly, "there '11 be work for
you to-day. We 've got to keep these people
from refugeeing into the country and spreading the fever broadcast. Can you make them
understand that the infection is already in
them, if it 's going to be, and they can't get
away from it?"
"I can try," said Gomez, "but de terror is
on dem." He swept his arms toward the empty
street. They all looked at one another, under
the great dread that threatened them. After

io6

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

a moment, Gomez gave himself a sharp, despairing fling and ran down the road.
" You '11 go back to Cypress Creek to-day,
my little nurse," Giacomo said to Clothilde.
He had been silent since the doctor had spoken
to the men; but thoughts were flashing as
swift and clear as messages through his mind.
"After all she 's done for me, to have anything
happen to her," kept singing itself behind all
the other thoughts. He was not troubled for
the fiddler. She was a part of himself, and
they would stay where they were, and live or
die as it happened, and show that they had no
fear. But something crossed his eyes and
clouded them with softness as he thought of
Clothilde and her trustful little mother, who
had sent her to him into all the hardship of
unfriendliness and suspicion and attack, and
now, perhaps, of death. The doctor could say
what he would about spreading the fever, but
Clothilde should go back to Cypress Creek.
"For, if I were her mother," Giacomo thought,
"I 'd rather have her back with me and take
care of her, and run the risk of all dying together than to feel that I 'd sent her away
among as good as strangers, and she 'd died
there. Yes," he said aloud, "you'll see your

THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

10o7

little mother to-night, and I reckon you '11 be
pretty glad."
"She 'll be mighty glad to see yo' an' de
baby," Clothilde answered, her face lighting up.
The potter set his lips. " We're not going,"
he said. " There will be plenty of people yet
to think I had a hand in this, and I can't refugee from it. I 've got to face whatever
comes."
"Folderol!" said the doctor. "But you
must refugee up in the woods, where you '11
be near to nobody. You don't want to go to
Cypress Creek. Hard to say it, and I don't
want to scare you, little Santa Claus; but
there 's a chance for you to have the fever from
being next door to that man, and you 're not
the one to want to take it home. I don't think
you '11 have it, for the wind was the other way,
and I did everything I could; but it 's not a
risk to play with."
"But she must n't be sick away from her
mother," Giacomo put in hoarsely.
Both men looked at Clothilde, and she stood
between them with her head downcast and
her cheeks fading. Cypress Creek with its
quiet and its love seemed crying out for her.
She could see her mother hurrying from the

Io8

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

low doorway of home with hands outstretched
and shining eyes, and she could feel herself
caught into the swift, long, warm embrace
that mothers give to children coming home.
Even death would be so easy if her mother
held her fast and Father Henri pointed a
bright way for her through all the darkness.
Uncle Giacomo was very good and very dear,
but he did not know all that Father Henri
did. She clenched her brown hands at her
sides, and her tears brimmed over, but still
she did not raise her head.
The doctor
reached out and touched her tenderly. In
the silence they could hear the fiddler screaming in untiring rage.
"Ah," Giacomo broke out, "she has to go.
I can't have anything happen to her after all
she 's done for me; and she has been more
patient than I have with the fiddler."
With a little heartbroken cry Clothilde
threw her arms about his neck. "I won't leave
de fiddler," she sobbed, "w'en maybe she '11
be sick too, an' I won't take de fever to my
mama. I--I--"
She drew herself away
from him and dashed the tears out of her eyes.
"I--I I '11 jus' go an' get 'er out of de hole I
drop 'er in to keep 'er safe."

THE FLOWER-POTS TAKE PART

o9

The doctor bent and brushed the dust of
broken pots from his shoe. "I thought I
knew her," he muttered. Giacomo said nothing; there was too much sorrow in his
thoughts.

CHAPTER IX
THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

HE fiddler had been wildly
anxious to leave the security
of the pots, but she was far
too angry to walk, so she came
back kicking and screaming in
Clothilde's arms. When they reached Giacomo, Clothilde swung her to and fro beside
him, trying to put her upon her feet, but the
small legs were possessed by stubborn limpness, and all that Clothilde could do was to
let her sink gradually into a formless bundle
of indignation upon the floor. Giacomo
reached down to pet the little bundle with its
gasping breath and tear-stained face.
The doctor looked on with unusual sympathy. "Got enough temper for a town," he
said; "but it was pretty good of her to stay
where you put her. Where was she ? "
"But," exclaimed Clothilde, "she had to

IIO

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

III

stay! She was back in de pots. I 'ad make
a littl' hole dere, me, deep like a well, faw
play. I put 'er into it, so," - she reached
down her arms,-" and she is not yet enough
tall to come out by 'erself. Dat keep 'er safe."
"You -- bad - mechante -- Clothilde,"
sobbed the fiddler, whose heart had melted to
a fresh gush of weeping under Giacomo's caresses; "you - did n't - come in too -- like
- always. I did n't told you you could go
away,- I was - afraid." She wiped her eyes
on her worn old dress, leaving red dust-tracks
across her face, and sobbed a little longer
tremulously but without tears. Then she
lifted her head and looked about her, making
wide eyes of reproof at all the broken things
which strewed the floor. "Who did it, papa?"
she asked.
"Just some men," her father answered.
"They played a very rough play here, worse
than you and Clothilde, when you build a
tower too high, out of pots."
"What for did they talk so loud? " the fiddler asked, looking straight into his eyes. " I
heard them talk too loud, papa, and Clothilde
talked too loud, and you talked too loud, papa,
and I was afraid. What for was I afraid ? "

1I2

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

Giacomo did not answer. He was bending
above her, stroking her hair, and wondering
what to say, when she noticed his crutch rising
beside her. Some dimples danced into her
face, under the red dust. She made a sudden
spring and caught the two sides of the crutch
and climbed into the foothold that was made
where they joined. Giacomo nearly lost his
balance, for she had taken him unawares.
Clothilde jumped to steady him, and the doctor picked Troululu off the crutch.
" You little crab ! " he cried, holding her over
his head, "you're out of mischief now, for a
little while, I reckon." He kept her aloft in
punishment while he turned to the potter. " If
it 's decided that all of you stay on here, I
must get along; I 've got to see how many
sane men there are left in town, and what can
be done."
"I wish I could help," Giacomo said.
''You may before we 're through," answered
the doctor. He looked at Troululu, who was
staring down at him.
" What are you going to do with me ? " she
asked.
He lowered her and gathered her suddenly
into his arms; but when he had kissed each

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

113

dimple free of the red dust, he dropped her
like a shot, turned, and went striding off along
the white shell road that echoed to his steps.
The fiddler was a little statue of wonder.
"The doctor kissed me," she said to Giacomo.
"What for ?" She had no memory of ever
being kissed, except by her father and Clothilde. Giacomo only stooped and kissed her
again, but she paid no attention. "What for
did he kiss me?" she repeated. "Does he
love me ?"
",Yes," her father said, "I reckon he loves
you, little fiddler."
The fiddler ran rapturously across to Clothilde. "Did you see the doctor kiss me?"
she cried. "He kissed me so, and so,"-she
patted the war-paint on her cheeks,-"just
the way my little angels kiss me. Papa kisses
me, and you kiss me, and the doctor kisses
me, and three, four, nine little angels kiss me,
because I am so good. Papa, why don't everybody kiss me when they see me on the street,
and what makes the children run away ? "
" Dey shall not run away no mo'," Clothilde
declared. " I will tell dem, me, jus' de way I
tole Philipe Gomez --"
"Hush," said the potter; "I 'm going to
8

114

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

make the two of you a set of real dishes for
play, if you clear all the bricks and broken stuff
out of this place and put it in order again."
He walked slowly across to his bed, and when
Clothilde had straightened it for him, he lay
down, looking spent with fatigue. "Little
nurse," he said to her, " I 'd give all I ever hope
to have, if you were out of this and safe with
your mother,- remember that of your hoodoo
uncle, won't you, whatever happens? But
seeing you 're here"-he touched her dress
lightly with his hand-" seeing you 're here, I
wish you 'd just tell your bon Dieu that I thank
him for sending me such a comfort,- and, little Clothilde, keep my fiddler happy."
Clothilde felt a choking in her throat. "'Uncle
Giacomo, yo' ain't sick, are yo'?" she asked.
"No, dear," the potter answered, " I 'm not
sick, thank God; only tired." He drew her
down to him and kissed her. Then he turned
and closed his eyes.
Clothilde stole away and began groping
about the floor for the wreckage of things
which had been friends to her since she came
to the pottery. The many-colored bits of
earthenware swam before her eyes and sometimes seemed to be rising out of reach. She

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

I15

kept pausing in anger at herself. Up at
Cypress Creek, it was her mama's boast that
Clothilde never cried, and now she seemed to
have tears in her eyes all of the time. Troululu, not finding her good company, soon stole
away to the yard, and there, in the sunshine
and the stillness, her baby voice took up the
words which she had heard outside, when she
was screaming in the well of pots. It seemed
to Clothilde that for hours and hours the child
kept singing, "Hoodoo! hoodoo! hoodoo!
hoodoo !" At last Giacomo put his hand to his
ears. Clothilde started to call her, but Giacomo
murmured, "Leave her alone; she is happy."
The doctor looked in again that evening to
tell them how the day had passed. He was
disgusted and disheartened, for the fear of
fever still kept people beyond all reason. The
village authorities had little power and less
purpose, and refugees had been streaming
out of town by every road. Those who did
not go were not staying from courage, but
from the worst fear of all, a vacillating fear
that had not even the strength for escape.
"I 'm surprised at Gomez, though," the doctor said; "he 's been as cool as--Clothilde,
and I reckon, from a word he dropped, that

Ii6

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

she had something to do with it. He talked
to those folks like a preacher; did a lot more
good than I could, though it was little enough."
Clothilde was keeping the fiddler out of
mischief by making shadow pictures on the
wall, and for a little while the two men watched
the pictures affectionately.
"You see," said Giacomo, "she gave him
her ideas about the wheel. I could tell it was
striking pretty deep from the queer look of
his face as he stood there, wanting to go ahead
but not daring to for fear he was making a
mistake about who owned the light. Queer
how the hoodoo notion makes a fool of a man.
Gomez is naturally mighty pious and mighty
brave, and my name 's not Giacomo any more
if he don't begin to show it now there 's real
danger on hand."
" Well," said the doctor, "if he 's lost the
hoodoo notion it 's not because I 've told him
that you painted your wheel with luminous
paint "- he always drawled the word "luminous" contemptuously. "I 've made that little statement to all the people in town, and
their minds have shed it just the way a duck
sheds water; but if little Santa Claus gets to
talking to them, maybe - " He jumped from

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

117

the edge of the bed where he had been sitting.
"Well, well, there are plenty of people beside
you to be thinking of now, but we '11 see."
"Yes," said Giacomo, "we 'll see." They
shook hands gravely, and the doctor patted
Clothilde on the shoulder and kissed the fiddler. All of them except the fiddler knew
that without a word they had promised one
another the best strength and endurance that
was in them if the great dread came true.
The fiddler threw herself across her father's
knees and hugged them. "He kissed me
again, the doctor did," she exulted. "Two
times to-day he kissed me ! Where did he
find so many kisses for me, and what made
him have his goodness on his face? "
" Because you 're the best of all the babies,
Troululu," the potter answered, as he had
answered many other questions many times
before.
The next morning quarantine had been declared against Potosi in answer to messages
which the doctor had sent out. The few slow
trains which crept along the coast-line in those
days passed without stopping, and the trading-schooners swung idly at anchor in the
blue, breeze-kissed channel, or nosed against
8*

I18

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

the straggling piers that fringed the beach.
Out of the hot, dusty September sky a blackness settled over the little town. People
scarcely ventured into the streets, and every
one knew that in the night a woman had
knocked frantically at the doctor's door, and
that he had gone with her and had not come
away. He left a word at the pottery as he
went. Clothilde found it and it read, "Jim
Tardy down with the fever. Started to run
away this afternoon, but came back sick tonight. You'll not see me again unless you
get it yourselves."
After that morning the days followed one
another silently at the pottery. Even Troululu's ceaseless chatter sounded small and
pitiful, and did not seem to break through the
hush which pressed in upon them from outside. The leaves of the China trees kept
fluttering from the branches and drifting
hither and yonder in ragged, capricious flocks,
like children, but nothing else was astir in
the empty streets. The way to the graveyard was not near to the pottery, or they
would have seen more passers, for Clothilde
heard of death after death as she went on her
errands in the village. The grocer was most

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

I19

given to talking to her, but she noticed that
after the first he told the deaths listlessly, as
if they had grown commonplace, and he was
no longer full of questions about her uncle and
herself and the pottery. It was as if nothing
mattered to him any more; and one day when
the store was shut, and Clothilde knocked
without rousing any one, the first thought that
crossed her mind was that he had finally lost
interest even in selling his goods; but the
next moment she heard a voice moaning inside the door. She stood quite silent, thinking what she ought to do, for she had already
tried the latch, and it was locked. Then the
rhythm of swift walking came along the street,
and, looking up, she saw the doctor hurrying
toward her, and waving her from him with
his hands. "Not yet, not yet, little Santa
Claus," he called; "we don't need you yet."
His voice had all of its strong emphatic comfort, but his face was drawn with deep lines
of care. Clothilde moved away reluctantly.
In the instant she had stood there a vision
had come to her of making an entrance to the
fever-stricken man, and saving his life. She
did not feel in the least afraid, only pitiful for
the moaning, and almost exultant in her op-

I20

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

portunity. It was a wild, childish dream, yet
she knew that if she could do something like
that people would not think she was a hoodoo
any more. She walked slowly, looking back
over her shoulder, and she saw the doctor set
himself against the door and force it from its
weak hinges. Some one must have taken
him word that there was a sick man inside,
for he had not paused an instant, but just before he went inside he called to Clothilde
again.
" How 's your uncle ? " he asked.
"Well!" Clothilde answered. "He don'
use 'is
crutch no mo'."
"Good," said the doctor, and hurried into
the house.
That night an oyster-shell struck the pottery door sharply. Giacomo opened it and
peered against the dark.
" Can you leave your fiddler with Clothilde
and come and nurse Philipe Gomez?" asked
the doctor's voice. "He 's been working
night and day, and now he 's down himself.
He says he 's willing to have you come, and
there 's no one else."
"All right," said Giacomo.
"Quick !"called the doctor. "No time to

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

121

waste, and I must tell you what to do as we

go."
" All right," Giacomo said again, but he
stood quite still, and put his hand up to his
head. " Clothilde," he said.
" It is not right!" Clothilde cried vehemently; " dey 'ave done not'ing faw yo'."
"
No, papa, it 's not right," the fiddler
echoed. The sound of the shell had wakened
her, and she was sitting up straight and fierce
in her bed, although she did not know what
was going on.
Giacomo snatched her up and kissed her
with a passion of tenderness. " It 's for you,
for you, for you," he whispered, carrying her
to Clothilde. "It 's for her, Clothilde," he
said aloud; "and you 'll keep her here, and
not try to see or hear from me unless she is
sick or you are sick." He stopped a moment,
with his clear deep eyes searching Clothilde's
steady face. " Little Clothilde," he went on,
" I think the good God will take care of youbut listen. Every day that you 're both well,
hang Trascan's red cage in the window of
your room, and every night put a lamp there.
I '11 come in sight, and then I '11 know."
" Quick ! " the doctor called.

122

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

Giacomo kissed Clothilde on the forehead,
and bent down toward the fiddler. She threw
herself round his neck, and clung to him so
that it took his strength to unclasp her arms.
As he hurried out and along the road with the
doctor he could hear her screaming for him to
come back.
"Little Santa Claus '11 soon pacify her," the
doctor said.
" Of course," Giacomo answered in a short
voice.
He could scarcely speak when the
fiddler was begging him to come and he was
going away from her. He looked back once.
Light streamed through the pottery windows
between the weird black figures he had shaped,
and Clothilde's silhouette still guarded the
doorway with the fiddler huddled against her
heart. The potter turned towards the darkness again, swallowing hard, but thanking
God for Clothilde. With her to care for his
fiddler he could go out and help these people
who had hated him, and if he lived they would
be his friends and the fiddler's friends forever,
and if he died Clothilde would take the fiddler
home to Cypress Creek and there would be
children to play with her and women to care

THE WINGS OF THE BLACK FEAR

123

for her, better than he, perhaps, in spite of all
he liked to say against them; and there would
be so much love all about her that she would
never miss his love nor know that it had been
the greatest love of all. His little fiddler,
who had never been an hour away from him,
would slowly forget the pottery and the long
nights when the wheel had glowed and he had
sung to her. She would forget to call his
name when she was frightened, or when she
was happy - quickly, very quickly, she would
even forget his face.
"Doctor," he asked huskily, "are most of
them dying with the fever?"
"Not a very large per cent.," the doctor
answered. "All the hot wet weather has made
the place ripe for it, but it 's not a very virulent
type.
The trouble is, these people do so
many imprudent things, and they keep one
another excited and frightened. You must insist on absolute quiet for Gomez; don't let
him lift a hand."
Giacomo straightened himself in the dark
and smiled at his own borrowing of sorrow.
He made up his mind that he would neither
die nor be sick, and a sudden buoyancy went

124

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

through him as he realized that he was walking off through the night in comradeship with
a man who trusted him.
" Doctor," he said, " my head has been back
with those children, so far, but now I 'm ready
to take exact orders. I 've never nursed yellow fever, and I want to know all that's to be
expected and all that 's to be done.

CHAPTER X
THE LONELINESS OF TROULULU

ONG after darkness had closed
behind the potter, Clothilde
stood in the doorway hugging
the fiddler close and closer in
her arms. The empty silence
of the room seemed harder to face than the
great breathing loneliness of the star-dusk in
which the fiddler's piercing " Pa-pa! Pa-pa!"
echoed faintly from the distance and was gone.
At last the fiddler fell into wordless sobbing
and Clothilde went inside with her and closed
the door.
It seemed as if they could never go to sleep.
Troululu lay with her great eyes full of mystery staring at the little lamp up on the shelf,
She had met
or roaming along the walls.
the first defeat of her life and she was pondering it, so that her longing for Giacomo was
not as great at first as her wonder that he
125

126

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

could have gone when she was crying for
him. Clothilde lay down beside her and reached
a protecting arm over the little figure that was
so absolutely stirless that again and again she
lifted her head to see if sleep had not touched
the solemn eyes. But the gaze she intercepted
held no token of wavering, and it made the
loneliness seem more lonely, for it awed Clothilde, and she did not dare to gather the fiddler
up close to her again and kiss and comfort
her as she would have comforted one of her
own little sisters. If the fiddler had kept on
crying it would have seemed more human and
less sad.
The fiddler sighed at last, a long, weary
sigh. Clothilde bent hoveringly over her,
whispering, " My po' che'rie."
" Is Papa coming pretty soon ?" the fiddler
asked.
" No, he can'd come," Clothilde answered,
"not ver' soon. He has gone to take care of
a man dat is sick, an' 'e can'd come back."
"What made him go away and not come
when I called ?"
" He had to go, po' littl' che'rie, de po' man
was so sick," Clothilde murmured, passing an
arm under the baby's shoulders and looking

THE LONELINESS OF TROULULU

127

down at her with tender eyes. "He had to
go, po' cherie," she repeated softly, "but Clothilde don' 'ave to go, an' Clothilde will take
good care of yo' till 'e come 'ome."
The fiddler drew herself away and sat up
to listen, for some night sound had caught her
ear. "Papa!" she called in sweet bird-notes;
"Papa !"
"He can'd 'ear yo', che'rie," Clothilde said.
"Papa!" the fiddler called again, "Papa!
Papa!"
Clothilde could not endure the child's pleading face and voice. "Don' call 'im," she
begged; "he is so far, far off wid de po' sick
man. He has gone w'ere 'e cannot come."
The fiddler looked up at her with a child's
strange calm. "Is my papa dead?" she
asked.
The older child shivered back from her.
SYo'saw 'im walk right oud de house yo'se'f,
Troululu," she cried. "Yo' know ver' well
he is not dead. W'y, my po' fetite, w'at faw
yo' ask if 'e is dead ? "
"My mama is dead," Troululu answered,
"'cause papa said so. Papa said I had a
mama up in the blue, blue sky, and then I
called, 'Mama! mama! mama!' and she

128

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

did n't come, and papa said she could n't come
'cause she was dead; and whenever I called
her he let me play horse with his mustaches
'cause she could n't come. And now my papa
won't come. Is he going to climb and climb
and climb up through the dark, and be with
my mama when the sky gets blue? "
Clothilde caught up the words and held
them in her memory. If anything should
happen to Giacomo they would be good to
use again; but the thought of how soon she
might have to use them was more than she
could bear. "Oh, Troululu, yo' papa ain'
dead," she sobbed; "po' littl' Troululu, 'e ain'
dead at all."
The fiddler's wide eyes slowly brimmed with
tears. " He - would n't -- come," she said.
"'E will come, po' littl' che'rie," Clothilde
sobbed again, "'e will come."
" But I called him," the fiddler repeated, as
if that settled everything; "I called himand he- did n't come."
"'E will come," Clothilde answered; and
softly, over and over again, she said it, until
she saw the kind dark shadows of sleep fluttering across the fiddler's eyes; and more and
more softly she kept on saying it, until it grew

THE LONELINESS

OF TROULULU

I29

into one of their ceaseless songs to the wheel,
and her own black lashes drooped against her
cheeks. The flame of the little lamp burned
low, and all the things upon the shelves
seemed shrinking out of sight. The wick
glowed for a while and then sparkled out,
leaving nothing in the pottery but peaceful
breathing and sleep, and the pale light of the
wheel, which stood like a tireless watcher by
the bed.
When the morning sunshine came into the
room it found the children still asleep. Clothilde's hand was resting on the wheel, for she
had wakened once and reached out to it, feeling that the bon Dieu was very good to her since
he had not taken away its light. A beam of
the sunshine crept across the floor and touched
her face. She opened her eyes with a startled remembrance that she and the fiddler

were alone.
"Has my papa come?" asked the fiddler,
opening her eyes too, as if something had
told her that Clothilde was awake.
"Naw, 'e 'as n't come, not yet," Clothilde
answered, "an' we mus' hurry an' dress an'
get our breakfas', an' den, do yo' know w'at

we goin' to do?"
9

130

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

" Go and find him ?" asked Troululu.
"Dat would n' be no fun," said Clothilde,
"cause he would jus' say to us, ' Go back an'
take care of de 'ouse like I tole yo', w'ile I take
care of de sick man.' Naw, we goin' to make
all sort of littl' pots on de w'eel, an' yo 'll play
yo' are de papa an' I 'm de Troululu, an' yo'
say, 'Fiddler, if yo' ain' good I put yo' on de
w'eel an' make yo' into a pint cup !"
" A-a-ah, I won't play that," the fiddler cried;
"that's just a mean, little hoodoo play,-- that's
what it is, it 's a hoodoo play; you're too big
to be a little Troululu, and I want you to take
me to my papa."
"An' I will make a littl' new dish on de
w'eel," Clothilde went on, "an' put it dere by
de chimney, an call all de littl' angels to come
an' eat breakfas' wid us-"
" No," interrupted the fiddler, beginning to
sob, "they 're too me'chants, the little angels;
I don't like them any more, not any more at all.
They live up in the blue, blue sky with my
mama, and they don't bring my mama here to
see me down the chimney. I like my papa
the best. I want you to take me to my papa."
"An' de littl' angels will say, "Who make
such a good coffee ?" Clothilde persisted hope-

THE LONELINESS

OF TROULULU

131

fully, "an' I will tell dem, me, ' Littl' Troululu
always get up an' he'p me make de coffee, dat
make it so delicieux, an' dey will say,-"
"I won't drink coffee with those bad, littl'
angels," the fiddler screamed, dropping out
of bed and making for the outer door, " I 'm
going to my papa."
" But yo' can'd go, littl' fiddler," Clothilde
said, running after her and pulling her away
from the lock, "yo' can'd go, de man is too
sick, an' yo' papa don' want yo' to come, an' he
is too far, yo' papa is too far, faw yo' to go to 'im'.
" My papa is not far, I saw him lesterday,"
the fiddler said. " He 's just up in the blue
sky with my mama and three, four, nine little
angels. And I 'm going to my papa; that 's
what I 'm going to do."
"How will yo' go ?" asked Clothilde practically; " how will yo' climb into de sky widout
no wings ? De littl' angels all has nice big
wings."
" No," said Troululu, " they don't have any
wings at all, they just climb."
Clothilde pointed to the blue clay angel on
the shelf. " Don' yo' see de wings ? Everyt'ing
in de sky 'aq to 'ave wings."
"Like the birds ?" asked the fiddler, looking

132

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

up in the bright earnestness with which she
always gazed at new ideas.
"Jus' like big, w'ite birds," Clothilde answered, picking the fiddler up and beginning
to dress her.
"Who makes their wings? " the fiddler asked.
"The bon Dieu," said Clothilde.
"And does he take them off at night, like
their dresses, when he puts them to bed ? "
" Naw, dey stay on all de time," Clothilde
answered, beginning to feel a little unsteady
in the deep water of the fiddler's questions.
"Dey keep dem on jus' like de birds."
"I want the bon Dieu to make me some
wings,-why don't he ?" asked the fiddler.
" W'en yo' die," said Clothilde, fastening the
last button with a great relief; "but now le's
make de breakfas'."
The fiddler broke into another wail. " I like
my papa the best," she cried. "I don't want
any breakfast, I want some wings to fly up to my
papa. O-oh -

I like my papa the best -- I like

my papa the best - and when I called him he
didn 't come."
Clothilde looked around her in despair.
The rows of water monkeys, the vases and the
pitchers, the frog mugs and the puzzle mugs,

THE LONELINESS

OF TROULULU

133

the fighting green dragons on the upper shelf,
the blue clay angel, and the long brown alligator, gave her no idea for comforting a baby
who liked her papa best. " And he told me to
keep her happy," Clothilde thought. As she
stood there with the baby quivering and sobbing at her feet, all the little pleasures of all
the long days at the pottery came back to her,
and they all seemed now to have been so centered in Giacomo that it seemed only pitiful to
think of trying them when he was gone. And
he had never scolded, no matter what they
had injured in their play. She remembered
the day they built the high tower out of pots.
The fiddler always had the most fun with the
pots. Clothilde went to the room where she
and Giacomo had resisted the siege of the
pottery; the pots were cupped into one another
just as she had often strung azalias or jasmine
bells. She took two stacks as high as she
could carry, and, holding one against her with
each hand, went out into the yard. She made
several trips before the fiddler noticed her,
and she was building a high wall out of the pots
when the fiddler came silently beside her.
After a long time Troululu spoke. "What
for ? " she asked.
9*

134

THE WONDERFUL

WHEEL

" To see how high I can make it," Clothilde
answered.
" Can I climb on it," asked the fiddler, " up
to the sky ? "
"If we get it enough high," Clothilde
answered.
The fiddler handed her a pot and kept on
handing until Clothilde persuaded her to start
another wall alongside, so as to have one for
each foot. While she was building it Clothilde slipped away to start the fire and to
hang Trascan's bright cage in her window as
a sign that all was well.
In spite of Clothilde's constant efforts, there
was never a day that the fiddler did not plan
to go to her father, but she cried less as the
days crept along and were followed by the
slow reluctant, weeks, and Clothilde, weary
from long hours of ceaseless romping, was
thankful every night to take down the red
cage and put the lamp in its place. Sometimes she had to take the fiddler and go out
on errands, and then she always asked for
news of her uncle and of the fever, but after
the grocer who liked to talk with her was
taken sick she had to go elsewhere, and other
dealers were less communicative. Philipe Go-

THE LONELINESS OF TROULULU

135

mez recovered and Giacomo was called to
another case and then to another. When the
third man was getting better there was a
change in the way Clothilde was told of it.
She was quick to notice the new tone.
" I 'ave told yo'," she said, " dat my uncle
is so good dat his w'eel is let to shine, an' in
co'se he know de bes' how to take care of sick
peopl' w'en 'e 'as jus' been sick himself."
She went back with her heart carrying her, it
was so light. " Dese po' miserab' peopl' going
to love yo' papa now, Troululu," she said.
" I like my papa the best," said the fiddler.
"When will he come ? "
As they turned into the street toward the
pottery they saw a man walking slowly, bending over a cane. As he heard their voices
he raised his face. It was Philipe Gomez, still
thin and haggard from his sickness. He was
braving a relapse by coming out so soon, but
Clothilde did not know that.
" Don' come up to me," he said, " I ave been
wid de fever an' it is bettah faw yo' not to
come too near. I 'ave been to see if de cage
was in yo' window.'
Clothilde drew the fiddler close to her. "Is
my uncle sick ?" she asked slowly.

136

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

"Naw, 'e ain' sick," Gomez answered in the
strained bodiless voice of the very weak. " It
is de doctor. De doctor come to see my
littl' boy an' 'e fell sick in de house."
"De doctor !" Clothilde echoed. She had
never thought that the doctor could be sick,
and an unbearable pang went through her as
if his being sick now was because she had forgotten his danger. Gomez saw her lips begin
to quiver.
" Don' be skeered," he said gently in his
monotonous voice. " Wid yo' uncle dere, it
will come all right. He know all de medicine
now like de doctor 'imself."
"I tole yo', Philipe Gomez," Clothilde began, but the man's pallid face reproached her
and she faltered.
"Yo' tole me de truth," he said solemnly.
His strained features began to work like a
woman's, and his eyes suddenly filled with
tears. He stretched out his hands to Clothilde across the space between them. " I ask
yo' fawgiveness," he began, and then stood
still with the tears running drwn his cheeks
trying to say more.
"Ah," he went on at
last, "I 'ave not de words. Do not come
near, pass by me and go home."

THE LONELINESS

OF TROULULU

137

Clothilde could not answer him. She lifted
the fiddler in her arms and hurried by while
he bowed feebly above his stick and crept
along with the message of cheer to Giacomo
for which he was risking his life.
"What for did he cry ? " the fiddler asked.
" Because," Clothilde answered vaguely,
"because yo' papa is so good."
The first stir of life that Potosi had known
since the beginning of the fever came with the
knowledge of the doctor's sickness. People
could not stay quietly in their houses while he
was in danger, and they thronged round the
stores and the post-office and Philipe Gomez's
door waiting for some word. Clothilde's
friendly grocer was well again, and early next
morning he came in his turn to look for Trascan's cage in the pottery window. Clothilde
heard him call.
IHello !"
"W'at has happened?" she asked at the
door.
"Nothing," he answered. "I just came to
look for your sign. As long as you and the
fiddler are well Barse don't want to leave the
doctor a minute, except to prescribe for them
that 's sick, and the Lord knows we don't want

138

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

him to. But don't be scared, there 's not been
much dying since your uncle took hold. We
all got to feeling kind of easy, as if him an'
the doctor was a team, and now it looks like
he 's doing just as well single handed. People all feels that, and yet, as long as the old
doctor lays there -"

The grocer stopped a

minute and went on jerkily: " People 's going
wild through the streets, and even your uncle
can't stop 'em. Sick and well, they 're all
running round asking news of him, so your
uncle sent word for you to stay close inside.
Some of us will bring whatever you need and
stop and holler back and forth to you a spell
every morning."
The fiddler pulled at Clothilde's hand. "Is
he going to take me to my papa ? " she asked.
"Lord love the baby," the grocer answered;
"she 's not the only child in Potosi that 's
crying for its father; but I reckon all that 's
left of us will stand round and shout when Giacomo gets hold of her again."
" An' w'en de doctor 's well," said Clothilde.
The grocer shook his head. " If the Lord
lets the doctor live, an' if your uncle don't get
the fever, every day '11 be Sunday in this town,
we '11 be so full of praise. Don't fret, it '11 be

THE LONELINESS OF TROULULU

139

a new heaven and a new earth for Potosi folks,
an' I reckon they '11 find a way to show it."
As he turned away the fiddler burst into
tears.
" He did n't take me to my papa," she cried.
"Naw," said Clothilde, struggling with a
strange uncertain joy, "but yo' papa will come,
an' all de peopl', Troululu. Yo' never goin'
to see dem run from yo' no mo'. Dey will all
come an' play, an' yo' will be so happy, happy,
happy. Yo' will fo'get w'en Clothilde play de
hoss faw yo'."
Troululu did a strange thing instead of answering. She neither took hold of the braids
which Clothilde shook down wistfully to her,
nor brushed them angrily away. She went
across to the bed, and climbing up on it laid
her cheek upon the pillow. "I 'm so tired
without my papa," she said.
Clothilde followed her in alarm. "Are yo'
sick ?" she asked.
"I want my papa," the fiddler answered

wearily.
Clothilde felt of her head and hands, and
did not find her cold or over warm. The fiddler had never willingly lain down before in
all her life, as far as Clothilde knew, and Clo-

I40

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

thilde tried and tried to interest her in play,
but Troululu gave the same answer to everything. She was tired without her papa, and
she liked him best.
Clothilde reasoned to herself that with such
an unusual child as the fiddler loneliness might
work itself out like this, but even without the
cold dread which she could not reason away,
it would have been almost heart-breaking to
see the fiddler lying still and tired on the bed,
and Clothilde's hands were shaking when she
drew a light cover over the small feet. The
fiddler did not kick the cover off. Clothilde's
heart sank at that, and she felt again of the
child's forehead. There seemed to be nothing wrong, but the big eyes, which should
have been so eager, were veiled with drowsiness. Clothilde stole away to the window,
and looked from it without seeing anything.
If Giacomo had not sent her word to stay
inside she would have run out to find some
one to tell her what to do. If the fiddler was
not really sick, she ought not to send for
Giacomo, because that might lose the doctor's
life besides putting the fiddler in danger, and
she dared not go out and ask some one who
knew better than she to come in and look at

THE LONELINESS

OF TROULULU

141

She dropped on her knees and
the baby.
said every prayer that Father Henri had taught
her ; when they were finished she looked across
at the bed. The fiddler was sleeping still and
there was nothing she could do but say the
prayers all over several times--she wished
she knew more of them so they would not be
said so quickly. The sun's light moved across
the floor and marked the time. An hour
passed and Troululu still slept. At the end
of the second hour Clothilde could not bear
the silence any longer and she wakened her.
" Has my papa come? " the fiddler asked.
"Naw," Clothilde answered almost with a
sob.

"Tell him I cried for him," Troululu murmured, "tell him I cried for him and he did n't
come."
" I t'ink 'e will come, oh -- soon," Clothilde
choked out - " unless yo' feel rested an' want
to build mo' wall of de pots ? "
"I 'm too tired without my papa," the fiddler answered, and soon she fell asleep.
Clothilde bent over in an agony of questioning. Was it only the long weeks of loneliness, or could it be that now when all Potosi
had learned to know and to love Giacomo,

142

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

and the wonderful joy of seeing his fiddler
loved was opening for him, his little fiddler
had crept up on to the bed to lie so still because
the merciless fever had found her, too, and
she was falling sick?

CHAPTER XI
THE WHEEL

OF THE BON DIEU

HE fiddler began to sigh and
moan in her sleep. Clothilde
touched her face and found that
it had suddenly grown hot.
There was no question now.
She ran to her window and took down the
cage. " Oh, come soon ! soon !" she begged.
" Don't make me into a pint cup !" the fiddler cried out sharply. "A quart cup! A
quart cup! No, no, papa, don't put me on
the wheel !"

"Yo' ain' on de w'eel, cheirie, yo' in bed,"
Clothilde said, soothing her hands. Troululu
opened her eyes and sat up with burning
cheeks.
"Where 's my papa ?" she asked.
" He ain' come, yo' was dreamin'," Clothilde
answered. "Jus' lie down, he 's comin' prett'
soon; an' he won't put yo' on de w'eel."
143

I44

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

The fiddler let herself be put back on the
pillows, and her eyelids sank half way across
her full dull eyes, but in a moment she started
"Don't let the dreams come,
up again.
"The big black
Clothilde," she begged.
dreams run after me and put me on the wheel
-

tell them to go."

" Dey shall not run after yo'," said Clothilde; " I will sing yo' ' Tournez toujours,'
an' dey will go away."
She commenced crooning softly, and the
fiddler smiled up at her with one of those
smiles so full of meaning that they frighten us
on the faces of children. "My papa used to
sing that," she said.
Her eyes wandered again, and soon she
slept, but Clothilde dared not leave her now
to go for help. "Oh, come soon! soon !" she
implored silently. "Oh, Uncle Giacomo, yo'
littl' fiddler is so sick, an' I don' know w'at to
do. Oh, come soon ! soon! faw I don' know
w'at to do ! " She buried her head in her lap
and cried the words aloud into the folds of her
dress. " Oh, Uncle Giacomo, can'd yo' hear
me ? She 's ver' sick, an' I don' know w'at to
do !"
"Don't make me into a pint cup! Don't

THE WHEEL OF THE BON DIEU

145

make me into a pint cup! the fiddler called
out again, and when Clothilde spoke to her
she did not answer, but kept on with shrill
feverish insistence: " Oh, I '11 be good, I '11 be
good ! Don't make me into a pint cup ! Oh,
papa, I '11 be good, I '11 be good, I '11 be good !
Take me off the wheel !"
The red sunlight came streaming in through
the windows and glowed on all that the potter
loved,- his crowded shelves, his cumbered
floor, the gray, silent wheel, the black head
bowed beside the bed, and the little tossing
figure that could find no rest. The sunset
died away, and shadows stole down from the
ceiling, and out from every corner and shelf,
and gathered round the bed, but Clothilde
would not light the lamp for fear it should be
taken as a token of safety, even though it was
not in her window. She would be glad, too,
she thought, to see the wheel shine through
the dark, but a band of moonlight crossed the
shadows and rested on the wheel, hiding its
glow. Clothilde shuddered, and could not
comfort herself by remembering that the bon
Dieu sends every kind of light.
It seemed to her that the moon had been
shining a long time when she heard footsteps
I0

I46

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

along the road outside. She ran to the door,
and saw her uncle hurrying toward her.
" Oh, Uncle Giacomo, de baby !" she cried
out.

Giacomo ran past her and dropped down by
the bed. " Little fiddler," he murmured.
He felt her hot hands push him away.
"Don't make me into a pint cup!" she
screamed.
Clothilde saw him totter to his feet, and
heard him sob. It was the only punishment
he had ever even threatened, and she felt that
she would rather a thousand times be sick or
even die herself than have him hear the fiddler
crying out in fear of it. " It is de fever in her
head," she said to him.
"I know," her uncle answered quietly.
"We can have a lamp, Clothilde, now that I
am here." But as the flame flickered upon
him, his face seemed to shrink from the light,
and there was such bitter heartbreak in it that
the tears sprang to Clothilde's eyes. " Put it
on the wheel," he said. " I want to fix some
medicine. How long has she been like this?"
Clothilde told him all about the day, and he
nodded slowly as he prepared his medicines
and listened. Once or twice his hand clenched

THE WHEEL OF THE BON DIEU

147

at the thought of the hours in which he had
been needed, and Clothilde had not known.
At the end he looked up and met her eyes.
She threw herself down beside him. " Uncle
Giacomo," she sobbed, " I can'd live if de fiddler dies, I can'd, I can'd! I tried to do de
right, I tried to do w'at yo' tole me, but I
did n't know, oh, Uncle Giacomo, I did n't
know."
Giacomo lifted her, and held her close in
his arms. " My Clothilde, you did right," he
said, brokenly. "No one could have done
lovbetter. You have been so faithful -so
ing-. There will never be a way to thank
you; but, my child, next to the fiddler I love
you best of anything on earth."
She rested trembling against his shoulder,
breathing in relief. "It 'as been so lonesome," she whispered, "an' de po' littl' fiddler
- oh, Uncle Giacomo, I don' want to live if
she don' get well."
Giacomo put her gently away from him.
"Bring me some water now," he said.
"We 're all going to live and see happy days,
my child."
It is the terror and the blessing of yellow
fever that the crisis comes so soon. Toward

148

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

morning of the second night after Giacomo
Her
came home Troululu's fever ceased.
sat beside her watching the quiet sleep
father
into which she had fallen, and taking note of
every breath she breathed, for it is after the
fever that the collapse comes in which people
die. Clothilde was in her room asleep.
Just as daylight began to show the fiddler
wakened. Her face was turned from Giacomo and she did not see him at first, but
her eyes rested on the wheel. Then she
looked down at her little hands, grown thin
by even those three wasting days. "My
papa did n't make me into a pint cup," she
said weakly.
Giacomo had risen and was bending over
her. A quick tear dropped upon the small
weak hands. The fiddler raised her eyes
with the slowness of exhaustion. Wonder
and joy sprang into them. " My papa," she
cried, "you 've comed home from the blue,
blue sky."
He kissed her and held her two hands in
his, but he dared not say very much. The
doctor's constant word to him had been that
excitement was bad. " My Troululu, my little fiddler," he whispered once or twice. It

THE WHEEL OF THE BON DIEU

149

seemed selfish to have so much joy all alone,
but Clothilde was sleeping and the fiddler's
little mother could not come back to them
out of her far blue sky. He felt very sorry
for her alone in heaven and he hoped she
knew.
When Clothilde came out from her room,
the fiddler was sleeping again. "Go right
out into the village and tell the folks that we
think she's safe," Giacomo whispered, "there's
not a soul among 'em now that does n't want
to hear."
A good many days later, when he was well
enough to walk quietly over to the pottery,
the doctor said, "I hope, Barse, that you
know it was n't entirely your skill as a nurse
that saved all our last patients from the graveyard." He was very thin, and he looked years
older than when he was at the pottery before;
but there was a boyish twinkle in his eyes.
"Why, no," Giacomo answered," I supposed
it was your skill."
"Stuff," said the doctor. "And it was n't
because your wheel shines in the dark, as I am
pleased to hear the people telling me, either."
"Well, I know that," said the potter, "but
if it was n't either of us, what was it ? "

150

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

"It was the queer, natural course of the
thing," the doctor answered. " As I told you,
it was never very virulent, even at the first,
though there were lots of deaths from pure
fright, and by the time I persuaded Philipe
Gomez into sending for you, its strength was
pretty well played out; the cases were all mild."
Giacomo looked up keenly. The two were
alone, for Clothilde had the fiddler out for her
first trial of sunshine. "Did you wait for that?"
he asked.
" Huh," said the doctor, "if I did, do you
reckon I 'd say so ? "
Giacomo reached out his hand and clasped
the doctor's. " The whole town is friends and
brothers with me now," he said, " but as long
as I live, I '11 never forget the first time you
shook hands with me. I wish it was n't such
hard talking, doctor."
"Talking!" scoffed the doctor ; " if you want
any talking done, get that little Santa Claus
to do it. Perhaps you don't understand that
it was her talking brought the whole town
over."

" I think I understand everything," the potter said.
They were silent a little while, then the doc-

THE WHEEL OF THE BON DIEU

151

tor broke out in his rough, blunt way. "'Spose
you've got to send her back to her mother as
soon as the frost comes, so it's safe for her folks.
She 's not going to have the fever, and neither
are you, that's plain."
Giacomo's bright eyes grew tender. "That
poor little mother of hers," he said, " to think
of her doing without her all this time! Of
course she 's going back, but my name 's not
Giacomo any more, if she stays there all the
while. I think my sister-in-law and I will have
to share her - share and share alike. I want
a chance to give her the best time any girl in
this world ever had. I don't have much to do
it with, but she and I know each other, and I
can make her happy."
"
Sounds kind of happy now," the doctor
said. "What they up to out there?"
Giacomo opened the door and peeped into
the yard. "She 's building another wall of
pots for her and the fiddler to climb up on, up
to the blue sky," he said.
" I reckon your little crab will knock it down
before it gets too high," the doctor whispered,
motioning Giacomo to open the door wide
enough for him to see. The air was fresh
with the first crispness of autumn, and the

152

THE WONDERFUL WHEEL

sunlight glinted down upon the children at their
work.

" Three, four, nine little angels are helping
us, papa," the fiddler cried; "don't you see
their big, white wings? "
When frost came, removing the last danger
from the town, the refugees began returning,
one by one. As soon as they had been greeted,
their friends were sure to say, " Come round
with us to the pottery this evening, and look
over the queer tricks Barse has been making
on his wheel."
And on dark nights, when they went late
past the pottery, and saw the faint light
shining from the window between the black
fantastic forms, there was not a man, woman,
or child in Potosi who did not bow his head
and murmur in gratitude, " It is a wonderful
wheel. It is the wheel of the bon Dieu."

THE END.

This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
It is made in compliance with copyright law
and produced on acid-free archival
60# book weight paper
which meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper).
Preservation facsimile printing and binding
by
Northern Micrographics
Brookhaven Bindery
La Crosse, Wisconsin
2012