Part 31

'Why,' he said, 'I'm not afraid of you any more.'

'Of course not, we're friends now,' said the wind. 'That's because we joined together to do a kindness to some one. There's nothing like that for making people friends.'

'Oh,' said Sep.

'Yes,' said the wind, 'and now, old chap, when will you go out and seek your fortune? Remember how poor your father is, and the fortune, if you find it, won't be just for you, but for your father and mother and the others.'

'Oh,' said Sep, 'I didn't think of that.'

'Yes,' said the wind, 'really, my dear fellow, I do hate to bother you, but it's better to fix a time. Now when shall we start?'

'We?' said Sep. 'Are you going with me?'

'I'll see you a bit of the way,' said the wind. 'What do you say now? Shall we start to-night? There's no time like the present.'

'I do hate going,' said Sep.

'Of course you do!' said the wind, cordially. 'Come along. Get into your things, and we'll make a beginning.'

So Sep dressed, and he wrote on his slate in very big letters, 'Gone to seek our fortune,' and he put it on the table so that his mother should see it when she came down in the morning. And he went out of the cottage and the wind kindly shut the door after him.

The wind gently pushed him down to the shore, and there he got into his father's boat, which was called the Septimus and Susie, after his father and mother, and the wind carried him across to another country and there he landed.

'Now,' said the wind, clapping him on the back, 'off you go, and good luck to you!'

And it turned round and took the boat home again.

When Sep's mother found the writing on the slate, and his father found the boat gone they feared that Sep was drowned, but when the wind brought the boat back wrong way up, they were quite sure, and they both cried for many a long day.

The wind tried to tell them that Sep was all right, but they couldn't understand wind-talk, and they only said, 'Drat the wind,' and fastened the shutters up tight, and put wedges in the windows.

Sep walked along the straight white road that led across the new country. He had no more idea how to look for his fortune than you would have if you suddenly left off reading this and went out of your front door to seek yours.

However, he had made a start, and that is always something. When he had gone exactly seven miles on that straight foreign road, between strange trees, and bordered with flowers he did not know the names of, he heard a groaning in the wood, and some one sighing and saying, 'Oh, how hard it is, to have to die and never see my wife and the little cubs again.'

The voice was rough as a lion's mane, and strong as a lion's claws, and Sep was very frightened. But he said, 'I'm not afraid,' and then oddly enough he found he had spoken the truth--he wasn't afraid.

He broke through the bushes and found that the person who had spoken was indeed a lion. A javelin had pierced its shoulder and fastened it to a great tree.

'All right,' cried Sep, 'hold still a minute, sir.'

He got out his knife and cut and cut at the shaft of the javelin till he was able to break it off. Then the lion drew back and the broken shaft passed through the wound and the broken javelin was left sticking in the tree.

'I'm really extremely obliged, my dear fellow,' said the lion warmly. 'Pray command me, if there's any little thing I can do for you at any time.'

'Don't mention it,' said Sep with proper politeness, 'delighted to have been of use to you, I'm sure.'

So they parted. As Sep scrambled through the bushes back to the road he kicked against an axe that lay on the ground.

'Hullo,' said he, 'some poor woodman's dropped this, and not been able to find it. I'll take it along--perhaps I may meet him.'

He was getting very tired and very hungry, and presently he sat down to rest under a chestnut-tree, and he heard two little voices talking in the branches, voices soft as a squirrel's fur, and bright as a squirrel's eyes. They were, indeed, the voices of two squirrels.

'Hush,' said one, 'there's some one below.'