THE SICK BOY 139 



trouble came. Victor did not recover from his fever as 

 rapidly as his father, and he seems to have been overcome 

 by the sequences. 



Audubon procured a wagon and laid his boy in it and 

 traveled beside him. What a journey that must have been 

 amid the bright days of the falling leaves ! 



Audubon journeyed on through sparsely inhabited 

 woods. Two things troubled him: his lack of money, and 

 lack of a larger knowledge of wanting to do perfect 

 work. 



He talked with his sick boy. 



" Perfect work was the ideal of my father. He tried 

 to prepare me for it." 



" The woods open as we go on," we may fancy his son 

 to have said; " so it will be with life." 



" Yes, the current of the mountain stream knows the 

 way, and I am doing the best I can. To do the best one can 

 leads to a larger and higher way." 



He nursed the boy, and the forest birds came to the 

 edges of the road pines to wonder at them as they went on 

 their way. They had one consolation: the whole family 

 were one in the love and trust of each other's heart. 



It was on this perilous forest journey from Florida to 

 Louisville that a very strange incident of natural history 

 occurred. 



They came to a squatter's cabin in the woods. 



