"I will," said Harry.
"Hurrah! for the Hermit!" was the shout.
The dominie went out of the schoolroom every forenoon for half an hour
to smoke. A pretty hubbub and din there was then, you may be sure.
The day after the theft of the tawse was determined on, as soon as the
pedagogue had stumped out of the school--he wore a wooden leg from the
knee--Harry went boldly up to the desk and seized the tawse.
"What shall I do with it?" he asked a schoolboy.
"Pitch it out of the window."
"_No_," cried another, "he would get it again. Put it in the fire."
Harry did so, and covered it up with burning coals.
By and by back stumped the dominie. He held his nose in the air and
sniffed. There was a shocking smell of burning leather.
The dominie went straight to the fire, and with the poker discovered the
almost shapeless cinders of his pet tawse!
He grew red and white, time about, with rage.
"Who has done this thing?" he thundered.
No reply, and the dominie thumped on the floor with his wooden leg, and
repeated the question.
Still no answer.
"I shall punish the entire school," cried Dominie Roberts.
He stumped out again, and many of the boys grew pale with fear, and the
smaller ones began to cry.
Presently the dominie returned. In his hand he bore a long piece of a
bridle rein, and this he fashioned into a tawse in sight of the whole
school. Then he called the biggest class, and once more demanded the
name of the culprit.
No reply, but every lad in the class began to wet his hands and pull
down his sleeves.
"All hands up," was the terrible command.
The punishment was about to commence when forth stepped Harry the Hermit
into the middle of the circle.
"Stay a moment, if you please, sir," said Harry.
"You know, then, who committed the crime?" asked the dominie, sternly.
"I do; it was myself."
"And why?"
"Because the other boys wanted to, but were afraid."
"Which other boys? Name them."
"I will not."
"_Pande_, sir, _Pande_."
Five minutes afterwards Harry staggered back to his seat, pale-faced and
sick.
He sat down beside his class-mate, and was soon so far recovered as to
be able to whisper--
"How many did I have?"
"Two-and-twenty," was the reply. "I counted."
"And that new tawse is a tickler, I can tell you," said Harry.
He did not climb any trees that day going home. He could not have held
on. Nor was he able to eat much supper, but he did not tell the reason
why.
But, apart from his fondness for corporal or palmar punishment, Dominie
Roberts was a clever teacher, and Harry made excellent progress.
Autumn came round, and stormy wet days, and many a cold drenching our
hero got, both coming to and going from school. But he did not mind
them. They only seemed to render him hardier and sturdier, and make his
cheeks the ruddier.
Then winter arrived "on his snow-white car," as poets say, and often
such storms blew that even grown-up people feared to face them. But
Harry would not give in. On evenings like these John would be
dispatched to meet Harry, and many an anxious glance from the
dining-room window would his mother cast, until she saw them coming up
the long avenue, Eily always first, feathering through the snow, and
barking for very joy as she neared the house.
Sometimes the roads would be so blocked with snow, that Harry found it
far more convenient to walk along on the top of the stone fences, often
missing his feet, and getting plunged nearly over his head in a
snow-bank.
In the early part of January, 186-, I forget the exact day and date, one
of the most fierce and terrible snowstorms that old men ever remembered,
swept over the northern shires of Scotland.
When Harry left for school that morning there seemed little cause for
alarm. There was no sunshine however, and the whole sky was covered by
an unbroken wall of blue-grey cloud. Towards the forenoon snow began to
fall--a kind of soft hail like millet seeds. The ground was hard and
dry to receive it, so it did not melt.
The schoolboys tried to mould it into snowballs, but it would not
"make," it would not stick together--evidence in itself that the frost
was intense.
Gradually this soft, fine hail changed to big, dry flakes. Then the
wind began to rise, and moan around the chimneys, and go shrieking
through the leafless boughs of the ash trees and elms. The snowfall
increased in density every minute. Looking up through the falling
flakes, you could not have seen three yards.
Dominie Roberts at two o'clock began to get uneasy, and gave many an
anxious glance towards the windows, now getting quickly snowed up. So
great, too, was the frost that, though a roaring fire of wood and peats
burned on the hearth, the panes were flowered and frozen.
At half-past two it began to get rapidly dark, so the dominie dismissed
his class with earnest injunctions to those boys who had far to go, not
to delay on the road, but to hurry home at once.
It might have been thought that on an evening like this, Harry would
have been glad of companionship on the road. Not he. He went off like
a young colt, with Eily galloping round him, as soon as ever he got
outside the gate.
The wind blew right in his face, however, and the drift was whirling
like smoke right over every fence. The roads were also barricaded every
few yards with high wreaths of snow, blown off the fields and hills.
The wind blew wilder, and every minute the cold seemed to grow more and
more intense.
Harry's face and hands were blue and benumbed before he had gone a mile
and a half, Eily's coat was white and frozen hard; but on went the pair
of them, battling with the storm, Harry holding his head well down, and
keeping his plaid up over his nostrils.
Often he had to turn round and walk backwards by way of resting himself.
The snow-wreaths were most difficult to get through, the smoking drift
cutting his breath and nearly suffocating him.
So ere long his strength began to fail. Hardy though he was, Highlander
though he was, bred and born among the wild, bleak mountains, and reared
in the forests, his powers of endurance gave out.
He crouched down and took the half-frozen dog in his arms. He talked to
her as if she had been a human being, and the probability is that she
_did_ know what he said.
"Oh, Eily," he said, "I do feel tired."
The kindly collie licked his face.
"But come on," he cried, starting up again; "we must not give in. We
have only about a mile and a half to go if we cross through the wood.
We'll soon get home. Come on, Eily, come on."
In a short time he had reached the wood. It was mostly spruce and fir,
and the branches were borne half to the ground with the weight of snow
at one side, while the other was bare, and the wind tearing through
them.
He leaped the "dyke," [a stone fence] and was glad he had done so.
There was far more shelter here, and the blasts were less fierce and
cutting. He walked faster now. The wood was about half a mile wide.
Arrived at the other side, a path by a stone fence led all the way down
to his own home in the glen beneath.
He hurried on. How strange the wood looked under its mantle of snow!
But he could not see any distance ahead owing to the drift. Sometimes
the wind would catch a tree and roar through it, and for the moment he
would be almost suffocated with the smother of falling snow.
He had gone on quite a long way, when he suddenly came to a clearing.
He had never seen it before; never been here before. Then the awful
truth flashed at once across the boy's mind--_he was lost_!
How long he wandered in the wood before he sank exhausted beside a tree
he never could tell.
Night and darkness came on, the storm roared through the wood with
ever-increasing force, but Harry knew nothing of it. He slept--slept
that sleep that seldom knows a waking in this world.
And the drift banked up--the cruel drift--up around him. It hid his
legs, his arms, his shoulders, and at last his head itself.
Still the snow fell and the wind blew. It blew with a moaning,
whistling sound through the tall pine-trees, as it does through rigging
and cordage of a ship in a gale. It blew with a rushing noise through
the closer-branched spruce trees, and ever in a momentary lull you might
have heard the frozen tips of the branches knocking together as if glass
rattled.
It was a terrible night.
As usual on stormy evenings, stalwart John had gone to meet young Harry;
but he kept the road. It never struck him that the boy would have
ventured through the wood in such a night.
Harry's parents were sitting in the parlour anxious beyond all
expression, when suddenly the quick, sharp, impatient bark of the collie
rang out high above the howling wind.
In she rushed whining when the door was opened. But out she flew again.
"Oh, come quickly," she seemed to say, "and save poor young master!"
Mr Milvaine well knew what it meant. Five minutes after, with lanterns
and poles, he and two trusty servants were following close at the honest
dog's heels.
Up the hill by the fence side, up and up and into the wood, and never
did the faithful animal halt until she led them to the tree where she
had left the boy.
For a moment or two now she seemed lost. She went galloping round and
round the tree; while with their lanterns Mr Milvaine and his servants
looked in vain for poor Harry.
But back Eily came, and at once began to scrape in the snow. Then
something dark appeared, and Eily barked for joy.
Her master was found.
Was he dead? They thought so at first. But the covering of snow had
saved him.
They poured a little brandy over his throat, wrapped him tenderly in a
Highland plaid, and bore him home. Yet it was days before he spoke.
Dear reader, did ever you consider what a blessing our loving Father has
given us in a faithful dog? How kind we ought to be, and how
considerate for the comfort of such a noble animal! And ever as they
get older our thoughtfulness for their welfare and care of them ought to
increase. Mind, too, that most good thinking men believe that dogs have
a hereafter.
"I canna but believe," says the Ettrick shepherd, in his broad Doric,
"that dowgs hae souls."
My friend, the Rev J.G. Wood, in his book called "Man and Beast," has
proved beyond dispute that there is nothing in Scripture against the
theory that the lower animals will have a hereafter.
And note how the goodly poet Tupper writes about his dear dog Sandy:
"Shall noble fidelity, courage and love,
Obedience and conscience--all rot in the ground?
No room be found for them beneath or above,
Nor anywhere in all the universe round?
Can Fatherhood cease? or the Judge be unjust?
Or changefulness mark any counsel of God?
Shall a butterfly's beauty be lost in the dust?
Or the skill of a spider be crushed as a clod?
"I cannot believe it: Creation still lives;
The Maker of all things made nothing in vain:
The Spirit His gracious ubiquity gives,
Though seeming to die, ever lives on again.
We `rise with our bodies,' and reason may hope
That truth, highest truth, may sink humbly to this,
That `Lo, the poor Indian' was wiser than Pope
When he longed for his dog to be with him in bliss!"
Book 1--CHAPTER SEVEN.