"While I write all is peace within and around our barque. I am sitting
in my little cabin. It is a summer's evening. Yonder is my bed; the
port-hole close by my snowy pillow is open, and playfully through it
steals the soft cool breeze of evening, and wantonly lifts and flutters
the blue silken curtains. Not far off I can catch glimpses of the
wooded hills and flowery vales of a sunny land. It is the rosy shores
of Persia, and every night the light wind that blows over it is laden
with the sweet breath of its flowers; while between there lies the
ocean, asleep, and quiet, and still, and beautiful with the tints of
reflected clouds. Often in the cool night that succeeds a day of heat
have I lain awake for hours, fanned by the breath of the sea, gazing on
the watery world beneath and beyond me, and the silvery moon and
glittering stars that waft my thoughts homewards, till sleep stole
gently down on a moonbeam and wafted me away to dreamland."
Thus I wrote when a young man. Thus I still do feel.
The first glimpse that one catches of the chalky shores of old England
after a long cruise thrills every nerve in his heart with hope and joy.
To experience even this it is worth while going to sea.
Probably some such thoughts as these stole through the mind of Harry
Milvaine as his homeward bound vessel came in sight of land.
His passage had been a good one all the way from Zanzibar to the Cape,
and from the Cape to Southampton.
If the thought of presenting himself at Beaufort Hall without first
writing ever came into his head at all, it was speedily banished.
Pleasant surprises are very well under certain circumstances, but they
may be so painfully pleasant as to be positively dangerous, for joy can
kill as well as cure.
So Harry telegraphed and wrote, and waited anxiously for the return
letter.
It came in good time.
With a beating heart he tore it open.
All were well. Even his old dog Eily was mentioned by his mother--for
of course the letter was from her--in terms of affection.
"She knows you are coming," she wrote, "and whenever I mention your name
rushes to the gate to look, and barks in a kind of half-joyful,
half-hysterical way that is most peculiar."
Harry is back in the Highlands at last. He has come a good two hours
earlier than he expected. But he does not mind that He likes to walk
slowly on towards the home of his boyhood. Every little cottage, every
hill--the hills are all heather-clad, for the summer's bloom bedecks
them--every wood, ay, every tree recalls some sweet memory of the
bygone.
He is still within half a mile of Beaufort when he sees a dog.
It is his own.
It is Eily.
She has been out hunting for stoats at the hedge-foot.
He calls her by name. She stops and stares, bewildered for a moment,
then with a few joyful bounds she is at him. She is _at_ him, and _on_
him, and _round_ him, and _round_ him all at once apparently.
Her dear old master risen from the dead!! She can hardly believe her
eyes, and is fain to stand a little way off and bark at him for very
joy. Then off she flies homewards, to tell that she has found her
master.
So that Harry's father, bareheaded and with his newspaper in his hand,
but hale and hearty as of yore, and Harry's mother, more fragile and
older-looking, are both at the gate to welcome him.
And behind them comes old Yonitch to shake her dear boy by the hand.
Harry has a companion, whom he now introduces, and he is no less a
personage than Raggy himself.
I think everybody is half afraid of Raggy at first, but Raggy smiles so
pleasantly, and laughs with such ringing joy, that he is soon at home,
and even Yonitch and Eily forgive him for being so dreadfully black.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That last line is meant to be left to the reader's own translation. It
represents exclamations of wonder and joy at Harry's long story, and
questions asked and answered, and a deal more I have no space to
mention.
Eily and Harry went that same evening for a ramble in the forest. They
found it just the same. The birds were there, and the bees were there,
and the rabbits and weasels and squirrels were there--but poor Towsie
the bull was gone.
They walked home round by Andrew's cottage.
Andrew came rushing to his little gate and held Harry's hand as if in a
vice, while he pulled him in and seated him in a chair.
Then Harry had all his story to tell over again.
And honest Andrew listened and listened; frequently his eyes would
become moist with tears, when he immediately took a large pinch of
snuff, for shy, sly Andrew wanted to make believe that it was the snuff
that made his eyes swim, and not downright emotion.
"Man! man!" was Andrew's frequent exclamation, "only to think o' seein'
you back again among us!"
"Look!" he said, when Harry finished speaking for the time being.
"Look!"
Harry looked. Andrew had a tall hat in his hand. It was gloomily
bedecked with weepers of crape, as big almost as those worn by
hearse-drivers.
"That's my Sunday's hat," said Andrew; "and I've worn it, as you see it,
every sabbath since the terrible day when Captain Wayland came here and
told us we would never see you more."
"But I'll take them off now," he added, joyfully.
Honest Andrew did so, folded them up, and put them carefully away in a
drawer. Then he heaved a big sigh and took another pinch of snuff.
It was very gratifying to Harry's feelings to find that his little
garden and boy's bungalow, where the swallow that Eily brought him told
the story of Africa, had been carefully tended and kept up inside and
out.
This was Andrew's doings.
Harry has had many wanderings since then, both by sea and land, but
adventures such as those he came through on the dark continent come but
once in a lifetime.
He has been a gallant and good officer.
He has done his duty.
Ah! there is a halo around the head of every one who does his duty, be
that duty high or be it humble.
Harry Milvaine now holds a good appointment in a dockyard, and his leave
is always spent in the Highlands, and honest Andrew and he are as good
friends as ever.
Though no longer a boy, Raggy is still his faithful servant.
But Harry has promised his mother that ere long he will take leave of
the service and settle down at home. He will have a flagstaff, however,
he says, towering high and mast-like up from the green garden lawn, and
proudly on that staff will flutter--
"The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End.