IN THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST--FRANK AND HIS TOAD--A DAY WITH THE HOUNDS--
THE FURIES' LEAP--"THAT FOX WAS MY FATE."
There is no doubt at all that when young Frank Willoughby brought out
his book with him, and seated himself on the trunk of the old fallen
tree, he meant to read it; but this intention had soon been abandoned,
and, at the moment our tale commences, the book lay on the grass at his
feet, and Frank was dreaming. He was not asleep, not a bit of it; his
eyes were as wide open as yours or mine are at this moment; but there
was a far-away look in them, and you could tell by the cloud that seemed
to hang on his lowered brow that his thoughts were none of the
pleasantest. He was not alone, at least not quite, for, not a yard away
from his feet, there sat gazing up into his face--why, what do you
think? A great toad! Do not start; men in solitude have taken up with
stranger companions than this. And Frank was solitary, or at least he
conceived himself to be so; and day after day he left his home on the
borders of the great forest of Epping, and wandered down here into the
depths of the wood, and seated himself idly on that log as we see him
now. The toad had come to know him, and he to know the toad. He even
brought crumbs for him, which the batrachian never failed to discuss,
and seemed to enjoy. So the two took a kindly interest in each other's
welfare.
On this particular forenoon the summer sun was very bright; it shimmered
down through the trees like a shower of gold, it glittered on the
grass-stems, it brightened the petals of the wild flowers, and burnished
the backs of myriads of beetles, as they opened their cloaks and tried
to fly in it. No wonder that on this glorious morning the birds sang in
every tree, and that the happy hum of insect life was everywhere around.
"Well, old gentleman," said Frank at last, addressing the toad, "you are
like myself, I think; you are not over happy."
"Pooh!" the toad seemed to reply. "I'm enjoying the sunshine and the
free, fresh air, ain't I? My house isn't many yards round the corner.
I'm a jolly old bachelor, that's what I am, and there's no life like it.
No, I'm not unhappy, if you are. Pooh!"
"Heigho!" sighed Frank.
But list! There is some one singing, some one hidden at present by the
trees, but evidently coming nearer and nearer to where Frank is
sitting--a rich, mellow, manly voice; and the song comes directly from
the heart, that you can easily tell, and from a gladsome heart, too, and
one in unison with the freshness and brightness to be seen on every
hand--
"I wish I were as I have been,
Hunting the hart in forests green.
With bended bow and bloodhound free;
For that's the life that's meet for me."
Next moment, brushing the boughs aside, a tall, handsome young man of
some five-and-twenty years appeared upon the scene. Brown he was as to
beard and whiskers, bronzed as to cheeks and brow, and clear in eye as a
little child.
"Why, Chisholm!" cried Frank, starting up and grasping his friend's
extended hand.
"Why, Frank!" cried Chisholm, "you terrible old recluse; and so I have
found you at last, have I? Fairly ferreted you out. Sit down, old man,
and give an account of yourself."
"Well, you see," said Willoughby, "I--I want to go up for my degree, and
I--the fact is I've been reading."
"Ha, ha, ha!" roared Chisholm, laughing till the forest rang again.
"Been reading, have you?" As he spoke he kicked the book that lay on
the grass. "Been reading Byron--ha, ha, ha! I do believe the boy's in
love."
Young Frank turned red all over.
"Why, how do you know?" he said, "and how did you find me out, here in
the forest? Chisholm, you're a wizard, or something worse."
"Been to your father's house, dear boy," replied Chisholm, explaining.
"Splendid fellow, your father, by the way. Enjoyed some rare sport and
fun--but missed you sadly, you may be sure; but your father told me
everything. `My young rascal,'--these are his very words, Frank--`my
young rascal,' he said, `has fallen in love, and wants to marry right
away; of course I couldn't give my consent, because he is only a boy,
you know, so he went into a pet, and has taken lodgings somewhere on the
borders of Epping Forest, under the pretence of reading.' And that,
Frank, was the only clue to your whereabouts that I could get; but you
see I've found you, my boy. And now tell me all about it."
"A most modest request, I do declare," said Frank, with a smile; "but
never mind, I never did have a secret from you, and it may do me good to
unburden my mind."
"That it will," said Chisholm; "but before you begin just pitch Byron at
that ugly toad there, will you?"
"That I certainly won't; he has been my only companion for weeks."
"Well, well, well," said Chisholm, "buried in the depths of Epping
Forest, his only companion a toad, the once gay and jolly Frank
Willoughby. Why you must be _deeply_ in love."
"I am, and that is a fact, and if you only saw the object of my
affections, I do not think you would wonder much. She is--"
"Now Frank, dear boy," Chisholm said, "I must apologise for interrupting
you; but pray do not begin to dilate on the charms of your fair
enslaver. I know she must be everything that is good and beautiful,
else she never could have captivated you. Just tell me how it happened,
and where it happened."
"It happened down in Wales," replied Frank, "that is _where_ it
happened; but the day, Chisholm, that was big with my fate, was a day
with the hounds. You know how fond I am of hunting, don't you?"
"I know," said Chisholm, laughing, "that there used not to be a better
man than yourself, Frank, in the field; that you crossed the very
stiffest country at the very heels of the hounds, and though you often
said you didn't like to see a poor fox broken up, you managed,
nevertheless, to be always in at the death. That is what you _used_ to
be, my boy. What you are now may be quite another thing, since a lady
has come to be woven up in the web of your history. Remember the story
of Hercules, Frank."
"Oh! bother Hercules," cried Frank impatiently; "pray let me get on with
my own story."
"Heave round then," said Chisholm.
"Well, then, when I arrived this year, early in spring, back from my
little trip to Malta, I brought with me a letter of introduction to
General Lyell, of Penmawhr Castle, in Brecknockshire. He keeps a nice
little pack of smallish foxhounds--oh! such rare ones for a run--they
can puzzle out the coldest scent, and when they find, they follow in
such beautiful form, that it seems to me you could cover the pack with
the mainsail of my father's yacht."
"Go on," cried Chisholm, "you're warming to your subject; there's life
in you yet."
"You may be sure," continued Frank, "that I did not take long to forward
my letter, and in due course an invitation followed. `Hounds meet at
the Three Cross Roads,' ran the epistle, `on Tuesday, the 9th. Come and
spend the Easter holidays with us, and take us as you find us.' There
were three clear days before the 9th, but my impatience would not let me
wait. I sent Bob, my man, down with my mare the next morning, and
followed on the same evening. My man had chosen the best inn in the
village, for I meant to meet the general for the first time with the
hounds, and show him what sort of metal my mare and I were made of.
"Next morning, to my sorrow, the ground was hard with frost, the sky
clear and blue, and the wind blowing high from the east. The day after
there was no improvement, and my heart sank to zero; but my spirits rose
that day, because down went the glass, and the wind veered round to
about a south and by west. The sunset was a gorgeous one, and long
after the god of day had sunk behind the hills, crimson clouds lying
along in a sky of palest, purest yellow, shading off into the blue dome
above, where bright stars shone, gave token of a beautiful to-morrow. I
was up betimes, you may be certain, and found to my joy that a little
rain had fallen. I ate a huntsman's breakfast, and then dressed. I
donned a new coat of scarlet--in fact, it was so new that I felt ashamed
of it, and had half a mind to make Bob splash it a bit with mud. It was
well splashed before night, I can tell you.
"The meet wasn't a large one, but men and hounds and horses all looked
as if they had plenty of go in them, and they required it too. The
country is a rough, rolling one, and there is no want of stone fences;
so you need pith and pluck if you'd keep the hounds in view.
"Not knowing any one, I kept aloof for a time until they drew a cover or
two, until the mellow music of the hounds, mingling with the cheering
notes of the huntsman's horn, told me they had found, and that the run
had commenced. Across country, straight almost as the crow could fly,
for ten miles, that old fox led us. Then he changed course near a
plantation, and took us five miles in another direction. Then, doubling
round, he took us almost straight away back, so that the stragglers once
more had a chance of joining the hunt. But the terribly rough state of
the country told on all but the best of us, and if we were few in number
to start, we were still less numerous when the fox finally took to earth
and refused to show again. A fine old gentlemanly fox, I can assure
you, who had apparently enjoyed the run as much as any of us, and having
done so, bade us good-morning and retired.
"I had made acquaintance with the general, and we were laughing and
talking together when he suddenly started and turned pale.
"`Great heavens!' he cried, `it is Eenie, my daughter. Black Bess, her
mare, has bolted with her, and is heading straight for the Furies' Leap.
She is lost! she is lost!'
"I hardly heard the last word. I had struck the spurs into my own good
mare, and was off like a meteor. I could see the lady's terrible
danger. She was heading for an awful precipice. I saw I might
intercept her if I crossed her bows, as a sailor would say. It was a
ride for life--we near each other, riding swift as arrows. Onward she
comes--onwards I dash, and we are barely fifty yards from the Furies'
Leap, when our horses come into collision with fearful force.
"I remember nothing more until I open my eyes and find myself in bed,
powerless to move. But a beautiful young girl rose from a seat near the
window, and, approaching the bed, gave me to drink, but enjoined me to
be still. This was Miss Lyell; she nursed me back to life, and the next
few weeks seemed all one happy dream."
"She loves you?"
"She does, and has promised never to be another's."
"And she'll be yours, Frank, my boy. Come, I've news to give you.
Neither your father nor her father object, except on the score of your
youth and hers, and your inexperience of the world. Now, depend upon
it, Frank, what your father advises is best. He wants you to spend your
next few years in travelling."
"And I will," cried Frank; "I'll seek adventures and dangers in every
part of the globe--among the snows of the north, amidst the jungles of
India, in Afric's bush, and the wild plain-lands of far distant
Australia. I care not if I am killed; life without my Eenie is not
worth having."
"Bravo! Frank," cried Chisholm, jumping up and shaking him by the hand.
"I'll go with you; and my friend, Fred Freeman, will go too. There's
luck in odd numbers. But don't talk about being killed; it is time that
we want to kill, and all the wild beasts we can draw a bead upon."
Frank left the gloomy forest a happier man than he had entered it. He
was laughing right merrily too.
"Bless that dear old fox, though," he was saying; "may he always be
jolly and fat and frolicsome 'mid summer's sunshine or winter's snow.
That fox was my fate."
CHAPTER TWO.
FRANK UNDERGOES THE PROCESS OF "HARDENING OFF"--CAMP-LIFE ON THE BANKS
OF THE THAMES--A WEEK AMONG RABBITS--"'WARE HARE."
There was something about Fred Freeman which is difficult to describe,
but which caused everybody to like him. He had the manners of a
high-bred English gentleman, but that did not, of course, constitute the
something that made him a favourite, because _bon ton_, manners are
happily not rare. However, there's no harm in my trying to describe him
to you, because he is one of our three heroes. Fred wasn't much, if
any, above the middle height; he had a short dark beard and moustache--
they were not black, however. He was very regular in features--
handsome, in fact, handsome when he was in his quiet moods, which he
very frequently was, and even more so when merry, for then he was simply
all sunshine, and it made you laugh to look at him. He was very
unobtrusive. He was a capital shot, and a daring hunter and sportsman,
but never boasted about his own doings. His constitution was as tough
as india-rubber, and as hard as nails. If there be anything wanting in
this description, the reader must supply it himself. Anyhow, Fred was a
genuine good fellow. He had hitherto travelled a good deal,
sport-intent, chiefly on the Continent; but he jumped at the proposal to
go round the world on "a big shoot," as he called it.
Freeman was a bachelor, and said he would always remain so; Chisholm
O'Grahame was also a bachelor. Perhaps he was seen to the best
advantage when his foot was on his native heath, and a covey of grouse
ahead of him. He was one of the so-called "lucky dogs" of this world.
On the death of an uncle, he would come into a fine old Highland estate.
Meanwhile he had nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in. After
his visit to Frank, he went back to see Frank's father, who was
delighted at the success of his mission.
"Ah," said he, "I'm so pleased! And so you must take the young dog off,
and show him the world. But look here, he's in your charge, mind you;
and if you take my advice, you'll show him some shooting in England
before you go abroad. He's only a hot-house plant as yet; he wants
hardening off."
Chisholm laughed. "I'll harden him off," he said.
And so the hardening-off process commenced at once. Frank was not
sorry, after all, to leave the gloom of Epping Forest, and commence a
sportsman's life in earnest. The plan adopted by Chisholm and his
friend, Fred, to "break young Frank in, and to harden him off," was, I
think, a good one. They were to travel a good deal in England, be here
to-day and away to-morrow, and visit any of the fens or moors or shores
where there was the chance of a week or two of good shooting.
That was one part of the plan. The other was that they were, as Fred
called it, "to forswear civilisation, and to live in tents;" in other
words, to do a deal of camping out, instead of living in hotels or
houses of any kind.
"How do you think you will like that kind of thing?" asked Chisholm.
"Oh, I think it will be perfectly delightful," said Frank,
enthusiastically.
"But Frank _is_ a bit of a shot, isn't he?" asked Fred.
"Always during vacation times," said Frank, speaking for himself. "I
used to potter around my father's property. I have done so ever since I
was a boy."
"Ha! ha!" laughed Chisholm. "Why, you're only a boy yet."
"All stuff," said Frank stoutly. "I'll be twenty next birthday."
"Well, well," said Chisholm; "but tell Fred what you used to shoot."
"Oh, anything about the farms, you know, bar the song-birds; father
thought it cruel to kill them. But there were rats, such lots of rats,
and sometimes a hawk or a rabbit, or even a hare. Then there were the
wild pigeons--wary beggars they are, too; I used to wait for them under
the fir-trees."
"What, and kill them sitting?" asked Fred.
"Well," said Frank, "it isn't sportsman-like, I know; but I could hardly
ever get near them else. Then the young rooks were great fun in spring;
and mind you, there is many a worse dish to set before a hungry man than
rook-pie."
"I believe you, lad," said Fred.
"Well, I've shot stoats and weasels by the score; and I once shot a
polecat, and another day an otter, and another day an owl."
"Well, well, well," cried Fred. "What bags you must have made, to be
sure! Never mind, you've got the makings of a good sportsman in you.
Chisholm and I will bring you out, never fear. Did you often go
owl-shooting?"
"No," replied Frank; "I only remember one owl, and I don't know which of
the two of us had the bigger fright--Ponto the pointer, or myself. I
had killed nothing that day but one old rook, a few field-mice, and a
snake or two, and we were coming home in the dusk, when some great bird
flew heavily out of the ivy-covered old tree near the churchyard. `Down
you come, whatever you are,' says I; and bang! bang! went both barrels.
He flew a goodly way, but finally fell; and off went Ponto, and off went
I in search of him. Ponto _was_ in a way, I can tell you; he wasn't
pointing half prettily. `Hoo! hoo! hoo!' the owl was screaming. `Come
a bit nearer, and out come both your eyes.' `I'll stand here, anyhow,'
Ponto seemed saying, `till master comes up.' Well, Chisholm, when I
came up and saw the creature, it looked so like one of the winged images
you see on tombstones, that, troth, I thought I'd shot a cherub of some
sort."
"Well done, Frank," cried Chisholm, laughing. "Now," he continued,
pulling a letter from his pocket, "How will this suit? It is from a
farmer friend of mine in Berkshire, a rough and right sort of a fellow.
He farms about five hundred acres close to the Thames. He invites us
down for a rabbit shoot, shall we go?"
"Oh! by all means," cried Frank.
"I'm ready," said Fred quietly.
And that "rabbit shoot" began Frank Willoughby's sporting adventures.
They had a whole week of it, and very much they enjoyed it. Chestnut
Farm was a dear old-fashioned, rustic, rumble-tumble of a place, with a
rolling country all around it, and the river quietly meandering through
its midst. They pitched their tent not far from the river; under canvas
they lived and ate and slept. Fred Freeman was a capital cook; he built
his fire of wood and hung his kettle-pot gipsy fashion on a tripod, and
the curries and stews he used to turn out were quite delightful. The
farmer and his wife would fain have had them to live in their hospitable
dwelling, but being told that Frank was undergoing the process of
hardening off and general tuition in camp and sporting life, the good
farmer looked at the young man for a moment or two from top to bottom,
just as if he had been a colt.
"Oh!" he said, with a grunt of satisfaction, "bein' broke, is he? Well,
a rare, fine, upstanding one he be. He'll do."
But the farmer's wife sent to the tent every day the freshest of butter
and sweetest of creamy milk, with eggs that never had time to get cool,
and so, on the whole, they were very well off.
It was deliciously comfortable, so thought Frank, this camping out. His
bed was a hammock, and, though there were at first some things he looked
upon as drawbacks, he soon got used to them. If a heavy shower came on
it made noise enough to waken the seven sleepers, and large drops used
to ooze in through the canvas. The gnats' bites were hard to put up
with, but Chisholm comforted him by bidding him "just wait until he went
to India and had a touch of the jungle bugs." Early to bed and early to
rise was our heroes' motto; early to bed to calm and dreamless slumber,
such as your dwellers within brick walls never know; early to rise to
have a header in the river, and to return to breakfast as fresh as a
jack; early to rise to get the lines and punt clear and ready for a few
hours' fishing; early to rise if only to hear the birds singing, to
watch the squirrels skipping about aloft among the trees, or to observe
the thousand-and-one queer ways of the tiny dwellers by the river side,
friends in fur and friends in feather. Why, in one week Frank felt
himself growing quite a naturalist.
They had come down to shoot rabbits, but it must not be supposed that
this was all the sport they had down by the charming river; for many
wild-fowl fell to Frank's gun, and he procured a good many beautiful
specimens of birds, which he took the pains to skin and preserve for the
purpose of having them stuffed. A good deal of their time was spent in
fishing. They did not catch a Thames salmon, it is true, and grayling
were not in season; but there were trout and perch and jack in
abundance, and one day, greatly to his joy, Frank landed a lordly pike.
"I must tell you this, Mr O'Grahame and gen'l'm'n all," said the farmer
to our friends on the very first day of their arrival, "I have an order
to kill five hundred to seven hundred rabbits, so there is plenty of
sport for you all, and 'specially for the young 'un that's bein' broke;
but mind, gen'l'm'n, 'ware hare, that's wot I says, 'ware hare. My
man'll go with ye and see it is all right like, and my boys will carry
the bags."
"Whatever does he mean by `'ware hare'?" asked Frank afterwards.
"Why, that we mustn't shoot a hare on any account," replied Chisholm;
"rabbits and nothing but rabbits."
"Gearge," the farmer's man, went with them every day to help to carry
the rabbits our sportsmen killed. On the other hand, there were boys in
the rear to help Gearge. Besides Gearge and the boys, there were two
dogs--a beautiful setter and a pointer, but good useful country dogs--
dogs that did not think it beneath their dignity to retrieve as well as
set and point. The most curious part of the whole business to young
Frank, was the fact that these dogs knew a hare from a rabbit at first
sight far better than he did. Well, to a young sportsman, to see a
beautiful hare pass within easy shooting distance was a great temptation
to fire. Frank had his doubts whether Gearge always knew one from the
other, or t'other from which, because, no matter what it was, if Gearge
saw only a bit of brown fur flitting from one bush to another, he sang
out in stentorian tones, "'Ware hare."
So it was "'Ware hare" all day long with Gearge. But once Frank did
make a mistake, or his gun did, for the latter seemed to rise to his
shoulder of its own accord, and next moment a hare was dead.
The pointer brought it and laid it solemnly down at Frank's feet, and
looked up into his face.
"See what you've done," he seemed to say; "here is a pretty kettle of
fish. What do you think of yourself? and how do you feel?"
And when Gearge came up and saw the result of the accident, his red,
round face, which, as a rule, was wreathed in smiles, got long, and his
jaw fell, while his eyes seemed wanting to jump out of their sockets.
"Well, I never?" said Gearge, rubbing the palms of his hands nervously
in his cow-gown, "and I warned ye sir, too."
"Bag him," said Frank, "and never mind."
"Bag 'im!" cried Gearge, aghast. "Bag _he_, bag a _hare_! No, sir, not
if I knows it. Master'd give me the sack myself. We'll leave 'im to
the blue-bottles and the beetles; but oh! sir, in future, 'ware hare."
"You seem fond of hare-shooting," said Fred that evening, when Frank
told him his adventure, or rather misadventure. "Why, if you had been
where I was last winter you would have had hare-shooting to your heart's
content."
"Beaters was it you had?" asked Chisholm.
"Yes, we had no dogs; but good sport, mind you--right and left
sometimes, and one to each barrel if you only chose to hold straight."
About the third morning, when Gearge came to the tent as usual, his face
seemed rounder and redder than ever; his eyes, too, were so wreathed in
smile-begotten wrinkles that they had almost disappeared. It was
moreover observed that the pockets of his cow-gown were more bulky than
usual.
"We'll have a rare lark to-day," said Gearge, pulling out first one
polecat ferret and then another.
And so they had; for what with working the banks all the morning and
shooting the rabbits in the open that succeeded in running the blockade,
they had wonderful bags. Though Frank didn't say much, he was glad to
get back to the tent; his feet were swollen, and he could hardly carry
his gun. He was certainly "bein' broke" with a vengeance.
CHAPTER THREE.
FRANK IS THOROUGHLY "HARDENED OFF"--DEER-STALKING IN THE HIGHLANDS--
PARTRIDGE, PHEASANT, AND DUCK SHOOTING--"GOOD-BYE"--"NONE BUT THE BRAVE
DESERVE THE FAIR."
"How does he harden, Fred?" cried Chisholm, bursting all unannounced one
morning into the dining-room of a North Wales hotel, where Freeman and
young Willoughby were just putting the finishing touches to a glorious
breakfast, with boiled eggs and mountain trout. Chisholm had been
absent for a whole week. "How does he harden?"
"I think he is getting on famously. He's curing nicely."
"I declare," said Frank, laughing, "you talk of me as if I were a ham or
something; and Chisholm asks about me in the same tone of voice he would
use if he wanted to know how your meerschaum coloured."
"'Cause we're interested in you, dear boy," said Chisholm, feeling
Frank's arm. "But, bless my heart," he continued, "there is a biceps
for you; why, it's as hard as a hawser! And there's a sunburnt face for
you! Waiter, bring the beef. And what are you doing, boys?"
"Well," said Fred, "you know we've been two months now under canvas, so
we thought we would try a week of civilisation. But we've had rare
sport enough, fishing in river and fishing in lake, and shooting almost
whatever we came across--rabbits, leverets, pigeons, plovers, anything."
"Bad boys," said Chisholm. "But never mind, we're off to-morrow."
"Where away?"
"To the Highlands, the stern Scottish Highlands," said Chisholm. "I'm
promised a week among the deer. You're hard enough for that now,
Frank."
"What a ubiquitous trio we are, to be sure!" said Fred.
They certainly seemed so, reader; for two days after the foregoing
conversation they were dining at a quiet little hotel in Beauley, and by
four of the clock next morning they were on their way to the house of
Duncan McPhee, the head keeper of the great forest of Cairntree, one of
the wildest tracts of country in the wild North. Though termed a
forest, it is only partially wooded; for gigantic hills, bare and
rugged, tower skywards every here and there from amidst the pine-trees,
and there are, too, vast tracts of bare brae or moorland, covered only
with heather, the home of the grouse and the ptarmigan. Deer abound in
this forest in countless herds; but, saving the houses of the keepers,
you might journey for days in all directions without seeing the smoke
from a single habitation.
Early as our heroes were abroad, Duncan and his dogs were there to meet
them. But their first day was a blank, and they returned very tired and
somewhat disheartened to the keeper's house, where, putting up with
Highland fare, they determined to stay all night. The next day they
were rewarded with the sight of deer in hundreds, but that was all; the
deer were too wild and wary to reach. More than once that day, as some
noble stag stood for a moment on knoll or brae-top, scenting the wind,
then dashing wildly off adown the glen, the words of Walter Scott came
to Frank's mind--
"The crested leader, proud and high,
Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky,
A moment gazed adown the dale,
A moment snuffed the tainted gale;
Then, as the headmost foe appeared.
With one brave bound the copse he cleared,
And stretching forward free and far,
Sought the wild heaths of Uam Var."
But the third was a never-to-be-forgotten day, for Frank brought down
his first stag, and it was a "royal." Luck seemed to set in after this.
It never rains but it pours, you know, and nobody had any reason to be
dissatisfied with that week spent among the red deer in the wilds of
Cairntree.
I wish I had space wherein to tell you of one-half of the delightful
sporting adventures our heroes had during the many months Frank was
"bein' broke," or of the many happy, pleasant days they had to look back
to, when afterwards sojourning with wild beasts and wilder men--of days
spent among the partridges, or with the cockers at work, or following
the pheasants. They all agreed that there was but little true sport
attached to pheasant-shooting, the birds are so tame.
"It's just like shooting hens," Chisholm remarked.
But perhaps their dearest recollections went back to the time they spent
in duck shooting. These were days they might have marked in their
diaries with a red cross--spent entirely under canvas they were, in true
gipsy fashion; for although the season was autumn, the weather was still
bright and warm, and the nights just cool enough to be pleasant. By
marshes or lonely moorlands, by inland lakes and ponds, or by wooded
friths and estuaries, following up the wild-fowl never failed to give
them the very greatest of pleasure and sport. In these adventures their
chief companion was a dog of the Irish water-spaniel type, and Pattie by
name. Red all over was Pattie, and one mass of ringlets, which even a
whole day's swimming in sea or river failed to unravel; he even had a
fringe or top-knot over his bonnie brow, which quite set off his
peculiar style of beauty. Pattie's style of beauty was what would be
designated in Scotland "the daft." Mind, you couldn't help loving
Pattie--I defy you not to love him if you tried; but he had such queer
ways, and such a funny face, that you couldn't look at him long without
laughing. Pattie was truly Irish, but grand at his work nevertheless,
whether retrieving a dead duck or a maimed one. When plunging into the
water after the latter, "Be quiet wid yer skraiching," Pattie would seem
to say. "Sure I'll fetch you out, and you'll never feel it at all, at
all." But you ought to have seen Pattie coming up out of the river with
a dead duck that he probably had had to swim a long distance against the
tide for; there was a pride in his beaming eye that my pen would attempt
in vain to depict. "What do ye think av me now?" Pattie would seem to
say.
But summer and autumn and the first months of winter wore away, and,
after spending a whole fortnight at the white hare-shooting among the
mountains of Perthshire--and harder work I defy you to find--Frank was
at last declared thoroughly broken in, completely hardened off.
"A man," said Chisholm, "that can stand a week or two among white hares,
and not feel too tired to sleep at night, is fit for anything. Now,
boys," he added, "what do you say to a run right away up to the polar
ice-fields?"
"I'm in," said Fred quietly.
"Oh!" said Chisholm, "you're always in for anything. If I asked you to
take a trip to the moon you'd jump at it."
"Or over it," said Fred, smiling, "like the cow in the poem of `Hey,
diddle diddle;' but are you in earnest about the ice-fields?"
"Downright."
"Well," said Frank, with assumed modesty, "if you think I'm `broke'
enough, please I'd like to go too."
"Bravo!" cried Chisholm O'Grahame, "that settles the question."
They made arrangements to sail in a seal-and-whale ship in February.
They got an introduction to a captain of one of these, and he gladly
undertook to convey them to Greenland and back, "free, gratis, and for
nothing, except the pleasure of their company, and the skins and blubber
they would no doubt kill." That was how the captain expressed it.
"But, mind you," he said, "you'll have to rough it a bit."
"We don't mind that," said Chisholm.
Before he left for the far distant north, Frank Willoughby spent some
weeks at General Lyell's castle. Happy, happy weeks they were, and how
quickly, too, they fled away! I could make you feel very sentimental
and "gushive," reader, if I told you all that passed between the lovely
young Eenie and our hero Frank, but I never tell tales out of school, so
there. I may just say, however, that, when the last moment _did_ come,
poor Eenie could hardly breathe the fond "good bye" for the tears that
she could not repress.
The General's adieu was a hearty one.
"Good-bye," he said, "keep up a good heart, and," he added laughingly,
as he patted Frank on the back, "remember--
"`None but the brave deserve the fair.'"
CHAPTER FOUR.