PART VI

I. A Trip Across a Continent (from

"Captains Courageous") 267

II. The Children of the Zodiac (from

"Many Inventions") 274

III. The Bridge Builders (from "The

Day's Work") 299

IV. The Miracles (from "The Seven Seas") 351

V. Our Lady of the Snows (from "The

Five Nations") 353

VI. The Song of the Women (from "The

Naulahka") 356

VII. The White Man's Burden (from "The

Five Nations") 359

* * * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS BY RUDYARD KIPLING

Initial for "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo" 213

A picture of Old Man Kangaroo when he was

the Different Animal with four short legs 215

Old Man Kangaroo at five in the afternoon,

when he had got his beautiful hind legs

just as Big God Nqong had promised 217

* * * * *

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

The deep and widespread interest which the writings of Mr. Rudyard

Kipling have excited has naturally led to curiosity concerning their

author and to a desire to know the conditions of his life. Much has

been written about him which has had little or no foundation in truth.

It seems, then, worth while, in order to prevent false or mistaken

reports from being accepted as trustworthy, and in order to provide

for the public such information concerning Mr. Kipling as it has a

right to possess, that a correct and authoritative statement of the

chief events in his life should be given to it. This is the object of

the following brief narrative.

* * * * *

Rudyard Kipling was born at Bombay on the 30th of December, 1865. His

mother, Alice, daughter of the Rev. G. B. Macdonald, a Wesleyan

preacher, eminent in that denomination, and his father, John Lockwood

Kipling, the son also of a Wesleyan preacher, were both of Yorkshire

birth. They had been married in London early in the year, and they

named their first-born child after the pretty lake in Staffordshire

on the borders of which their acquaintance had begun. Mr. Lockwood

Kipling, after leaving school, had served his apprenticeship in one of

the famous Staffordshire potteries at Burslem, had afterward worked in

the studio of the sculptor, Mr. Birnie Philip, and from 1861 to 1865

had been engaged on the decorations of the South Kensington Museum.

During our American war and in the years immediately following, the

trade of Bombay was exceedingly flourishing, the city was immensely

prosperous, a spirit of inflation possessed the Government and the

people alike, there were great designs for the improvement and

rebuilding of large portions of the town, and a need was felt for

artistic oversight and direction of the works in hand and

contemplated. The distinction which Mr. Lockwood Kipling had already

won by his native ability and thorough training led to his being

appointed in 1865 to go to Bombay as the professor of Architectural

Sculpture in the British School of Art which had been established

there.

It was thus that Rudyard Kipling came to be born in the most

cosmopolitan city of the Eastern world, and it was there and in its

neighbourhood that the first three years of the boy's life were spent,

years in which every child receives ineffaceable impressions, shaping

his conceptions of the world, and in which a child of peculiarly

sensitive nature and active disposition, such as this boy possessed,

lies open to myriad influences that quicken and give colour to the

imagination.

In the spring of 1868 he was taken by his mother for a visit to

England, and there, in the same year, his sister was born. In the next

year his mother returned to India with both her children, and the

boy's next two years were spent at and near Bombay.

He was a friendly and receptive child, eager, interested in all the

various entertaining aspects of life in a city which, "gleaning all

races from all lands," presents more diversified and picturesque

varieties of human condition than any other, East or West. A little

incident which his mother remembers is not without a pretty allegoric

significance. It was at Nasik, on the Dekhan plain, not far from

Bombay: the little fellow trudging over the ploughed field, with his

hand in that of the native husbandman, called back to her in the

Hindustani, which was as familiar to him as English, "Good-bye, this

is my brother."

In 1871 Mr. and Mrs. Kipling went with their children to England, and

being compelled to return to India the next year, they took up the

sorrow common to Anglo-Indian lives, in leaving their children "at

home," in charge of friends at Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was a

hard and sad experience for the boy. The originality of his nature and

the independence of his spirit had already become clearly manifest,

and were likely to render him unintelligible and perplexing to

whosoever might have charge of him unless they were gifted with

unusual perceptions and quick sympathies. Happily his mother's sister,

Mrs. (now Lady) Burne-Jones, was near at hand, in case of need, to

care for him.

In the spring of 1877 Mrs. Kipling came to England to see her

children, and was followed the next year by her husband. The children

were removed from Southsea, and Rudyard, grown into a companionable,

active-minded, interesting boy, now in his thirteenth year, had the

delight of spending some weeks in Paris, with his father, attracted

thither by the exhibition of that year. His eyesight had been for some

time a source of trouble to him, and the relief was great from

glasses, which were specially fitted to his eyes, and with which he

has never since been able to dispense.

On the return of his parents to India, early in 1878, Rudyard was

placed at the school of Westward Ho, at Bideford, in Devon. This

school was one chiefly intended for the sons of members of the Indian

services, most of whom were looking forward to following their

fathers' careers as servants of the Crown. It was in charge of an

admirable head-master, Mr. Cormell Price, whose character was such

that he won the affection of his boys no less than their respect. The

young Kipling was not an easy boy to manage. He chose his own way. His

talents were such that he might have held a place near the highest in

his studies, but he was content to let others surpass him in lessons,

while he yielded to his genius in devoting himself to original

composition and to much reading in books of his own choice. He became

the editor of the school paper, he contributed to the columns of the

local Bideford _Journal_, he wrote a quantity of verse, and was

venturesome enough to send a copy of verses to a London journal,

which, to his infinite satisfaction, was accepted and published. Some

of his verses were afterward collected in a little volume, privately

printed by his parents at Lahore, with the title "Schoolboy Lyrics."

All through his time at school his letters to his parents in India

were such as to make it clear to them that his future lay in the field

of literature.

His literary gifts came to him by inheritance from both the father and

mother, and they were nurtured and cultivated in the circle of

relatives and family friends with whom his holidays were spent. A

sub-master at Westward Ho, though little satisfied with the boy's

progress in the studies of the school, gave to him the liberty of his

own excellent library. The holidays were spent at the Grange, in South

Kensington, the home of his aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones,

and here he came under the happiest possible domestic influences, and

was brought into contact with men of highest quality, whose lives were

given to letters and the arts, especially with William Morris, the

closest intimate of the household of the Grange. Other homes were open

to him where the pervading influence was that of intellectual

pursuits, and where he had access to libraries through which he was

allowed to wander and to browse at his will. The good which came to

him, directly and indirectly, from these opportunities can hardly be

overstated. To know, to love, and to be loved by such a man as

Burne-Jones was a supreme blessing in his life.

In the autumn of 1882, having finished his course at school, a

position was secured for him on the _Civil and Military Gazette_,

Lahore, and he returned to his parents in India, who had meanwhile

removed from Bombay to Lahore, where his father was at the head of the

most important school of the arts in India. The _Civil and Military

Gazette_ is the chief journal of northwestern India, owned and

conducted by the managers and owners of the Allahabad _Pioneer_, the

ablest and most influential of all Indian newspapers published in the

interior of the country.

For five years he worked hard and steadily on the _Gazette_. Much of

the work was simple drudgery. He shirked nothing. The editor-in-chief

was a somewhat grim man, who believed in snubbing his subordinates,

and who, though he recognized the talents of the "clever pup," as he

called him, and allowed him a pretty free hand in his contributions to

the paper, yet was inclined to exact from him the full tale of the

heavy routine work of a newspaper office.

But these were happy years. For the youth was feeling the spring of

his own powers, was full of interest in life, was laying up stores of

observation and experience, and found in his own home not only

domestic happiness, but a sympathy in taste and a variety of talent

and accomplishment which acted as a continual stimulus to his own

genius. Father, mother, sister, and brother all played and worked

together with rare combination of sympathetic gifts. In 1885 some of

the verses with the writing of which he and his sister had amused

themselves were published at Lahore, in a little volume entitled

"Echoes," because most of them were lively parodies on some of the

poems of the popular poets of the day. The little book had its moment

of narrowly limited success and opened the way for the wider notoriety

and success of a volume into which were gathered the "Departmental

Ditties" that had appeared from time to time in the _Gazette_. Many of

the stories also which were afterward collected under the now familiar

title of "Plain Tales from the Hills" made their first appearance in

the _Gazette_, and attracted wide attention in the Anglo-Indian

community.

Kipling's work for five years at Lahore had indeed been of such

quality that it was not surprising that he was called down to

Allahabad, in 1887, to take a place upon the editorial staff of the

_Pioneer_. The training of an Anglo-Indian journalist is peculiar. He

has to master knowledge of many kinds, to become thoroughly acquainted

with the affairs of the English administration and the conditions of

Anglo-Indian life, and at the same time with the interests, the modes

of life, and thought of the vast underlying native population. The

higher positions in Indian journalism are places of genuine importance

and of large emolument, worthy objects of ambition for a young man

conscious of literary faculty and inspired with zeal for public ends.

The _Pioneer_ issued a weekly as well as a daily edition, and in

addition to his regular work upon the daily paper, Kipling continued

to write for the weekly issue stories similar to those which had

already won him reputation, and they now attracted wider attention

than ever. His home at Allahabad was with Professor Hill, a man of

science attached to the Allahabad College. But the continuity of his

life was broken by various journeys undertaken in the interest of the

paper--one through Rajputana, from which he wrote a series of

descriptive letters, called "Letters of Marque"; another to Calcutta

and through Bengal, which resulted in "The City of Dreadful Night" and

other letters describing the little-known conditions of the vast

presidency; and, finally, in 1889, he was sent off by the _Pioneer_ on

a tour round the world, on which he was accompanied by his friends,

Professor and Mrs. Hill. Going first to Japan, he thence came to

America, writing on the way and in America the letters which appeared

in the _Pioneer_ under the title of "From Sea to Sea"; and in

September, 1889, he arrived in London.

His Indian repute had not preceded him to such degree as to make the

way easy for him through the London crowd. But after a somewhat dreary

winter, during which he had been making acquaintances and had found

irregular employment upon newspapers and magazines, arrangements were

made with Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for the publication of an edition of

"Plain Tales from the Hills." The book appeared in June. Its success

was immediate. It was republished at once in America, and was welcomed

as warmly on this side of the Atlantic as on the other. The reprint of

Kipling's other Indian stories and of his "Departmental Ditties"

speedily followed, together with the new tales and poems which showed

the wide range of his creative genius. Each volume was a fresh

success; each extended the circle of Mr. Kipling's readers, till now

he is the most widely known of English authors.

In 1891 Mr. Kipling left England for a long voyage to South Africa,

Australia, New Zealand, and Ceylon, and thence to visit his parents at

Lahore. On his return to England, he was married in London to Miss

Balestier, daughter of the late Mr. Wolcott Balestier of New York.

Shortly after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Kipling visited Japan, and

in August they came to America. They established their home at

Brattleboro, Vermont, where Mrs. Kipling's family had a large estate:

and here, in a pleasant and beautifully situated house which they had

built for themselves, their two eldest children were born, and here

they continued to live till September, 1896.

During these four years Mr. Kipling made three brief visits to England

to see his parents, who had left India and were now settled in the old

country.

The winter of 1897-98 was spent by Mr. Kipling and his family,

accompanied by his father, in South Africa. He was everywhere received

with the utmost cordiality and friendliness.

Returning to England in the spring of 1898, he took a house at

Rottingdean, near Brighton, with intention to make it his permanent

home.

Of the later incidents of his life there is no need to speak.

IV

BAA, BAA, BLACK SHEEP

At the School Council Baa, Baa, Black Sheep was elected to a

very high position among the Kipling Stories "because it

shows how mean they were to a boy and he did n't need it."

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes, Sir; yes, Sir; three bags full.

One for the Master, one for the Dame--

None for the Little Boy that cries down the lane.

--_Nursery Rhyme._

THE FIRST BAG

"When I was in my father's house, I was in a better place."

They were putting Punch to bed--the ayah and the hamal, and Meeta, the

big Surti boy with the red and gold turban. Judy, already tucked

inside her mosquito-curtains, was nearly asleep. Punch had been

allowed to stay up for dinner. Many privileges had been accorded to

Punch within the last ten days, and a greater kindness from the people

of his world had encompassed his ways and works, which were mostly

obstreperous. He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare legs

defiantly.

"Punch-baba going to bye-lo?" said the ayah suggestively.

"No," said Punch. "Punch-baba wants the story about the Ranee that was

turned into a tiger. Meeta must tell it, and the hamal shall hide

behind the door and make tiger-noises at the proper time."

"But Judy-Baba will wake up," said the ayah.

"Judy-baba is waking," piped a small voice from the mosquito-curtains.

"There was a Ranee that lived at Delhi. Go on, Meeta," and she fell

asleep again while Meeta began the story.

Never had Punch secured the telling of that tale with so little

opposition. He reflected for a long time. The hamal made the

tiger-noises in twenty different keys.

"'Top!" said Punch authoritatively. "Why does n't Papa come in and say

he is going to give me put-put?"

"Punch-baba is going away," said the ayah. "In another week there will

be no Punch-baba to pull my hair any more." She sighed softly, for the

boy of the household was very dear to her heart.

"Up the Ghauts in a train?" said Punch, standing on his bed. "All the

way to Nassick, where the Ranee-Tiger lives?"

"Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib," said Meeta, lifting him on

his shoulder. "Down to the sea where the cocoanuts are thrown, and

across the sea in a big ship. Will you take Meeta with you to

Belait?"

"You shall all come," said Punch, from the height of Meeta's strong

arms. "Meeta and the ayah and the hamal and Bhini-in-the-Garden, and

the salaam-Captain-Sahib-snake-man."

There was no mockery in Meeta's voice when he replied--"Great is the

Sahib's favour," and laid the little man down in the bed, while the

ayah, sitting in the moonlight at the doorway, lulled him to sleep

with an interminable canticle such as they sing in the Roman Catholic

Church at Parel. Punch curled himself into a ball and slept.

Next morning Judy shouted that there was a rat in the nursery, and

thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter,

for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch

was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than a

trip to Nassick.

* * * * *

And Papa and Mamma sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the

house, and curtailed the allowance of crockery for the daily meals,

and took long council together over a bundle of letters bearing the

Rocklington postmark.

"The worst of it is that one can't be certain of anything," said Papa,

pulling his moustache. "The letters in themselves are excellent, and

the terms are moderate enough."

"The worst of it is that the children will grow up away from me,"

thought Mamma; but she did not say it aloud.

"We are only one case among hundreds," said Papa bitterly. "You shall

go Home again in five years, dear."

"Punch will be ten then--and Judy eight. Oh, how long and long and

long the time will be! And we have to leave them among strangers."

"Punch is a cheery little chap. He's sure to make friends wherever he

goes."

"And who could help loving my Ju?"

They were standing over the cots in the nursery late at night, and I

think that Mamma was crying softly. After Papa had gone away, she

knelt down by the side of Judy's cot. The ayah saw her and put up a

prayer that the memsahib might never find the love of her children

taken away from her and given to a stranger.

Mamma's own prayer was a slightly illogical one. Summarized it ran:

"Let strangers love my children and be as good to them as I should be,

but let me preserve their love and their confidence for ever and ever.

Amen." Punch scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned a little.

That seems to be the only answer to the prayer: and, next day, they

all went down to the sea, and there was a scene at the Apollo Bunder

when Punch discovered that Meeta could not come too, and Judy learned

that the ayah must be left behind. But Punch found a thousand

fascinating things in the rope, block, and steam-pipe line on the big

P. and O. Steamer, long before Meeta and the ayah had dried their

tears.

"Come back, Punch-baba," said the ayah.

"Come back," said Meeta, "and be a Burra Sahib."

"Yes," said Punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave good-bye.

"Yes, I will come back, and I will be a Burra Sahib Bahadur!"

At the end of the first day Punch demanded to be set down in England,

which he was certain must be close at hand. Next day there was a merry

breeze, and Punch was very sick. "When I come back to Bombay," said

Punch on his recovery, "I will come by the road--in a broom-gharri.

This is a very naughty ship."

The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as

the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask

questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the

hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani

once his second-speech.

But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached

Southampton, Mamma asked her if she would not like to see the ayah

again. Judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had

swallowed all her tiny past, and she said: "Ayah! What ayah?"

Mamma cried over her, and Punch marveled. It was then that he heard

for the first time Mamma's passionate appeal to him never to let Judy

forget Mamma. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that

Mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to

sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious tune that he called

"Sonny, my soul," Punch could not understand what Mamma meant. But he

strove to do his duty, for the moment Mamma left the cabin, he said to

Judy: "Ju, you bemember Mamma?"

"'Torse I do," said Judy.

"Then always bemember Mamma, 'r else I won't give you the paper ducks

that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me."

So Judy promised always to "bemember Mamma."

Many and many a time was Mamma's command laid upon Punch, and Papa

would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child.

"You must make haste and learn to write, Punch," said Papa, "and then

you'll be able to write letters to us in Bombay."

"I'll come into your room," said Punch, and Papa choked.

Papa and Mamma were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy

to task for not "bemembering," they choked. If Punch sprawled on the

sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in

purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth

for a kiss.

Through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth:

Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, and

Papa and Mamma grave, distracted, and choking.

"Where," demanded Punch, wearied of a loathsome contrivance on four

wheels with a mound of luggage atop--"where is our broom-gharri? This

thing talks so much that I can't talk. Where is our own broom-gharri?

When I was at Bandstand before we comed away, I asked Inverarity Sahib

why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said, 'I

will give it you'--I like Inverarity Sahib--and I said, 'Can you put

your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows? And Inverarity

Sahib said No, and laughed. I can put my legs through the pully-wag

loops. I can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. Look! Oh,

Mamma's crying again! I did n't know. I was n't not to do so."

Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the four-wheeler: the door

opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door

of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend "Downe Lodge."

Punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavour. It

stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbockered

legs.

"Let us go away," said Punch. "This is not a pretty place."

But Mamma and Papa and Judy had quitted the cab, and all the luggage

was being taken into the house. At the door-step stood a woman in

black, and she smiled largely, with dry chapped lips. Behind her was a

man, big, bony, gray, and lame as to one leg--behind him a boy of

twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. Punch surveyed the trio,

and advanced without fear, as he had been accustomed to do in Bombay

when callers came and he happened to be playing in the veranda.

"How do you do?" said he. "I am Punch." But they were all looking at

the luggage--all except the gray man, who shook hands with Punch and

said he was a "smart little fellow." There was much running about and

banging of boxes, and Punch curled himself up on the sofa in the

dining-room and considered things.

"I don't like these people," said Punch. "But never mind. We'll go

away soon. We have always went away soon from everywhere. I wish we

was gone back to Bombay soon."

The wish bore no fruit. For six days Mamma wept at intervals, and

showed the woman in black all Punch's clothes--a liberty which Punch

resented. "But p'raps she's a new white ayah," he thought. "I'm to

call her Antirosa, but she does n't call me Sahib. She says just

Punch," he confided to Judy. "What is Antirosa?"

Judy did n't know. Neither she nor Punch had heard anything of an

animal called an aunt. Their world had been Papa and Mamma, who knew

everything, permitted everything, and loved everybody--even Punch when

he used to go into the garden at Bombay and fill his nails with mold

after the weekly nail-cutting, because, as he explained between two

strokes of the slipper to his sorely tried Father, his fingers "felt

so new at the ends."

In an undefined way Punch judged it advisable to keep both parents

between himself and the woman in black and the boy in black hair. He

did not approve of them. He liked the gray man, who had expressed a

wish to be called "Uncleharri." They nodded at each other when they

met, and the gray man showed him a little ship with rigging that took

up and down.

"She is a model of the _Brisk_--the little _Brisk_ that was sore

exposed that day at Navarino." The gray man hummed the last words and

fell into a reverie. "I'll tell you about Navarino, Punch, when we go

for walks together; and you must n't touch the ship, because she's the

_Brisk_."

Long before that walk, the first of many, was taken, they roused Punch

and Judy in the chill dawn of a February morning to say Good-bye; and

of all people in the wide earth to Papa and Mamma--both crying this

time. Punch was very sleepy and Judy was cross.

"Don't forget us," pleaded Mamma. "Oh, my little son, don't forget us,

and see that Judy remembers too."

"I've told Judy to bemember," said Punch, wiggling, for his father's

beard tickled his neck. "I've told Judy--ten--forty--'leven thousand

times. But Ju 's so young--quite a baby--is n't she?"

"Yes," said Papa, "Quite a baby, and you must be good to Judy, and

make haste to learn to write and--and--and----"

Punch was back in his bed again. Judy was fast asleep, and there was

the rattle of a cab below. Papa and Mamma had gone away. Not to

Nassick; that was across the sea. To some place much nearer, of

course, and equally of course they would return. They came back after

dinner-parties, and Papa had come back after he had been to a place

called "The Snows," and Mamma with him, to Punch and Judy at Mrs.

Inverarity's house in Marine Lines. Assuredly they would come back

again. So Punch fell asleep till the true morning, when the

black-haired boy met him with the information that Papa and Mamma had

gone to Bombay, and that he and Judy were to stay at Downe Lodge

"forever." Antirosa, tearfully appealed to for a contradiction, said

that Harry had spoken the truth, and that it behooved Punch to fold up

his clothes neatly on going to bed. Punch went out and wept bitterly

with Judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the

meaning of separation.

When a matured man discovers that he has been deserted by Providence,

deprived of his God, and cast without help, comfort, or sympathy, upon

a world which is new and strange to him, his despair, which may find

expression in evil-living, the writing of his experiences, or the more

satisfactory diversion of suicide, is generally supposed to be

impressive. A child, under exactly similar circumstances as far as its

knowledge goes, cannot very well curse God and die. It howls till its

nose is red, its eyes are sore, and its head aches. Punch and Judy,

through no fault of their own, had lost all their world. They sat in

the hall and cried; the black-haired boy looking on from afar.

The model of the ship availed nothing, though the gray man assured

Punch that he might pull the rigging up and down as much as he

pleased; and Judy was promised free entry into the kitchen. They

wanted Papa and Mamma, gone to Bombay beyond the seas, and their grief

while it lasted was without remedy.

When the tears ceased the house was very still. Antirosa had decided

it was better to let the children "have their cry out," and the boy

had gone to school. Punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed

mournfully. Judy was nearly asleep. Three short years had not taught

her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge. There was a distant, dull

boom in the air--a repeated heavy thud. Punch knew that sound in

Bombay in the Monsoon. It was the sea--the sea that must be traversed

before anyone could get to Bombay.

"Quick, Ju!" he cried, "we're close to the sea. I can hear it! Listen!

That's where they've went. P'raps we can catch them if we was in time.

They did n't mean to go without us. They've only forgot."

"Iss," said Judy. "They've only forgotted. Less go to the sea."

The hall-door was open and so was the garden-gate.

"It's very, very big, this place," he said, looking cautiously down

the road, "and we will get lost; but I will find a man and order him

to take me back to my house--like I did in Bombay."

He took Judy by the hand, and the two fled hatless in the direction of

the sound of the sea. Downe Villa was almost the last of a range of

newly built houses running out, through a chaos of brick-mounds, to a

heath where gypsies occasionally camped and where the Garrison

Artillery of Rocklington practised. There were few people to be seen,

and the children might have been taken for those of the soldiery, who

ranged far. Half an hour the wearied little legs tramped across

heath, potato-field, and sand-dune.

"I'se so tired," said Judy, "and Mamma will be angry."

"Mamma's never angry. I suppose she is waiting at the sea now while

Papa gets tickets. We'll find them and go along with them. Ju, you

must n't sit down. Only a little more and we'll come to the sea. Ju,

if you sit down I'll thmack you!" said Punch.

They climbed another dune, and came upon the great gray sea at low

tide. Hundreds of crabs were scuttling about the beach, but there was

no trace of Papa and Mamma not even of a ship upon the waters--nothing

but sand and mud for miles and miles.

And "Uncleharri" found them by chance--very muddy and very

forlorn--Punch dissolved in tears, but trying to divert Judy with an

"ickle trab," and Judy wailing to the pitiless horizon for "Mamma,

Mamma!"--and again "Mamma!"

THE SECOND BAG

Ah, well-a-day, for we are souls bereaved!

Of all the creatures under Heaven's wide scope

We are most hopeless, who had once most hope,

And most beliefless, who had most believed.

--_The City of Dreadful Night._

All this time not a word about Black Sheep. He came later, and Harry,

the black-haired boy, was mainly responsible for his coming.

Judy--who could help loving little Judy?--passed, by special permit,

into the kitchen and thence straight to Aunty Rosa's heart. Harry was

Aunty Rosa's one child, and Punch was the extra boy about the house.

There was no special place for him or his little affairs, and he was

forbidden to sprawl on sofas and explain his ideas about the

manufacture of this world and his hopes for his future. Sprawling was

lazy and wore out sofas, and little boys were not expected to talk.

They were talked to, and the talking to was intended for the benefit

of their morals. As the unquestioned despot of the house at Bombay,

Punch could not quite understand how he came to be of no account in

this new life.

Harry might reach across the table and take what he wanted; Judy might

point and get what she wanted. Punch was forbidden to do either. The

gray man was his great hope and stand-by for many months after Mamma

and Papa left, and he had forgotten to tell Judy to "bemember Mamma."

This lapse was excusable, because in the interval he had been

introduced by Aunty Rosa to two very impressive things--an abstraction

called God, the intimate friend and ally of Aunty Rosa, generally

believed to live behind the kitchen-range because it was hot

there--and a dirty brown book filled with unintelligible dots and

marks. Punch was always anxious to oblige everybody. He, therefore,

welded the story of the Creation on to what he could recollect of his

Indian fairy tales, and scandalized Aunty Rosa by repeating the result

to Judy. It was a sin, a grievous sin, and Punch was talked to for a

quarter of an hour. He could not understand where the iniquity came

in, but was careful not to repeat the offence, because Aunty Rosa told

him that God had heard every word he had said and was very angry. If

this were true why did n't God come and say so, thought Punch, and

dismissed the matter from his mind. Afterward he learned to know the

Lord as the only thing in the world more awful than Aunty Rosa--as a

Creature that stood in the background and counted the strokes of the

cane.

But the reading was, just then, a much more serious matter than any

creed. Aunty Rosa sat him upon a table and told him that A B meant ab.

"Why?" said Punch. "A is a and B is bee. Why does A B mean ab?"

"Because I tell you it does," said Aunty Rosa "and you've got to say

it."

Punch said it accordingly, and for a month, hugely against his will,

stumbled through the brown book, not in the least comprehending what

it meant. But Uncle Harry, who walked much and generally alone, was

wont to come into the nursery and suggest to Aunty Rosa that Punch

should walk with him. He seldom spoke, but he showed Punch all

Rocklington, from the mud-banks and the sand of the back-bay to the

great harbours where ships lay at anchor, and the dockyards where the

hammers were never still, and the marine-store shops, and the shiny

brass counters in the Offices where Uncle Harry went once every three

months with a slip of blue paper and received sovereigns in exchange;

for he held a wound-pension. Punch heard, too, from his lips the story

of the battle of Navarino, where the sailors of the Fleet, for three

days afterward, were deaf as posts and could only sign to each other.

"That was because of the noise of the guns," said Uncle Harry, "and I

have got the wadding of a bullet somewhere inside me now."

Punch regarded him with curiosity. He had not the least idea what

wadding was, and his notion of a bullet was a dockyard cannon-ball

bigger than his own head. How could Uncle Harry keep a cannon-ball

inside him? He was ashamed to ask, for fear Uncle Harry might be

angry.

Punch had never known what anger--real anger--meant until one terrible

day when Harry had taken his paint-box to paint a boat with, and Punch

had protested with a loud and lamentable voice. Then Uncle Harry had

appeared on the scene and, muttering something about "strangers'

children," had with a stick smitten the black-haired boy across the

shoulders till he wept and yelled, and Aunty Rosa came in and abused

Uncle Harry for cruelty to his own flesh and blood, and Punch

shuddered to the tips of his shoes. "It was n't my fault," he

explained to the boy, but both Harry and Aunty Rosa said that it was,

and that Punch had told tales, and for a week there were no more walks

with Uncle Harry.

But that week brought a great joy to Punch.

He had repeated till he was thrice weary the statement that "the Cat

lay on the Mat and the Rat came in."

"Now I can truly read," said Punch, "and now I will never read

anything in the world."

He put the brown book in the cupboard where his schoolbooks lived and

accidentally tumbled out a venerable volume, without covers, labelled

_Sharpe's Magazine_. There was the most portentous picture of a

Griffin on the first page, with verses below. The Griffin carried off

one sheep a day from a German village, till a man came with a

"falchion" and split the Griffin open. Goodness only knew what a

falchion was, but there was the Griffin, and his history was an

improvement upon the eternal Cat.

"This," said Punch, "means things, and now I will know all about

everything in all the world." He read till the light failed, not

understanding a tithe of the meaning, but tantalized by glimpses of

new worlds hereafter to be revealed.

"What is a 'falchion'? What is a 'e-wee lamb'? What is a 'base

ussurper'? What is a 'verdant me-ad'? he demanded, with flushed

cheeks, at bedtime, of the astonished Aunt Rosa.

"Say your prayers and go to sleep," she replied, and that was all the

help Punch then or afterward found at her hands in the new and

delightful exercise of reading.

"Aunt Rosa only knows about God and things like that," argued Punch.

"Uncle Harry will tell me."

The next walk proved that Uncle Harry could not help either; but he

allowed Punch to talk, and even sat down on a bench to hear about the

Griffin. Other walks brought other stories as Punch ranged farther

afield, for the house held large store of old books that no one ever

opened--from Frank Fairlegh in serial numbers, and the earlier poems

of Tennyson, contributed anonymously to _Sharpe's Magazine_, to '62

Exhibition Catalogues, gay with colours and delightfully

incomprehensible, and odd leaves of "Gulliver's Travels."

As soon as Punch could string a few pot-hooks together, he wrote to

Bombay, demanding by return of post "all the books in all the world."

Papa could not comply with this modest indent, but sent "Grimm's Fairy

Tales" and a "Hans Andersen." That was enough. If he were only left

alone Punch could pass, at any hour he chose, into a land of his own,

beyond reach of Aunty Rosa and her God, Harry and his teasements, and

Judy's claims to be played with.

"Don't disturb me, I'm reading. Go and play in the kitchen," grunted

Punch. "Aunty Rosa lets you go there." Judy was cutting her second

teeth and was fretful. She appealed to Aunty Rosa, who descended on

Punch.

"I was reading," he explained, "reading a book. I want to read."

"You're only doing that to show off," said Aunty Rosa. "But we'll see.

Play with Judy now, and don't open a book for a week."

Judy did not pass a very enjoyable playtime with Punch, who was

consumed with indignation. There was a pettiness at the bottom of the

prohibition which puzzled him.

"It's what I like to do," he said, "and she's found out that and

stopped me. Don't cry, Ju--it was n't your fault--please don't cry, or

she'll say I made you."

Ju loyally mopped up her tears, and the two played in their nursery, a

room in the basement and half underground, to which they were

regularly sent after the midday dinner while Aunty Rosa slept. She

drank wine--that is to say, something from a bottle in the

cellaret--for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she

would sometimes come into the nursery to see that the children were

really playing. Now bricks, wooden hoops, ninepins, and chinaware

cannot amuse forever, especially when all Fairyland is to be won by

the mere opening of a book, and, as often as not, Punch would be

discovered reading to Judy or tell her interminable tales. That was an

offence in the eyes of the law, and Judy would be whisked off by Aunty

Rosa, while Punch was left to play alone, "and be sure that I hear you

doing it."

It was not a cheering employ, for he had to make a playful noise. At

last, with infinite craft, he devised an arrangement whereby the table

could be supported as to three legs on toy bricks, leaving the fourth

clear to bring down on the floor. He could work the table with one

hand and hold a book with the other. This he did till an evil day when

Aunty Rosa pounced upon him unawares and told him that he was "acting

a lie."

"If you're old enough to do that," she said--her temper was always

worst after dinner--"you're old enough to be beaten."

"But--I'm--I'm not a animal!" said Punch, aghast. He remembered Uncle

Harry and the stick, and turned white. Aunty Rosa had hidden a light

cane behind her, and Punch was beaten then and there over the

shoulders. It was a revelation to him. The room door was shut, and he

was left to weep himself into repentance and work out his own Gospel

of Life.

Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with many stripes. It

was unjust and cruel and Mamma and Papa would never have allowed it.

Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret

orders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would be discreet in

the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters

in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to "show

off." He had "shown off" before visitors when he had attacked a

strange gentleman--Harry's uncle, not his own--with requests for

information about the Griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature

of the Tilbury in which Frank Fairlegh rode--all points of paramount

interest which he was bursting to understand. Clearly it would not do

to pretend to care for Aunty Rosa.

At this point Harry entered and stood afar off, eying Punch, a

disheveled heap in the corner of the room, with disgust.

"You're a liar--a young liar," said Harry, with great unction, "and

you're to have tea down here because you're not fit to speak to us.

And you're not to speak to Judy again till Mother gives you leave.

You'll corrupt her. You're only fit to associate with the servant.

Mother says so."

Having reduced Punch to a second agony of tears Harry departed

upstairs with the news that Punch was still rebellious.

Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining-room. "D---- it all, Rosa,"

said he at last, "can't you leave the child alone? He's a good enough

little chap when I meet him."

"He puts on his best manners with you, Henry," said Aunty Rosa, "but

I'm afraid, I'm very much afraid, that he is the Black Sheep of the

family."

Harry heard and stored up the name for future use. Judy cried till she

was bidden to stop, her brother not being worth tears; and the evening

concluded with the return of Punch to the upper regions and a private

sitting at which all the blinding horrors of Hell were revealed to

Punch with such store of imagery as Aunty Rosa's narrow mind

possessed.

Most grievous of all was Judy's round-eyed reproach, and Punch went to

bed in the depths of the Valley of Humiliation. He shared his room

with Harry and knew the torture in store. For an hour and a half he

had to answer that young gentleman's question as to his motives for

telling a lie, and a grievous lie, the precise quantity of punishment

inflicted by Aunty Rosa, and had also to profess his deep gratitude

for such religious instruction as Harry thought fit to impart.

From that day began the downfall of Punch, now Black Sheep.

"Untrustworthy in one thing, untrustworthy in all," said Aunty Rosa,

and Harry felt that Black Sheep was delivered into his hands. He

would wake him up in the night to ask him why he was such a liar.

"I don't know," Punch would reply.

"Then don't you think you ought to get up and pray to God for a new

heart?"

"Y-yess."

"Get out and pray, then!" And Punch would get out of bed with raging

hate in his heart against all the world, seen and unseen. He was

always tumbling into trouble. Harry had a knack of cross-examining him

as to his day's doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and

savage, into half a dozen contradictions--all duly reported to Aunty

Rosa next morning.

"But it was n't a lie," Punch would begin, charging into a laboured

explanation that landed him more hopelessly in the mire. "I said that

I did n't say my prayers twice over in the day, and that was on

Tuesday. Once I did, I know I did, but Harry said I did n't," and so

forth, till the tension brought tears, and he was dismissed from the

table in disgrace.

"You use n't to be as bad as this?" said Judy, awe-stricken at the

catalogue of Black Sheep's crimes. "Why are you so bad now?"

"I don't know," Black Sheep would reply. "I'm not, if I only was n't

bothered upside down. I knew what I did, and I want to say so; but

Harry always makes it out different somehow, and Aunty Rosa does n't

believe a word I say. Oh, Ju! don't you say I'm bad too."

"Aunty Rosa says you are," said Judy. "She told the Vicar so when he

came yesterday."

"Why does she tell all the people outside the house about me? It is

n't fair," said Black Sheep. "When I was in Bombay, and was bad--doing

bad, not made-up bad like this--Mamma told Papa, and Papa told me he

knew, and that was all. Outside people did n't know too--even Meeta

did n't know."

"I don't remember," said Judy wistfully. "I was all little then. Mamma

was just as fond of you as she was of me, was n't she?"

"'Course she was. So was Papa. So was everybody."

"Aunty Rosa likes me more than she does you. She says that you are a

Trial and a Black Sheep, and I'm not to speak to you more than I can

help."

"Always? Not outside of the times when you must n't speak to me at

all?"

Judy nodded her head mournfully. Black Sheep turned away in despair,

but Judy's arms were round his neck.

"Never mind, Punch," she whispered. "I will speak to you just the same

as ever and ever. You're my own, own brother though you are--though

Aunty Rosa says you're Bad, and Harry says you're a little coward. He

says that if I pulled your hair hard, you'd cry."

"Pull, then," said Punch.

Judy pulled gingerly.

"Pull harder--as hard as you can! There! I don't mind how much you

pull it now. If you'll speak to me same as ever I'll let you pull it

as much as you like--pull it out if you like. But I know if Harry came

and stood by and made you do it I'd cry."

So the two children sealed the compact with a kiss, and Black Sheep's

heart was cheered within him, and by extreme caution and careful

avoidance of Harry he acquired virtue and was allowed to read

undisturbed for a week. Uncle Harry took him for walks and consoled

him with rough tenderness, never calling him Black Sheep. "It's good

for you, I suppose, Punch," he used to say. "Let us sit down. I'm

getting tired." His steps led him now not to the beach, but to the

Cemetery of Rocklington, amid the potato-fields. For hours the gray

man would sit on a tombstone, while Black Sheep read epitaphs, and

then with a sigh would stump home again.

"I shall lie there soon," said he to Black Sheep; one winter evening,

when his face showed white as a worn silver coin under the lights of

the chapel-lodge. "You need n't tell Aunty Rosa."

A month later, he turned sharp round, ere half a morning walk was

completed, and stumped back to the house. "Put me to bed, Rosa," he

muttered. "I've walked my last. The wadding has found me out."

They put him to bed, and for a fortnight the shadow of his sickness

lay upon the house, and Black Sheep went to and fro unobserved. Papa

had sent him some new books, and he was told to keep quiet. He retired

into his own world, and was perfectly happy. Even at night his

felicity was unbroken. He could lie in bed and string himself tales of

travel and adventure while Harry was downstairs.

"Uncle Harry's going to die," said Judy, who now lived almost entirely

with Aunty Rosa.

"I'm very sorry," said Black Sheep soberly. "He told me that a long

time ago."

Aunty Rosa heard the conversation. "Will nothing check your wicked

tongue?" she said angrily. There were blue circles round her eyes.

Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and read "Cometh up as a Flower"

with deep and uncomprehending interest. He had been forbidden to read

it on account of its "sinfulness," but the bonds of the Universe were

crumbling, and Aunty Rosa was in great grief.

"I'm glad," said Black Sheep. "She 's unhappy now. It was n't a lie,

though. I knew. He told me not to tell."

That night Black Sheep woke with a start. Harry was not in the room,

and there was a sound of sobbing on the next floor. Then the voice of

Uncle Harry, singing the song of the Battle of Navarino, cut through

the darkness:

"Our vanship was the Asia--

The Albion and Genoa!"

"He 's getting well," thought Black Sheep, who knew the song through

all its seventeen verses. But the blood froze at his little heart as

he thought. The voice leapt an octave and rang shrill as a boatswain's

pipe:

"And next came on the lovely Rose,

The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,

And the Little Brisk was sore exposed

That day at Navarino."

"That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry!" shouted Black Sheep, half wild

with excitement and fear of he knew not what.

A door opened and Aunty Rosa screamed up the staircase: "Hush! For

God's sake hush, you little devil. Uncle Harry is dead!"

THE THIRD BAG

Journeys end in lovers' meeting,

Every wise man's son doth know.

"I wonder what will happen to me now," thought Black Sheep, when the

semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of the Dead in middle-class

houses had been accomplished, and Aunty Rosa, awful in black crape,

had returned to this life. "I don't think I've done anything bad that

she knows of. I suppose I will soon. She will be very cross after

Uncle Harry's dying, and Harry will be cross too. I 'll keep in the

nursery."

Unfortunately for Punch's plans, it was decided that he should be sent

to a day-school which Harry attended. This meant a morning walk with

Harry, and perhaps an evening one; but the prospect of freedom in the

interval was refreshing. "Harry 'll tell everything I do, but I won't

do anything," said Black Sheep. Fortified with this virtuous

resolution, he went to school only to find that Harry's version of his

character had preceded him, and that life was a burden in consequence.

He took stock of his associates. Some of them were unclean, some of

them talked in dialect, many dropped their h's, and there were two

Jews and a Negro, or someone quite as dark, in the assembly. "That's a

hubshi," said Black Sheep to himself. "Even Meeta used to laugh at a

hubshi. I don't think this is a proper place." He was indignant for at

least an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part

would be by Aunty Rosa construed into "showing off," and that Harry

would tell the boys.

"How do you like school?" said Aunty Rosa at the end of the day.

"I think it is a very nice place," said Punch quietly.

"I suppose you warned the boys of Black Sheep's character?" said Aunty

Rosa to Harry.

"Oh, yes!" said the censor of Black Sheep's morals. "They know all

about him."

"If I was with my father," said Black Sheep, stung to the quick, "I

should n't speak to those boys. He would n't let me. They live in

shops. I saw them go into shops--where their fathers live and sell

things."

"You're too good for that school, are you?" said Aunty Rosa, with a

bitter smile. "You ought to be grateful, Black Sheep, that those boys

speak to you at all. It is n't every school that takes little liars."

Harry did not fail to make much capital out of Black Sheep's

ill-considered remark; with the result that several boys, including

the hubshi, demonstrated to Black Sheep the eternal equality of the

human race by smacking his head, and his consolation from Aunty Rosa

was that it "served him right for being vain." He learned, however, to

keep his opinions to himself, and by propitiating Harry in carrying

books and the like to secure a little peace. His existence was not too

joyful. From nine till twelve he was at school, and from two to four,

except on Saturdays. In the evenings he was sent down into the nursery

to prepare his lessons for the next day, and every night came the

dreaded cross-questionings at Harry's hand. Of Judy he saw but little.

She was deeply religious--at six years of age Religion is easy to come

by--and sorely divided between her natural love for Black Sheep and

her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do no wrong.

The lean woman returned that love with interest, and Judy, when she

dared, took advantage of this for the remission of Black Sheep's

penalties. Failures in lessons at school were furnished at home by a

week without reading other than schoolbooks, and Harry brought the

news of such a failure with glee. Further, Black Sheep was then bound

to repeat his lessons at bedtime to Harry, who generally succeeded in

making him break down, and consoled him by gloomiest forebodings for

the morrow. Harry was at once spy, practical joker, inquisitor, and

Aunty Rosa's deputy executioner. He filled his many posts to

admiration. From his actions, now that Uncle Harry was dead, there was

no appeal. Black Sheep had not been permitted to keep any self-respect

at school; at home he was of course utterly discredited, and grateful

for any pity that the servant-girls--they changed frequently at Downe

Lodge because they, too, were liars--might show. "You 're just fit to

row in the same boat with Black Sheep," was a sentiment that each new

Jane or Eliza might expect to hear, before a month was over, from

Aunty Rosa's lips; and Black Sheep was used to ask new girls whether

they had yet been compared to him. Harry was "Master Harry" in their

mouths; Judy was officially "Miss Judy"; but Black Sheep was never

anything more than Black Sheep _tout court_.

As time went on and the memory of Papa and Mamma became wholly

overlaid by the unpleasant task of writing them letters under Aunty

Rosa's eye, each Sunday, Black Sheep forgot what manner of life he had

led in the beginning of things. Even Judy's appeals to "try and

remember about Bombay" failed to quicken him.

"I can't remember," he said. "I know I used to give orders and Mamma

kissed me."

"Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good," pleaded Judy.

"Ugh! I don't want to be kissed by Aunty Rosa. She'd say I was doing

it to get something more to eat."

The weeks lengthened into months, and the holidays came; but just

before the holidays Black Sheep fell into deadly sin.

Among the many boys whom Harry had incited to "punch Black Sheep's

head because he dare n't hit back," was one more aggravating than the

rest, who, in an unlucky moment, fell upon Black Sheep when Harry was

not near. The blows stung, and Black Sheep struck back at random with

all the power at his command. The boy dropped and whimpered. Black

Sheep was astounded at his own act, but, feeling the unresisting body

under him, shook it with both his hands in blind fury and then began

to throttle his enemy; meaning honestly to slay him. There was a

scuffle, and Black Sheep was torn off the body by Harry and some

colleagues, and cuffed home tingling but exultant. Aunty Rosa was out;

pending her arrival Harry set himself to lecture Black Sheep on the

sin of murder--which he described as the offence of Cain.

"Why did n't you fight him fair? What did you hit him when he was down

for, you little cur?"

Black Sheep looked up at Harry's throat and then at a knife on the

dinner-table.

"I don't understand," he said wearily. "You always set him on me and

told me I was a coward when I blubbed. Will you leave me alone until

Aunty Rosa comes in? She'll beat me if you tell her I ought to be

beaten; so it's all right."

"It's all wrong," said Harry magisterially. "You nearly killed him,

and I should n't wonder if he dies."

"Will he die?" said Black Sheep.

"I daresay," said Harry, "and then you'll be hanged."

"All right," said Black Sheep, possessing himself of the table-knife.

"Then I'll kill you now. You say things and do things and--and I

don't know how things happen, and you never leave me alone--and I

don't care what happens!"

He ran at the boy with the knife, and Harry fled upstairs to his room,

promising Black Sheep the finest thrashing in the world when Aunty

Rosa returned. Black Sheep sat at the bottom of the stairs, the

table-knife in his hand, and wept for that he had not killed Harry.

The servant-girl came up from the kitchen, took the knife away, and

consoled him. But Black Sheep was beyond consolation. He would be

badly beaten by Aunty Rosa; then there would be another beating at

Harry's hands; then Judy would not be allowed to speak to him; then

the tale would be told at school and then----

There was no one to help and no one to care, and the best way out of

the business was by death. A knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa had told

him, a year ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. He went into

the nursery, unearthed the now-disused Noah's Ark, and sucked the

paint off as many animals as remained. It tasted abominable, but he

had licked Noah's Dove clean by the time Aunty Rosa and Judy returned.

He went upstairs and greeted them with: "Please, Aunty Rosa, I believe

I've nearly killed a boy at school, and I've tried to kill Harry, and

when you've done all about God and Hell, will you beat me and get it

over?"

The tale of the assault as told by Harry could only be explained on

the ground of possession by the Devil. Wherefore Black Sheep was not

only most excellently beaten, once by Aunty Rosa and once, when

thoroughly cowed down, by Harry, but he was further prayed for at

family prayers, together with Jane, who had stolen a cold rissole from

the pantry and snuffled audibly as her enormity was brought before the

Throne of Grace. Black Sheep was sore and stiff, but triumphant. He

would die that very night and be rid of them all. No, he would ask for

no forgiveness from Harry, and at bedtime would stand no questioning

at Harry's hands, even though addressed as "Young Cain."

"I've been beaten," said he, "and I've done other things. I don't care

what I do. If you speak to me to-night, Harry, I'll get out and try to

kill you. Now you can kill me if you like."

Harry took his bed into the spare-room, and Black Sheep lay down to

die.

It may be that the makers of Noah's Arks know that their animals are

likely to find their way into young mouths, and paint them

accordingly. Certain it is that the common, weary next morning broke

through the windows and found Black Sheep quite well and a good deal

ashamed of himself, but richer by the knowledge that he could, in

extremity, secure himself against Harry for the future.

When he descended to breakfast on the first day of the holidays, he

was greeted with the news that Harry, Aunty Rosa, and Judy were going

away to Brighton, while Black Sheep was to stay in the house with the

servant. His latest outbreak suited Aunty Rosa's plans admirably. It

gave her good excuse for leaving the extra boy behind. Papa in Bombay,

who really seemed to know a young sinner's wants to the hour, sent,

that week, a package of new books. And with these, and the society of

Jane on board-wages, Black Sheep was left alone for a month.

The books lasted for ten days. They were eaten too quickly, in long

gulps of four-and-twenty hours at a time. Then came days of doing

absolutely nothing, of dreaming dreams and marching imaginary armies

up and down stairs, of counting the number of banisters, and of

measuring the length and breadth of every room in handspans--fifty

down the side, thirty across, and fifty back again. Jane made many

friends, and, after receiving Black Sheep's assurance that he would

not tell of her absences, went out daily for long hours. Black Sheep

would follow the rays of the sinking sun from the kitchen to the

dining-room and thence upward to his own bedroom until all was gray

dark, and he ran down to the kitchen fire and read by its light. He

was happy in that he was left alone and could read as much as he

pleased. But, later, he grew afraid of the shadows of window-curtains

and the flapping of doors and the creaking of shutters. He went out

into the garden, and the rustling of the laurel-bushes frightened him.

He was glad when they all returned--Aunty Rosa, Harry, and Judy--full

of news, and Judy laden with gifts. Who could help loving loyal little

Judy? In return for all her merry babblement, Black Sheep confided to

her that the distance from the hall-door to the top of the first

landing was exactly one hundred and eighty-four handspans. He had

found it out himself.

Then the old life recommenced; but with a difference, and a new sin.

To his other iniquities Black Sheep had now added a phenomenal

clumsiness--was as unfit to trust in action as he was in word. He

himself could not account for spilling everything he touched,

upsetting glasses as he put his hand out, and bumping his head against

doors that were manifestly shut. There was a gray haze upon all his

world, and it narrowed month by month, until at last it left Black

Sheep almost alone with the flapping curtains that were so like

ghosts, and the nameless terrors of broad daylight that were only

coats on pegs after all.

Holidays came and holidays went, and Black Sheep was taken to see many

people whose faces were all exactly alike; was beaten when occasion

demanded, and tortured by Harry on all possible occasions; but

defended by Judy through good and evil report, though she hereby drew

upon herself the wrath of Aunty Rosa.

The weeks were interminable and Papa and Mamma were clean forgotten.

Harry had left school and was a clerk in a Banking-Office. Freed from

his presence, Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be

deprived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently, when he

failed at school he reported that all was well, and conceived a large

contempt for Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. "She

says I'm a little liar when I don't tell lies, and now I do, she does

n't know," thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had credited him in the

past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his

head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to

him he paid her back full tale. In a household where the most innocent

of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affection, had been

interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam or to ingratiate

himself with strangers and so put Harry into the background, his work

was easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but

not all. He set his child's wits against hers and was no more beaten.

It grew monthly more and more of a trouble to read the schoolbooks,

and even the pages of the open-print story-books danced and were dim.

So Black Sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and cut him

off from the world, inventing horrible punishments for "dear Harry,"

or plotting another line of the tangled web of deception that he

wrapped round Aunty Rosa.

Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. It was impossible to

foresee everything. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries as to Black

Sheep's progress and received information that startled her. Step by

step, with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed

housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she followed the trail of Black

Sheep's delinquencies. For weeks and weeks, in order to escape

banishment from the book-shelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of

Harry, of God, of all the world. Horrible, most horrible, and evidence

of an utterly depraved mind.

Black Sheep counted the cost. "It will only be one big beating, and

then she'll put a card with 'Liar' on my back, same as she did before.

Harry will whack me and pray for me, and she will pray for me at

prayers and tell me I'm a Child of the Devil and give me hymns to

learn. But I've done all my reading and she never knew. She'll say she

knew all along. She's an old liar, too," said he.

For three days Black Sheep was shut in his own bedroom--to prepare his

heart. "That means two beatings. One at school and one here. That one

will hurt most." And it fell even as he thought. He was thrashed at

school before the Jews and the hubshi, for the heinous crime of

bringing home false reports of progress. He was thrashed at home by

Aunty Rosa on the same count, and then the placard was produced. Aunty

Rosa stitched it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with

it upon him.

"If you make me do that," said Black Sheep very quietly, "I shall burn

this house down, and perhaps I'll kill you. I don't know whether I can

kill you--you 're so bony--but I'll try."

No punishment followed this blasphemy, though Black Sheep held himself

ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa's withered throat, and grip there

till he was beaten off. Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black

Sheep, having reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with a new

recklessness.

In the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from over the

seas to Downe Lodge, who knew Papa and Mamma, and was commissioned to

see Punch and Judy. Black Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and

charged into a solid tea-table laden with china.

"Gently, gently, little man," said the visitor turning Black Sheep's

face to the light slowly. "What's that big bird on the palings?"

"What bird?" asked Black Sheep.

The visitor looked deep down into Black Sheep's eyes for a half a

minute, and then said suddenly: "Good God, the little chap's nearly

blind."

It was a most business-like visitor. He gave orders, on his own

responsibility, that Black Sheep was not to go to school or open a

book until Mamma came home. "She'll be here in three weeks, as you

know of course," said he, "and I'm Inverarity Sahib. I ushered you

into this wicked world, young man, and a nice use you seem to have

made of your time. You must do nothing whatever. Can you do that?"

"Yes," said Punch in a dazed way. He had known that Mamma was coming.

There was a chance, then, of another beating. Thank Heaven, Papa was

n't coming too. Aunty Rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten

by a man.

For the next three weeks Black Sheep was strictly allowed to do

nothing. He spent his time in the old nursery looking at the broken

toys, for all of which account must be rendered to Mamma. Aunty Rosa

hit him over the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. But that sin

was of small importance compared to the other revelations, so darkly

hinted at by Aunty Rosa. "When your mother comes, and hears what I

have to tell her, she may appreciate you properly," she said grimly,

and mounted guard over Judy lest that small maiden should attempt to

comfort her brother, to the peril of her own soul.

And Mamma came--in a four-wheeler and a flutter of tender excitement.

Such a Mamma! She was young, frivolously young, and beautiful, with

delicately flushed cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice

that needed no additional appeal of outstretched arms to draw little

ones to her heart. Judy ran straight to her, but Black Sheep

hesitated. Could this wonder be "showing off"? She would not put out

her arms when she knew of his crimes. Meantime was it possible that by

fondling she wanted to get anything out of Black Sheep? Only all his

love and all his confidence; but that Black Sheep did not know. Aunty

Rosa withdrew and left Mamma, kneeling between her children, half

laughing, half crying, in the very hall where Punch and Judy had wept

five years before.

"Well, chicks, do you remember me?"

"No," said Judy frankly, "but I said 'God bless Papa and Mamma,' ev'vy

night."

"A little," said Black Sheep. "Remember I wrote to you every week,

anyhow. That is n't to show off, but 'cause of what comes afterward."

"What comes after! What should come after, my darling boy?" And she

drew him to her again. He came awkwardly, with many angles. "Not used

to petting," said the quick Mother-soul. "The girl is."

"She's too little to hurt anyone," thought Black Sheep, "and if I said

I'd kill her, she'd be afraid. I wonder what Aunty Rosa will tell."

There was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which Mamma picked

up Judy and put her to bed with endearments manifold. Faithless little

Judy had shown her defection from Aunty Rosa already. And that lady

resented it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the room.

"Come and say good night," said Aunty Rosa, offering a withered cheek.

"Huh!" said Black Sheep. "I never kiss you, and I'm not going to show

off. Tell that woman what I've done, and see what she says."

Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost Heaven after a

glimpse through the gates. In half an hour "that woman" was bending

over him. Black Sheep flung up his right arm. It was n't fair to come

and hit him in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried that. But no blow

followed.

"Are you showing off? I won't tell you anything more than Aunty Rosa

has, and she does n't know everything," said Black Sheep as clearly as

he could for the arms round his neck.

"Oh, my son--my little, little son! It was my fault--my fault,

darling--and yet how could we help it? Forgive me, Punch." The voice

died out in a broken whisper, and two hot tears fell on Black Sheep's

forehead.

"Has she been making you cry, too?" he asked. "You should see Jane

cry. But you're nice, and Jane is a Born Liar--Aunty Rosa says so."

"Hush, Punch, hush! My boy, don't talk like that. Try to love me a

little bit--a little bit. You don't know how I want it. Punch-baba,

come back to me! I am your Mother--your own Mother--and never mind the

rest. I know--yes, I know, dear. It does n't matter now. Punch, won't

you care for me a little?"

It is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can endure when he

is quite sure that there is no one to laugh at him. Black Sheep had

never been made much of before, and here was this beautiful woman

treating him--Black Sheep, the Child of the Devil and the Inheritor of

Undying Flame--as though he were a small God.

"I care for you a great deal, Mother dear," he whispered at last, "and

I'm glad you've come back; but are you sure Aunty Rosa told you

everything?"

"Everything. What does it matter? But----" the voice broke with a sob

that was also laughter--"Punch, my poor, dear, half-blind darling,

don't you think it was a little foolish of you?"

"No. It saved a lickin'."

Mamma shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to write a long

letter to Papa. Here is an extract:

"... Judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and wears

with as much gravity as her religious opinions--only eight, Jack!--a

venerable horsehair atrocity which she calls her Bustle. I have just

burned it, and the child is asleep in my bed as I write. She will come

to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand. He is well nourished,

but seems to have been worried into a system of small deceptions which

the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don't you recollect our own

up-bringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord was so often the

beginning of falsehood? I shall win Punch to me before long. I am

taking the children away into the country to get them to know me, and,

on the whole, I am content, or shall be when you come home, dear boy,

and then, thank God, we shall be all under one roof again at last!"

* * * * *

Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has discovered that

he is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely Mamma, who is also a

sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the

Father comes home. Deception does not suit the part of a protector,

and, when one can do anything without question, where is the use of

deception?

"Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch," says

Judy, continuing a conversation.

"Mother's never angry," says Punch. "She'd just say, 'You're a little

pagal'; and that's not nice, but I'll show."

Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. "Mother,

dear," he shouts, "I'm just as dirty as I can pos-sib-ly be!"

"Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-sib-ly can!" rings out

Mother's clear voice from the house. "And don't be a little pagal!"

"There! Told you so," says Punch. "It's all different now, and we are

just as much Mother's as if she had never gone."

Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the

bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the

world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn

darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith

was.

V

WEE WILLIE WINKIE

"An officer and a gentleman."

His full name was Percival William Williams, but he picked up the

other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened

titles. His mother's ayah called him Willie-Baba, but as he never paid

the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did

not help matters.

His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and as soon as Wee Willie

Winkie was old enough to understand what Military Discipline meant,

Colonel Williams put him under it. There was no other way of managing

the child. When he was good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay; and

when he was bad, he was deprived of his good-conduct-stripe. Generally

he was bad, for India offers so many chances to little six-year-olds

of going wrong.

Children resent familiarity from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was

a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was

graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the

195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee

Willie Winkie entered, strong in the possession of a good-conduct

badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. He regarded

Brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then delivered

himself of his opinion.

"I like you," said he slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to

Brandis. "I like you. I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. Do

you mind being called Coppy? It is because of ve hair, you know."

Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee Willie Winkie's

peculiarities. He would look at a stranger for some time, and then,

without warning or explanation, would give him a name. And the name

stuck. No regimental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie of this

habit. He lost his good-conduct badge for christening the

Commissioner's wife "Pobs"; but nothing that the Colonel could do made

the Station forego the nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. "Pobs"

till the end of her stay. So Brandis was christened "Coppy," and rose,

therefore, in the estimation of the regiment.

If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in anyone, the fortunate man was

envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay

no suspicion of self-interest. "The Colonel's son" was idolized on his

own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face

was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and

in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted

upon having his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion.

"I want my hair like Sergeant Tummil's," said Wee Willie Winkie, and,

his father abetting, the sacrifice was accomplished.

Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on

Lieutenant Brandis--henceforward to be called "Coppy" for the sake of

brevity--Wee Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and

far beyond his comprehension.

Coppy returned his liking with interest. Coppy had let him wear for

five rapturous minutes his own big sword--just as tall as Wee Willie

Winkie. Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had

permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay,

more--Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in

time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and

a silver-handled "sputter-brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it.

Decidedly, there was no one, except his father, who could give or take

away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and

valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast.

Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the unmanly weakness of

kissing--vehemently kissing--a "big girl," Miss Allardyce to wit? In

the course of a morning ride, Wee Willie Winkie had seen Coppy so

doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round and

cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but

he felt instinctively that this was a matter on which Coppy ought

first to be consulted.

"Coppy," shouted Wee Willie Winkie, reining up outside that

subaltern's bungalow early one morning--"I want to see you, Coppy!"

"Come in, young 'un," returned Coppy, who was at early breakfast in

the midst of his dogs. "What mischief have you been getting into now?"

Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and

so stood on a pinnacle of virtue.

"I've been doing nothing bad," said he, curling himself into a long

chair with a studious affectation of the Colonel's langour after a hot

parade. He buried his freckled nose in a tea-cup and, with eyes

staring roundly over the rim, asked: "I say, Coppy, is it pwoper to

kiss big girls?"

"By Jove! You're beginning early. Who do you want to kiss?"

"No one. My muvver's always kissing me if I don't stop her. If it is

n't pwoper, how was you kissing Major Allardyce's big girl last

morning, by ve canal?"

Coppy's brow wrinkled. He and Miss Allardyce had with great craft

managed to keep their engagement secret for a fortnight. There were

urgent and imperative reasons why Major Allardyce should not know how

matters stood for at least another month, and this small marplot had

discovered a great deal too much.

"I saw you," said Wee Willie Winkle calmly. "But ve groom did n't see.

I said, 'Hut jao.'"

"Oh, you had that much sense, you young Rip," groaned poor Coppy, half

amused and half angry. "And how many people may you have told about

it?"

"Only me myself. You did n't tell when I twied to wide ve buffalo ven

my pony was lame; and I fought you would n't like."

"Winkie," said Coppy enthusiastically, shaking the small hand, "you're

the best of good fellows. Look here, you can't understand all these

things. One of these days--hang it, how can I make you see it!--I'm

going to marry Miss Allardyce, and then she'll be Mrs. Coppy, as you

say. If your young mind is so scandalized at the idea of kissing big

girls, go and tell your father."

"What will happen?" said Wee Willie Winkie, who firmly believed that

his father was omnipotent.

"I shall get into trouble," said Coppy, playing his trump card with

an appealing look at the holder of the ace.

"Ven I won't," said Wee Willie Winkie briefly. "But my faver says it's

un-man-ly to be always kissing, and I did n't fink you'd do vat,

Coppy."

"I'm not always kissing, old chap. It's only now and then, and when

you're bigger you'll do it too. Your father meant it's not good for

little boys."

"Ah!" said Wee Willie Winkle, now fully enlightened. "It's like ve

sputter-brush?"

"Exactly," said Coppy gravely.

"But I don't fink I'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no one, 'cept

my muvver. And I must vat, you know."

There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie Winkie.

"Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy?"

"Awfully!" said Coppy.

"Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha--or me?"

"It's in a different way," said Coppy. "You see, one of these days

Miss Allardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and command the

Regiment and--all sorts of things. It's quite different, you see."

"Very well," said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. "If you're fond of ve big

girl, I won't tell anyone. I must go now."

Coppy rose and escorted his small guest to the door, adding: "You're

the best of little fellows, Winkie. I tell you what. In thirty days

from now you can tell if you like--tell anyone you like."

Thus the secret of the Brandis-Allardyce engagement was dependent on a

little child's word. Coppy, who knew Wee Willie Winkie's idea of

truth, was at ease, for he felt that he would not break promises. Wee

Willie Winkie betrayed a special and unusual interest in Miss

Allardyce, and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed young lady,

was used to regard her gravely with unwinking eye. He was trying to

discover why Coppy should have kissed her. She was not half so nice as

his own mother. On the other hand she was Coppy's property, and would

in time belong to him. Therefore it behooved him to treat her with as

much respect as Coppy's big sword or shiny pistol.

The idea that he shared a great secret in common with Coppy kept Wee

Willie Winkie unusually virtuous for three weeks. Then the Old Adam

broke out, and he made what he called a "camp-fire" at the bottom of

the garden. How could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would

have lighted the Colonel's little hay-rick and consumed a week's store

for the horses? Sudden and swift was the punishment--deprivation of

the good-conduct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two days'

confinement to barracks--the house and veranda--coupled with the

withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance.

He took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew himself up

with a quivering under-lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran

to weep bitterly in his nursery--called by him "my quarters." Coppy

came in the afternoon and attempted to console the culprit.

"I'm under awwest," said Wee Willie Winkie mournfully, "and I did n't

ought to speak to you."

Very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the

house--that was not forbidden--and beheld Miss Allardyce going for a

ride.

"Where are you going?" cried Wee Willie Winkie.

"Across the river," she answered, and trotted forward.

Now the cantonment in which the 195th lay was bounded on the north by

a river--dry in the winter. From his earliest years, Wee Willie Winkie

had been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even

Coppy--the almost almighty Coppy--had never set foot beyond it. Wee

Willie Winkie had once been read to, out of a big blue book, the

history of the Princess and the Goblins--a most wonderful tale of a

land where the Goblins were always warring with the children of men

until they were defeated by one Curdie. Ever since that date it seemed

to him that the bare black and purple hills across the river were

inhabited by Goblins, and, in truth, everyone had said that there

lived the Bad Men. Even in his own house the lower halves of the

windows were covered with green paper on account of the Bad Men who

might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and

comfortable bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the river, which was the end

of all the Earth, lived the Bad Men. And here was Major Allardyce's

big girl, Coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders!

What would Coppy say if anything happened to her? If the Goblins ran

off with her as they did with Curdie's Princess? She must at all

hazards be turned back.

The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie reflected for a moment on the

very terrible wrath of his father; and then--broke his arrest! It was

a crime unspeakable. The low sun threw his shadow, very large and very

black, on the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and

ordered his pony. It seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all

the big world had been bidden to stand still and look at Wee Willie

Winkie guilty of mutiny. The drowsy groom handed him his mount, and

since the one great sin made all others insignificant, Wee Willie

Winkie said that he was going to ride over to Coppy Sahib, and went

out at a foot-pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flower-borders.

The devastating track of the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut

him off from all sympathy of Humanity. He turned into the road, leaned

forward, and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in

the direction of the river.

But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little against the long

canter of a Waler. Miss Allardyce was far ahead, had passed through

the crops, beyond the Police-post, when all the guards were asleep,

and her mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as Wee

Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed,

forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan

territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce a black speck, flickering

across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough.

Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over

night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to

prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a lesson.

Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills Wee Willie Winkie saw the

Waler blunder and come down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled clear,

but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand.

Having thus demonstrated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was

surprised by the apparition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a

nearly spent pony.

"Are you badly, badly hurted?" shouted Wee Willie Winkie, as soon as

he was within range. "You did n't ought to be here."

"I don't know," said Miss Allardyce ruefully ignoring the reproof.

"Good gracious, child, what are you doing here?"

"You said you was going acwoss ve wiver," panted Wee Willie Winkie,

throwing himself off his pony. "And nobody--not even Coppy--must go

acwoss ve wiver, and I came after you ever so hard, but you would n't

stop, and now you 've hurted yourself, and Coppy will be angry wiv me,

and--I've bwoken my awwest! I've bwoken my awwest!"

The future Colonel of the 195th sat down and sobbed. In spite of the

pain in her ankle the girl was moved.

"Have you ridden all the way from cantonments, little man? What for?"

"You belonged to Coppy. Coppy told me so!" wailed Wee Willie Winkie

disconsolately. "I saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of

you van Bell or ve Butcha or me. And so I came. You must get up and

come back. You did n't ought to be here. Vis is a bad place, and I 've

bwoken my awwest."

"I can't move, Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, with a groan. "I've hurt

my foot. What shall I do?"

She showed a readiness to weep afresh which steadied Wee Willie

Winkie, who had been brought up to believe that tears were the depth

of unmanliness. Still, when one is as great a sinner as Wee Willie

Winkie, even a man may be permitted to break down.

"Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, "when you've rested a little, ride back

and tell them to send out something to carry me back in. It hurts

fearfully."

The child sat still for a little time and Miss Allardyce closed her

eyes; the pain was nearly making her faint. She was roused by Wee

Willie Winkie tying up the reins on his pony's neck and setting it

free with a vicious cut of his whip that made it whicker. The little

animal headed toward the cantonments.

"Oh, Winkie! What are you doing?"

"Hush!" said Wee Willie Winkie. "Vere's a man coming--one of ve Bad

Men. I must stay wiv you. My faver says a man must always look after a

girl. Jack will go home, and ven vey 'll come and look for us. Vat 's

why I let him go."

Not one man, but two or three, had appeared from behind the rocks of

the hills, and the heart of Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for

just in this manner were the Goblins wont to steal out and vex

Curdie's soul. Thus had they played in Curdie's garden, he had seen

the picture, and thus had they frightened the Princess's nurse. He

heard them talking to each other, and recognized with joy the bastard

Pushto that he had picked up from one of his father's grooms lately

dismissed. People who spoke that tongue could not be the Bad Men. They

were only natives, after all.

They came up to the boulders on which Miss Allardyce's horse had

blundered.

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child of the Dominant Race,

aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically "Jao!"

The pony had crossed the river-bed.

The men laughed, and laughter from natives was the one thing Wee

Willie Winkie could not tolerate. He asked them what they wanted and

why they did not depart. Other men with most evil faces and

crooked-stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till,

soon, Wee Willie Winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty

strong. Miss Allardyce screamed.

"Who are you?" said one of the men.

"I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once.

You black men are frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into

cantonments and take the news that the Miss Sahib has hurt herself,

and that the Colonel's son is here with her."

"Put our feet into the trap?" was the laughing reply. "Hear this boy's

speech!"

"Say that I sent you--I, the Colonel's son. They will give you

money."

"What is the use of this talk? Take up the child and the girl, and we

can at least ask for the ransom. Ours are the villages on the

heights," said a voice in the background.

These were the Bad Men--worse than Goblins--and it needed all Wee

Willie Winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. But

he felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother's ayah,

would be an infamy greater than any mutiny. Moreover, he, as future

Colonel of the 195th, had that grim regiment at his back.

"Are you going to carry us away?" said Wee Willie Winkie, very

blanched and uncomfortable.

"Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur," said the tallest of the men, "and eat

you afterward."

"That is child's talk," said Wee Willie Winkie. "Men do not eat men."

A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on firmly--"And if you

do carry us away, I tell you that all my regiment will come up in a

day and kill you all without leaving one. Who will take my message to

the Colonel Sahib?"

Speech in any vernacular--and Wee Willie Winkie had a colloquial

acquaintance with three--was easy to the boy who could not yet manage

his "r's" and "th's" aright.

Another man joined the conference, crying: "Oh, foolish men! What this

babe says is true. He is the heart's heart of those white troops. For

the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment

will break loose and gut the valley. Our villages are in the valley,

and we shall not escape. That regiment are devils. They broke Khoda

Yar's breast-bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles; and if

we touch this child they will fire and rape and plunder for a month,

till nothing remains. Better to send a man back to take the message

and get a reward. I say that this child is their God, and that they

will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm him."

It was Din Mahommed, the dismissed groom of the Colonel, who made the

diversion, and an angry and heated discussion followed. Wee Willie

Winkie, standing over Miss Allardyce, waited the upshot. Surely his

"wegiment," his own "wegiment," would not desert him if they knew of

his extremity.

* * * * *

The riderless pony brought the news to the 195th, though there had

been consternation in the Colonel's household for an hour before. The

little beast came in through the parade-ground in front of the main

barracks, where the men were settling down to play Spoil-five till the

afternoon. Devlin, the Colour Sergeant of E Company, glanced at the

empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each

Room Corporal as he passed. "Up, ye beggars! There's something

happened to the Colonel's son," he shouted.

"He could n't fall off! S'elp me, 'e could n't fall off," blubbered a

drummer-boy. "Go an' hunt acrost the river. He's over there if he's

anywhere, an' maybe those Pathans have got 'im. For the love o' Gawd

don't look for 'im in the nullahs! Let's go over the river."

"There's sense in Mott yet," said Devlin. "E Company, double out to

the river--sharp!"

So E Company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, doubled for the dear life,

and in the rear toiled the perspiring Sergeant, adjuring it to double

yet faster. The cantonment was alive with the men of the 195th hunting

for Wee Willie Winkie, and the Colonel finally overtook E Company, far

too exhausted to swear, struggling in the pebbles of the river-bed.

Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie's Bad Men were discussing

the wisdom of carrying off the child and the girl, a lookout fired two

shots.

"What have I said?" shouted Din Mahommed. "There is the warning! The

pulton are out already and are coming across the plain! Get away! Let

us not be seen with the boy!"

The men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired,

withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared.

"The wegiment is coming," said Wee Willie Winkie confidently to Miss

Allardyce, "and it's all wight. Don't cwy!"

He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later, when his father

came up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in Miss Allardyce's

lap.

And the men of the 195th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings;

and Coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his

intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men.

But there was balm for his dignity. His father assured him that not

only would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the

good-conduct badge would be restored as soon as his mother could sew

it on his blouse-sleeve. Miss Allardyce had told the Colonel a story

that made him proud of his son.

"She belonged to you, Coppy," said Wee Willie Winkie, indicating Miss

Allardyce with a grimy forefinger. "I knew she did n't ought to go

acwoss ve wiver, and I knew ve wegiment would come to me if I sent

Jack home."

"You're a hero, Winkie," said Coppy--"a pukka hero!"

"I don't know what vat means," said Wee Willie Winkie, "but you must

n't call me Winkie any no more. I'm Percival Will'am Will'ams."

And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie enter into his manhood.

VI

THE DOVE OF DACCA

The freed dove flew to the Rajah's tower--

Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings--

And the thorns have covered the city of Gaur.

Dove--dove--oh, homing dove!

Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings!

The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall;

He set in his bosom a dove of flight--

"If she return, be sure that I fall."

Dove--dove--oh, homing dove!

Pressed to his heart in the thick of the fight.

"Fire the palace, the fort, and the keep--

Leave to the foeman no spoil at all.

In the flame of the palace lie down and sleep

If the dove, if the dove--if the homing dove

Come and alone to the palace wall."