[Frontispiece: "'FOUND THEM HIDIN' DOWN THE FORE-HOLD, SIR.'" p. 26.]
SUNSHINE AND SNOW.
BY
HAROLD BINDLOSS.
Author of "In the Niger Country," "The Concession Hunters,"
"Ainslie's Ju-ju" etc.
_WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS._
TORONTO:
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY,
LIMITED.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.--THE PAPER-CHASE
II.--IN COLLISION
III.--THE STOLEN CATTLE
IV.--THROUGH THE BLIZZARD
V.--ADVERSE FORTUNE
VI.--WHEN THE SNOWS CAME DOWN
SUNSHINE AND SNOW.
CHAPTER I.
THE PAPER-CHASE.
It was a December day, the great day of all the year to Charley
Gordon and the boys of Firdene School, which stands in a deep, green
valley of the North Country, for the last term's work was done. That
very morning the prizes had been given away, and on the following one
they would depart homewards for their Christmas holiday. Charley had
come out first in many subjects, besides winning a special
certificate for all-round excellence, and had read his prize essay to
a gathering of all his comrades and some of their parents in the
great stone hall which had once formed part of an ancient abbey. The
prize distribution at Firdene was generally well attended.
Even now, as he ran first in the paper-chase, he could remember the
mass of faces turned towards him, and the clapping of hands, though
it hurt him to see his elder brother Arthur, who stood among the
guests, watching him, he thought, sadly. Arthur was an officer of
artillery, as he too hoped to be, and since their father and mother
died had been his only guardian, while Charley was never tired of
singing his praises to less fortunate companions who had not an army
officer for a brother. Still--when everybody called, 'Bravo!' and he
blushed and felt uncomfortable when one old lady said, "What a pretty
boy!"--Arthur only said very quietly, "You have done well, Charley."
In the afternoon there was always a paper-chase, with prizes for the
two hares if not caught, or the first two hounds that overtook them,
and all the athletes of Firdene practised for it. Charley ran well,
and now with the empty bag which had held the torn paper fluttering
behind his shoulders he did his best, a comrade panting at his heels,
and several of the fastest hounds somewhere two or three fields
behind, while not far ahead a high ridge of furzy down shut off the
dip into Firdene valley. Although it was winter, a gentle south-west
wind blew up channel soft to the breath, while, as the daylight faded
a white mist rolled up from the valley, and the rush through the damp
air brought the blood mantling under the runner's skin. He was a
clean-limbed, vigorous English boy, with muscles suppled and
strengthened by many a swim from the pebble beach and exercise in the
open air; for they were taught at Firdene that a healthy body means a
healthy mind, and that laziness and uncleanliness, with the habits
they breed, formed a millstone which might hang about a boy's neck
during the rest of his life. So, very few among them slunk off into
the fir-woods to smoke, as unfortunately some school-boys do, and,
when caught red-handed it was bad for those who did; while it was
currently reported that the head of the school once checked an
indignant parent who complained about her son getting kicked at
football and tearing his clothes in the paper-chase: "Madam, you
should be thankful you boy takes an innocent pleasure in these
desirable things," he said. "If he doesn't lose his temper, a few
kicks may even be good for him."
Charley, however, had his failings, and one of them was a conviction
that only the best of everything was good enough for him. In itself
this was not very wrong, but in trying to get it he sometimes forgot
what others were entitled to; and, because he was generally
successful, there began to grow up within him a dangerous vanity.
Many a vain boy finds when he has left the school he lorded over that
in the outside world busy men are sometimes uncivil to presumptuous
striplings, and then the discovery that he is a very insignificant
person pains him. Still, he did all that lay before him thoroughly;
and now, dressed in the Firdene football jersey with a crimson band
round shoulders and breast, and the neatest of cricket shoes, he ran
his hardest, swinging light-footed across the long meadows, through
the dead leaves that rustled beside a copse, and then over
stiff-ploughed furrows that sadly soiled his shoes, towards the brook
which crossed a hollow. He halted a moment on the short turf beside
it, for the stream ran fast and high, and while he did so the clumsy
red-haired boy behind him came lumbering up.
"We're caught; I can't jump it!" gasped the latter, looking ruefully
at the wide stretch of muddy water which eddied and gurgled among the
rotting flags. "No scent left for them to follow, so they'll head us
off!"
"Don't be a muff, Baxter!" said Charley, moving backwards, as the
hounds behind, catching sight of them, set up a triumphant cry. "I
can; follow me;" and, with a rapid quickening of short steps, he set
himself at the leap, while Baxter looked on and envied him. Then the
lithe form shot out into mid-air, landed lightly on the ball of the
feet; and, never looking behind him, Charley went springily up the
opposite slope of the hollow.
"Might have waited for me!" said Baxter, as, setting his teeth, he
also hurled himself at the leap; but he fell short, and, floundering
waist-deep, lost his footing in a swifter rush of current; then
clawing at the rushes and willow branches, was swept towards a deeper
pool--and Baxter could not swim. But the hounds were close upon
their heels; and Pierce, the foremost, was prompt of action when he
saw what had happened.
[Illustration: "HE FELL SHORT, AND, FLOUNDERING WAIST DEEP, LOST HIS
FOOTING IN A SWIFTER RUSH OF CURRENT."]
"Go on, you behind there! Come with me, Maxwell; we must get him
out!" he shouted, and throwing his chance of the prize away, leapt
boldly into the water. There was another splash close by and, when
Pierce grabbed the floundering Baxter, his comrade helped him, so
that presently they dragged the unfortunate lad out upon the bank,
spluttering and very wet, but not much the worse for his ducking.
"It was mean of Gordon major; he ought to have seen you across,"
Maxwell said. "But, of course, that wouldn't strike him. The worst
of Gordon is that he thinks such a lot of himself."
Meantime Charley, remembering nothing but that he was first, ran on
alone, brushing with a sharp crackle through yellow tufts of withered
fern, or winding among the prickly furze on the edge of the down. He
had trained hard for that race, and the boy, or man either, who will
deny himself superfluous food, rise on raw cold mornings for an icy
bath, and in other ways try to keep his body subject to his mind, for
the benefit of both, is entitled to rejoice in the strength that
comes from it. Training can, of course, be over-done, but it teaches
self-restraint, and those who think too much of their food and
comforts can never grow brave and strong. But Pierce and Maxwell had
done so, too, and they did not forget everything but the prize. So,
with head flung proudly back, and the damp air whipping his clear red
cheeks, Charley swept down the side of the valley, while the grey
walls of Firdene rose higher ahead. The last stretch was a long
meadow with a tall hedge at the end of it, beyond which he could see
a number of grown-up people as well as boys waiting to witness the
finish; and, glancing behind him, Charley slackened his stride and
let the hounds draw up a little. He had an audience, and would show
them what he could do. Then the others saw him, and a shouting began.
"Gordon's home first! Well done, Charley! No, he's pumped out; the
hounds are coming through the gate. A last spurt, Charley, before
they catch you!"
Sixty yards behind came the pursuers, panting
heavily,--forty--thirty, and there was a roar of voices, for the
great hedge, with the steep fall behind it, lay close ahead; while
someone shouted above all the rest in warning, "Round by the gap,
Gordon--you'll never do it!"
But Charley only clenched his hands, and quickened his stride as the
hounds came on hot-foot to catch him. Some of them spread out to bar
the way to a gap where the thorns were thinner, and Charley smiled a
little to himself, knowing that by doing so they were throwing their
chance away. He had fixed his eyes upon a spot straight before him,
where hazel branches, which would bend easily under anyone who had
the courage to charge them, grew tall and slender. So a few seconds
later a great shout went up as the slim figure went flying at, what
appeared to be, the stiffest part of the barrier. The lad rose
gallantly, and some of the watchers held their breath, expecting to
see him come down head-foremost, but there was a crash of yielding
branches and rustle of withered leaves, and breaking through he
descended lightly through eight feet of air into the hollow below.
Then while several of the hounds tore their skins and jerseys as they
struggled amid the thorns, and the rest trotted beaten round by the
gap, he came on at an easy stride with a red gash on one leg. There
were deafening cheers when he halted breathless at the goal, and a
burly country gentleman clapped his shoulder as he said, "Well done,
my lad; well done! My word, sir, there's good pluck in him! Where
did you leave my big, slow-moving son?"
But the head of the school only nodded stiffly, as if he were not
altogether pleased, and looked grim when, after he asked, "Where is
Baxter?" Charley, answered smiling, "I left him in the Willow Brook,
sir."
Then the tail of the hunt came up with Baxter; and there was more
cheering when the prizes were handed to the winners; while, after
Charley had changed his clothes, he was told that the head master
wanted to see him. He found him in his study, a grey-haired man with
a keen, close-shaven face, which looked softer than usual under the
light of a shaded lamp.
"Sit down, Gordon," he commenced, gravely. "Your brother has
important news for you, and you must try to meet it courageously.
You are leaving Firdene to-morrow, and I hope you will do your work
in the world as thoroughly as you have done it here. But I want you
to remember that the best men do not work for the mere sake of the
prizes, that is, the money or fame it brings. They call the
latter--you will learn why some day--playing to the gallery, and
strong, brave men despise it. For instance, you ran and jumped well,
but would you have taken the last dangerous leap if there had been no
one to see you? You won the prize, but I would sooner have handed it
to Pierce or Maxwell, who gave up their chance to help poor Baxter.
You will remember that neither the prize nor the applause are, after
all, very important, and the main thing is to do your work well,
won't you? Now, go, bear your troubles bravely. Do your best, as I
think you have always tried to do, and some day we hope Firdene will
be proud of you."
He shook the boy's hand, and Charley went out abashed to have tea
with his brother Arthur in a quaint old-English hostelry. This was
all part of a long-expected treat, but Charley felt he would hardly
enjoy it now, while the master's words and his brother's looks in the
morning had left him with an uneasy feeling that there was trouble at
hand. Arthur was like him in face, with fair hair and honest grey
eyes, and he stood on the hearth-rug, looking at him, the boy
fancied, half-pityingly. "I was glad to see you do so well,
Charley," he said; "but I almost wish I had made a blacksmith or a
carpenter of you. I am afraid you will be sorry to hear that you
can't be a soldier as you hoped to. How would you like to turn
farmer instead?"
Then, as the boy stared at him with puzzled eyes he laid a hand on
his shoulder saying, "Charley, the bank has failed, and nearly all
our money has been lost. I have left the army, and nothing remains
but for you and little Reggie to begin life working for a few
shillings weekly in some big English town, or go out with me to seek
our fortune in another country. There are too many poor people in
this one already. You remember what I told you about my visit to
Canada? Well, now we have very little money left, I have decided to
try farming on the prairie. You would like to live in the open air
and drive your own oxen and horses, wouldn't you? At least, it would
be better than licking postage stamps or copying letters all day in a
dingy office."
The boy's first feeling was that somebody had cruelly injured him.
His one desire had been to become a soldier, and he had often
pictured himself leading his company of red-coated men. Now,
however, all that was gone; he was perhaps poorer than Evans, whom he
had once laughed at for coming back each term with fresh patches on
his well-worn clothes. He might even have to wear old clothes, too,
and it all seemed hard and unfair, but his master's words had left
their mark, and he remembered that Arthur, who only seemed sorry for
him, had also lost everything, and said, very slowly--
"I would like it far better than living in a big smoky town. Little
Reggie is fond of cattle and horses, too--but I had set my heart on
being an army officer."
"That's right!" said his brother Arthur. "We can't often get what we
like. Perhaps it wouldn't be good for us if we did, and I am sorry
for you. Still, you will learn to ride, and shoot, and plough, and
there are such things as coyotes and antelopes to hunt if there are
no more buffalo. Oh, yes, you'll like it famously. However, it's
the day before the holidays. Sit down, forget everything unpleasant,
think of the saddles and guns and snow-shoes, and enjoy your tea."
Charley did his best to be cheerful, and finally grew keenly
interested in his brother's stories about the prairie; while, when he
walked back to the school afterwards, the future seemed brighter, and
he told an admiring audience what he was going to do. Some of the
listeners, however, laughed when Maxwell said--
"You'll have to clean out stables and hen-houses, Charley, and black
your own boots--if you wear any--and you won't like that, you know.
Fancy Gordon major plucking a fowl or combing the tail of a mule.
That's the worst of setting one's self up to be particular."
He went home with Arthur and his younger brother Reggie next day, and
it was a somewhat silent journey, while he remembered how he had long
looked forward to it. Then for four months he lived on a farm in the
bleak hill country, where he got up long before daylight, even when
there was bitter frost, and learned to do many disagreeable but very
useful things, until at last the spring came and one afternoon he
stood, with Arthur and Reggie, on the deck of a great steamer hauling
out of dock at Liverpool. Steam roared aloft from her escape pipe,
the winches clattered, and the deck was like a fair with swarming
passengers, while he heard his brother say to a tall, soldierly man
who shook his hand when the warning bell rang----
"Yes, I feel it. I'm about the only friend these youngsters have in
the world, and it's a heavy responsibility. However, it seems the
only thing we can do, and for their sake I must make the best of it.
I can't thank your wife too much for taking care of my sister. We
shall have a hard time at the beginning, but as soon as possible I
will send for her."
The bell rang again, ropes were let go, and, with the screw throbbing
in time to the big engines which pounded below, the steamer forged
out slowly into the tide that raced seaward down the Mersey. There
was a storm of voices, a great waving of hats, and an answering cheer
from the watchers ashore. Then the faces grew blurred and hazy,
poorly-dressed women sat down and cried, and the men talked thickly,
while for some reason, Charley, who had neither father nor mother to
leave behind, felt his breath come faster and something dim his eyes.
It was only then, when he was leaving it for ever, he learned how
much he loved his native country. Presently the dock wall faded
behind them too, rolling, red-painted lightships, each with a big
lantern at her mast-head, slid by, and the steamer commenced to lift
her bows leisurely out of boiling white froth as she met the long
heave of the open sea, and rolled westwards into a great half-circle
of clear, transparent blue. But by-and-by the blue changed to
crimson low down on the horizon, and there were smears of red fire on
the sea as the sun dipped like a burning coal beneath it; after which
the twinkling stars came out one by one, and the night wind sang
songs in the rigging as the tall black masts lurched to and fro.
From one of them a reeling shaft of light zig-zagged across the sky.
Charley found it made him faint and dizzy to watch them, and, after
staring at a trembling streamer of brightness that flickered up from
a lighthouse near the Isle of Man, he suddenly lost all interest in
everything, and crawled away below, where he lay groaning with
sea-sickness. His room smelt nastily, and presently grew
suffocating; he could scarcely keep himself within his berth, and
somebody was making unpleasant noises in the one below him. But
though he did not think so at the time, that sickness did him no
harm, because Charley had rather too good an opinion of himself; and
if anyone, man or boy, wants to find out what a cowardly wretch he
is, he cannot do better than make himself sea-sick. Still, though
their throbbing added to the torture of his aching head, the big
engines steadily pounded on, and swinging like a pendulum until the
cabin floor seemed to rise up on end beneath him, for there was a
fresh breeze now, the steamer, hurling the white seas apart before
her bows, rolled north and west towards the rock-bound coast of
Ireland. Charley, however, would have felt thankful for his
comfortable room, had he seen the crowded steerage, where sea-sick
emigrants who could not get into their berths rolled up and down
together among their clattering pots and pans. An ocean voyage on a
large steamer is not always nice at the beginning, and third-class
passengers had not much comfort then.
On the second afternoon, after calling in Lough Foyle for Irish
emigrants, the vessel steamed out into the Atlantic, past the great
cliffs of Donegal. Charley leaned feebly against the bulwarks
watching the rainbows that flickered in the spray each time the bows
dipped into a great blue ridge of water. Then he watched the tall
masts swing across the sky, and the bleak Irish hills grow dimmer
behind them, after which his eyes wandered curiously across the
swarming passengers. They were men of all nations, though most of
them were evidently the struggling poor, while a few days earlier he
might have glanced indifferently, or even with disgust at their
toil-stained garments and careworn faces. Now he could sympathise
with them, for he had learned what it costs to leave one's mother
country, and that it is not easy, even when there is only want and
hardship at home, to leave all one loves behind and go out with a
brave heart to seek better fortune in the new lands across the sea.
Presently there was a commotion about the forward hatch, and a seaman
appeared, dragging two unkempt urchins out from the black hole in the
deck. One was still flecked with bits of the dirty newspapers he had
wrapped about him to keep out the cold when he and his companion
crawled down the slippery ladder, and hid themselves among the cargo,
before the steamer sailed. He looked about ten years old, and was
dressed in very thin, ragged clothes, as he had been all the bitter
winter, during which he hawked papers up and down the seaport town;
while the other, who seemed older, grasped one of the boxes of
wax-lights he sold in Liverpool. It was empty now, for he had struck
the matches to keep the rats away. Huge rats swarm in many steamers'
holds.
"They can't drown'd us or send us to prison, can they, Tom?" asked
the younger lad, shivering, and the other flung back his head as he
answered--
"Not they! There ain't no prisons in Canady. My, ain't all this
wonnerful! Never you mind for nothin', and look straight at the
Capt'in, Jim. I've heard as all sailors is soft-'earted, an' p'r'aps
he'll be good to us."
"Found them hiding down the fore-hold, sir," said the seaman; and an
officer nodded, answering, "Take them to the skipper." Then the pair
were led aft by two big seamen, while eight hundred passengers stared
at them.
Some of the women were pitiful, and a very poor one, fishing two
oranges out of the bundle she never lost sight of by night or day,
and now sat upon, thrust them into the younger lad's hand. The pair
had pinched, blue faces, and shivered in the breeze, for it had been
very dark and cold in the hold, and they had had very little to eat
as they crouched there on the hard railway iron, which groaned as the
steamer rolled.
It struck Charley that he was not so very unfortunate, and had much
to be thankful for, as he watched them.