“I ken that, faither, but I couldna help the thought getting into my
heid. I’ll run down to Mr Borland’s, and ask him to trust you two
loaves till your hand gets weel. It’ll be nothing to him; I’ve seen
you bring hame as much into your wages.”
The father remained silent, but after a little pressing and pleading,
said with a weary sigh—
“Do as you please; it’ll sune be a’ ower noo.”
The boy darted out of the house, afraid that his father might change
his mind and command him to stay.
Johnny, be it observed, was in rags, and wore boots which a
cinder-gatherer would have passed in contempt in a dust-heap.
Pinching hunger had given him a haggard and disreputable look, and
all that he wanted to pass for one of my “bairns” were a dishonest
heart and hand.
Ten minutes’ walking brought him to the baker’s shop, which he
thought was Mr Borland’s, but which had been quitted by that master
more than a year before, in favour of one in a better locality.
However, it was a baker’s shop still, and Johnny, noticing no change
in the name, and seeing the place closed, began to knock gently at
the door in hope that the occupant might be still within. There was
no answer, and at length the boy, with a hazy idea that the baker
might live behind the shop, went through a narrow entry to have a
look at the back.
By the dim light he picked out the window of the back shop. There
were bags of flour and shelves of loaves dimly discernible within,
but no light and no human face. A moving thing he did see, and a pair
of shining eyes gruesome enough to have frightened the wits out of
one less hungry, but a steady look for a moment or two showed him
that the living creature was only a cat, which had got shut in, and
was now mewing most piteously, as if imploring to be let out. The
misery of another creature often draws us from our own. Johnny became
interested in the cat, and its desperate scratchings and mewings,
and, after watching it for some time—quite forgetful of the fact that
he might be watched as well—said to himself—
“It would be easy to push up the window and let the puir brute out.”
Accordingly, putting his small strength to the frame, he raised the
sash high enough to let the cat scramble out into freedom. But, alas!
his efforts did not end there.
When the cat was gone his own desperate condition returned to his
mind with redoubled strength. There were the loaves in dozens on the
shelves within, but there was no sympathising friend present to whom
to appeal. How much easier it would be to take a loan of two loaves,
and come back on Monday and explain all about them to Mr Borland. If
he went home without the loaves, Johnny had an idea they would all
be dead before Monday, and then his father need never know anything
about it till it was all explained and adjusted.
I am not trying to give his reasoning as sound, but rather to show
that when a child is wolfish with hunger he and reason have for the
time parted company.
Johnny prised the window sash a few inches higher, and wriggled
himself inside. The first loaves that came to hand were grasped at.
He meant to take only two, but there happened to be four sticking
together, and he concluded that he might as well take the lot. He
placed the big square of bread out on the window sill, and then
clambered out, and was turning to reclose the window, when something
glaring and far more terrible than a cat’s eye caught his gaze, and
riveted him helpless and speechless to the spot. It was a bull’s
eye, and the holder was a policeman, who had first been attracted
by Johnny’s knocking at the front door, and then had slipped in by
another entry to watch the whole proceedings from the other end of
the green.
The slide of the lantern had been closed till the critical moment
when Johnny had accomplished his burglary, when out shone the light,
and with a few quick strides the man was upon the trembling boy.
“What! you’re young begun,” said the policeman, throttling Johnny
nearly black in the face, and then shaking him violently lest there
should be any breath left in his body by the throttling. “How old are
you?”
“Twelve,” gasped Johnny at random.
He was barely ten, but with the wild, reproachful thought at his
heart that he had disgraced and ruined himself for ever by his
rashness had come a queer resolve.
“And what’s yer name?” continued the man, who was from the far north,
and thought he saw the gallows written in every line of the boy’s
face.
“Peter M^cBain.”
It was the first name that came to the tongue of the boy, and he
blurted it out, with death at his heart.
“And far dee ye live?” continued his captor.
“In the West Port.”
Lies, lies! every word of it. Johnny simply named the place farthest
from his own home, but then he had an object in view, and the lies
wrung more agony out of him than the truth would have done. He was
thinking of his father and that fierce warning in the dark—“If ever
you turn thief while I’m living, never come near me or look me in the
face again.”
“How did I ever come to do it? how did I do it?” he bitterly added to
himself; but to that there came no answer.
He did not know that famine and excitement had slightly unhinged his
faculties; he knew only that in some amazing manner he had become a
housebreaker and a thief in the face of his father’s commands, and
got captured by the police in the very act.
“Then jist you tak’ up your bundle and come awa’ wi’ me to the
office,” said the policeman; and Johnny lifted the loaves and obeyed,
the man closing the window, and taking down the name and address
before leaving. While the pair were passing up St Mary’s Wynd towards
the High Street, I chanced to be coming down, and stopped to learn
the nature of the crime. Johnny’s face was quite unknown to me, and
I could not believe that he or his relatives belonged to the West
Port, a suspicion which was strengthened when Johnny became taciturn,
and refused to reveal aught of his antecedents. I turned back with
them, and went as far as the Central, trying in vain to draw the
truth from the poor quivering boy. I should not have taken half the
trouble with him but for the fact that he was evidently labouring
under great excitement, and that more than once I saw his eyes become
brimful of tears. Your true gutter child—the raggamuffin who steals
as naturally as he draws his breath—is case-hardened against either
tears or trembling. There is no mistaking him; and the first glance
at Johnny half convinced me that in spite of his wretched clothing
and haggard looks, he was not of that class. As he refused to speak,
he was entered as “Peter M^cBain, West Port, aged twelve,” and locked
up, charged with breaking into the shop of a baker whom I may name
Brown, “and stealing therefrom four loaves of bread, of the value of
2s. 8d. or thereby.”
My idea was that he was a runaway from some distant town, who had
tramped the boots off his feet, and then been forced by sheer hunger
to the robbery. I therefore had him tested with the offer of food.
But Johnny was now too excited and overwhelmed with grief and shame
at his position, and refused the food with unaffected loathing. Then
the last prop was soon driven from my theory by a policeman on the
West Port beat declaring, on being shown “Peter M^cBain,” that he
believed he knew him well as one who had long been a pest to that
district.
While this small and terrible burglar was thus seeing the inside
of a cell for the first time, his parents were awaiting his return
in anxiety and trembling expectancy. Hour after hour passed, and
still the light footfall failed to strike upon their ears, and at
last, near midnight, the father could bear the strain no longer, and
started out to search for the wanderer. Had the hour been an earlier
one, Mossman would have gone in the same direction as the boy had
taken, and probably have discovered that the name had been changed.
But he logically reasoned that now the shop must be shut, and Borland
at his own home, which was a street or two further off.
“He’ll have taken pity on the boy and asked him to go home with
him,” was his parting remark to his wife, and to the home of his
old friend he turned his steps—a shabby shadow, walking softly and
hurriedly upon stocking soles, for his boots had long since gone to
feed the hungry bairns. He was thoroughly ashamed of his appearance,
and nothing short of his great anxiety for the boy would have roused
him to brave the humiliation of appearing before Borland. The house
was a respectable flat in Lothian Street, and the same which the
baker had occupied for years. Mossman made certain by examining the
bell-plates by the light of the street lamps, and then rang and was
admitted. To his relief the door was opened by Borland himself, who
had been busy looking over his books at home after the rest of the
household were in bed. The prosperous baker stared at the gaunt and
poorly-clad figure rising before him out of the darkness of the
stair, and then exclaimed, in lively horror—
“Good God! it’s not Geordie Mossman?”
“I’ve come after my laddie,” said the other, hurriedly. “I sent him
to your shop hours ago, to—to ask a favour, and he’s never come back.”
“I’m no an hour hame,” said Borland, “and he never came near while I
was there. But I’m no in the auld place now, and maybe he’s wandered
a bit in lookin’ for the new shop. Man, Geordie,” he added with deep
feeling, and wringing the other’s hand with a fervour unmistakable,
“is it possible ye’ve been in distress and never let me ken? Come in
by and tell me a’ about it.”
Kindness is more overpowering than cruelty. The poor baker staggered,
trembled, and then fairly broke down, and was then hurried into the
house, planted down by a rousing fire, and there forced to sit at
ease, while the stout baker hastened to pile before him half the
eatables in the house. While thus busy diving in and out the room
as a means of concealing his own emotion, Borland managed to draw
from his broken-down visitor an account of his misfortunes, and
the state of things in his home; and then he quietly slipped out
of the room, roused his wife out of bed, and sent her off in that
direction with a bundle and a basket, which she and the servant girl
could scarce carry between them. Then he got a pair of boots and
a coat and muffler for Mossman, and the two set out to search for
Johnny. Borland advised that they should go to the Police Office
first, but that Mossman would not hear of, declaring that that was
the last place Johnny would go near. When they had spent an hour in
the streets they went to Hill Place in full hope that the boy would
be there before them. They found some appearance of comfort in the
house, but the poor mother was in tears, and the cause of her grief
was explained in a few words—
“Johnny said that if he was away there would be ane less to eat, and
he said he would run away and be a sailor. He’s away now, and we’ll
maybe never see him again.”
“I never thought of that,” gasped Mossman, with a sinking heart. “One
less to eat—he’s been craiking aboot that for weeks. We’ll never see
him again;” and then in that relieved household there was more of
tears than mirth or rejoicing.
“If I had only gone myself!” the father cried in unsparing
self-reproach.
“If I had only known an hour or two earlier,” said the kind-hearted
master baker.
But the mother was most inconsolable.
“I made him gang—if it hadna been for me he would have been here
yet!” she sobbed. “I have done it all.”
“Tuts, the laddie is not out o’ the world surely,” said her husband,
with more lightness than he really felt. “I’ve often heard him speak
of trying to find out his uncle, who is a fisherman in Kirkcaldy, and
of learning under him. Have patience for a day or two, and we’ll hear
of him all right.”
They waited the day or two, but Johnny was as effectually hidden
from them as if he had been buried alive. On the Monday morning he
had been placed at the bar of the Police Court, and, when asked if
he had taken the loaves in the manner described, said simply that he
had, but had never thought of taking them till he opened the window
to let out the cat. The magistrate thought for a little, and spoke of
sending him to a reformatory, but as there was a difficulty in having
no parents to fall back on for the cost of maintenance, he contented
himself with a sentence of three days’ imprisonment, and a warning to
the terrible burglar not to be seen there again or it would be worse
for him.
At the trial Johnny’s father never appeared, and from that the boy
concluded that he was cast off for ever as an unclean thing. Neither
was he once inquired for by his mother, which fact cut him keenest of
all.
“_She_ might have known I didn’t mean it,” he thought with bitter
tears, “but was just led to take them by thinking of them at home.”
As “Peter M^cBain” he served his term of three days, and then was
free. Curiously enough, his first thought was of his fisher uncle in
Kirkcaldy, whom he had often heard of but never seen. Johnny never
thought of going home, but asked the way to Kirkcaldy. He had not a
penny in his pocket, and the rags he called clothes could scarcely
hold together, and, when he was told that there were two ways to
Kirkcaldy—a short way by the ferry, and a long way by land—he had
no choice but to go by land, and turned his face with the utmost
coolness in the direction of Stirling.
Very little alters the whole course of a life. As with most boys,
Johnny’s little head was full of romance, and he had determined
either to be a fisherman or a sailor, and actually might have had his
desire accomplished had he ever found that uncle in Kirkcaldy. But he
had not got many miles on his way when he picked up an acquaintance
in shape of a boy a year or two older than himself, who, having been
well thrashed by his father for some fault, was “running away” to a
grannie in Dundee. He had run away before, and was never tired of
describing the glories of life in the mills there, and the kindness
of his grannie, who kept lodgers, and was always glad to see him when
his own home became too hot for him. So Johnny, who still stuck to
the name of “Peter M^cBain,” decided to accept the boy’s offer of
friendship and guidance, and the two small waifs at length reached
that town, where the reception by the grannie was quite as kind and
loving to Johnny as if he had been her own grandson. After the boys
had rested two days to heal their blistered feet, they went to one of
the largest mills, and were readily engaged for some simple part of
the jute spinning which could be learnt in an hour or two. At this
work Peter M^cBain showed real smartness, and soon attracted the
notice of the foreman. Peter lived with the grannie who had first
welcomed him to Dundee, and learned to call her grannie too. The
first flush of prosperity was on Dundee at the time; wages were high,
and work was plentiful, and anyone showing peculiar smartness was
almost certain of speedy promotion.
When Peter had been in the mill for nearly a year, the manager asked
him if he would like to learn a trade instead of to be a tenter.
Peter was willing, and was taken into the mechanics’ shop attached to
the mill, there to learn to make and fit up machinery. He grew stout
and sturdy, and gave great satisfaction, as he never seemed happier
than when tearing in at his work. He never dared to write home, and
was mourned as one dead. In six years Peter became a full-fledged
journeyman. He was now a tall, strapping fellow, with a good face,
and a clear, laughing eye, and was qualified to go anywhere and
command a high wage as a first-class engine-fitter. He had been
diligent and steady, and had studied drawing and designing to help
him in his trade, and altogether was quite a different character from
what he had promised as a small and terrible burglar. He had even
saved a little money, and it was the thought of that money lying
idle, and the heaps more which he was now able to earn, which sent
his thoughts homewards and his heart throbbing for dear Auld Reekie.
When he had been a few weeks journeyman, and engaged in the same mill
at a capital wage, the Fair holidays came on, and Peter’s eye caught
a bill announcing a “Trip to Edinburgh.” Edinburgh! The very sight
of the word thrilled him through. He got a ticket and went through
next day. He made his way first to Hill Place. His parents had not
lived there for years. No one knew them, or had heard of them, and he
began to faintly wonder if they could have been all starved to death
at that fearful time when he was locked up in prison as a burglar.
Then he thought of the bakers’ house of call, and went thither and
got a great lift to his heart. His father was alive and doing well
as foreman to Borland the baker, who had now two shops, and was
flourishing also. Peter went to the principal shop, and found Mr
Borland behind the counter. As he entered the shop a floury-faced
man, in his shirt sleeves, was leaving for the regions below, and the
young engine-fitter stared into the face with a palpitating heart.
“That’s my faither! that’s my faither!” he thought, with a great lump
rising in his throat; but he could no more have spoken than he could
have flown in the air.
Borland stared at him curiously, and thought from his incoherent
words and strange manner that the stranger was drunk. At length he
understood that the young man wished to be directed to the home of
Mossman, the foreman, and, as he refused to see the foreman, he got
the address and departed. Mossman came up from the bakehouse a few
minutes later, and was apprised of the circumstance, but thought
nothing of it till he was half-way down the stair again. Then
something familiar in the face he had seen for a moment in the shop
had flashed upon his memory, and he dashed up to the shop, whiter
than the flour on his face, and faintly staggered towards his friend
and master, Borland, with the words—
“I’ll hae to gang hame for a minute. I believe that fellow was my
lost laddie—my Johnny come back!”
Meanwhile Peter M^cBain had gone a street or two farther, and found
the house—a much nicer one than the last he had called his home in
Edinburgh. A shining brass-plate on the door bore his father’s name,
and when he knocked, a little urchin, chubby and rosy, whom he had
never seen before, opened the door and allowed him to step within. A
grey-haired woman sat sewing by the window, and some older children
were clustered around, but they all stared at the stranger in blank
amazement, and in utter ignorance of his identity. Peter stepped
forward and gazed into his mother’s face, with the tears creeping
into his eyes.
“Dae ye no ken me, mother?” he slowly and chokingly articulated. “I’m
Johnny that ran awa’!”
A scream of joy and a wild clasp of the arms was the answer, and
then the floury-faced father broke in on them to join in their great
rejoicing.
Johnny became a sailor in one sense, for he is now engineer on board
one of the American liners, but his heart always turns to Auld Reekie
as warmly as when he stood thus before his mother, like one restored
from the grave.