CHAPTER I.

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE,

THE BROWNIES,

AND

OTHER TALES.

BY

JULIANA HORATIA EWING,

AUTHOR OF “JAN OF THE WINDMILL,” “SIX TO SIXTEEN,” “A GREAT

EMERGENCY,” “WE AND THE WORLD,” “MRS. OVERTHEWAY’S REMEMBRANCES,”

“JACKANAPES AND OTHER TALES,” “A FLAT

IRON FOR A FARTHING,” “MELCHIOR’S DREAM, BROTHERS

OF PITY, AND OTHER TALES.”

M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY

CHICAGO NEW YORK

CONTENTS.

Contents

Page

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE, OR THE LUCK OF 5

LINGBOROUGH

TIMOTHY’S SHOES 61

OLD FATHER CHRISTMAS 85

BENJY IN BEASTLAND 98

THE PEACE-EGG 121

THE BROWNIES 142

THE LAND OF LOST TOYS 179

THREE CHRISTMAS-TREES 204

AN IDYL OF THE WOOD 213

CHRISTMAS CRACKERS 224

AMELIA AND THE DWARFS 244

Also included at the end of this book: SPOONS by Frances Henshaw Baden

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE.

INTRODUCTORY.

Lob Lie-by-the-fire—the Lubber-fiend, as Milton calls him—is a rough

kind of Brownie or House Elf, supposed to haunt some north-country

homesteads, where he does the work of the farm laborers, for no grander

wages than

“—to earn his cream-bowl duly set.”

Not that he is insensible of the pleasures of rest, for

“—When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn

That ten day-laborers could not end,

Then lies him down the Lubber-fiend,

And, stretched out all the chimney’s length,

Basks at the fire his hairy strength.”

It was said that a Lob Lie-by-the-fire once haunted the little old Hall

at Lingborough. It was an old stone house on the Borders, and seemed to

have got its tints from the gray skies that hung above it. It was

cold-looking without, but cosy within, “like a north-country heart,”

said Miss Kitty, who was a woman of sentiment, and kept a common-place

book.

It was long before Miss Kitty’s time that Lob Lie-by-the-fire first came

to Lingborough. Why and whence he came is not recorded, nor when and

wherefore he withdrew his valuable help, which, as wages rose, and

prices rose also, would have been more welcome than ever.

This tale professes not to record more of him than comes within the

memory of man.

Whether (as Fletcher says) he were the son of a witch, if curds and

cream won his heart, and new clothes put an end to his labors, it does

not pretend to tell. His history is less known than that of any other

sprite. It may be embodied in some oral tradition that shall one day be

found; but as yet the mists of forgetfulness hide it from the

story-teller of to-day as deeply as the sea frogs are wont to lie

between Lingborough and the adjacent coast.

THE LITTLE OLD LADIES.—ALMS DONE IN SECRET.

The little old ladies of Lingborough were heiresses.

Not, mind you, in the sense of being the children of some mushroom

millionaire, with more money than manners, and (as Miss Betty had seen

with her own eyes, on the daughter of a manufacturer who shall be

nameless) dresses so fine in quality and be-furbelowed in construction

as to cost a good quarter’s income (of the little old ladies), but

trailed in the dirt from “beggarly extravagance,” or kicked out behind

at every step by feet which fortune (and a very large fortune too) had

never taught to walk properly.

“And how should she know how to walk?” said Miss Betty. “Her mother

can’t have taught her, poor body! that ran through the streets of Leith,

with a creel on her back, as a lassie; and got out of her coach (lined

with satin, you mind, sister Kitty?) to her dying day, with a bounce,

all in a heap, her dress caught, and her stockings exposed (among

ourselves, ladies!) like some good wife that’s afraid to be late for the

market. Aye, aye! Malcolm Midden—good man!—made a fine pocket of

silver in a dirty trade, but his women’ll jerk, and toss, and bounce,

and fuss, and fluster for a generation or two yet, for all the silks and

satins he can buy ’em.”

From this it will be seen that the little old ladies inherited some

prejudices of their class, and were also endowed with a shrewdness of

observation common among all classes of north-country women.

But to return to what else they inherited. They were heiresses, as the

last representatives of a family as old in that Border country as the

bold blue hills which broke its horizon. They were heiresses also in

default of heirs male to their father, who got the land from his uncle’s

dying childless—sons being scarce in the family. They were heiresses,

finally, to the place and the farm, to the furniture that was made when

folk seasoned their wood before they worked it, to a diamond brooch

which they wore by turns, besides two diamond rings, and two black lace

shawls, that had belonged to their mother and their Auntie Jean, long

since departed thither where neither moth nor rust corrupt the true

riches.

As to the incomings of Lingborough, “It was nobody’s business but their

own,” as Miss Betty said to the lawyer who was their man of business,

and whom they consulted on little matters of rent and repairs at as much

length, and with as much formal solemnity, as would have gone elsewhere

to the changing hands of half a million of money. Without violating

their confidence, however, we may say that the estate paid its way, kept

them in silk stockings, and gave them new tabbinet dresses once in three

years. It supplied their wants the better that they had inherited house

plenishing from their parents, “which they thanked their stars was not

made of tag-rag, and would last their time,” and that they were quite

content with an old home and old neighbors, and never desired to change

the grand air that blew about their native hills for worse, in order to

be poisoned with bad butter, and make the fortunes of extortionate

lodging-house keepers.

The rental of Lingborough did more. How much more the little old ladies

did not know themselves, and no one else shall know till that which was

done in secret is proclaimed from the housetops.

For they had had a religious scruple, founded upon a literal reading of

the scriptural command that a man’s left hand should not know what his

right hand gives in alms, and this scruple had been ingeniously set at

rest by the parson, who, failing in an attempt to explain the force of

eastern hyperbole to the little ladies’ satisfaction, had said that Miss

Betty, being the elder, and the head of the house, might be likened to

the right hand, and Miss Kitty, as the younger, to the left, and that if

they pursued their good works without ostentation, or desiring the

applause even of each other, the spirit of the injunction would be

fulfilled.

The parson was a good man and a clever. He had (as Miss Betty justly

said) a very spiritual piety. But he was also gifted with much

shrewdness in dealing with the various members of his flock. And his

work was law to the sisters.

Thus it came about that the little ladies’ charities were not known to

each other—that Miss Betty turned her morning camlet twice instead of

once, and Miss Kitty denied herself in sugar, to carry out benevolent

little projects which were accomplished in secret and of which no record

appears in the Lingborough ledger.

AT TEA WITH MRS. DUNMAW.

The little ladies of Lingborough were very sociable, and there was, as

they said, “as much gaiety as was good for anyone” within their reach.

There were at least six houses at which they drank tea from time to

time, all within a walk. As hosts or guests, you always met the same

people, which was a friendly arrangement, and the programmes of the

entertainments were so uniform, that no one could possibly feel awkward.

The best of manners and home-made wines distinguished these tea parties,

where the company was strictly genteel, if a little faded. Supper was

served at nine, and the parson and the lawyer played whist for love with

different partners on different evenings with strict impartiality.

Small jealousies are apt to be weak points in small societies, but there

was a general acquiescence in the belief that the parson had a friendly

preference for the little ladies of Lingborough.

He lived just beyond them, too, which led to his invariably escorting

them home. Miss Betty and Miss Kitty would not for worlds have been so

indelicate as to take this attention for granted, though it was a custom

of many years standing. The older sister always went through the form of

asking the younger to “see if the servant had come,” and at this signal

the parson always bade the lady of the house good night, and

respectfully proffered his services as an escort to Lingborough.

It was a lovely evening in June, when the little ladies took tea with

the widow of General Dunmaw at her cottage, not quite two miles from

their own home.

It was a memorable evening. The tea party was an agreeable one. The

little ladies had new tabbinets on, and Miss Kitty wore the diamond

brooch. Miss Betty had played whist with the parson, and the younger

sister (perhaps because of the brooch) had been favored with a good deal

of conversation with the lawyer. It was an honor, because the lawyer

bore the reputation of an _esprit fort_, and was supposed to have, as a

rule, a contempt for feminine intellects, which good manners led him to

veil under an almost officious politeness in society. But honors are apt

to be uneasy blessings, and this one was at least as harassing as

gratifying. For a somewhat monotonous vein of sarcasm, a painful power

of producing puns, and a dexterity in suggesting doubts of everything,

were the main foundation of his intellectual reputation, and Miss Kitty

found them hard to cope with. And it was a warm evening.

But women have much courage, especially to defend a friend or a faith,

and the less Miss Kitty found herself prepared for the conflict the

harder she esteemed it her duty to fight. She fought for Church and

State, for parsons and poor people, for the sincerity of her friends,

the virtues of the Royal Family, the merit of Dr. Drugson’s

prescriptions, and for her favorite theory that there is some good in

everyone and some happiness to be found everywhere.

She rubbed nervously at the diamond brooch with her thin little mittened

hands. She talked very fast; and if the lawyer were guilty of feeling

any ungallant indifference to her observations, she did not so much as

hear his, and her cheeks became so flushed that Mrs. Dunmaw crossed the

room in her China crape shawl and said, “My dear Miss Kitty, I’m sure

you feel the heat very much. Do take my fan, which is larger than

yours.”

But Miss Kitty was saved a reply, for at this moment Miss Betty turned

on the sofa, and said, “Dear Kitty, will you kindly see if the

servant——”

And the parson closed the volume of ‘Friendship’s Offering’ which lay

before him, and advanced towards Mrs. Dunmaw and took leave in his own

dignified way.

Miss Kitty was so much flustered that she had not even presence of mind

to look for the servant, who had never been ordered to come, but the

parson relieved her by saying in his round, deep voice, “I hope you will

not refuse me the honor of seeing you home, since our roads happen to

lie together.” And she was glad to get into the fresh air, and beyond

the doubtful compliments of the lawyer’s nasal suavity—“You have been

very severe upon me to-night, Miss Kitty. I’m sure I had no notion I

should find so powerful an antagonist,” &c.

MIDSUMMER EVE—A LOST DIAMOND.

It was Midsummer eve. The long light of the North was pale and clear,

and the western sky shone luminous through the fir-wood that bordered

the road. Under such dim lights colors deepen, and the great bushes of

broom, that were each one mass of golden blossom, blazed like fairy

watch-fires up the lane.

Miss Kitty leaned on the left arm of the parson and Miss Betty on his

right. She chatted gaily, which left her younger sister at leisure to

think of all the convincing things she had not remembered to say to the

lawyer, as the evening breeze cooled her cheeks.

“A grand prospect for the crops, sir,” said Miss Betty; “I never saw the

broom so beautiful.” But as she leaned forward to look at the yellow

blaze which foretells good luck to farmers, as it shone in the hedge on

the left-hand side of the road, she caught sight of the Brooch in Miss

Kitty’s lace shawl. Through a gap in the wood the light from the western

sky danced among the diamonds. But where one of the precious stones

should have been, there was a little black hole.

“Sister, you’ve lost a stone out of your brooch!” screamed Miss Betty.

The little ladies were well-trained, and even in that moment of despair

Miss Betty would not hint that her sister’s ornaments were not her sole

property.

When Miss Kitty burst into tears the parson was a little astonished as

well as distressed. Men are apt to be so, not perhaps because women cry

on such very small accounts, as because the full reason does not always

transpire. Tears are often the climax of nervous exhaustion, and this is

commonly the result of more causes than one. Ostensibly Miss Kitty was

“upset” by the loss of the diamond, but she also wept away a good deal

of the vexation of her unequal conflict with the sarcastic lawyer, and

of all this the parson knew nothing.

Miss Betty knew nothing of that, but she knew enough of things in

general to feel sure the diamond was not all the matter.

“What is amiss, sister Kitty?” said she. “Have you hurt yourself? Do you

feel ill? Did you know the stone was out?”—“I hope you’re not going to

be hysterical, sister Kitty,” added Miss Betty anxiously; “there never

was a hysterical woman in our family yet.”

“Oh dear no, sister Betty,” sobbed Miss Kitty; “but it’s all my fault. I

know I was fidgeting with it whilst I was talking; and it’s a punishment

on my fidgety ways, and for ever presuming to wear it at all, when

you’re the head of the family, and solely entitled to it. And I shall

never forgive myself if it’s lost, and if it’s found I’ll never, never

wear it any more.” And as she deluged her best company

pocket-handkerchief (for the useful one was in a big pocket under her

dress, and could not be got at, the parson being present), Church,

State, the Royal Family, the family Bible, her highest principles, her

dearest affections, and the diamond brooch, all seemed to swim before

her disturbed mind in one sea of desolation.

There was not a kinder heart than the parson’s towards women and

children in distress. He tucked the little ladies again under his arms,

and insisted upon going back to Mrs. Dunmaw’s, searching the lane as

they went. In the pulpit or the drawing-room a ready anecdote never

failed him, and on this occasion he had several. Tales of lost rings,

and even single gems, recovered in the most marvellous manner and the

most unexpected places—dug up in gardens, served up to dinner in

fishes, and so forth. “Never,” said Miss Kitty, afterwards, “never, to

her dying day, could she forget his kindness.”

She clung to the parson as a support under both her sources of trouble,

but Miss Betty ran on and back, and hither and thither, looking for the

diamond. Miss Kitty and the parson looked too, and how many aggravating

little bits of glass and silica, and shining nothings and

good-for-nothings there are in the world, no one would believe who has

not looked for a lost diamond on a high road.

But another story of found jewels was to be added to the parson’s stock.

He had bent his long back for about the eighteenth time, when such a

shimmer as no glass or silica can give flashed into his eyes, and he

caught up the diamond out of the dust, and it fitted exactly into the

little black hole.

Miss Kitty uttered a cry, and at the same moment Miss Betty, who was

farther down the road, did the same, and these were followed by a third,

which sounded like a mocking echo of both. And then the sisters rushed

together.

“A most miraculous discovery!” gasped Miss Betty.

“You must have passed the very spot before,” cried Miss Kitty.

“Though I’m sure, sister, what to do with it now we have found it I

don’t know,” said Miss Betty, rubbing her nose, as she was wont to do

when puzzled.

“It shall be taken better care of for the future, sister Betty,” said

Miss Kitty, penitently. “Though how it got out I can’t think now.”

“Why, bless my soul! you don’t suppose it got there of itself, sister?”

snapped Miss Betty. “How did it get there is another matter.”

“I felt pretty confident about it, for my own part,” smiled the parson

as he joined them.

“Do you mean to say, sir, that you knew it was there?” asked Miss Betty,

solemnly.

“I didn’t know the precise spot, my dear madam, but——”

“You didn’t see it, sir, I hope?” said Miss Betty.

“Bless me, my dear madam, I found it!” cried the parson.

Miss Betty bridled and bit her lip.

“I never contradict a clergyman, sir,” said she, “but I can only say

that if you did see it, it was not like your usual humanity to leave it

lying there.”

I’ve got it in my hand, ma’am!

“Why

He’s got it in his hand, sister!”

cried the parson and Miss Kitty in one breath. Miss Betty was too much

puzzled to be polite.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“The diamond, oh dear, oh dear! _The Diamond!_” cried Miss Kitty. “But

what are you talking about, sister?”

“_The Baby_,” said Miss Betty.

WHAT MISS BETTY FOUND.

It was found under a broom-bush. Miss Betty was poking her nose near the

bank that bordered the wood, in her hunt for the diamond, when she

caught sight of a mass of yellow of a deeper tint that the mass of

broom-blossom above it, and this was the baby.

This vivid color, less opaque than “deep chrome” and a shade more

orange, seems to have a peculiar attraction for wandering tribes.

Gipsies use it, and it is a favorite color with Indian squaws. To the

last dirty rag it is effective, whether it flutters near a tent on

Bagshot Heath, or in some wigwam doorway makes a point of brightness

against the gray shadows of the pine forest.

A large kerchief of this, wound about its body, was the baby’s only

robe, but he seemed quite comfortable in it when Miss Betty found him,

sleeping on a pillow of deep hair moss, his little brown fists closed as

fast as his eyes, and a crimson toadstool grasped in one of them.

When Miss Betty screamed the baby awoke, and his long black lashes

tickled his cheeks and made him wink and cry. But by the time she

returned with her sister and the parson, he was quite happy again,

gazing up with dark eyes full of delight into the glowing broom-bush,

and fighting the evening breeze with his feet, which were entangled in

the folds of the yellow cloth, and with the battered toadstool which was

still in his hand.

“And, indeed, sir,” said Miss Betty, who had rubbed her nose till it

looked like the twin toadstool to that which the baby was flourishing in

her face, “you won’t suppose I would have left the poor little thing

another moment, to catch its death of cold on a warm evening like this;

but having no experience of such cases, and remembering that murder at

the inn in the Black Valley, and that the body was not allowed to be

moved till the constables had seen it, I didn’t feel to know how it

might be with foundlings, and——”

But still Miss Betty did not touch the bairn. She was not accustomed to

children. But the parson had christened too many babies to be afraid of

them, and he picked up the little fellow in a moment, and tucked the

yellow rag round him, and then addressing the little ladies precisely as

if they were sponsors, he asked in his deep round voice, “Now where on

the face of earth are the vagabonds who have deserted this child?”

The little ladies did not know, the broom-bushes were silent, and the

question has remained unanswered from that day to this.

THE BABY, THE LAWYER, AND THE PARSON.

There were no railways near Lingborough at this time. The coach ran

three times a week, and a walking postman brought the letters from the

town to the small hamlets. Telegraph wires were unknown, and yet news

traveled quite as fast then as it does now, and in the course of the

following morning all the neighborhood knew that Miss Betty had found a

baby under a broom-bush, and the lawyer called in the afternoon to

inquire how the ladies found themselves after the tea party at Mrs.

General Dunmaw’s.

Miss Kitty was glad on the whole. She felt nervous, but ready for a

renewal of hostilities. Several clinching arguments had occurred to her

in bed last night, and after hastily looking up a few lines from her

common-place book, which always made her cry when she read them, but

which she hoped to be able to hurl at the lawyer with a steady voice,

she followed Miss Betty to the drawing-room.

It was half a relief and half a disappointment to find that the lawyer

was quite indifferent to the subject of their late contest. He

overflowed with compliments; was quite sure he must have had the worst

of the argument, and positively dying of curiosity to hear about the

baby.

The little ladies were very full of the subject themselves. An active

search for the baby’s relations, conducted by the parson, the clerk, the

farm-bailiff, the constable, the cowherd, and several supernumeraries,

had so far proved quite vain. The country folk were most anxious to

assist, especially by word of mouth. Except a small but sturdy number

who had seen nothing, they had all seen “tramps,” but unluckily no two

could be got together whose accounts of the tramps themselves, of the

hour at which they were seen, or of the direction in which they went,

would tally with each other.

The little ladies were quite alive to the possibility that the child’s

parents might never be traced, indeed the matter had been constantly

before their minds ever since the parson had carried the baby to

Lingborough, and laid it in the arms of Thomasina, the servant.

Miss Betty had sat long before her toilette-table that evening, gazing

vacantly at the looking-glass. Not that the reflection of the eight

curl-papers she had neatly twisted up was conveyed to her brain. She was

in a brown study, during which the following thoughts passed through her

mind, and they all pointed one way:

That that fine little fellow was not to blame for his people’s

misconduct.

That they would never be found.

That it would probably be the means of the poor child’s ruin, body and

soul, if they were.

That the master of the neighboring workhouse bore a bad character.

That a child costs nothing to keep—where cows are kept too—for years.

That just at the age when a boy begins to eat dreadfully and wear out

his clothes, he is very useful on a farm (though not for these reasons).

That Thomasina had taken to him.

That there need be no nonsense about it, as he could be brought up in

his proper station in life in the kitchen and the farmyard.

That tramps have souls.

That he would be taught to say his prayers.

Miss Betty said hers, and went to bed; but all through that midsummer

night the baby kept her awake, or flaunted his yellow robe and crimson

toadstool through her dreams.

The morning brought no change in Miss Betty’s views, but she felt

doubtful as to how her sister would receive them. Would she regard them

as foolish and unpractical, and her respect for Miss Betty’s opinion be

lessened thenceforward?

The fear was needless. Miss Kitty was romantic and imaginative. She had

carried the baby through his boyhood about the Lingborough fields whilst

she was dressing; and he was attending her own funeral in the capacity

of an attached and faithful servant, in black livery with worsted frogs,

as she sprinkled salt on her buttered toast at breakfast, when she was

startled from this affecting day-dream by Miss Betty’s voice.

“Dear sister Kitty, I wish to consult you as to our plans in the event

of those wicked people who deserted the baby not being found.”

The little ladies resolved that not an inkling of their benevolent

scheme must be betrayed to the lawyer. But they dissembled awkwardly,

and the tone in which they spoke of the tramp-baby roused the lawyer’s

quick suspicions. He had a real respect for the little ladies, and was

kindly anxious to save them from their own indiscretion.

“My dear ladies,” said he, “I do hope your benevolence—may I say your

romantic benevolence?—of disposition is not tempting you to adopt this

gipsy waif?”

“I hope we know what is due to ourselves, and to the estate—small as it

is—sir,” said Miss Betty, “as well as to Providence, too well to

attempt to raise any child, however handsome, from that station of life

in which he was born.”

“Bless me, madam! I never dreamed you would adopt a beggar child as your

heir; but I hope you mean to send it to the workhouse, if the gipsy

tramps it belongs to are not to be found?”

“We have not made up our minds, sir, as to the course we propose to

pursue,” said Miss Betty, with outward dignity proportioned to her

inward doubts.

“My dear ladies,” said the lawyer anxiously, “let me implore you not to

be rash. To adopt a child in the most favorable circumstances is the

greatest of risks. But if your benevolence _will_ take that line, pray

adopt some little boy out of one of your tenants’ families. Even your

teaching will not make him brilliant, as he is likely to inherit the

minimum of intellectual capacity; but he will learn his catechism,

probably grow up respectable, and possibly grateful, since his

forefathers have (so Miss Kitty assures me) had all these virtues for

generations. But this baby is the child of a heathen, barbarous, and

wandering race. The propensities of the vagabonds who have deserted him

are in every drop of his blood. All the parsons in the diocese won’t

make a Christian of him, and when (after anxieties I shudder to foresee)

you flatter yourselves that he is civilized, he will run away and leave

his shoes and stockings behind him.”

“He has a soul to be saved, if he is a gipsy,” said Miss Kitty,

hysterically.

“The soul, my dear Miss Kitty”—began the lawyer, facing round upon her.

“Don’t say anything dreadful about the soul, sir, I beg,” said Miss

Betty, firmly. And then she added in a conciliatory tone, “Won’t you

look at the little fellow, sir? I have no doubt his relations are

shocking people; but when you see his innocent little face and his

beautiful eyes, I think you’ll say yourself that if he were a duke’s son

he couldn’t be a finer child.”

“My experience of babies is so limited, Miss Betty,” said the lawyer,

“that really—if you’ll excuse me—but I can quite imagine him. I have

before now been tempted myself to adopt stray—puppies, when I have seen

them in the round, soft, innocent, bright-eyed stage. And when they have

grown up in the hands of more credulous friends into lanky,

ill-conditioned, misconducted curs, I have congratulated myself that I

was not misled by the graces of an age at which ill-breeding is less

apparent than later in life.”

The little ladies both rose. “If you see no difference, sir,” said Miss

Betsy in her stateliest manner, “between a babe with an immortal soul

and the beasts that perish, it is quite useless to prolong the

conversation.”

“Reason is apt to be useless when opposed to the generous impulses of a

sex so full of sentiment as yours, madam,” said the lawyer, rising also.

“Permit me to take a long farewell, since it is improbable that our

friendship will resume its old position until your _protegé_ has—run

away.”

The words “long farewell” and “old friendship” were quite sufficient to

soften wrath in the tender hearts of the little ladies. But the lawyer

had really lost his temper, and, before Miss Betty had decided how to

offer the olive branch without conceding her principles he was gone.

The weather was warm. The little ladies were heated by discussion and

the parson by vain scouring of the country on foot, when they asked his

advice upon their project, and related their conversation with the

lawyer. The two gentlemen had so little in common that the parson felt

it his duty not to let his advice be prejudiced by this fact. For some

moments he sat silent, then he began to walk about as if he were

composing a sermon; then he stepped before the little ladies (who were

sitting as stiffly on the sofa as if it were a pew) and spoke as if he

were delivering one.

“If you ask me, dear ladies, whether it is your duty to provide for this

child because you found him, I say that there is no such obligation. If

you ask if I think it wise in your own interests, and hopeful as to the

boy’s career, I am obliged to agree with your legal adviser. Vagabond

ways are seldom cured in one generation, and I think it is quite

probable that, after much trouble and anxiety spent upon him, he may go

back to a wandering life. But, Miss Betty,” continued the parson in

deepening tones, as he pounded his left palm with his right fist for

want of a pulpit, “If you ask me whether I believe any child of any race

is born incapable of improvement, and beyond benefit from the charities

we owe to each other, I should deny my faith if I could say yes. I shall

not, madam, confuse the end of your connection with him with the end of

your training in him, even if he runs away, or fancy that I see the one

because I see the other. I do not pretend to know how much evil he

inherits from his forefathers as accurately as our graphic friend; but I

do know that he has a Father whose image is also to be found in His

children—not quite effaced in any of them—and whose care of this one

will last when yours, madam, may seem to have been in vain.”

As the little ladies rushed forward and each shook a hand of the parson,

he felt some compunction for his speech.

“I fear I am encouraging you in grave indiscretion,” said he. “But,

indeed, my dear ladies, I am quite against your project, for you do not

realize the anxieties and disappointments that are before you, I am

sure. The child will give you infinite trouble. I think he will run

away. And yet I cannot in good conscience say that I believe love’s

labor must be lost. He may return to the woods and wilds; but I hope he

will carry something with him.”

“Did the reverend gentleman mean Miss Betty’s teaspoons?” asked the

lawyer, stroking his long chin, when he was told what the person had

said.

BABYHOOD.—PRETTY FLOWERS.—THE ROSE-COLORED TULIPS.

The matter of the baby’s cap disturbed the little ladies. It seemed so

like the beginning of a fulfilment of the lawyer’s croakings.

Miss Kitty had made it. She had never seen a baby without a cap before,

and the sight was unusual, if not indecent. But Miss Kitty was a quick

needlewoman, and when the new cap was fairly tied over the thick crop of

silky black hair, the baby looked so much less like Puck, and so much

more like the rest of the baby world, that it was quite a relief.

Miss Kitty’s feelings may therefore be imagined when going to the baby

just after the parson’s departure, she found him in open rebellion

against his cap. It had been tied on whilst he was asleep, and his eyes

were no sooner open than he commenced the attack. He pulled with one

little brown hand and tugged with the other; he dragged a rosette over

his nose and got the frills into his eyes; he worried it as a puppy

worries your handkerchief if you tie it round its face and tell it to

“look like a grandmother.” At last the strings gave way, and he cast it

triumphantly out of the clothes-basket which served him for cradle.

Successive efforts to induce him to wear it proved vain, so Thomasina

said the weather was warm and his hair was very thick, and she parted

this and brushed it, and Miss Kitty gave the cap to the farm-bailiff’s

baby, who took to it as kindly as a dumpling to a pudding-cloth.

How the boy was ever kept inside his christening clothes, Thomasina said

she did not know. But when he got into the parson’s arms he lay quite

quiet, which was a good omen. That he might lack no advantage, Miss

Betty stood godmother for him, and the parish clerk and the sexton were

his godfathers.

He was named John.

“A plain, sensible name,” said Miss Betty. “And while we are about it,”

she added, “we may as well choose his surname. For a surname he must

have, and the sooner it is decided upon the better.”

Miss Kitty had made a list of twenty-seven of her favorite Christian

names which Miss Betty had sternly rejected, that everything might be

plain, practical, and respectable at the outset of the tramp-child’s

career. For the same reason she refused to adopt Miss Kitty’s

suggestions for a surname.

“It’s so seldom there’s a chance of _choosing_ a surname for anybody,

sister,” said Miss Kitty, “it seems a pity not to choose a pretty one.”

“Sister Kitty,” said Miss Betty, “don’t be romantic. The boy is to be

brought up in that station of life for which one syllable is ample. I

should have called him Smith if that had not been Thomasina’s name. As

it is, I propose to call him Broom. He was found under a bush of broom,

and it goes very well with John, and sounds plain and respectable.”

So Miss Betty bought a Bible, and on the fly-leaf of it she wrote in her

fine, round, gentlewoman’s writing—“_John Broom. With good wishes for

his welfare, temporal and eternal. From a sincere friend._” And when the

inscription was dry the Bible was wrapped in brown paper, and put by in

Thomasina’s trunk till John Broom should come to years of discretion.

He was slow to reach them, though in other respects he grew fast.

When he began to walk he would walk barefoot. To be out of doors was his

delight, but on the threshold of the house he always sat down and

discarded his shoes and stockings. Thomasina bastinadoed the soles of

his feet with the soles of his shoes “to teach him the use of them,” so

she said. But Miss Kitty sighed and thought of the lawyer’s prediction.

There was no blinking the fact that the child was as troublesome as he

was pretty. The very demon of mischief danced in his black eyes, and

seemed to possess his feet and fingers as if with quicksilver. And if,

as Thomasina said, you “never knew what he would be at next,” you might

also be pretty sure that it would be something he ought to have left

undone.

John Broom early developed a taste for glass and crockery, and as the

china cupboard was in that part of the house to which he by social

standing also belonged, he had many chances to seize upon cups, jugs and

dishes. If detected with anything that he ought not to have had, it was

his custom to drop the forbidden toy and toddle off as fast as his

unpractised feet would carry him. The havoc which this caused amongst

the glass and china was bewildering in a household where tea-sets and

dinner-sets had passed from generation to generation, where slapdash,

giddy-pated kitchen-maids never came, where Miss Betty washed the best

teacups in the parlor, where Thomasina was more careful than her

mistress, and the breaking of a single plate was a serious matter, and

if beyond riveting, a misfortune.

Thomasina soon found that her charge was safest, as he was happiest, out

of doors. A very successful device was to shut him up in the

drying-ground, and tell him to “pick the pretty flowers.” John Broom

preferred flowers even to china cups with gilding on them. He gathered

nosegays of daisies and buttercups, and the winning way in which he

would present these to the little ladies atoned, in their benevolent

eyes, for many a smashed teacup.

But the tramp-baby’s restless spirit was soon weary of the drying

ground, and he set forth one morning in search of “fresh fields and

pastures new.” He had seated himself on the threshold to take off his

shoes, when he heard the sound of Thomasina’s footsteps, and, hastily

staggering to his feet, toddled forth without farther delay. The sky was

blue above him, the sun was shining, and the air was very sweet. He ran

for a bit and then tumbled, and picked himself up again, and got a fresh

impetus, and so on till he reached the door of the kitchen garden, which

was open. It was an old-fashioned kitchen-garden with flowers in the

borders. There were single rose-colored tulips which had been in the

garden as long as Miss Betty could remember, and they had been so

increased by dividing the clumps that they now stretched in two rich

lines of color down both sides of the long walk. And John Broom saw

them.

“Pick the pretty f’owers, love,” said he, in imitation of Thomasina’s

patronising tone, and forthwith beginning at the end, he went steadily

to the top of the right-hand border mowing the rose-colored tulips as he

went.

Meanwhile, when Thomasina came to look for him, he could not be found,

and when all the back premises and the drying-ground had been searched

in vain, she gave the alarm to the little ladies.

Miss Kitty’s vivid imagination leaped at once to the conclusion that the

child’s vagabond relations had fetched him away, and she became rigid

with alarm. But Miss Betty rushed out into the shrubbery and Miss Kitty

took a whiff of her vinaigrette and followed her.

When they came at last to the kitchen-garden, Miss Betty’s grief for the

loss of John Broom did not prevent her observing that there was

something odd about the borders, and when she got to the top, and found

that all the tulips had been picked from one side, she sank down on the

roller which happened to be lying beside her.

And John Broom staggered up to her, and crying “For ’oo, Miss Betty,”

fell headlong with a sheaf of rose-colored tulips into her lap.

As he did not offer any to Miss Kitty, her better judgment was not

warped, and she said, “You must slap him, sister Betty.”

“Put out your hand, John Broom,” said Miss Betty, much agitated.

And John Broom, who was quite composed, put out both his little grubby

paws so trustfully that Miss Betty had not the heart to strike him. But

she scolded him, “Naughty boy!” and she pointed to the tulips and shook

her head. John Broom looked thoughtfully at them, and shook his.

“Naughty boy!” repeated Miss Betty, and she added in very impressive

tones, “John Broom’s a very naughty boy!”

After which she took him to Thomasina, and Miss Kitty collected the

rose-colored tulips and put them into water in the best old china

punch-bowl.

In the course of the afternoon she peeped into the kitchen, where John

Broom sat on the floor, under the window, gazing thoughtfully up into

the sky.

“As good as gold, bless his little heart!” murmured Miss Kitty. For as

his feet were tucked under him, she did not know that he had just put

his shoes and stockings into the pig-tub, into which he all but fell

himself from the exertion. He did not hear Miss Kitty, and thought on.

He wanted to be out again, and he had a tantalising remembrance of the

ease with which the tender juicy stalks of the tulips went snap, snap,

in that new place of amusement he had discovered. Thomasina looked into

the kitchen and went away again. When she had gone, John Broom went away

also.

He went both faster and steadier on his bare feet, and when he got into

the kitchen garden, it recalled Miss Betty to his mind. And he shook his

head, and said, “Naughty boy!” And then he went up the left-hand border,

mowing the tulips as he went; after which he trotted home, and met

Thomasina at the back door. And he hugged the sheaf of rose-colored

tulips in his arms, and said, “John Broom a very naughty boy!”

Thomasina was not sentimental, and she slapped him well—his hands for

picking the tulips and his feet for going barefoot.

But his feet had to be slapped with Thomasina’s slipper, for his own

shoes could not be found.

EDUCATION.—FIRESIDE TALES.

In spite of all his pranks, John Broom did not lose the favor of his

friends. Thomasina spoiled him, and Miss Betty and Miss Kitty tried not

to do so.

The parson had said, “Treat the child fairly. Bring him up as he will

have to live hereafter. Don’t make him half pet and half-servant.” And

following this advice, and her own resolve that there should be “no

nonsense” in the matter, Miss Betty had made it a rule that he should

not be admitted to the parlor. It bore more heavily on the tender hearts

of the little ladies than on the light heart of John Broom, and led to

their waylaying him in the passages and gardens with little gifts,

unknown to each other. And when Miss Kitty kissed his newly-washed

cheeks, and pronounced them “like ripe russets,” Miss Betty murmured,

“Be judicious, sister Kitty;” and Miss Kitty would correct any possible

ill effects by saying, “_Now_ make your bow to your betters, John Broom,

and say, ‘Thank you, ma’am!’” which was accomplished by the child’s

giving a tug to the forelock of his thick black hair, with a world of

mischief in his eyes.

When he was old enough, the little ladies sent him to the village

school.

The total failure of their hopes for his education was not the smallest

of the disappointments Miss Betty and Miss Kitty endured on his behalf.

The quarrel with the lawyer had been made up long ago, and though there

was always a touch of raillery in his inquiries after “the young gipsy,”

he had once said, “If he turns out anything of a genius at school, I

might find a place for him in the office, by-and-by.” The lawyer was

kind-hearted in his own fashion, and on this hint Miss Kitty built up

hopes, which unhappily were met by no responsive ambition in John Broom.

As to his fitness to be an errand boy, he could not carry a message from

the kitchen to the cowhouse without stopping by the way to play with the

yard-dog, and a hedgehog in the path would probably have led him astray,

if Thomasina had had a fit and he had been dispatched for a doctor.

During school hours he spent most of his time under the fool’s-cap when

he was not playing truant. With his school-mates he was good friends. If

he was seldom out of mischief, he was seldom out of temper. He could

beat any boy at a foot-race (without shoes); he knew the notes and nests

of every bird that sang, and whatever an old pocket-knife is capable of,

that John Broom could and would do with it for his fellows.

Miss Betty had herself tried to teach him to read, and she continued to

be responsible for his religious instruction. She had tried to stir up

his industry by showing him the Bible, and promising that when he could

read it he should have it for his “very own.” But he either could not or

would not apply himself, so the prize lay unearned in Thomasina’s trunk.

But he would listen for any length of time to Scripture stories, if they

were read or told to him, especially to the history of Elisha, and the

adventures of the Judges.

Indeed, since he could no longer be shut up in the drying-ground,

Thomasina had found that he was never so happy and so safe as when he

was listening to tales, and many a long winter evening he lay idle on

the kitchen hearth, with his head on the sheep dog, whilst the more

industrious Thomasina plied her knitting-needles, as she sat in the

ingle-nook, with the flickering firelight playing among the plaits of

her large cap, and told tales of the country side.

Not that John Broom was her only hearer. Annie “the lass” sat by the

hearth also, and Thomasina took care that she did not “sit with her

hands before her.” And a little farther away sat the cowherd.

He had a sleeping-room above the barn, and took his meals in the house.

By Miss Betty’s desire he always went in to family prayers after supper,

when he sat as close as possible to the door, under an uncomfortable

consciousness that Thomasina did not think his boots clean enough for

the occasion, and would find something to pick off the carpet as she

followed him out, however hardly he might have used the door-scraper

beforehand.

It might be a difficult matter to decide which he liked best, beer or

John Broom. But next to these he liked Thomasina’s stories.

Thomasina was kind to him. With all his failings and the dirt on his

boots, she liked him better than the farm-bailiff. The farm-bailiff was

thrifty and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and

sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly

of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless

and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with

rival notabilities. And so Thomasina’s broad face beamed benevolently as

she bid the cowherd “draw up” to the fire, and he who (like Thomasina)

was a native of the country, would confirm the marvels she related, with

a proper pride in the wonderful district to which they both belonged.

He would help her out sometimes with names and dates in a local

biography. By his own account he knew the man who was murdered at the

inn in the Black Valley so intimately that it turned Annie the lass as

white as a dish-cloth to sit beside him. If Thomasina said that folk

were yet alive who had seen the little green men dance in Dawborough

Croft, the cowherd would smack his knees and cry, “Scores on ’em!” And

when she whispered of the white figure which stood at the cross roads

after midnight, he testified to having seen it himself—tall beyond

mortal height, and pointing four ways at once. He had a legend of his

own too, which Thomasina sometimes gave him the chance of telling, of

how he was followed home one moonlight night by a black Something as big

as a young calf, which “wimmled and wammled” around him till he fell

senseless into the ditch, and being found there by the farm-bailiff on

his return from market, was unjustly accused of the vice of

intoxication.

“Fault-finders should be free of flaws,” Thomasina would say with a prim

chin. She _had_ seen the farm-bailiff himself “the worse” for more than

his supper beer.

But there was one history which Thomasina was always loth to relate, and

it was that which both John Broom and the cowherd especially

preferred—the history of Lob Lie-by-the-fire.

Thomasina had a feeling (which was shared by Annie the lass) that it was

better not to talk of “anything” peculiar to the house in which you were

living. One’s neighbors’ ghosts and bogles are another matter.

But to John Broom and the cowherd no subject was so interesting as that

of the Lubber-fiend. The cowherd sighed to think of the good old times

when a man might sleep on in spite of cocks, and the stables be cleaner,

and the beasts better tended than if he had been up with the lark. And

John Broom’s curiosity was never quenched about the rough, hairy

Good-fellow who worked at night that others might be idle by day, and

who was sometimes caught at his hard-earned nap, lying, “like a great

hurgin bear,” where the boy loved to lie himself, before the fire, on

this very hearth.

Why and where he had gone, Thomasina could not tell. She had heard that

he had originally come from some other household, where he had been

offended. But whether he had gone elsewhere when he forsook Lingborough,

or whether “such things had left the country” for good, she did not

pretend to say.

And when she had told, for the third or fourth time, how his porridge

was put into a corner of the cowhouse for him overnight, and how he had

been often overheard at his work, but rarely seen, and then only lying

before the fire, Miss Betty would ring for prayers, and Thomasina would

fold up her knitting and lead the way, followed by Annie the lass, whose

nerves John Broom would startle by treading on her heels, the rear being

brought up by the cowherd, looking hopelessly at his boots.

THE FARM-BAILIFF.—PRETTY COCKY.—IN THE WILLOW TREE.

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty did really deny themselves the indulgence of

being indulgent, and treated John Broom on principles, and for his good.

But they did so in their own tremulous and spasmodic way, and got little

credit for it. Thomasina, on the other hand, spoiled him with such a

masterful managing air, and so much sensible talk, that no one would

have thought that the only system she followed was to conceal his

misdemeanors, and to stand between him and the just wrath of the

farm-bailiff.

The farm-bailiff, or grieve, as he liked to call himself, was a

Scotchman, with a hard-featured face (which he washed on the Sabbath), a

harsh voice, a good heart rather deeper down in his body than is usual,

and a shrewd, money-getting head, with a speckled straw hat on the top

of it. No one could venture to imagine when that hat was new, or how

long ago it was that the farm-bailiff went to the expense of purchasing

those work-day clothes. But the dirt on his face and neck was an orderly

accumulation, such as gathers on walls, oil-paintings, and other places

to which soap is not habitually applied; it was not a matter of spills

and splashes, like the dirt John Broom disgraced himself with. And his

clothes, if old, fitted neatly about him; they never suggested

raggedness, which was the normal condition of the tramp-boy’s jackets.

They only looked as if he had been born (and occasionally buried) in

them. It is needful to make this distinction, that the good man may not

be accused of inconsistency in the peculiar vexation which John Broom’s

disorderly appearance caused him.

In truth, Miss Betty’s _protegé_ had reached the age at which he was to

“eat dreadfully, wear out his clothes, and be useful on the farm;” and

the last condition was quite unfulfilled. At eleven years old he could

not be trusted to scare birds, and at half that age the farm-bailiff’s

eldest child could drive cattle.

“And no’ just ruin the leddies in new coats and compliments, either,

like some ne’er-do-weels,” added the farm-bailiff, who had heard with a

jealous ear of six-pences given by Miss Betty and Miss Kitty to their

wasteful favorite.

When the eleventh anniversary of John Broom’s discovery was passed, and

his character at school gave no hopes of his ever qualifying himself to

serve the lawyer, it was resolved that—“idleness being the mother of

mischief,” he should be put under the care of the farm-bailiff, to do

such odd jobs about the place as might be suited to his capacity and

love of out-door life. And now John Broom’s troubles began. By fair

means or foul, with here an hour’s weeding and there a day’s bird

scaring, and with errands perpetual, the farm-bailiff contrived to “get

some work out of” the idle little urchin. His speckled hat and grim face

seemed to be everywhere, and always to pop up when John Broom began to

play.

They lived “at daggers drawn.” I am sorry to say that John Broom’s

fitful industry was still kept for his own fancies. To climb trees, to

run races with the sheep dog, to cut grotesque sticks, gather hedge

fruits, explore a bog, or make new friends among beasts and birds—at

such matters he would labor with feverish zeal. But so far from trying

to cure himself of his indolence about daily drudgery, he found a new

and pleasant excitement in thwarting the farm-bailiff at every turn.

It would not sound dignified to say that the farm-bailiff took pleasure

in thwarting John Broom. But he certainly did not show his satisfaction

when the boy did do his work properly. Perhaps he thought that praise is

not good for young people; and the child did not often give him the

chance of trying. Of blame he was free enough. Not a good scolding to

clear the air, such as Thomasina would give to Annie the lass, but his

slow, caustic tongue was always growling, like muttered thunder, over

John Broom’s incorrigible head.

He has never approved of the tramp-child, who had the overwhelming

drawbacks of having no pedigree and of being a bad bargain as to

expense. This was not altogether John Broom’s fault, but with his

personal failings the farm-bailiff had even less sympathy. It has been

hinted that he was born in the speckled hat, and whether this were so or

not, he certainly had worn an old head whilst his shoulders were still

young, and could not remember the time when he wished to waste his

energies on anything that did not earn or at least save something.

Once only did anything like approval of the lad escape his lips.

Miss Betty’s uncle’s second cousin had returned from foreign lands with

a good fortune and several white cockatoos. He kept the fortune himself,

but he gave the cockatoos to his friends, and he sent one of them to the

little ladies of Lingborough.

He was a lovely creature (the cockatoo, not the cousin, who was plain),

and John Broom’s admiration of him was boundless. He gazed at the

sulphur-colored crest, the pure white wings with their deeper-tinted

lining, and even the beak and the fierce round eyes, as he had gazed at

the broom bush in his babyhood, with insatiable delight.

The cousin did things handsomely. He had had a ring put around one of

the cockatoo’s ankles, with a bright steel chain attached and a fastener

to secure it to the perch. The cockatoo was sent in the cage by coach,

and the perch, made of foreign wood, followed by the carrier.

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty were delighted both with the cockatoo and the

perch, but they were a good deal troubled as to how to fasten the two

together. There was a neat little ring on the perch, and the cockatoo’s

chain was quite complete, and he evidently wanted to get out, for he

shook the walls of his cage in his gambols. But he put up his crest and

snapped when any one approached, in a manner so alarming that Annie the

lass shut herself up in the dairy, and the farm-bailiff turned his

speckled hat in his hands, and gave cautious counsel from a safe

distance.

“How he flaps!” cried Miss Betty. “I’m afraid he has a very vicious

temper.”

“He only wants to get out, Miss Betty,” said John Broom. “He’d be all

right with his perch, and I think I can get him on it.”

“Now heaven save us from the sin o’ presumption!” cried the

farm-bailiff, and putting on the speckled hat, he added, slowly: “I’m

thinking, John Broom, that if ye’re engaged wi’ the leddies this morning

it’ll be time I turned my hand to singling these few turnips ye’ve been

thinking about the week past.”

On which he departed, and John Broom pressed the little ladies to leave

him alone with the bird.

“We shouldn’t like to leave you alone with a wild creature like that,”

said Miss Betty.

“He’s just frightened on ye, Miss Betty. He’ll be like a lamb when

you’re gone,” urged John Broom.

“Besides, we should like to see you do it,” said Miss Kitty.

“You can look in through the window, miss. I must fasten the door, or

he’ll be out.”

“I should never forgive myself if he hurt you, John,” said Miss Betty,

irresolutely, for she was very anxious to have the cockatoo and perch in

full glory in the parlor.

“He’ll none hurt me, miss,” said John, with a cheerful smile on his rosy

face. “I likes him, and he’ll like me.”

This settled the matter. John was left with the cockatoo. He locked the

door, and the little ladies went into the garden and peeped through the

window.

They saw John Broom approach the cage, on which the cockatoo put up his

crest, opened his beak slowly, and snarled, and Miss Betty tapped on the

window and shook her black satin workbag.

“Don’t go near him!” she cried. But John Broom paid no attention.

“What are you putting up that top-knot of yours at me for?” said he to

the cockatoo. “Don’t ye know your own friends? I’m going to let ye out,

I am. You’re going on to your perch, you are.”

“Eh, but you’re a bonny creature!” he added, as the cockatoo filled the

cage with snow and sulphur flutterings.

“Keep away, keep away!” screamed the little ladies, playing a duet on

the window panes.

“Out with you!” said John Broom, as he unfastened the cage door.

And just when Miss Betty had run round, and as she shouted through the

key-hole, “Open the door, John Broom, we’ve changed our minds; we’ve

decided to keep it in its cage,” the cockatoo strode solemnly forth on

his eight long toes.

“Pretty Cocky!” said he.

When Miss Betty got back to the window, John Broom had just made an

injudicious grab at the steel chain, on which Pretty Cocky flew fiercely

at him, and John, burying his face in his arms, received the attack on

his thick poll, laughing into his sleeves and holding fast to the chain,

whilst the cockatoo and the little ladies screamed against each other.

“It’ll break your leg—you’ll tear its eyes out!” cried Miss Kitty.

“Miss Kitty means that you’ll break its leg, and it will tear your eyes

out,” Miss Betty explained through the glass. “John Broom! Come away!

Lock it in! Let it go!”

But Cocky was now waddling solemnly round the room, and John Broom was

creeping after him, with the end of the chain in one hand, and the perch

in the other, and in a moment more he had joined the chain and the ring,

and just as Miss Betty was about to send for the constable and have the

door broken open, Cocky—driven into a corner—clutched his perch, and

was raised triumphantly to his place in the bow-window.

He was now a parlor pet, and John Broom saw little of him. This vexed

him, for he had taken a passionate liking for the bird. The little

ladies rewarded him well for his skill, but this brought him no favor

from the farm-bailiff, and matters went on as ill as before.

One day the cockatoo got his chain entangled, and Miss Kitty promptly

advanced to put it right. She had unfastened that end which secured it

to the perch, when Cocky, who had been watching the proceeding with much

interest, dabbed at her with his beak. Miss Kitty fled, but with great

presence of mind shut the door after her. She forgot, however, that the

window was open, in front of which stood the cockatoo scanning the

summer sky with his fierce eyes, and flapping himself in the breeze.

And just as the little ladies ran into the garden, and Miss Kitty was

saying, “One comfort is, sister Betty, that it’s quite safe in the room,

till we can think what to do next,” he bowed his yellow crest, spread

his noble wings, and sailed out into the ether.

In ten minutes the whole able-bodied population of the place was in the

grounds of Lingborough, including the farm-bailiff.

The cockatoo was on the top of a fir-tree, and a fragment of the chain

was with him, for he had broken it, and below on the lawn stood the

little ladies, who, with the unfailing courage of women in a hopeless

cause, were trying to dislodge him by waving their pocket-handkerchiefs

and crying “sh!”

He looked composedly down out of one eye for some time, and then he

began to move.

“I think it’s coming down now,” said Miss Kitty.

But in a quarter of a minute, Cocky had sailed a quarter of a mile, and

was rocking himself on the top of an old willow tree. And at this moment

John Broom joined the crowd which followed him.

“I’m thinking he’s got his chain fast,” said the farm-bailiff; “if

anybody that understood the beastie daured to get near him——”

“I’ll get him,” said John Broom, casting down his hat.

“Ye’ll get your neck thrawed,” said the farm-bailiff.

“We won’t hear of it,” said the little ladies.

But to their horror, John Broom kicked off his shoes after which he spat

upon his hands (a shock which Miss Kitty thought she never could have

survived), and away he went up the willow.

It was not an easy tree to climb, and he had one or two narrow escapes,

which kept the crowd breathless, but he shook the hair from his eyes,

moistened his hands afresh, and went on. The farm-bailiff’s far-away

heart was stirred. No Scotchman is insensible to gallantry. And courage

is the only thing a “canny” Scot can bear to see expanded without

return.

“John Broom,” screamed Miss Betty, “come down! I order, I command you to

come down.”

The farm-bailiff drew his speckled hat forward to shade his upward gaze,

and folded his arms.

“Dinna call on him, leddies,” he said, speaking more quickly than usual.

“Dinna mak him turn his head. Steady, lad! Grip wi’ your feet. Spit on

your pawms, man.”

Once the boy trod on a rotten branch, and as he drew back his foot, and

it came crashing down, the farm-bailiff set his teeth, and Miss Kitty

fainted in Thomasina’s arms.

“I’ll reward anyone who’ll fetch him down,” sobbed Miss Betty. But John

Broom seated himself on the same branch as the cockatoo, and undid the

chain and prepared his hands for the downward journey.

“You’ve got a rare perch, this time,” said he. And Pretty Cocky crept

towards him, and rubbed its head against him and chuckled with joy.

What dreams of liberty in the tree-tops, with John Broom for a

playfellow, passed through his crested head, who shall say? But when he

found that his friend meant to take him prisoner, he became very angry

and much alarmed. And when John Broom grasped him by both legs and began

to descend, Cocky pecked him vigorously. But the boy held the back of

his head towards him, and went steadily down.

“Weel done!” roared the farm-bailiff. “Gently lad! Gude save us! ha’e a

care o’ yoursen. That’s weel. Keep your pow at him. Didna let the beast

get at your een.”

But when John Broom was so near the ground as to be safe, the

farm-bailiff turned wrathfully upon his son, who had been gazing

open-mouthed at the sight which had so interested his father.

“Ye look weel standing gawping here, before the leddies,” said he,

“wasting the precious hours, and bringing your father’s gray hairs wi’

sorrow to the grave; and John Broom yonder shaming ye, and you not so

much as thinking to fetch the perch for him, ye lazy loon. Away wi’ ye

and get it before I lay a stick about your shoulders.”

And when his son had gone for the perch, and John Broom was safely on

the ground, laughing, bleeding, and triumphant, the farm-bailiff said,—

“Ye’re a bauld chil, John Broom, I’ll say that for ye.”

INTO THE MIST.

Unfortunately the favorable impression produced by “the gipsy lad’s”

daring soon passed from the farm-bailiff’s mind. It was partly effaced

by the old jealousy of the little ladies’ favor. Miss Betty gave the boy

no less than four silver shillings, and he ungraciously refused to let

the farm-bailiff place them in a savings bank for him.

Matters got from bad to worse. The farming man was not the only one who

was jealous, and John Broom himself was as idle and reckless as ever.

Though, if he had listened respectfully to the Scotchman’s counsels, or

shown any disposition to look up to and be guided by him, much might

have been overlooked. But he made fun of him and made a friend of the

cowherd. And this latter most manifest token of low breeding vexed the

respectable taste of the farm-bailiff.

John Broom had his own grievances too, and he brooded over them. He

thought the little ladies had given him over to the farm-bailiff,

because they had ceased to care for him, and that the farm-bailiff was

prejudiced against him beyond any hope of propitiation. The village folk

taunted him, too, with being an outcast, and called him Gipsy John, and

this maddened him. Then he would creep into the cowhouse and lie in the

straw against the white cow’s warm back, and for a few of Miss Betty’s

coppers, to spend in beer or tobacco, the cowherd would hide him from

the farm-bailiff and tell him country-side tales. To Thomasina’s stories

of ghosts and gossip, he would add strange tales of smugglers on the

near-lying coast, and as John Broom listened, his restless blood

rebelled more and more against the sour sneers and dry drudgery that he

got from the farm-bailiff.

Nor were sneers the sharpest punishment his misdemeanors earned. The

farm-bailiff’s stick was thick and his arm was strong, and he had a

tendency to believe that if a flogging was good for a boy, the more he

had of it the better it would be for him.

And John Broom, who never let a cry escape him at the time would steal

away afterwards and sob out his grief into the long soft coat of the

sympathizing sheep dog.

Unfortunately he never tried the effect of deserving better treatment as

a remedy for his woes. The parson’s good advice and Miss Betty’s

entreaties were alike in vain. He was ungrateful even to Thomasina. The

little ladies sighed and thought of the lawyer. And the parson preached

patience.

“Cocky has been tamed,” said Miss Kitty, thoughtfully, “perhaps John

Broom will get steadier by-and-by.”

“It seems a pity we can’t chain him to a perch, Miss Kitty,” laughed the

parson; “he would be safe then, at any rate.”

Miss Betty said afterwards that it did seem so remarkable that the

parson should have made this particular joke on this particular

night—the night when John Broom did not come home.

He had played truant all day. The farm-bailiff had wanted him, and he

had kept out of the way.

The wind was from the east, and a white mist rolled in from the sea,

bringing a strange invigorating smell, and making your lips clammy with

salt. It made John Broom’s heart beat faster, and filled his head with

dreams of ships and smugglers; and rocking masts higher than the willow

tree, and winds wilder than this wind, and dancing waves.

Then something loomed through the fog. It was the farm-bailiff’s

speckled hat. John Broom hesitated—the thick stick became visible.

Then a cloud rolled between them, and the child turned, and ran, and

ran, and ran, coastwards, into the sea mist.

THE SEA.—THE ONE-EYED SAILOR.—THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD.

John Broom was footsore when he reached the coast, but that keen,

life-giving smell had drawn him on and held him up. The fog had cleared

off, and he strained his black eyes through the darkness to see the sea.

He had never seen it—that other world within this, on which one lived

out of doors, and climbed about all day, and no one blamed him.

When he did see it, he thought he had got to the end of the world. If

the edge of the cliff were not the end, he could not make out where the

sky began; and if that darkness were the sea, the sea was full of stars.

But this was because the sea was quiet and reflected the color of the

night sky, and the stars were the lights of the herring-boats twinkling

in the bay.

When he got down by the water he saw the vessels lying alongside, and

they were dirtier than he had supposed. But he did not lose heart, and

remembering, from the cowherd’s tales, that people who cannot pay for

their passage must either work it out or hide themselves on board ship,

he took the easier alternative, and got on to the first vessel which had

a plank to the quay, and hid himself under some tarpaulin on the deck.

The vessel was a collier bound for London, and she sailed with the

morning tide.

When he was found out he was not ill-treated. Indeed, the rough skipper

offered to take him home again on his return voyage. He would have liked

to go, but pride withheld him, and home sickness had not yet eaten into

his very soul. Then an old sailor with one eye (but that a sly one) met

him, and told him tales more wonderful than the cowherd’s. And with him

he shipped as cabin-boy, on a vessel bound for the other side of the

world.

* * * * * *

A great many sins bring their own punishment in this life pretty

clearly, and sometimes pretty closely; but few more directly or more

bitterly than rebellion against the duties, and ingratitude for the

blessings, of home.

There was no playing truant on board ship; and as to the master poor

John Broom served now, his cruelty made the memory of the farm-bailiff a

memory of tenderness and gentleness and indulgence. Till he was

half-naked and half-starved, and had only short snatches of sleep in

hard corners, it had never occurred to him that when one has got good

food and clothes, and sound sleep in a kindly home, he has got more than

many people, and enough to be thankful for.

He did everything he was told now as fast as he could do it, in fear for

his life. The one-eyed sailor had told him that the captain always took

orphans and poor friendless lads to be his cabin-boys, and John Broom

thought what a nice kind man he must be, and how different from the

farm-bailiff, who thought nobody could be trustworthy unless he could

show parents and grandparents, and cousins to the sixth degree. But

after they had sailed, when John Broom felt very ill, and asked the

one-eyed sailor where he was to sleep, the one-eyed sailor pleasantly

replied that if he hadn’t brought a four-post bed in his pocket he must

sleep where he could, for that all the other cabin-boys were sleeping in

Davy’s Locker, and couldn’t be disturbed. And it was not till John Broom

had learned ship’s language that he found out that Davy’s Locker meant

the deep, and that the other cabin-boys were dead. “And as they’d nobody

belonging to ’em, no hearts was broke,” added the sailor, winking with

his one eye.

John Broom slept standing sometimes for weariness, but he did not sleep

in Davy’s Locker. Young as he was he had dauntless courage, a careless

hopeful heart, and a tough little body; and that strong, life-giving sea

smell bore him up instead of food, and he got to the other side of the

world.

Why he did not stay there, why he did not run away into the wilderness

to find at least some easier death than to have his bones broken by the

cruel captain, he often wondered afterwards. He was so much quicker and

braver than the boys they commonly got, that the old sailor kept a sharp

watch over him with his one eye whilst they were ashore; but one day he

was too drunk to see out of it, and John Broom ran away.

It was Christmas day, and so hot that he could not run far, for it was

at the other side of the world, where things are upside down, and he sat

down by the roadside on the outskirts of the city; and as he sat, with

his thin, brown face resting on his hands, a familiar voice beside him

said, “Pretty Cocky!” and looking up he saw a man with several cages of

birds. The speaker was a cockatoo of the most exquisite shades of

cream-color, salmon, and rose, and he had a rose-colored crest. But

lovely as he was, John Broom’s eyes were on another cage, where, silent,

solemn and sulky, sat a big white one with sulphur-colored trimmings and

fierce black eyes; and he was so like Miss Betty’s pet, that the poor

child’s heart bounded as if a hand had been held out to him from home.

“If you let him get at you, you’ll not do it a second time, mate,” said

the man. “He’s the nastiest-tempered beast I ever saw. I’d have wrung

his neck long ago if he hadn’t such a fine coat.”

But John Broom said as he had said before, “I like him, and he’ll like

me.”

When the cockatoo bit his finger to the bone, the man roared with

laughter, but John Broom did not draw his hand away. He kept it still at

the bird’s beak, and with the other he gently scratched him under the

crest and wings. And when the white cockatoo began to stretch out his

eight long toes, as cats clutch with their claws from pleasure, and

chuckled, and sighed, and bit softly without hurting, and laid his head

against the bars till his snow and sulphur feathers touched John Broom’s

black locks, the man was amazed.

“Look here, mate,” said he, “you’ve the trick with birds, and no

mistake. I’ll sell you this one cheap, and you’ll be able to sell him

dear.”

“I’ve not a penny in the world,” said John Broom.

“You do look cleaned out, too,” said the man scanning him from head to

foot. “I tell you what, you shall come with me a bit and tame the birds,

and I’ll find you something to eat.”

Ten minutes before, John Broom would have jumped at this offer, though

he now refused it. The sight of the cockatoo had brought back the fever

of home sickness in all its fierceness. He couldn’t stay out here. He

would dare anything, do anything, to see the hills about Lingborough

once more before he died; and even if he did not live to see them, he

might live to sleep in that part of Davy’s Locker which should rock him

on the shores of home.

The man gave him a shilling for fastening a ring and chain on to the

cocky’s ankle, and with this he got the best dinner he had eaten since

he lost sight of the farm-bailiff’s speckled hat in the mist.

And then he went back to the one-eyed sailor, and shipped as cabin-boy

again for the homeward voyage.

THE HIGHLANDER.—BARRACK LIFE.—THE GREAT CURSE—JOHN BROOM’S MONEY-BOX.

When John Broom did get home he did not go to sea again. He lived from

hand to mouth in the seaport town, and slept, as he was well accustomed

to sleep, in holes and corners.

Every day and every night, through the long months of the voyage, he had

dreamed of begging his way barefoot to Miss Betty’s door. But now he did

not go. His life was hard, but it was not cruel. He was very idle, and

there was plenty to see. He wandered about the country as of old. The

ships and shipping too had a fascination for him now that the past was

past, and here he could watch them from the shore; and, partly for shame

and partly for pride, he could not face the idea of going back. If he

had been taunted with being a vagrant boy before, what would be said now

if he presented himself, a true tramp, to the farm-bailiff? Besides,

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty could not forgive him. It was impossible!

He was wandering about one day when he came to some fine high walls with

buildings inside. There was an open gateway, at which stood a soldier

with a musket. But a woman and some children went in, and he did not

shoot them; so when his back was turned, and he was walking stiffly to

where he came from, John Broom ran in through the gateway.

The first man he saw was the grandest-looking man he had ever seen.

Indeed, he looked more like a bird than a man, a big bird, with a big

black crest. He was very tall. His feet were broad and white, like the

feathered feet of some plumy bird; his legs were bare and brown and

hairy. He was clothed in many colors. He had fur in front, which swung

as he walked, and silver and shining stones about him. He held his head

very high, and from it dropped great black plumes. His face looked as if

it had been cut—roughly but artistically—out of a block of old wood,

and his eyes were the color of a summer sky. And John Broom felt as he

had felt when he first saw Miss Betty’s cockatoo.

In repose the Highlander’s eye was as clear as a cairngorm and as cold,

but when it fell upon John Broom it took a twinkle not quite unlike the

twinkle in the one eye of the sailor; and then, to his amazement, this

grand creature beckoned to John Broom with a rather dirty hand.

“Yes, sir,” said John Broom, staring up at the splendid giant, with eyes

of wonder.

“I’m saying,” said the Highlander, confidentially (and it had a pleasant

homely sound to hear him speak like the farm-bailiff)—“I’m saying, I’m

confined to barracks, ye ken; and I’ll gi’e ye a hawpenny if ye’ll get

the bottle filled wi’ whusky. Roun’ yon corner ye’ll see the ‘Britain’s

Defenders.’”

But at this moment he erected himself, his turquoise eyes looked

straight before them, and he put his hand to his head and moved it

slowly away again, as a young man with more swinging grandeur of colors

and fur and plumes, and with greater glittering of gems and silver,

passed by, a sword clattering after him.

Meanwhile John Broom had been round the corner and was back again.

“What for are ye standin’ there ye fule?” asked his new friend. “What

for didna ye gang for the whusky?”

“It’s here, sir.”

“My certy, ye dinna let the grass grow under your feet,” said the

Highlander; and he added, “If ye want to run errands, laddie, ye can

come back again.”

It was the beginning of a fresh life for John Broom. With many other

idle or homeless boys he now haunted the barracks, and ran errands for

the soldiers. His fleetness of foot and ready wit made him the favorite.

Perhaps, too, his youth and his bright face and eyes pleaded for him,

for British soldiers are a tender-hearted race.

He was knocked about, but never cruelly, and he got plenty of coppers

and broken victuals, and now and then an old cap or a pair of a boots, a

world too large for him. His principal errands were to fetch liquor for

the soldiers. In arms and pockets he would sometimes carry a dozen

bottles at once, and fly back from the canteen or public-house without

breaking one.

Before the summer was over he was familiar with every barrack-room and

guard-room in the place; he had food to eat and coppers to spare, and he

shared his bits with the mongrel dogs who lived, as he did, on the

good-nature of the garrison.

It must be confessed that neatness was not among John Broom’s virtues.

He looped his rags together with bits of string, and wasted his pence or

lost them. The soldiers standing at the bar would often give him a drink

out of their pewter-pots. It choked him at first, and then he got used

to it, and liked it. Some relics of Miss Betty’s teaching kept him

honest. He would not condescend to sip by the way out of the soldiers’

jugs and bottles as other errand-boys did, but he came to feel rather

proud of laying his twopence on the counter, and emptying his own pot of

beer with a grimace to the by-standers through the glass at the bottom.

One day he was winking through the froth of a pint of porter at the

canteen sergeant’s daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the

pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander’s hand was

laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place

in one swoop.

“I’ll trouble ye to give me your attention,” said the Highlander, when

they came to a standstill, “and to speak the truth. Did ye ever see me

the worse of liquor?”

John Broom had several remembrances of the clearest kind to that effect,

so he put up his arms to shield his head from the probable blow, and

said, “Yes, McAlister.”

“How often?” asked the Scotchman.

“I never counted,” said John Broom; “pretty often.”

“How many good-conduct stripes do ye ken me to have lost of your ain

knowledge?”

“Three, McAlister.”

“Is there a finer man than me in the regiment?” asked the Highlander,

drawing up his head.

“That there’s not,” said John Broom, warmly.

“Our sairgent, now,” drawled the Scotchman, “wad ye say he was a better

man than me?”

“Nothing like so good,” said John Broom, sincerely.

“And what d’ye suppose, man,” said the Highlander, firing with sudden

passion, till the light of his clear blue eyes seemed to pierce John

Broom’s very soul—“what d’ye suppose has hindered me that I’m not

sairgent, when yon man is? What has keepit me from being an officer,

that has served my country in twa battles when oor quartermaster hadn’t

enlisted? Wha gets my money? What lost me my stripes? What loses me

decent folks’ respect, and waur than that, my ain? What gars a hand that

can grip a broadsword tremble like a woman’s? What fills the canteen and

the kirkyard? What robs a man of health and wealth and peace? What ruins

weans and women, and makes mair homes desolate than war? Drink, man,

drink! The deevil of drink!”

It was not till the glare in his eyes had paled that John Broom ventured

to speak. Then he said,—

“Why don’t ye give it up, McAlister?”

The man rose to his full height, and laid his hand heavily on the boy’s

shoulder, and his eyes seemed to fade with that pitiful, weary look,

which only such blue eyes show so well, “Because I _canna_,” said he;

“because, for as big as I am, I canna. But for as little as you are,

laddie, ye can, and, Heaven help me, ye shall.”

That evening he called John Broom into the barrack-room where he slept.

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and had a little wooden money-box

in his hands.

“What money have ye, laddie?” he asked.

John Broom pulled out three halfpence lately earned, and the Scotchman

dropped them slowly into the box. Then he turned the key, and put it

into his pocket, and gave the box to the boy.

“Ye’ll put what you earn in there,” said he, “I’ll keep the key, and

ye’ll keep the box yourself; and when its opened we’ll open it together,

and lay out your savings in decent clothes for ye against the winter.”

At this moment some men passing to the canteen shouted, “McAlister!” The

Highlander did not answer, but he started to the door. Then he stood

irresolute, and then turned and reseated himself.

“Gang and bring me a bit o’ tobacco,” he said, giving John Broom a

penny. And when the boy had gone he emptied his pocket of the few pence

left, and dropped them into the box, muttering, “If he manna, I wunna.”

And when the tobacco came, he lit his pipe, and sat on the bench,

outside and snarled at every one who spoke to him.

OUTPOST DUTY.—THE SERGEANT’S STORY.—GRAND ROUNDS.

It was a bitterly cold winter. The soldiers drank a great deal, and John

Broom was constantly trotting up and down, and the box grew very heavy.

Bottles were filled and refilled, in spite of greatly increased

strictness in the discipline of the garrison, for there were rumors of

invasion, and penalties were heavy, and sentry posts were increased, and

the regiments were kept in readiness for action.

The Highlander had not cured himself of drinking, though he had cured

John Broom. But, like others, he was more wary just now, and had

hitherto escaped the heavy punishments inflicted in a time of probable

war; and John Broom watched over him with the fidelity of a sheep dog,

and more than once had roused him with a can of cold water when he was

all but caught by his superiors in a state of stupor, which would not

have been credited to the frost alone.

The talk of invasion had become grave, when one day a body of men were

ordered for outpost duty, and McAlister was among them. The officer had

got a room for them in a farmhouse, where they sat round the fire, and

went out by turns to act as sentries at various posts for an hour or two

at a time.

The novelty was delightful to John Broom. He hung about the farmhouse,

and warmed himself at the soldiers’ fire.

In the course of the day McAlister got him apart, and whispered, “I’m

going on duty the night at ten, laddie. It’s fearsome cold, and I hav’na

had a drop to warm me the day. If ye could ha’ brought me a wee drappie

to the corner of the three roads—its twa miles from here I’m

thinking—”

“It’s not the miles, McAlister,” said John Broom, “but you’re on outpost

duty, and——”

“And you’re misdoubting what may be done to ye for bringing liquor to a

sentry on duty! Aye, aye, lad, ye do weel to be cautious,” said the

Highlander, and he turned away.

But it was not the fear of consequences to himself which had made John

Broom hesitate, and he was stung by the implication.

The night was dark and very cold, and the Highlander had been pacing up

and down his post for about half an hour, when his quick ear caught a

faint sound of footsteps.

“Wha goes there?” said he.

“It’s I, McAlister,” whispered John Broom.

“Whisht, laddie,” said the sentry; “are ye there after all? Did no one

see ye?”

“Not a soul; I crept by the hedges. Here’s your whisky, McAlister; but,

oh, be careful!” said the lad.

The Scotchman’s eye glistened greedily at the bottle.

“Never fear,” said he, “I’ll just rub a wee drappie on the pawms of my

hands to keep away the frost-bite, for it’s awsome cold, man. Now away

wi’ ye, and take tent, laddie, keep off the other sentries.”

John Broom went back as carefully as he had come, and slipped in to warm

himself by the guard-room fire.

It was a good one, and the soldiers sat close round it. The officer was

writing a letter in another room, and in a low, impressive voice, the

sergeant was telling a story which was listened to with breathless

attention. John Broom was fond of stories, and he listened also.

It was of a friend of the sergeant’s, who had been a boy with him in the

same village at home, who had seen active service with him abroad, and

who had slept at his post on such a night as this, from the joint

effects of cold and drink. It was war time, and he had been tried by

court-martial, and shot for the offense. The sergeant had been one of

the firing party to execute his friend, and they had taken leave of each

other as brothers, before the final parting face to face in this last

awful scene.

The man’s voice was faltering, when the tale was cut short by the

jingling of the field officer’s accoutrements as he rode by to visit the

outposts. In an instant the officer and men turned out to receive him;

and, after the usual formalities, he rode on. The officer went back to

his letter, and the sergeant and his men to their fireside.

The opening of the doors had let in a fresh volume of cold, and one of

the men called to John Broom to mend the fire. But he was gone.

John Broom was fleet of foot, and there are certain moments which lift

men beyond their natural powers, but he had set himself a hard task.

As he listened to the sergeant’s tale, an agonizing fear smote him for

his friend McAlister. Was there any hope that the Highlander could keep

himself from the whisky? Officers were making their rounds at very short

intervals just now, and if drink and cold overcame him at his post!

Close upon these thoughts came the jingling of the field officer’s

sword, and the turn out of the guard. “Who goes

there?”—“Rounds.”—“What rounds?”—“Grand rounds?”—“Halt, grand

rounds, advance one, and give the countersign!” The familiar words

struck coldly on John Broom’s heart, as if they had been orders to a

firing party, and the bandage were already across the Highlander’s blue

eyes. Would the grand rounds be challenged at the three roads to-night?

He darted out into the snow.

He flew, as the crow flies, across the fields, to where McAlister was on

duty. It was a much shorter distance than by the road, which was

winding; but whether this would balance the difference between a horse’s

pace and his own was the question, and there being no time to question,

he ran on.

He kept his black head down, and ran from his shoulders. The clatter,

clatter, jingle, jingle, on the hard road came to him through the still

frost on a level with his left ear. It was terrible, but he held on,

dodging under the hedges to be out of sight, and the sound lessened, and

by-and-by, the road having wound about, he could hear it faintly, _but

behind him_.

And he reached the three roads, and McAlister was asleep in the ditch.

But when, with jingle and clatter, the field officer of the day reached

the spot, the giant Highlander stood like a watch-tower at his post,

with a little snow on the black plumes that drooped upon his shoulders.

HOSPITAL.—“HAME.”

John Broom did not see the Highlander again for two or three days. It

was Christmas week, and, in spite of the war panic, there was festivity

enough in the barracks to keep the errand-boy very busy.

Then came New Year’s Eve—“Hogmenay,” as the Scotch call it—and it was

the Highland regiment’s particular festival. Worn-out with

whisky-fetching and with helping to deck barrack-rooms and carrying pots

and trestles, John Broom was having a nap in the evening, in company

with a mongrel deerhound, when a man shook him, and said, “I heard some

one asking for ye an hour or two back; McAlister wants ye.”

“Where is he?” said John Broom, jumping to his feet.

“In hospital; he’s been there a day or two. He got cold on out-post

duty, and it’s flown to his lungs, they say. Ye see he’s been a hard

drinker, has McAlister, and I expect he’s breaking up.”

With which very just conclusion the speaker went on into the canteen,

and John Broom ran to the hospital.

Stripped of his picturesque trappings, and with no plumes to shadow the

hollows in his temples, McAlister looked gaunt and feeble enough, as he

lay in the little hospital bed, which barely held his long limbs. Such a

wreck of giant powers of body, and noble qualities of mind as the

drink-shops are preparing for the hospitals every day!

Since the quickly-reached medical decision that he was in a rapid

decline, and that nothing could be done for him, McAlister had been left

a good deal alone. His intellect (and it was no fool’s intellect,) was

quite clear, and if the long hours by himself, in which he reckoned with

his own soul, had hastened the death-damps on his brow, they had also

written there an expression which was new to John Broom. It was not the

old sour look, it was a kind of noble gravity.

His light, blue eyes brightened as the boy came in, and he held out his

hand, and John Broom took it with both his, saying,

“I never heard till this minute, McAlister. Eh, I do hope you’ll be

better soon.”

“The Lord being merciful to me,” said the Highlander. “But _this_

world’s nearly past, laddie, and I was fain to see ye again. Dinna

greet, man, for I’ve important business wi’ ye, and I should wish your

attention. Firstly, I’m aboot to hand ower to ye the key of your box.

Tak it, and put it in a pocket that’s no got a hole in it, if you’re

worth one. Secondly, there’s a bit bag I made mysel, and it’s got a

trifle o’ money in it that I’m giving and bequeathing to ye, under

certain conditions, namely, that ye shall spend the contents of the box

according to my last wishes and instructions, with the ultimate end of

your ain benefit, ye’ll understand.”

A fit of coughing here broke McAlister’s discourse; but after drinking

from a cup beside him, he put aside John Broom’s remonstrances with a

dignified movement of his hand, and continued,—

“When a body comes of decent folk, he won’t just care, maybe, to have

their names brought up in a barrack-room. Ye never heard me say aught of

my father or my mither?”

“Never, McAlister.”

“I’d a good hame,” said the Highlander, with a decent pride in his tone.

“It was a strict hame—I’ve no cause now to deceive mysel’, thinking it

was a wee bit ower strict—but it was a good hame. I left it, man—I ran

away.”

The glittering blue eyes turned sharply on the lad, and he went on:—

“A body doesna’ care to turn his byeganes oot for every fool to peck at.

Did I ever speer about your past life, and whar ye came from?”

“Never, McAlister.”

“But that’s no to say that, if I knew manners, I dinna obsairve. And

there’s been things now and again, John Broom, that’s gar’d me think

that ye’ve had what I had, and done as I did. Did ye rin awa’, laddie?”

John Broom nodded his black head, but tears choked his voice.

“Man!” said the Highlander, “ane word’s as gude’s a thousand. Gang back!

Gang hame! There’s the bit siller here that’s to tak ye, and the love

yonder that’s waiting ye. Listen to a dying man, laddie, and gang hame!”

“I doubt if they’d have me,” sobbed John Broom, “I gave ’em a deal of

trouble, McAlister.”

“And d’ye think, lad, that that thought has na’ cursed _me_, and keepit

me from them that loved me? Aye, lad, and till this week I never

overcame it.”

“Weel may I want to save ye, bairn,” added the Highlander tenderly, “for

it was the thocht of a’ ye riskit for the like of me at the three roads,

that made me consider wi’ mysel’ that I’ve aiblins been turning my back

a’ my wilfu’ life on love that’s bigger than a man’s deservings. It’s

near done now, and it’ll never lie in my poor power so much as rightly

to thank ye. It’s strange that a man should set store by a good name

that he doesna’ deserve; but if ony blessings of mine could bring ye

good, they’re yours, that saved an old soldier’s honor, and let him die

respected in his regiment.”

“Oh, McAlister, let me fetch one of the chaplains to write a letter to

fetch your father,” cried John Broom.

“The minister’s been here this morning,” said the Highlander, “and I’ve

tell’t him mair than I’ve tell’t you. And he’s jest directed me to put

my sinful trust in the Father of us a’. I’ve sinned heaviest against

_Him_, laddie, but His love is stronger than the lave.”

John Broom remained by his friend, whose painful fits of coughing, and

of gasping for breath, were varied by intervals of seeming stupor. When

a candle had been brought in and placed near the bed, the Highlander

roused himself and asked,—

“Is there a Bible on yon table? Could ye read a bit to me, laddie?”

There is little need to dwell on the bitterness of heart with which John

Broom confessed,—

“I can’t read big words, McAlister.”

“Did ye never go to school?” said the Scotchman.

“I didn’t learn,” said the poor boy; “I played.”

“Aye, aye. Weel, ye’ll learn, when ye gang hame,” said the Highlander,

in gentle tones.

“I’ll never get home,” said John Broom, passionately. “I’ll never

forgive myself. I’ll never get over it, that I couldn’t read to ye when

ye wanted me, McAlister.”

“Gently, gently,” said the Scotchman. “Dinna daunt yoursel’ owermuch wi’

the past, laddie. And for me—I’m not that presoomptious to think that I

can square up a misspent life as a man might compound wi’s creditors.

’Gin He forgi’es me, He’ll forgi’e; but it’s not a prayer up or a

chapter down that’ll stan’ between me and the Almighty. So dinna fret

yoursel’, but let me think while I may.”

And so, far into the night, the Highlander lay silent, and John Broom

watched by him.

It was just midnight when he partly raised himself, and cried,—

“Whist, laddie! do ye hear the pipes?”

The dying ears must have been quick, for John Broom heard nothing; but

in a few moments he heard the bagpipes from the officers’ mess, where

they were keeping Hogmenay. They were playing the old year out with

“Auld lang syne,” and the Highlander beat the tune out with his hand,

and his eyes gleamed out of his rugged face in the dim light, as

cairngorms glitter in dark tartan.

There was a pause after the first verse, and he grew restless, and

turning doubtfully to where John Broom sat, as if his sight were

failing, he said, “Ye’ll mind your promise, ye’ll gang hame?” And after

awhile he repeated the last word,

“_Hame!_”

But as he spoke there spread over his face a smile so tender and so full

of happiness, that John Broom held his breath as he watched him. As the

light of sunrise creeps over the face of some rugged rock, it crept from

chin to brow, and the pale blue eyes shone tranquil, like water that

reflects heaven.

And when it had passed it left them still open, but gems that had lost

their ray.

LUCK GOES.—AND COMES AGAIN.

The spirit does not always falter in its faith because the flesh is

weary with hope deferred. When week after week, month after month, and

year after year, went by and John Broom was not found, the

disappointment seemed to “age” the little ladies, as Thomasina phrased

it. But yet they said to the parson, “We do not regret it.”

“God forbid that you should regret it,” said he.

And even the lawyer (whose heart was kinder than his tongue) abstained

from taunting them with his prophecies, and said, “The force of the

habits of early education is a power as well as that of inherent

tendencies. It is only for your sake that I regret a too romantic

benevolence.” And Miss Betty and Miss Kitty tried to put the matter

quite away. But John Broom was very closely bound up with the life of

many years past. Thomasina mourned him as if he had been her son, and

Thomasina being an old and valuable servant, it is needless to say that

when she was miserable no one in the house was permitted to be quite at

ease.

As to Pretty Cocky, he lived, but Miss Kitty fancied that he grew less

pretty and drooped upon his polished perch.

There were times when the parson felt almost conscience-stricken because

he had encouraged the adoption of John Broom. Disappointments fall

heavily upon elderly people. They may submit better than the young, but

they do not so easily revive. The little old ladies looked grayer and

more nervous, and the little old house looked grayer and gloomier than

of old.

Indeed there were other causes of anxiety. Times were changing, prices

were rising, and the farm did not thrive. The lawyer said that the

farm-bailiff neglected his duties, and that the cowherd did nothing but

drink; but Miss Betty trembled, and said they could not part with old

servants.

The farm-bailiff had his own trouble, but he kept it to himself. No one

knew how severely he had beaten John Broom the day before he ran away,

but he remembered it himself with painful clearness. Harsh men are apt

to have consciences, and his was far from easy about the lad who had

been entrusted to his care. He could not help thinking of it when the

day’s work was over, and he had to keep filling up his evening

whisky-glass again and again to drown disagreeable thoughts.

The whisky answered this purpose, but it made him late in the morning;

it complicated business on market days, not to the benefit of the farm,

and it put him at a disadvantage in dealing with the drunken cowherd.

The cowherd was completely upset by John Broom’s mysterious

disappearance, and he comforted himself as the farm-bailiff did, but to

a larger extent. And Thomasina winked at many irregularities in

consideration of the groans of sympathy with which he responded to her

tears as they sat around the hearth where John Broom no longer lay.

At the time that he vanished from Lingborough the gossips of the country

side said, “This comes of making pets of tramps’ brats, when honest

folk’s sons may toil and moil without notice.” But when it was proved

that the tramp-boy had stolen nothing, when all search for him was vain,

and when prosperity faded from the place season by season and year by

year, there were old folk who whispered that the gaudily-clothed child

Miss Betty had found under the broom-bush had something more than common

in him, and that whoever and whatever had offended the eerie creature,

he had taken the luck of Lingborough with him when he went away.

It was early summer. The broom was shining in the hedges with uncommon

wealth of golden blossoms. “The lanes look for all the world as they did

the year that poor child was found,” said Thomasina, wiping her eyes.

Annie the lass sobbed hysterically, and the cowherd found himself so low

in spirits that after gazing dismally at the cow-stalls, which had not

been cleaned for days past, he betook himself to the ale-house to

refresh his energies for this and other arrears of work.

On returning to the farm, however, he found his hands still feeble, and

he took a drop or two more to steady them, after which it occurred to

him that certain new potatoes which he had had orders to dig were yet in

the ground. The wood was not chopped for the next day’s use, and he

wondered what had become of a fork he had had in the morning and had

laid down somewhere.

So he seated himself on some straw in the corner to think about it all,

and whilst he was thinking he fell fast asleep.

By his own account many remarkable things had befallen him in the course

of his life, including that meeting with a Black Something to which

allusion has been made, but nothing so strange as what happened to him

that night.

When he awoke in the morning and sat up on the straw, and looked around

him, the stable was freshly cleaned, the litter in the stalls was shaken

and turned, and near the door was an old barrel of newly-dug potatoes,

and the fork stood by it. And when he ran to the wood-house there lay

the wood neatly chopped and piled to take away.

He kept his own counsel that day and took credit for the work, but when

on the morrow the farm-bailiff was at a loss to know who had thinned the

turnips that were left to do in the upper field, and Annie the lass

found the kitchen-cloths she had left overnight to soak, rubbed through

and rinsed, and laid to dry, the cowherd told his tale to Thomasina, and

begged for a bowl of porridge and cream to set in the barn, as one might

set a mouse-trap baited with cheese.

“For,” said he, “the luck of Lingborough’s come back, missis. _It’s Lob

Lie-by-the-fire!_”

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE.

“It’s Lob Lie-by-the-fire!”

So Thomasina whispered exultingly, and Annie the lass timidly. Thomasina

cautioned the cowherd to hold his tongue, and she said nothing to the

little ladies on the subject. She felt certain that they would tell the

parson, and he might not approve. The farm-bailiff knew of a farm on the

Scotch side of the Border where a brownie had been driven away by the

minister preaching his last Sunday’s sermon over again at him, and as

Thomasina said, “There’d been little enough luck at Lingborough lately,

that they should wish to scare it away when it came.”

And yet the news leaked out gently, and was soon known all through the

neighborhood—as a secret.

“The luck of Lingborough’s come back. Lob’s lying by the fire!”

He could be heard at his work any night, and several people had seen

him, though this vexed Thomasina, who knew well that the Good People do

not like to be watched at their labors.

The cowherd had not been able to resist peeping down through chinks in

the floor of the loft above the barn, where he slept, and one night he

had seen Lob fetching straw for the cowhouse. “A great, rough, black

fellow,” said he, and he certainly grew bigger and rougher and blacker

every time the cowherd told the tale.

The Lubber-fiend appeared next to a boy who was loitering at a late hour

somewhere near the little ladies’ kitchen-garden, and whom he pursued

and pelted with mud till the lad nearly lost his wits with terror. (It

was the same boy who was put in the lock-up in the autumn for stealing

Farmer Mangel’s Siberian crabs.)

For this trick, however, the rough elf atoned by leaving three pecks of

newly-gathered fruit in the kitchen the following morning. Never had

there been such a preserving season at Lingborough within the memory of

Thomasina.

The truth is, hobgoblins, from Puck to Will-o’-the-wisp, are apt to play

practical jokes and knock people about whom they meet after sunset. A

dozen tales of such were rife, and folk were more amused than amazed by

Lob Lie-by-the-fire’s next prank.

There was an aged pauper who lived on the charity of the little ladies,

and whom it was Miss Betty’s practice to employ to do light weeding in

the fields for heavy wages. This venerable person was toddling to his

home in the gloaming with a barrow-load of Miss Betty’s new potatoes,

dexterously hidden by an upper sprinkling of groundsel and hemlock, when

the Lubber-fiend sprang out from behind an elder-bush, ran at the old

man with his black head, and knocked him, heels uppermost into the

ditch. The wheel-barrow was afterwards found in Miss Betty’s farmyard,

quite empty.

And when the cowherd (who had his own opinion of the aged pauper, and it

was a very poor one) went that evening, to drink Lob Lie-by-the-fire’s

health from a bottle he kept in the harness-room window, he was nearly

choked with the contents, which had turned into salt and water, as fairy

jewels turn to withered leaves.

But luck had come to Lingborough. There had not been such crops for

twice seven years past.

The lay-away hen’s eggs were brought regularly to the kitchen.

The ducklings were not eaten by rats.

No fowls were stolen.

The tub of pig-meal lasted three times as long as usual.

The cart-wheels and gate-hinges were oiled by unseen fingers.

The mushrooms in the croft gathered themselves and lay down on a dish in

the larder.

It is by small savings that a farm thrives, and Miss Betty’s farm

throve.

Everybody worked with more alacrity. Annie, the lass, said the butter

came in a way that made it a pleasure to churn.

The neighbors knew even more than those on the spot. They said—That

since Lob came back to Lingborough the hens laid eggs as large as

turkeys’ eggs, and the turkeys’ eggs were—oh, you wouldn’t believe the

size!

That the cows gave nothing but cream, and that Thomasina skimmed butter

off it as less lucky folk skim cream from milk.

That her cheeses were as rich as butter.

That she sold all she made, for Lob took the fairy butter from the old

trees in the avenue, and made it up into pats for Miss Betty’s table.

That if you bought Lingborough turnips, you might feed your cows on them

all the winter and the milk would be as sweet as new-mown hay.

That horses foddered on Lingborough hay would have thrice the strength

of others, and that sheep who cropped Lingborough pastures would grow

three times as fat.

That for as good a watch-dog as it was the sheep dog never barked at

Lob, a plain proof that he was more than human.

That for all its good luck it was not safe to loiter near the place

after dark, if you wished to keep your senses. And if you took so much

as a fallen apple belonging to Miss Betty, you might look out for palsy

or St. Vitus’s dance, or to be carried off bodily to the underground

folk.

Finally, that it was well that all the cows gave double, for that Lob

Lie-by-the-fire drank two gallons of the best cream every day, with

curds, porridge, and other dainties to match. But what did that matter,

when he had been overheard to swear that luck should not leave

Lingborough till Miss Betty owned half the country side?

MISS BETTY IS SURPRISED.

Miss Betty and Miss Kitty having accepted a polite invitation from Mrs.

General Dunmaw, went down to tea with that lady one fine evening in this

eventful summer.

Death had made a gap or two in the familiar circle during the last

fourteen years, but otherwise it was quite the same except that the

lawyer was married and not quite so sarcastic, and that Mrs. Brown Jasey

had brought a young niece with her dressed in the latest fashion, which

looked quite as odd as new fashions are wont to do, and with a

_coiffure_ “enough to frighten the French away,” as her aunt told her.

It was while this young lady was getting more noise out of Mrs. Dunmaw’s

red silk and rosewood piano than had been shaken out of it during the

last thirty years, that the lawyer brought his cup of coffee to Miss

Betty’s side, and said, suavely, “I hear wonderful accounts of

Lingborough, dear Miss Betty.”

“I am thankful to say, sir, that the farm is doing well this year. I am

very thankful, for the past few years have been unfavorable, and we had

begun to face the fact that it might be necessary to sell the old place.

And, I will not deny, sir, that it would have gone far to break my

heart, to say nothing of my sister Kitty’s.”

“Oh, we shouldn’t have let it come to that,” said the lawyer, “I could

have raised a loan——”

“Sir,” said Miss Betty, with dignity; “If we have our own pride, I hope

it’s an honest one. Lingborough will have passed out of our family when

it’s kept up on borrowed money.”

“I _could_ live in lodgings,” added Miss Betty, firmly, “little as I’ve

been accustomed to it, but _not in debt_.”

“Well, well, my dear madam, we needn’t talk about it now. But I’m dying

of curiosity as to the mainstay of all this good luck.”

“The turnips—” began Miss Betty.

“Bless my soul, Miss Betty!” cried the lawyer, “I’m not talking turnips.

I’m talking of Lob Lie-by-the-fire, as all the country side is for that

matter.”

“The country people have plenty of tales of him,” said Miss Betty, with

some pride in the family goblin. “He used to haunt the old barns, they

say, in my great-grandfather’s time.”

“And now you’ve got him back again,” said the lawyer.

“Not that I know of,” said Miss Betty.

On which the lawyer poured into her astonished ear all the latest news

on the subject, and if it had lost nothing before reaching his house in

the town, it rather gained in marvels as he repeated it to Miss Betty.

No wonder that the little lady was anxious to get home to question

Thomasina, and that somewhat before the usual hour she said.—

“Sister Kitty, if it’s not too soon for the servant——”

And the parson, threading his way to where Mrs. Dunmaw’s china crape

shawl (dyed crimson) shone in the bow window, said, “The clergy should

keep respectable hours; especially when they are as old as I am. Will

you allow me to thank you for a very pleasant evening, and to say

good-night?”

THE PARSON AND THE LUBBER-FIEND.

“Do you think there’d be any harm in leaving it alone, sister Betty?”

asked Miss Kitty, tremulously.

They had reached Lingborough, and the parson had come in with them, by

Miss Betty’s request, and Thomasina had been duly examined:

“Eh, Miss Betty, why should ye chase away good luck with the minister?”

cried she.

“Sister Kitty! Thomasina!” said Miss Betty. “I would not accept good

luck from a doubtful quarter to save Lingborough. But if It can face

this excellent clergyman, the Being who haunted my great-grandfather’s

farm is still welcome to the old barns, and you, Thomasina, need not

grudge It cream or curds.”

“You’re quite right, sister Betty,” said Miss Kitty, “you always are;

but oh dear, oh dear!”—

“Thomasina tells me,” said Miss Betty, turning to the parson, “that on

chilly evenings It sometimes comes and lies by the kitchen fire after

they have gone to bed, and I can distinctly remember my grandmother

mentioning the same thing. Thomasina has of late left the kitchen door

on the latch for Its convenience, as they had to sit up late for us, she

and Annie have taken their work into the still-room to leave the kitchen

free for Lob Lie-by-the-fire. They have not looked into the kitchen this

evening, as such beings do not like to be watched. But they fancy that

they heard It come in. I trust, sir, that neither in myself nor my

sister Kitty does timidity exceed a proper feminine sensibility, where

duty is concerned. If you will be good enough to precede us, we will go

to meet the old friend of my great-grandfather’s fortunes, and we leave

it entirely to your valuable discretion to pursue what course you think

proper on the occasion.”

“Is this the door?” said the parson, cheerfully, after knocking his head

against black beams and just saving his legs down shallow and unexpected

steps on his way to the kitchen—beams so unfelt and steps so familiar

to the women that it had never struck them that the long passage was not

the most straightforward walk a man could take—“I think you said It

generally lies on the hearth?”

The happy thought struck Thomasina that the parson might be frightened

out of his unlucky interference.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said she from behind. “We’ve heard him rolling by the

fire, and growling like thunder to himself. They say he’s an awful size,

too, with the strength of four men, and a long tail, and eyes like coals

of fire.”

But Thomasina spoke in vain, for the parson opened the door, and as they

pressed in, the moonlight streaming through the lattice window showed

Lob lying by the fire.

“There’s his tail! Ay——k!” screeched Annie the lass, and away she

went, without drawing breath, to the top garret, where she locked and

bolted herself in, and sat her bandbox flat, screaming for help.

But it was the plumy tail of the sheep dog, who was lying there with the

Lubber-fiend. And Lob was asleep, with his arms round the sheep dog’s

neck, and the sheep dog’s head lay on his breast, and his own head

touched the dog’s.

And it was a smaller head than the parson had been led to expect, and it

had thick black hair.

As the parson bent over the hearth, Thomasina took Miss Kitty round the

waist, and Miss Betty clutched her black velvet bag till the steel beads

ran into her hands, and they were quite prepared for an explosion, and

sulphur, and blue lights, and thunder.

And then the parson’s deep round voice broke the silence, saying,—

“Is that you, lad? God bless you, John Broom. You’re welcome home!”

THE END.

Some things—such as gossip—gain in the telling, but there are others

before which words fail, though each heart knows its own power of

sympathy. And such was the joy of the little ladies and of Thomasina at

John Broom’s return.

The sheep dog had his satisfaction out long ago, and had kept it to

himself, but how Pretty Cocky crowed, and chuckled, and danced, and

bowed his crest, and covered his face with his amber wings, and kicked

his seed-pot over, and spilt his water-pot on to the Derbyshire marble

chess-table, and screamed till the room rang again, and went on

screaming, with Miss Kitty’s pocket-handkerchief over his head to keep

him quiet, my poor pen can but imperfectly describe.

The desire to atone for the past which had led John Broom to act the

part of one of those Good-Fellows who have, we must fear, finally

deserted us, will be easily understood. And to a nature of his type, the

earning of some self-respect, and of a new character before others, was

perhaps a necessary prelude to future well-doing.

He did do well. He became “a good scholar,” as farmers were then. He

spent as much of his passionate energies on the farm as the farm would

absorb, and he restrained the rest. It is not cockatoos only who have

sometimes to live and be happy in this unfinished life with one wing

clipped.

In fine weather, when the perch was put into the garden, Miss Betty was

sometimes startled by stumbling on John Broom in the dusk, sitting on

his heels, the unfastened chain in his hand, with his black head

lovingly laid against Cocky’s white and yellow poll, talking in a low

voice, and apparently with the sympathy of his companion; and, as Miss

Betty justly feared, of that “other side of the world,” which they both

knew, and which both at times had cravings to revisit.

Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a

wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long

intervals) his “restless times,” when his good “missis” would bring out

a little store laid by in one of the children’s socks, and would bid him

“Be off, and get a breath of the sea-air,” but on condition that the

sock went with him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to go,

but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his absence

with that confidence in her knowledge of “the master,” which is so

mysterious to the unmarried, and which Miss Betty looked upon as “want

of feeling” to the end. She always dreaded that he would not return, and

a little ruse which she adopted of giving him money to make bargains for

foreign articles of _vertu_ with the sailors, is responsible for many of

the choicest ornaments in the Lingborough parlor.

“The sock’ll bring him home,” said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and

never could say what he had been doing. Nor was the account given by

Thomasina’s cousin, who was a tide-waiter down yonder, particularly

satisfying to the women’s curiosity. He said that John Broom was always

about; that he went aboard of all the craft in the bay, and asked whence

they came and whither they were bound. That, being once taunted to it,

he went up the rigging of a big vessel like a cat, and came down it

looking like a fool. That, as a rule, he gossipped and shared his

tobacco with sailors and fishermen, and brought out the sock much

oftener than was prudent for the benefit of the ragged boys who haunt

the quay.

He had two other weaknesses, which a faithful biographer must chronicle.

A regiment on the march would draw him from the ploughtail itself, and

“With daddy to see the soldiers” was held to excuse any of Mrs. Broom’s

children from household duties.

The other shall be described in the graphic language of that acute

observer the farm-bailiff.

“If there cam’ an Irish beggar, wi’ a stripy cloot roond him and a

bellows under’s arm, and ca’d himself a Hielander, the lad wad gi’e him

his silly head off his shoulders.”

As to the farm-bailiff, perhaps no one felt more or said less than he

did on John Broom’s return. But the tones of his voice had tender

associations for the boy’s ears as he took off his speckled hat, and

after contemplating the inside for some moments, put it on again, and

said,—

“Aweel, lad, sae ye’ve cam hame?”

But he listened with quivering face when John Broom told the story of

McAlister, and when it was ended he rose and went out, and “took the

pledge” against drink, and—kept it.

Moved by similar enthusiasm, the cowherd took the pledge also, and if he

didn’t keep it, he certainly drank less, chiefly owing to the vigilant

oversight of the farm-bailiff, who now exercised his natural severity

almost exclusively in the denunciation of all liquors whatsoever, from

the cowherd’s whisky to Thomasina’s elder-flower wine.

The plain cousin left his money to the little old ladies, and

Lingborough continued to flourish.

Partly perhaps because of this, it is doubtful if John Broom was ever

looked upon by the rustics as quite “like other folk.”

The favorite version of his history is that he was Lob under the guise

of a child; that he was driven away by new clothes; that he returned

from unwillingness to see an old family go to ruin “which he had served

for hundreds of years;” that the parson preached his last Sunday’s

sermon at him; and that having stood that test, he took his place among

Christian people.

Whether a name invented off-hand, however plain and sensible, does not

stick to a man as his father’s does, is a question. But John Broom was

not often called by his.

With Scotch caution, the farm-bailiff seldom exceeded the safe title of

“Man!” and the parson was apt to address him as “My dear boy” when he

had certainly outgrown the designation.

Miss Betty called him John Broom, but the people called him by the name

that he had earned.

And long after his black hair lay white and thick on his head, like snow

on the old barn roof, and when his dark eyes were dim in an honored old

age, the village children would point him out to each other, crying,

“There goes Lob Lie-by-the-fire, the Luck of Lingborough!”

TIMOTHY’S SHOES.

THE FAIRY GODMOTHER.

Timothy’s mother was very conscientious. When she was quite a young

woman, just after the birth of her first baby, and long before Timothy

saw the light, she was very much troubled about the responsibilities of

having a family.

“Suppose,” she murmured, “they catch measles, whooping cough,

chicken-pox, scarlatina, croup, or inflammation of the lungs, when I

might have prevented it; and either die, or have weak eyes, weak lungs

or a chronic sore throat to the end of their days. Suppose they have

bandy legs from walking too soon, or crooked spines from being carried

too long. Suppose, too, that they grow up bad—that they go wrong, do

what one will to keep them right. Suppose I cannot afford to educate

them properly, or that they won’t learn if I can afford to have them

taught. Suppose that they die young, when I might have kept them alive;

or live only to make me think they had better have died young. Oh dear,

it’s a terrible responsibility having a family!”

“It’s too late to talk about that now, my dear,” said her godmother (a

fairy godmother, too!); “the baby is a very fine boy, and if you will

let me know when the christening-day is fixed, I will come and give him

a present. I can’t be godmother, though; I’m too old, and you’ve talked

about responsibilities till I’m quite alarmed.” With which the old lady

kissed her goddaughter, and nearly put out the baby’s eye with the point

of her peaked hat, after which she mounted her broomstick and rode away.

“A very fine boy,” continued the young mother. “Ah! that’s just where it

is; if it had only been a girl I shouldn’t have felt so much afraid.

Girls are easily managed. They have got consciences, and they mend their

own clothes. You can make them work, and they can amuse themselves when

they’re not working. Now with boys it is quite different. And yet I

shouldn’t wonder if I have a large family of boys, just because I feel

it to be such a responsibility.”

She was quite right. Years went by; one baby after another was added to

the family, and they were all boys. “Twenty feet that want socks,”

sighed the good woman, “and not a hand that can knit or darn!”

But we must go back to the first christening. The godmother arrived,

dressed in plum-colored satin, with a small brown-paper parcel in her

hand.

“Fortunatus’s purse!” whispered one of the guests, nudging his neighbor

with his elbow. “The dear child will always be welcome in my poor

establishment,” he added aloud to the mother.

“A mere trifle, my love,” said the fairy godmother, laying the

brown-paper parcel beside her on the table and nodding kindly to her

goddaughter.

“That means a mug,” said one of the godfathers, decidedly. “Rather

shabby! I’ve gone as far as a knife, fork, and spoon myself.”

“Doubtless ’tis of the more precious metal,” said Dr. Dixon Airey, the

schoolmaster (and this was his way of saying that it was a gold mug),

“and not improbably studded with the glittering diamond. Let us not be

precipitate in our conclusions.”

At this moment the fairy spoke again. “My dear goddaughter,” she began,

laying her hand upon the parcel, “I have too often had reason to observe

that the gift of beauty is far from invariably proving a benefit to its

possessor.” (“I told you it was a purse,” muttered the guest.) “Riches,”

continued the fairy, “are hardly a less doubtful boon; and the youth who

is born to almost unlimited wealth is not always slow to become a

bankrupt. Indeed, I fear that the experience of many centuries has

almost convinced us poor fairies that extraordinary gifts are not

necessarily blessings. This trifle,” she continued, beginning to untie

the string of the parcel, “is a very common gift to come from my hands,

but I trust it will prove useful.”

“There!” cried the godfather, “didn’t I say it was a mug? Common? Why

there’s nothing so universal except, indeed, the knife, fork, and

spoon.”

But before he had finished his sentence the parcel was opened, and the

fairy presented the young mother with—_a small pair of strong leather

shoes, copper tipped and heeled_. “They’ll never wear out, my dear,” she

said; “rely upon it, you’ll find them a ‘mother’s blessing,’ and however

large a family you may have, your children will step into one another’s

shoes just at the age when little feet are the most destructive.” With

which the old lady carefully wound the string on her finger into a neat

twist, and folding the bit of brown paper put both in her pocket, for

she was a very economical dame.

I will not attempt to describe the scandalized buzz in which the

visitors expressed their astonishment at the meanness of the fairy’s

gift. As for the young mother, she was a sensible, sweet-tempered woman,

and very fond of her old godmother, so she set it down to a freak of

eccentricity; and, dismissing a few ambitious day-dreams from her mind,

she took the shoes, and thanked the old lady pleasantly enough.

When the company had departed, the godmother still lingered, and kissed

her goddaughter affectionately. “If your children inherit your good

sense and good temper, my love, they will need nothing an old woman like

me can give them,” said she; “but, all the same, my little gift is not

_quite_ so shabby as it looks. These shoes have another quality besides

that of not wearing out. The little feet that are in them cannot very

easily go wrong. If, when your boy is old enough, you send him to school

in these shoes, should he be disposed to play truant, they will pinch

and discomfit him so that it is probable he will let his shoes take him

the right way; they will in like manner bring him home at the proper

time. And——”

“Mrs. Godmother’s broomstick at the door!” shouted the farming man who

was acting as footman on this occasion.

“Well, my dear,” said the old lady, “you will find out their virtues all

in good time, and they will do for the whole family in turn; for I

really can come to no more christenings. I am getting old—besides, our

day is over. Farewell, my love.” And mounting her broomstick, the fairy

finally departed.

KINGCUPS.

As years went by, and her family increased, the mother learned the full

value of the little shoes. Her nine boys wore them in turn, but they

never wore them out. So long as the fairy shoes were on their feet they

were pretty sure to go where they were sent and to come back when they

were wanted, which, as all parents know, is no light matter. Moreover,

during the time that each boy wore them, he got into such good habits

that he was thenceforward comparatively tractable. At last they

descended to the ninth and youngest boy, and became—Timothy’s shoes.

Now the eighth boy had very small feet, so he had worn the shoes rather

longer, and Timothy got them somewhat later than usual. Then, despite

her conscientiousness, Timothy’s mother was not above the weakness of

spoiling the youngest of the family; and so, for one reason or another,

Master Timothy was wilful, and his little feet pretty well used to

taking their own way before he stepped into the fairy shoes. But he

played truant from the dame’s school and was late for dinner so often,

that at length his mother resolved to bear it no longer; and one morning

the leather shoes were brightly blacked and the copper tips polished,

and Master Tim was duly shod, and dismissed to school with many a wise

warning from his fond parent.

“Now, Tim, dear, I know you will be a good boy,” said his mother, a

strong conviction that he would be no such thing pricking her

conscience. “And mind you don’t loiter or play truant, for if you do,

these shoes will pinch you horribly, and you’ll be sure to be found

out.”

Tim’s mother held him by his right arm, and Tim’s left arm and both his

legs were already as far away as he could stretch them, and Tim’s face

looked just as incredulous as yours would look if you were told that

there was a bogy in the store-closet who would avenge any attack upon

the jam-pots with untold terrors. At last the good woman let go her

hold, and Tim went off like an arrow from a bow, and he gave not one

more thought to what his mother had said.

The past winter had been very cold, the spring had been fitful and

stormy, and May had suddenly burst upon the country with one broad

bright smile of sunshine and flowers. If Tim had loitered on the school

path when the frost nipped his nose and numbed his toes, or when the

trees were bare and the ground muddy, and the March winds crept up his

jacket-sleeves, one can imagine the temptations to delay when every nook

had a flower and every bush a bird. It is very wrong to play truant, but

still it was very tempting. Twirr-r-r-r-r—up into the blue sky went the

larks; hedge-birds chirped and twittered in and out of the bushes, the

pale milkmaids opened their petals, and down in the dark marsh below the

kingcups shone like gold.

Once or twice Tim loitered to pick milkmaids and white starflowers and

speedwell; but the shoes pinched him, and he ran on all the more

willingly that a newly fledged butterfly went before him. But when the

path ran on above the marsh, and he looked down and saw the kingcups, he

dismissed all thoughts of school. True, the bank was long and steep, but

that only added to the fun. Kingcups he must have. The other flowers he

flung away. Milkmaids are wan-looking at the best; starflowers and

speedwell are ragged; but those shining things that he had not seen for

twelve long months, with cups of gold and leaves like water-lilies—Tim

flung his satchel on to the grass, and began to scramble down the bank.

But though he turned his feet towards the kingcups, the shoes seemed

resolved to go to school; and as he persisted in going towards the

marsh, he suffered such twitches and twinges that he thought his feet

must have been wrenched off. But Tim was a very resolute little fellow,

and though his ankles bid fair to be dislocated at every step, he

dragged himself, shoes and all, down to the marsh. And now, provokingly

enough, he could not find a kingcup within reach; in very perversity, as

it seemed, not one would grow on the safe edge, but, like so many

Will-o’-the-wisps, they shone out of the depths of the treacherous bog.

And as Tim wandered round the marsh, jerk, wrench—oh, dear! every step

was like a galvanic shock. At last, desperate with pain and

disappointment, he fairly jumped into a brilliant clump that looked

tolerable near, and was at once ankle-deep in water. Then, to his

delight, the wet mud sucked the shoes off his feet, and he waded about

among the rushes, reeds, and kingcups, sublimely happy.

And he was none the worse, though he ought to have been. He moved about

very cautiously, feeling his way with a stick from tussock to tussock of

reedy grass, and wondering how his eight brothers had been so

feeble-minded as never to think of throwing the obnoxious shoes into a

bog and so getting rid of them once for all. True, in fairy stories, the

youngest brother always does accomplish what his elders had failed to

do: but fairy tales are not always true. At last Tim began to feel

tired; he hurt his foot with a sharp stump. A fat yellow frog jumped up

in his face and so startled him that he nearly fell backwards into the

water. He was frightened, and had culled more kingcups than he could

carry. So he scrambled out, and climbed the bank, and cleaned himself up

as well as he could with a small cotton pocket handkerchief, and thought

he would go on to school.

Now, with all his faults, Tim was no coward and no liar, so with a

quaking heart and a stubborn face he made up his mind to tell the dame

that he had played truant; but even when one has resolved to confess,

the words lag behind, and Tim was still composing a speech in his mind,

and had still got no farther than, “Please, ma’am,” when he found

himself in the school and under the dame’s very eye.

But Tim heeded not her frown, nor the subdued titters of the children;

his eyes were fixed on the schoolroom floor, where—in Tim’s proper

place in the class—stood the little leather shoes, very muddy, and with

a kingcup in each.

“You’ve been in the marsh, Timothy,” said the dame. “_Put on your

shoes._”

It will be believed that when his punishment and his lessons were over,

Tim allowed his shoes to take him quietly home.

THE SHOES AT SCHOOL.

When Timothy’s mother heard how he had been in the marsh, she decided to

send him at once to a real boys’ school, as he was quite beyond dame’s

management. So he went to live with Dr. Dixon Airey, who kept a school

on the moors, assisted by one Usher, a gentleman who had very long legs

and used very long words, and who wore common spectacles of very high

power on work days, and green ones on Sundays and holidays.

And Timothy’s shoes went with him.

On the whole he liked being at school. He liked the boys, he did not

hate Dr. Airey much, and he would have felt kindly towards the Usher but

for certain exasperating circumstances. The Usher was accustomed to

illustrate his lessons by examples from familiar objects, and as he

naturally had not much imagination left after years of grinding at the

rudiments of everything with a succession of lazy little boys, he took

the first familiar objects that came to hand, and his examples were apt

to be tame. Now though Timothy’s shoes were well-known in his native

village, they created quite a sensation in Dr. Dixon Airey’s

establishment, and the Usher brought them into his familiar examples

till Timothy was nearly frantic. Thus: “If Timothy’s shoes cost 8_s._

7_d._ without the copper tips, &c.” or, illustrating the genitive case,

“Timothy’s shoes, or the shoes of Timothy,” or again: “The shoes. Of the

shoes. To or for the shoes. The shoes. O shoes! By, with, or from the

shoes.”

“I’ll run away by, with, or from the shoes shortly,” groaned Timothy,

“see if I don’t. I can’t stand it any longer.”

“I wouldn’t mind it, if I were you,” returned Bramble minor. “They all

do it. Look at the fellow who wrote the Latin Grammar! He looks around

the schoolroom, and the first thing that catches his eyes goes down for

the first declension, _forma_, a form. They’re all alike.”

But when the fruit season came round, and boys now and then smuggled

cherries into school, which were forfeited by the Usher, he sometimes

used these for illustrations instead of the shoes, thus (in the

arithmetic class): “Two hundred and fifty-four cherries added to one

thousand six hundred and seventy-five will make——?”

“A _very_ big pie!” cried Tim on one of these occasions. He had been

sitting half asleep in the sunshine, his mind running on the coming

enjoyments of the fruit season, cooked and uncooked; the Usher had

appealed to him unexpectedly, and the answer was out of his lips before

he could recollect himself. Of course he was sent to the bottom of the

class; and the worst of going down in class for Timothy was that his

shoes were never content to rest there. They pinched his poor feet till

he shuffled them off in despair, and then they pattered back to his

proper place where they stayed till, for very shame, Tim was obliged to

work back to them: and if he kept down in his class for two or three

days, for so long he had to sit in his socks, for the shoes always took

the place that Tim ought to have filled.

But, after all, it was pleasant enough at that school upon the moors,

from the time when the cat heather came out upon the hills to the last

of the blackberries; and even in winter, when the northern snow lay

deep, and the big dam was “safe” for skaters, and there was a slide from

the Doctor’s gate to the village post-office—one steep descent of a

quarter of a mile on the causeway, and as smooth as the glass mountain

climbed by the princes in the fairy tale. Then Saturday was a

half-holiday, and the boys were allowed to ramble off on long country

walks, and if they had been particularly good they were allowed to take

out Nardy.

This was the Doctor’s big dog, a noble fellow of St. Bernard breed. The

Doctor called him Bernardus, but the boys called him Nardy.

Sometimes, too, the Usher would take one or two boys for a treat to the

neighboring town, and when the Usher went out holidaying, he always wore

the green spectacles, through which he never saw anything amiss, and

indeed (it was whispered) saw very little at all.

Altogether Timothy would have been happy but for the shoes. They did him

good service in many ways, it is true. When Timothy first came the

little boys groaned under the tyranny of a certain big bully of whom all

were afraid. One day when he was maltreating Bramble minor in a shameful

and most unjust fashion, Timothy rushed at him and with the copper tips

of his unerring shoes he kicked him so severely that the big bully did

not get over it for a week, and no one feared him any more. Then in

races, and all games of swift and skilful chase, Timothy’s shoes won him

high renown. But they made him uncomfortable whenever he went wrong, and

left him no peace till he went right, and he grumbled loudly against

them.

“There is a right way and a wrong way in all sublunary affairs,” said

the Usher. “Hereafter, young gentleman, you will appreciate your

singular felicity in being incapable of taking the wrong course without

feeling uncomfortable.”

“What’s the use of his talking like that?” said Timothy, kicking the

bench before him with his “copper tips.” “I don’t want to go the wrong

way, I only want to go my own way, that’s all.” And night and day he

beat his brains for a good plan to rid himself of the fairy shoes.

THE SHOES AT CHURCH.

On Sunday, Dr. Dixon Airey’s school went to the old church in the

valley. It was a venerable building with a stone floor, and when Dr.

Dixon Airey’s young gentlemen came in they made such a clattering with

their feet that everybody looked round. So the Usher very properly made

a point of being punctual that they might not disturb the congregation.

The Usher always went to church with the boys, and he always wore his

green spectacles. It has been hinted that on Sundays and holidays he was

slow to see anything amiss. Indeed if he were directly told of

misconduct he would only shake his head and say:

“_Humanum est errare_, my dear boy, as Dr. Kerchever Arnold truly

remarks in one of the exercises.”

And the boys liked him all the better, and did not on the whole behave

any the worse for this occasional lenity.

Four times in the year, on certain Sunday afternoons, the young people

of the neighborhood were publicly catechised in the old church after the

second lesson at Evening Prayer, and Dr. Dixon Airey’s young gentlemen

with the rest. They all filed down on the nave in a certain order, and

every boy knew beforehand which question and answer would fall to his

share. Now Timothy’s mother had taught him the Catechism very

thoroughly, and so on a certain Sunday he found that the lengthy answer

to the question, “What is thy duty towards thy neighbor?” had been given

to him. He knew it quite well; but a stupid, half-shy, and wholly

aggravating fit came upon him, and he resolved that he would not stand

up with the others to say his Catechism in church. So when they were

about half-way there, Timothy slipped off unnoticed, and the Usher—all

confidence and green spectacles—took the rest of the party on without

him.

Oh, how the shoes pinched Tim’s feet as he ran away over the heather,

and how Tim vowed in his heart never to rest till he got rid of them! At

last the wrenching became so intolerable that Tim tore them off his

feet, and kicked them for very spite. Fortunately for Tim’s shins the

shoes did not kick back again, but they were just setting off after the

Usher, when Tim snatched them up and put them in his pocket. At last he

found among the gray rocks that peeped out of the heather and bracken,

one that he could just move, and when he had pushed it back, he popped

the shoes under it, and then rolled the heavy boulder back on them to

keep them fast. After which he ate bilberries till his teeth were blue,

and tried to forget the shoes and to enjoy himself. But he could hot do

either.

As to the Usher, when he found that Timothy was missing, he was very

much vexed; and when the Psalms were ended and still he had not come,

the Usher took off his green spectacles and put them into his pocket.

And Bramble minor, who came next to Timothy, kept his Prayer-Book open

at the Church Catechism and read his Duty to his Neighbor instead of

attending to the service. At last the time came, and all the boys filed

down the nave. First the Parish schools and then Doctor Dixon Airey’s

young gentlemen; and just as they took their places between Bramble

minor and the next boy—in the spot where Timothy should have

been—stood Timothy’s shoes.

After service the shoes walked home with the boys, and followed the

Usher into Dr. Dixon Airey’s study.

“I regret, sir,” said the Usher, “I deeply regret to have to report to

you that Timothy was absent from Divine worship this evening.”

“And who did his Duty to his Neighbor?” asked the Doctor, anxiously.

“Bramble minor, sir.”

“And how did he do it?” asked the Doctor.

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Mrs. Airey and I,” said the Doctor, “shall have much pleasure in seeing

Bramble minor at tea this evening. I believe there are greengage

turnovers. We hope also for the honor of _your_ company, sir,” added the

Doctor. “And when Timothy retraces his erring steps, _tell him to come

and fetch his shoes_.”

THE POOR PERSON.

I regret to say that the events just related only confirmed Timothy in

his desire to get rid of his shoes. He took Bramble minor into his

confidence, and they discussed the matter seriously after they went to

bed.

What a gift it is to be able to dispose in one trenchant sentence of a

question that has given infinite trouble to those principally concerned!

Most journalists have this talent, and Bramble minor must have had some

of it, for when Timothy had been stating his grievance in doleful and

hopeless tones, his friend said:

“What’s the use of putting them under stones and leaving them in bogs?

Give your shoes to some one who wants ’em, my boy, and they’ll be kept

fast enough, you may be sure!”

“But where am I to find any one who wants them?” asked Timothy.

“Why, bless your life!” said Bramble minor, “go to the first poor

person’s cottage you come to, and offer them to the first person you

see. Strong shoes with copper tips and heels will not be refused in a

hurry, and will be taken very good care of, you’ll find.”

With which Bramble minor rolled over in his little bed and went to

sleep, and Timothy turned over in his, and thought what a thing it was

to have a practical genius—like Bramble minor! And the first

half-holiday he borrowed a pair of shoes, and put his own in his pocket,

and set forth for the nearest poor person’s cottage.

He did not go towards the village (it was too public he thought); he

went over the moors, and when he had walked about half a mile, down by a

sandy lane just below him, he saw a poor person’s cottage. The cottage

was so tumble-down and so old and inconvenient, there could be no doubt

but that it belonged to a poor person, and to a very poor person indeed!

When Timothy first rapped at the door he could hear no answer, but after

knocking two or three times he accepted a faint sound from within as a

welcome, and walked into the cottage. Though more comfortable within

than without, it was unmistakably the abode of a “poor person,” and the

poor person himself was sitting crouched over a small fire, coughing

after a manner that shook the frail walls of the cottage and his own

frailer body. He was an old man and rather deaf.

“Good afternoon,” said Timothy, for he did not know what else to say.

“Good day to ye,” coughed the old man.

“And how are you this afternoon?” asked Tim.

“No but badly, thank ye,” said the old man; “but I’m a long age, and

it’s what I mun expect.”

“You don’t feel as if a small pair of strong leather shoes would be of

any use to you?” asked Tim in his ear.

“Eh? Shoes? It’s not many shoes I’m bound to wear out now. These’ll last

my time, I expect. I’m a long age, sir. But thank ye kindly all the

same.”

Tim was silent, partly because the object of his visit had failed,

partly with awe of the old man, whose time was measured by the tattered

slippers on his feet.

“You be one of Dr. Airey’s young gentlemen, I reckon,” said the old man

at last. Tim nodded.

“And how’s the old gentleman? He wears well, do the Doctor. And I expect

he’s a long age, too?”

“He’s about sixty, I believe,” said Timothy.

“I thowt he’d been better nor seventy,” said the old man, in almost an

injured tone, for he did not take much interest in any one younger than

threescore years and ten.

“Have you any children?” asked Tim, still thinking of the shoes.

“Four buried and four living,” said the old man.

“Perhaps _they_ might like a pair——” began Timothy; but the old man

had gone on without heeding him.

“And all four on ’em married and settled, and me alone; for my old woman

went Home twenty years back, come next fift’ o’ March.”

“I daresay you have grandchildren, then?” said Tim.

“Ay, ay. Tom’s wife’s brought him eleven, _so_ fur; and six on ’em

boys.”

“They’re not very rich, I daresay,” said Tim.

“Rich!” cried the old man; “Why, bless ye, last year Tom were out o’

work six month, and they were a’most clemmed.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Tim; “and will you please give them these shoes?

They’re sure to fit one of the boys, and they are very very strong

leather, and copper-tipped and heeled, and——.”

But as Tim enumerated the merits of his shoes the old man tried to

speak, and could not for a fit of coughing, and as he choked and

struggled he put back the shoes with his hand. At last he found voice to

gasp,—“Lor’, bless you, Tom’s in Osstraylee.”

“Whatever did he go there for?” cried Tim, impatiently, for he saw no

prospect of getting rid of his tormentors.

“He’d nowt to do at home, and he’s doing well out yonder. He says he’ll

send me some money soon, but I doubt it won’t be in time for my burying.

I’m a long age,” muttered the old man.

Tim put the shoes in his pocket again, and pulled out a few coppers, the

remains of his pocket-money. These the old man gratefully accepted, and

Tim departed. And as he was late, he took off the borrowed shoes and put

on his own once more, for they carried him quicker over the ground.

And so they were still Timothy’s shoes.

THE DIRTY BOY.

One day the Usher invited Timothy to walk to the town with him. It was a

holiday. The Usher wore his green spectacles; Tim had a few shillings of

pocket-money, and plums were in season. Altogether the fun promised to

be good.

Timothy and the Usher had so much moor breeze and heather scents every

day, that they quite enjoyed the heavier air of the valley and the smell

and smoke of town life. Just as they entered the first street a dirty

little boy, in rags and with bare feet, ran beside them, and as he ran

he talked. And it was all about his own trouble and poverty, and hunger

and bare feet, and he spoke very fast, with a kind of whine.

“I feel quite ashamed, Timothy,” said the Usher (who worked hard for

twelve hours a day, and supported a blind mother and two sisters),—“I

feel quite ashamed to be out holidaying when a fellow-creature is

barefooted and in want.” And as he spoke the Usher gave a sixpence to

the dirty little boy (who never worked at all, and was supported by kind

people out walking). And when the dirty little boy had got the sixpence,

he bit it with his teeth and rang it on the stones, and then danced

catherine-wheels on the pavement till somebody else came by. But the

Usher did not see this through his green spectacles.

And Timothy thought, “My shoes would fit that barefooted boy.”

After they had enjoyed themselves very much for some time, the Usher had

to pay a business visit in the town, and he left Timothy to amuse

himself alone for a while. And Timothy walked about, and at last he

stopped in front of a bootmaker’s shop, and in the window he saw a

charming little pair of boots just his own size. And when he turned away

from the window, he saw something coming very fast along the pavement

like the three legs on an Isle of Man halfpenny, and when it stood still

it was the barefooted boy.

Then Timothy went into the shop, and bought the boots, and this took all

his money to the last farthing.

And when he came out of the shop the dirty little boy was still there.

“Come here, my poor boy,” said Tim, speaking like a young gentleman out

of ‘Sanford and Merton.’ “You look very poor, and your feet must be very

cold.”

The dirty boy whined afresh, and said his feet were so bad he could

hardly walk. They were frost-bitten, sun-blistered, sore, and rheumatic;

and he expected shortly to become a cripple like his parents and five

brothers, all from going barefoot. And Timothy stooped down and took off

the little old leather shoes.

“I will give you these shoes, boy,” said he, “on one condition. You must

promise not to lose them, nor to give them away.”

“Catch me!” cried the dirty boy, as he took the shoes. And his voice

seemed quite changed, and he put one of his dirty fingers by the side of

his nose.

“I could easily catch you if I wished,” said Tim. (For slang was not

allowed in Dr. Dixon Airey’s establishment, and he did not understand

the remark.)

“Well, you _are_ green!” said the dirty boy, putting on the shoes.

“It’s no business of yours what color I am,” said Tim, angrily. “You’re

black, and that’s your own fault for not washing yourself. And if you’re

saucy or ungrateful, I’ll kick you—at least, I’ll try,” he added, for

he remembered that he no longer wore the fairy shoes, and could not be

sure of kicking or catching anybody now.

“Walker!” cried the dirty boy. But he did not walk, he ran, down the

street as fast as he could go, and Timothy was parted from his shoes.

He gave a sigh, just one sigh, and then he put on the new boots, and

went to meet the Usher.

The Usher was at the door of a pastrycook’s shop, and he took Tim in,

and they had veal-pies and ginger-wine; and the Usher paid the bill. And

all this time he beamed affably through his green spectacles, and never

looked at Timothy’s feet.

Then they went out into the street, where there was an interesting smell

of smoke, and humanity, and meat, and groceries, and drapery, and drugs,

quite different to the moor air, and the rattling and bustling were most

stimulating. And Tim and the Usher looked in at all the shop-windows

gratis, and choose the things they would have bought if they had had the

money. At last the Usher went into a shop and bought for Tim a kite

which he had admired; and Tim would have given everything he possessed

to have been able to buy some small keep-sake for the Usher, but he

could not, for he had spent all his pocket-money on the new boots.

When they reached the bottom of the street, the Usher said, “Suppose we

go up the other side and look at the shops there.” And when they were

half way up the other side, they found a small crowd round the window of

a print-seller, for a new picture was being exhibited in the window. And

outside the crowd was the dirty boy, but Tim and the Usher did not see

him. And they squeezed in through the crowd and saw the picture. It was

a historical subject with a lot of figures, and they were all dressed so

like people on the stage of a theatre that Tim thought it was a scene

out of Shakespeare. But the Usher explained that it was the signing of

the Magna Charta, or the Foundation Stone of our National Liberties, and

he gave quite a nice little lecture about it, and the crowd said, “Hear,

hear!” But as everybody wanted to look at King John at the same moment

when the Usher called him “treacherous brother and base tyrant,” there

was a good deal of pushing, and Tim and he had to stand arm-in-arm to

keep together at all. And thus it was that when the dirty boy from

behind put his hand in the Usher’s waistcoat pocket, and took out the

silver watch that had belonged to his late father, the Usher thought it

was Tim’s arm that seemed to press his side, and Tim thought it was the

Usher’s arm that _he_ felt. But just as the dirty boy had secured the

watch the shoes gave him such a terrible twinge, that he started in

spite of himself. And in his start he jerked the Usher’s waistcoat, and

in one moment the Usher forgot what he was saying about our national

liberties, and recalled (as with a lightning flash) the connection

between crowds and our national pickpockets. And when he clapped his

hand to his waistcoat—his watch was gone!

“My watch has been stolen!” cried the Usher, and, as he turned round,

the dirty boy fled, and Tim, the Usher, and the crowd ran after him

crying, “Stop thief!” and every one they met turned round and ran with

them, and at the top of the street they caught a policeman, and were

nearly as glad as if they had caught the thief.

Now if the dirty boy had still been barefoot no one could ever have

stopped _him_. But the wrenching and jerking of the shoes made running

most difficult, and just as he was turning a corner they gave one

violent twist that turned him right round, and he ran straight into the

policeman’s arms.

Then the policeman whipped out the watch as neatly as if he had been a

pickpocket himself, and gave it back to the Usher. And the dirty boy

yelled, and bit the policeman’s hand, and butted him in the chest with

his head, and kicked his shins; but the policeman never lost his temper,

and only held the dirty boy fast by the collar of his jacket, and shook

him slightly. When the policeman shook him, the dirty boy shook himself

violently, and went on shaking in the most ludicrous way, pretending

that it was the policeman’s doing, and he did it so cleverly that Tim

could not help laughing. And then the dirty boy danced, and shook

himself faster and faster, as a conjuror shakes his chains of iron

rings. And as he shook, he shook the shoes off his feet, and drew his

arms in, and ducked his head, and, as the policeman was telling the

Usher about a pickpocket he had caught the day before yesterday, the

dirty boy gave one wriggle, dived, and leaving his jacket in the

policeman’s hand, fled a way like the wind on his bare feet.

The policeman looked seriously annoyed; but the Usher said he was very

glad, as he shouldn’t like to prosecute anybody, and had never been in a

police-court in his life. And he gave the policeman a shilling for his

trouble, and the policeman said the court “wouldn’t be no novelty to

him,”—meaning to the dirty boy.

And when the crowd had dispersed, Timothy told the Usher about the

boots, and said he was very sorry; and the Usher accepted his apologies,

and said, “_Humanum est errare_, my dear boy, as Dr. Kerchever Arnold

truly remarks in one of the exercises.” Then Timothy went to the

bootmaker, who agreed to take back the boots “for a consideration.” And

with what was left of his money, Tim bought some things for himself and

for Bramble minor and for the Usher.

And the shoes took him very comfortably home.

THE CHILDREN’S PARTY.

When Timothy went home for the Christmas holidays, his mother thought

him greatly improved. His friends thought so too, and when Tim had been

at home about a week, a lady living in the same town invited him to a

children’s party and dance. It was not convenient for any one to go with

him; but his mother said, “I think you are to be trusted now, Timothy,

especially in the shoes. So you shall go, but on one condition. The

moment ten o’clock strikes, you must start home at once. Now remember!”

“I can come home in proper time without those clod-hopping shoes,” said

Timothy to himself. “It is really too bad to expect one to go to a party

in leather shoes with copper tips and heels!”

And he privately borrowed a pair of pumps belonging to his next brother,

made of patent leather and adorned with neat little bows, and he put a

bit of cotton wool into each toe to make them fit. And he went by a

little by-lane at the back of the house, to avoid passing under his

mother’s window, for he was afraid she might see the pumps.

Now the little by-lane was very badly lighted, and there were some

queer-looking people loitering about, and one of them shouted something

at him, and Timothy felt frightened, and walked on pretty fast. And then

he heard footsteps behind him, and walked faster, and still the

footsteps followed him, and at last he ran. Then they ran too, and he

did not dare to look behind. And the footsteps followed him all down the

by-lane and into the main street and up to the door of the lady’s house,

where Tim pulled the bell and turned to face his pursuer.

But nothing was to be seen save Timothy’s little old leather shoes,

which stood beside him on the steps.

“Your shoes, sir?” said the very polite footman who opened the door. And

he carried the shoes inside, and Tim was obliged to put them on and

leave the pumps with the footman, for (as he said) “they’ll be coming up

stairs, and making a fool of me in the ball-room.”

Tim had no reason to regret the exchange. Other people are not nearly so

much interested in one’s appearance as one is oneself; and then they

danced so beautifully that every little girl in the room wanted Tim for

her partner, and he was perfectly at home, even in the Lancers. He went

down twice to supper, and had lots of gooseberry-fool; and they were

just about to dance Sir Roger de Coverley, when the clock struck ten.

Tim knew he ought to go, but a very nice little girl wanted to dance

with him, and Sir Roger is the best of fun, and he thought he would just

stay till it was over. But though he secured his partner and began, the

shoes made dancing more a pain than a pleasure to him. They pinched him,

they twitched him, they baulked his _glissades_, and once when he should

have gone down the room they fairly turned him around and carried him

off towards the door. The other dancers complained, and Tim kicked off

the shoes in a pet, and resolved to dance it out in his socks.

But when the shoes were gone, Tim found how much the credit of his

dancing was due to them. He could not remember the figure. He swung the

little lady round when he should have bowed, and bowed when he should

have taken her hand, and led the long line of boys the wrong way, and

never made a triumphal arch at all. The boys scolded and squabbled, the

little ladies said he had had too much gooseberry-fool, and at last

Timothy left them and went down stairs. Here he got the little pumps

from the footman and started home. He ran to make up for lost time, and

as he turned out of the first street he saw the leather shoes running

before him, the copper tips shining in the lamplight.

And when he reached his own door the little shoes were waiting on the

threshold.

THE SNOW STORM.

When Timothy went back to school in the beginning of the year, the snow

lay deep upon the moors. The boys made colossal snow men and buried

things deep under drifts, for the dog Bernardus to fetch out. On the ice

Timothy’s shoes were invaluable. He was the best skater and slider in

the school, and when he was going triumphantly down a long slide with

his arms folded and his friends cheering, Tim was very glad he had not

given away his shoes.

One Saturday the Usher took him and Bramble minor for a long walk over

the hills. They had tea with a friendly farmer, whose hospitality would

hardly let them go. So they were later than they had intended, and about

the time that they set out to return a little snow began to fall. It was

small snow, and fell very quietly. But though it fell so quietly, it was

wonderful how soon the walls and gates got covered; and though the

flakes were small they were so dense that in a short time no one could

see more than a few yards in front of him. The Usher thought it was

desirable to get home as quickly as possible, and he proposed to take a

short cut across the moors, instead of following the high road all the

way. So they climbed a wall, and ploughed their way through the

untrodden snow, and their hands and feet grew bitterly painful and then

numb, and the soft snow lodged in their necks and drifted on to their

eyelashes and into their ears, and at last Timothy fairly cried. For he

said, that besides the biting of the frost his shoes pinched and pulled

his feet.

“It’s because we are not on the high road,” said the Usher; “but this

will take half an hour off our journey, and in five minutes we shall

strike the road again, and then the shoes will be all right. Bear it for

a few minutes longer if you can, Tim.”

But Tim found it so hard to bear, that the Usher took him on to his back

and took his feet into his hands, and Bramble minor carried the shoes.

And five minutes passed but they did not strike the road, and five more

minutes passed, and though Tim lay heavy upon the Usher’s shoulder (for

he was asleep) the Usher’s heart was heavier still. And five minutes

more passed, and Bramble minor was crying, and the Usher said, “Boys,

we’ve lost our way. I see nothing for it but to put Timothy’s shoes down

and follow them.”

So Bramble minor put down the shoes, and they started off to the left,

and the Usher and the boys followed them.

But the shoes tripped lightly over the top of the snow, and went very

fast, and the Usher and Bramble minor waded slowly through it, and in a

few seconds the shoes disappeared into the snowstorm, and they lost

sight of them altogether, and Bramble minor said—“I _can’t_ go any

further. I don’t mind being left, but I must lie down, I am so very,

very tired.”

Then the Usher woke Timothy, and made him put on Bramble minor’s boots

and walk, and he took Bramble minor on to his back, and made Timothy

take hold of his coat, and they struggled on through the storm, going as

nearly as they could in the way that the shoes had gone.

“How are you getting on, Timothy?” asked the Usher after a long silence.

“Don’t be afraid of holding on to me, my boy.”

But Timothy gave no answer.

“Keep a brave heart, laddie!” cried the Usher, as cheerfully as his numb

and languid lips could speak.

Still there was silence, and when he looked round, _Timothy was not

there_.

When and where he had lost his hold the distracted Usher had no idea. He

shouted in vain.

“How could I let him take off the shoes?” groaned the poor man. “Oh!

what shall I do? Shall I struggle on to save this boy’s life, or risk

all our lives by turning back after the other?”

He turned round as he spoke, and the wild blast and driving snow struck

him in the face. The darkness fell rapidly, the drifts grew deeper, and

yet the Usher went after Timothy.

And he found him, but too late—for his own strength was exhausted, and

the snow was three feet deep all round him.

BERNARDUS ON DUTY.

When the snow first began to fall, Dr. Dixon Airey observed,—“Our

friends will get a sprinkling of sugar this evening;” and the boys

laughed, for this was one of Dr. Dixon Airey’s winter jokes.

When it got dusk, and the storm thickened, Dr. Dixon Airey said—“I hope

they will come home soon.”

But when the darkness fell, and they did not come, Dr. Dixon Airey said,

“I think they must have remained at the farm.” And when an hour passed

and nothing was to be seen or heard without but the driving wind and

snow, the Doctor said, “Of course they are at the farm. Very wise and

proper.” And he drew the study curtains, and took up a newspaper, and

rang for tea. But the Doctor could not eat his tea, and he did not read

his paper, and every five minutes he opened the front door and looked

out, and all was dark and silent, only a few snow-flakes close to him

looked white as they fell through the light from the open door. And the

Doctor said, “There can’t be the slightest doubt they are at the farm.”

But when Dr. Dixon Airey opened the door for the seventh time, Timothy’s

shoes ran in, and they were filled with snow. And when the Doctor saw

them he covered his face with his hands.

But in a moment more he had sent his man-servant to the village for

help, and Mrs. Airey was filling his flask with brandy, and he was tying

on his comforter and cap, and fastening his leggings and great-coat.

Then he took his lantern and went out in the yard.

And there lay Bernardus with his big nose at the door of his kennel

smelling the storm. And when he saw the light and heard footsteps, his

great, melancholy, human eyes brightened, and he moaned with joy. And

when the men came up from the village and moved about with shovels and

lanterns, he was nearly frantic, for he thought, “This looks like

business;” and he dragged at his kennel, as much as to say, “If you

don’t let me off the chain now, of all moments, I’ll come on my own

responsibility and bring the kennel with me.”

Then the Doctor unfastened the chain, and he tied Timothy’s shoes round

the dog’s neck, saying, “Perhaps they will help to lead their wearer

aright.” And either the shoes did pull in the right direction, or the

sagacity of Bernardus sufficed him, for he started off without a

moment’s hesitation. The men followed him as fast as they were able, and

from time to time Bernardus would look round to see if they were coming,

and would wait for them. But if he saw the lanterns he was satisfied and

went on.

“It’s a rare good thing there’s some dumb animals cleverer than we are

ourselves,” observed one of the laborers as they struggled blindly

through the snow, the lanterns casting feeble and erratic patches of

light for a yard or two before their feet. To Bernardus his own

wonderful gift was light, and sight, and guide, its own sufficient

stimulus, and its own reward.

“There’s some’at amiss,” said another man presently; “t’dog’s whining;

he’s stuck fast.”

“Or perhaps he has found something,” said the Doctor trembling.

The Doctor was right. He had found Timothy and Bramble minor, and the

Usher: and they were still alive.

* * * * * *

“Mrs. Airey,” said the Doctor, as an hour later, they sat round the

study fire wrapped in blankets, and drinking tumblers of hot

compounds—“Mrs. Airey, that is a creature above kennels. From this

eventful evening I wish him to sleep under our roof.”

And Mrs. Airey began, “Bless him!” and then burst into tears.

And Bernardus, who lay with his large eyes upon the fire, rejoiced in

the depths of his doggish heart.

THE SHOES GO HOME.

It is hardly needful to say that Timothy was reconciled to his shoes. As

to being ashamed of them—he would as soon have been ashamed of that

other true friend of his, the Usher. He would no more have parted with

them now than Dr. Dixon Airey would have parted with the dog Bernardus.

But, alas! how often it happens that we do not fully value our best

friends till they are about to be taken from us! It was a painful fact,

but Timothy was outgrowing his shoes.

He was at home when the day came on which the old leather shoes into

which he could no longer squeeze his feet were polished for the last

time, and put away in a cupboard in his mother’s room: Timothy blacked

them with his own hands, and the tears were in his eyes as he put them

on the shelf.

“Good-bye, good little friends;” said he; “I will try and walk as you

have taught me.”

Timothy’s mother was much affected by this event. She could not sleep

that night for thinking of the shoes in the cupboard. She seemed to live

over again all the long years of her married life. Her first anxieties,

the good conduct of all her boys, the faithful help of those good

friends to her nine sons in turn—all passed through her mind as she

knitted her brows under the frill of her nightcap and gazed at the

cupboard door with sleepless eyes. “Ah!” she thought, “how wise the good

godmother was! No money, no good luck, would have done for my boys what

the early training of these shoes has done. That early discipline which

makes the prompt performance of duty a habit in childhood, is indeed the

quickest relief to parental anxieties, and the firmest foundation for

the fortunes of one’s children.”

Such, and many more, were the excellent reflections of this

conscientious woman; but excellent as they were, they shall not be

recorded here. One’s own experience preaches with irresistible

eloquence; but the second-hand sermons of other people’s lives are apt

to seem tedious and impertinent.

Her meditations kept her awake till dawn. The sun was just rising, and

the good woman was just beginning to feel sleepy, and had once or twice

lost sight of the bed-room furniture in a half-dream, when she was

startled by the familiar sound as of a child jumping down from some

height to the floor. The habit of years was strong on her, and she

cried, “Bless the boy! He’ll break his neck!” as she had had reason to

exclaim about one or other of her nine sons any day for the last twenty

years.

But as she spoke the cupboard door swung slowly open, and Timothy’s

shoes came out and ran across the floor. They paused for an instant by

his mother’s bed, as if to say farewell, and then the bed-room door

opened also and let them pass. Down the stairs they went, and they ran

with that music of a childish patter that no foot in the house could

make now; and the mother sobbed to hear it for the last time. Then she

thought, “The house door’s locked, they can’t go right away yet.”

But in that moment she heard the house door turn slowly on its hinges.

Then she jumped out of bed, and ran to the window, pushed it open, and

leaned out.

In front of the house was a little garden, and the little garden was

kept by a gate, and beyond the gate was a road, and beyond the road was

a hill, and on the grass of the hill the dew lay thick and white, and

morning mists rested on the top. The little shoes pattered through the

garden, and the gate opened for them and snecked after them. And they

crossed the road, and went over the hill, leaving little footprints in

the dew. And they passed into the morning mists, and were lost to sight.

And when the sun looked over the hill and dried the dew, and sent away

the mists, Timothy’s Shoes were gone.

* * * * * *

“If they never come back,” said Timothy’s mother, “I shall know that I

am to have no more children!” and though she had certainly had her

share, she sighed.

But they never did come back; and Timothy remained the youngest of the

family.

OLD FATHER CHRISTMAS.

CHAPTER I.

“Can you fancy, young people,” said Godfather Garbel, winking with his

prominent eyes, and moving his feet backwards and forwards in his square

shoes, so that you could hear the squeak-leather, half a room off—“can

you fancy my having been a very little boy, and having a godmother? But

I had, and she sent me presents on my birthdays too. And young people

did not get presents when I was a child as they get them now. We had not

half so many toys as you have, but we kept them twice as long. I think

we were fonder of them too, though they were neither so handsome, nor so

expensive as these new-fangled affairs you are always breaking about the

house.

“You see, middle-class folk were more saving then. My mother turned and

dyed her dresses, and when she had done with them, the servant was very

glad to have them; but, bless me! your mother’s maids dress so much

finer than their mistress, I do not think they would say ‘thank you’ for

her best Sunday silk. The bustle’s the wrong shape.

“What’s that you are laughing at, little miss? It’s _pannier_, is it?

Well, well, bustle or pannier, call it what you like; but only donkeys

wore panniers in my young days, and many’s the ride I’ve had in them.

“Now, as I say, my relations and friends thought twice before they

pulled out five shillings in a toy-shop, but they didn’t forget me, all

the same. On my eighth birthday my mother gave me a bright blue

comforter of her own knitting. My little sister gave me a ball. My

mother had cut out the divisions from various bits in the rag bag, and

my sister had done some of the seaming. It was stuffed with bran, and

had a cork inside which had broken from old age, and would no longer fit

the pickle jar it belonged to. This made the ball bound when we played

‘prisoner’s base.’ My father gave me the riding-whip that had lost the

lash and the top of the handle, and an old pair of his gloves, to play

coachman with; these I had long wished for. Kitty the servant gave me a

shell that she had had by her for years. How I had coveted that shell!

It had this remarkable property: when you put it to your ear you could

hear the roaring of the sea. I had never seen the sea, but Kitty was

born in a fisherman’s cottage, and many an hour have I sat by the

kitchen fire whilst she told me strange stories of the mighty ocean, and

ever and anon she would snatch the shell from the mantelpiece and clap

it to my ear, crying, ‘There child, you couldn’t hear it plainer than

that. It’s the very moral!’

“When Kitty gave me that shell for my very own I felt that life had

little more to offer. I held it to every ear in the house, including the

cat’s; and, seeing Dick the sexton’s son go by with an armful of straw

to stuff Guy Fawkes, I ran out, and in my anxiety to make him share the

treat, and learn what the sea is like, I clapped the shell to his ear so

smartly and unexpectedly, that he, thinking me to have struck him,

knocked me down then and there with his bundle of straw. When he

understood the rights of the case, he begged my pardon handsomely, and

gave me two whole treacle sticks and part of a third out of his

breeches’ pocket, in return for which I forgave him freely, and promised

to let him hear the sea roar on every Saturday half-holiday till farther

notice.

“And, speaking of Dick and the straw reminds me that my birthday falls

on the fifth of November. From this it came about that I always had to

bear a good many jokes about being burnt as a Guy Fawkes; but, on the

other hand, I was allowed to make a small bonfire of my own, and to have

six potatoes to roast therein, and eight-pennyworth of crackers to let

off in the evening.

“On this eighth birthday, having got all the above-named gifts, I cried,

in the fulness of my heart, ‘There never was such a day!’ And yet there

was more to come, for the evening coach brought me a parcel, and the

parcel was my godmother’s picture book.

“My godmother was a woman of small means; but she was accomplished. She

could make very spirited sketches, and knew how to color them after they

were outlined and shaded in India ink. She had a pleasant talent for

versifying. She was very industrious. I have it from her own lips that

she copied the figures in my picture-book from prints in several

different houses at which she visited. They were fancy portraits of

characters, most of which were familiar to my mind. There were Guy

Fawkes, Punch, his then Majesty the King, Bogy, the Man in the Moon, the

Clerk of the Weather Office, a Dunce, and Old Father Christmas. Beneath

each sketch was a stanza of my godmother’s own composing.

“My godmother was very ingenious. She had been mainly guided in her

choice of these characters by the prints she happened to meet with, as

she did not trust herself to design a figure. But if she could not get

exactly what she wanted, she had a clever knack of tracing an outline of

the attitude from some engraving, and altering the figure to suit her

purpose in the finished sketch. She was the soul of truthfulness, and

the notes she added to the index of contents in my picture-book spoke at

once for her honesty in avowing obligations, and her ingenuity in

availing herself of opportunities. They ran thus:—

No. 1.—Guy Fawkes. Outlined from a figure of a warehouse man

rolling a sherry cask into Mr. Rudd’s wine vaults. I added the

hat, the cloak, and boots in the finished drawing.

No. 2.—Punch. I sketched him from the life.

No. 3.—His Most Gracious Majesty the King. On a quart jug

bought in Cheapside.

No. 4.—Bogy, _with bad boys in the bag on his back_. Outlined

from Christian bending under his burden, in my mother’s old copy

of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ The face from Giant Despair.

No. 5 and No. 6.—The Man in the Moon, and The Clerk of the

Weather Office. From a book of caricatures belonging to Dr.

James.

No. 7.—A Dunce. From a steel engraving framed in rosewood that

hangs in my Uncle Wilkinson’s parlor.

No. 8.—Old Father Christmas. From a German book at Lady

Littleham’s.