AV/r 1 ! HAYES I Full of zeal for the service. SECOND LIEUTENANT BUCHANAN I A brave Scot with a grave failing. CAPTAIN BUCKR.AM, of the Marines : as stiff as a poker and as hard as steel. PAYMASTER PERKINS I A fussy wee purser. PLAIN JACK WILLIAMS: A midship?na7i. LONG TOM THUMWOOD Something like a signalman. LITTLE BOY JOSH I A waif from the wilds. THE HON. DE GREY I A midsLipnn'te of the real old type. MR. HARNESS: Mate of the Dardanelle, a scoundrel of the old school. IV. Ordinary Cliaracters : Jack - Tars and Joe - Marines ; cooks, clerks, and stewards ; dogs, mates, monkeys, and loblolly boys ; . a few old women and a <' girl or two, etc. ILLUSTRATION?, A Wreck and a Fire. Schoolboy Life in Scotland. Keeper McGregor and the Apparition. Boy Bedouins. Under the Pennant. Joining the Service. The Great Snapping Turtle. A Flag of Truce. A Fair Companion. In the Far West. A well-deserved Punishment. CHAPTEE I. IN A LONESOME LAND. ' MY heather land, my heather land ! Though fairer lands there be, Thy gowanie braes in early days Were gowden ways to me. Must life's poor boon go darkening doon, ISTor die where it had dawned, But seek a grave beyond the wave ? Alas ! ray heather land !" Thorn. E are not too late yet, at all events," said Willie Grant to his friend and companion. " We are not too late yet, are we, Dem ?" Dem did not reply at once. He was a cautious boy. But he grew suddenly serious. He threw down a flat stone that he had been just about to make skip across a wild-duck pond, and gazed for a moment at the distant school-house near the larch-tree wood, on the other side of the glen. Between the school and the place where the boys were standing, there was first and foremost a long expanse of flat, heathy moor- land, ll 12 In the Dashing Days of Old. The Leather here was still green, and the moor was dotted over with low-lying bushes of bright golden gorse, for the summer was still very young. Beyond this, and stretching miles upon miles from east to west, was a rocky and densely wooded ravine. Here grew the tallest pine trees and the highest, darkest, and thickest spruce trees in all the country side ; but tall and high thougli they were, they did not obscure the view, for their topmost branches or tapering points alone were visible above the moorland. Beyond this wood was a series of beetling rocks and precipices, then fields, and then the school. Dem took all this in and judged the distance at a single glance. Then he turned round and had a good look at the sun and the distant mountains that bounded the south-eastern horizon, after which he addressed his friend as follows, "Well, Willie," he said, "we can do it. It is half- past nine by the sun. If we are not in by five minutes after ten, you know what we'll catch. But I think we can do it, if we cross the burn and don't mind wetting our feet." " Because you know, Dem," added Willie, " we never yet have played truant; and I wouldn't like to begin, would you ? " "No," said Dem. " So come on, let us run." They had to go all round the wild-duck pond that Willie had been skipping stones across. But they kept as close to the water's edge as possible, even splashing In a Lonesome Place. 13 through the water itself sometimes, in order to cut off corners, and jumping high over the rush bushes. " Hurrah!" cried Willie, rushing on in quite a reckless kind of a way, " hurrah ! my feet are wet already. This is a regular steeple-chase." " So are mine," echoed Dem. " Hurrah ! for a hop, step, and jump." The hop and the step were right enough, and dry enough, but the jump landed him in a pool which took him up over his knees. Willie laughed, and stopped a moment to help his friend out, when, from some rush bushes not fifteen yards away, up started a wild drake. " Whirr rr, whirr rr! " went the drake, flying heavily and with outstretched neck, as ducks do. " Oh, look, Dem, look ! " cried Willie, mad with excite- ment. "Let us search for the nest," he continued, clapping his hands with joy. " It is bound to be here, you know. I always did feel sure the wild ducks built about this pond, though we never yet found a nest." Dem gave one more glance at the distant school-house, then, " Yes," he said ; " we're bound to find it in about five minutes. You go round that way, and I'll go this ; the duck is sure to lie close, so don't miss a single likely bush." The five minutes soon fled away, and so did five minutes more, and five to that, but at last, oh, joy ! " Whirr ack, whirr ack, whirr rr ! " 14 In the Dashing Days of Old. Up flew the duck, and off ; and next minute Dem and Willie stood in ecstasies gazing down upon the large and lovely eggs that the nest contained. "One, two," cried Willie, counting, "six, seven, nine, eleven eggs. Oh ! aren't we in luck, Dem ? Why, I never had a nest like this the whole of last summer." Dem was deep in thought. No ; I am sorry to say it was not school he was thinking about, but simply those charming egga. To rob the poor duck was wrong, he knew, and yet to do so was a sore temptation. "When Miss Wilson," he said slowly, still gazing at the eggs, " met you and me, Willie, last summer, carrying a nest of gaping thrushes, she stopped us, and told us it was very, very cruel. She is the minister's daughter, and ought to know. Well, I think she was right; and when you and I carried back the nest, and put it in the same place in the same spruce tree where we found it, we did right." "We did, Dem." " But here, I think, is a different case. Very likely the duck, having seen that we have found the nest, will ' forhooit/ * and build somewhere else ; so I think we may as well call these eggs ours. Besides, they are good for food." "Yes," assented Willie, "so long as there aren't birds in them." * Scottice=desert it. In a Lonesome Place. 15 " Eight, Willie," said Dem, " so long as there aren't birds in them. Now just let us try one." Dem took a long steel needle from a pocket-book as he spoke. It was the same pocket-book he kept his gut and his flies in, for fishing purposes. He very quickly drilled a hole in an egg, and lo ! a tiny drop of pure, translucent albumen. "Hurrah!" cried Willie. "Now, Dem, Til empty my bag ; you shall carry all the books, and I'll pack the eggs in grass and carry them." The two boys set off now to walk schoolwards. They ran no more ; they were silent and moody. They saw the poor bereaved duck running half-dis- tractedly about among the sedges and grass. There was grief in her every movement, and grief in her very eyes. The boys looked the other way. They felt and knew they had done wrong. Dem spoke at last. " It .is a kind of pity, after all," he said, " we took these eggs ; I shan't enjoy eating them much. If we had only taken two, now." " Yes," said Willie, " two as specimens, as we did of the hawk's and the owl's and the magpie's." "It can't be helped," said Dem. "But oh! Willie, we're late for school." " We can't go to-day," Willie remarked doggedly. " No, that is impossible/' said Dem, in the same frame of mind. " And after all, you know, it isn't more than other 16 In the Dashing Days of Old. boys have done, and often do. But it is our first time, we couldn't really help it." " Ah ! but won't we catch it, Willie ! " " Yes, we will catch it," said Willie, " sure enough." Willie sat down upon one stone and Dem sat down upon another. ' ( I'm going to pull off my stockings," Dem said, " and wring them. Then they will soon dry when I put them on again." "Well," said Willie, "I shall do the same. Here goes." " But yours are not wet, are they ? You didn't jump into a hole." " Oh ! but I did, though," replied Willie, with a long, earnest face. " I did jump into a hole on purpose. Do you think I was going to go with dry feet when yours were wet. No ! " Were these boys brothers ? it maybe asked. Brothers in a thousand ways, and more than brothers in some, but not brothers by consanguinity, no, nor even blood relations. Orphans we might almost call them, for their mothers had died when they were very young indeed, and their fathers were away in foreign lands. Willie Grant had been living in the Highland parish where we first find them, for over five years, during which time his father had come but twice to see him. A merchant skipper he was, rough enough, in all conscience, but probably right enough for all that. He did not speak much ; perhaps, In a Lonesome Place. 17 like the Irishman's parrot, he thought the more. But one promise Willie had elicited from his father the last time they had been together, and just before they parted. What it was may be gathered from the following scrap of conversation. " I will, I will/' said the father ; " I'll take you with me to sea when you are thirteen years of age. Ah ! lad, perhaps you'll be glad enough to get back here again after a bit. If I could live in the bonnie place, catch me go to sea. Ha ! ha ! I'd know a trick worth ten o' that. But look, see lad, all you have got to do for the present is to eat and read and learn. I hope they give you plenty to eat ?" " Oh, yes, father; plenty, father, plenty." " And you are coming well on at school, your teacher says. I'm glad o' that, lad. Well, I'll send you more books. One is a natural history book ; you like that ?" " Yes, father." " Tells you all about every bird and beast and tree and flower that grows in these same British islands/' " And what else, father ?" " Why, lad, I bought a whole lot of novels in a box at a sale, for next to nought. Sea stories some of them are, my boy. Aye, and there is the right ring about them too. If there is a bit o' imagination about you, you'll hear the wind roaring through the rigging and shrouds as you read them, and see the vicious, angry seas curling higher than the maintop, or breaking in over the bows, and rushing aft with the force of a 18 In the Dashing Days of Old. cataract. Then I've got you voyages and travels; and something better than all, boy, something better than all." " What is it ? What can be better, father ?" " The ' Arabian Nights/ lad." "What are they, father ?" " What are they ! Let me see, I can't well tell you. You've never seen a pantomime, nor a tragedy, else I'd say that the ' Arabian Nights ' is better than a hundred pantomimes rolled into one, with fifty tragedies thrown in, to keep them well together. But mind, boy, these books are only for reading in your idle' time. Mind your Latin, lad, and your Euclid, and your logarithms, lad, and read your Bible too, boy. Heigho ! I wish I was a boy again." " Father, I wish I were a man." "Ha! you think so now. But wait till you get older." " Father, I do miss companions very much. I have plenty at school, but no one comes this way ; and Miss McBride isn't a companion, you know." " What, the lady that keeps you ? Well, no, boy ; but she minds your socks, and sees to your shoes, and takes care you have good clothes, and puts you to bed afc night." " Oh, no, father ! I was twelve last birthday. I always say ' good-night ' to Miss McBride, and go to bed myself." " Well, well ; only, I pay her plenty of money for you, Iii a Lonesome Place. 19 and I believe she does you well. But stay, I had almost forgotten, lad. I'vo something else to tell you before I go." "Yes, father." " There is a gentleman, a Colonel Rutherford, I have taken out to India and back twice now. He has a son. His mother is dead, poor boy, as your dear mother is, and if I can persuade him the Colonel he shall send his son James here to McBride's. He is not so strong as you, though a year or two older. He is an Anglo-Indian, so you'd need to take care of him." " Oh, father, I should bo so delighted ! " " Mind, though, I don't promise; but I do promise to take you to sea at thirteen, if you're good and make bones, and mind the teaching o' the good Book, and attend well to your Latin and your logarithms." After Willie's father had gone, the boy thought the time very long indeed waiting for the promised box ; but the old carrier that jogged twice a week betwixt Inverinch and Abergair brought it at last, and to Willie's joy it contained all his father had promised, and a good deal more. Willie made up his mind that he would not devour the contents of those valuable books too quickly; for he argued, "I cannot have my cake and eat it too." So he stuck harder to his studies than he had done before, and only took a book out for a treat when he thought he deserved it, or when he felt very lonely indeed. It was a lonesome country in which Willie lived, and 20 In the Dashing Days of Old. Miss McBride's house was a good mile from any other. Miss McBride does not figure much in our story, so it is sufficient to say that she was the pensioner sister of a general, who had taken Willie as a boarder partly because she knew his father, and partly perhaps because it added a trifle to her income. Miss McBride was a martyr to rheumatism, or thought she was ; she lay long a-bed of a morning, and retired very early at night, so that Willie's sense of freedom was unbounded. The house was a better-class farm-house or cottage ; and the only other inmate was old Tibbie, who cooked the food and milked the two cows, and in fact did all the work, out-doors and in. Old Tibbie was Willie's particular friend. Not that she was very old, either ; but she had roughed it in life, and at fifty was wrinkled and grey. But stout and strong she was, as a five-year old Shetland pony. Oh ! the tales she used to tell Willie in the long forenights of winter, as they sat by the kitchen fire, she at one side with her cutty pipe, Willie at the other, and the cat between. She had seen fairies in her time, had old Tibbie, at least she averred so, and ghosts too ; and she believed in boddachs and brownies and water kelpies and spunkies, yes, and in witches and warlocks as well. It was of these she spoke, it was to tales about these that Willie was fond of listening. And the wilder the nights without, the cosier it seemed within, beside that old- fashioned hearth, with the wind " howthering " round In a Lonesome Place. 21 the chimney, and the snow perhaps sifting in beneath the door or through the key-hole. It was a lonesome country in which Willie lived, and it was wild as well as lonesome. Here were mountain and moorland, streamlet and tarn, rocks and glens and waving forests, and not very far off the great wide ocean itself, the roar of which among the broken boulders that formed the beach ceased not day nor night ; for even in calm weather, as the tide rose and fell in ebb cr flow, each wave hurtled forward, or sucked back with it, millions of stones worn smooth and round by the motion of the ever restless waves. Down near the beach, where a mountain stream that inland was noisy and brawling enough, glided quietly into the sea, dwelt a solitary fisherman. He was a good friend to Willie, because he often took him out in his boat ; and he taught him how to row, and told him many a strange story of the long-forgotten, past, stories that had never been in print, but were handed down from sire to son. It was no wonder that, dwelling in such a country as this, with no other companions save those two and his books, Willie had become a dreamy and imaginatively speculative boy. No other companions, I have said, but must correct myself ; for there was hardly a bird or beast that lived, or a shrub or flower that grew, that Willie did not know all about the habits of; so he really did not feel very lonely. 22 In the Dusting Days of Old. One evening he had been out fishing with Saunders the recluse. They had been to an island which lay about three miles from the mainland, a favourite resort of theirs, because among its rocks the fish were never shy, even mullet were abundant, and you had only to sink a creel for a few hours, to be sure of a splendid haul of lobsters. On this particular evening they had had particularly good luck. They had caught more fish than they really wanted, and the blue pilot jacket that Willie always wore on these occasions was as white with the dried sliine off the fish, as though it had been snowed upon. Well, they were late, and night had fallen and the stars had come out while they were still far away at sea, their wee boat rising and falling on the smooth round waves. Suddenly Willie cried, as he pointed shorewards, " Oh ! look, Saunders, look ! Look at that bright star shining right out in the midst of the mountain. I never saw it before. What can it be ? " " You may never see it again," said Saunders, resting on his oars and looking towards the strange mountain star. No planet in all the blue vault of heaven shone with a brighter effulgence than did that star at this moment. It was of a greenish hue, sometimes changing to light yellow or blue, and anon to crimson. Willie gazed entranced, and a feeling akin to awe came over him as the fisherman went on with his story. "You'll know," he said, "the old castle ruin of Carrickareen ? " In a Lonesome Place. 23 " The old castle where the wild cats scream so awfully on moonlight nights ? " said Willie. ' ' Yes, yes, I know it well." " Trees have grown up now in the very centre of it," continued Saunders, "there is broom and moss growing on its crumbling walls, but hundreds of years ago the castle of Carrickareen was in its glory. The McDonalds had held it for centuries. All up and down the glen, and iii the adjoining glens around the country, the houses or huts were as thick as the nests that hang in the rookery in the woods yonder. They held their rights by the sword, did the McDonalds, and many a bloody Gght they used to have with the McLeods of Stroma, their bitterest foes. A McDonald never met a McLeod in those days without drawing dirk or sword, and fighting to the grim end. Ifc was a McDonald and a McLeod that met together on the plank bridge across the roaring waterfall of Upper Foyers. The bridge was composed of only two tree trunks thrown rudely across, and far down beneath were the roaring rapids and the cataract. It was a bridge on which the bravest men might have turned giddy and fallen. There was not room on it for even two children to pass; and yet on this dreadful bridge a McDonald and a McLeod, both in their war-dress, with claymore, skean-dhu, dirk, and shield, with bonnet plumes and belted plaids, met. " Neither would return. They fought. The very wild birds fled screaming farther into the woods, at sight of men fighting in such a position. The McDonald fell 24 In the Dashing Days of Old. stabbed to the heart, but not before in his dying agony he clutched McLeod, and both went headlong to death. " As long," continued the fisherman recluse, " as the McLeods fought unaided against the McDonalds of Carrickareen, they seldom gained an advantage. But there were wise old grey -beards in the clan, and these laid a plot which, alas ! was only too successful to exterminate the McDonalds. They formed an alliance with a wandering tribe, the gipsies of the ancient High- lands, and in their thousands the two together invaded the glens where dwelt the McDonalds. "In the castle was wealth untold, the accumulated riches of centuries. Forewarned some hours before the attack, of the great danger to his castle and clan from the hosts that were marching against him, the chieftain sent ten of his trustiest uien to yonder mountain, to hide the gold in a cave known only to them. (t Before morning light there was not a McDonald left alive in the glen, nor a beast of kine, nor even a dog, that had belonged to the unhappy clan, and the castle itself was a smouldering ruin. " It has been a ruin ever since, the home of the wild cat, the weasel, and foumart; but up in a cave they say the gold still lies hidden, and will lie there till the crack of doom. For they tell me it is watched over by an ogre or demon with one eye. It is that evil eye you see shin- ing down on us now. " Do you believe all this ? " said Willie. " How my father would laugh at so silly a story ! " In a Lonesome Place. 25 " No," said the fisherman ; " I do not believe all of it. The story of the murder of the McDonalds is true, the hiding of the gold is probably true also, the watching demon is only believed in by the very superstitious." "And the star?" " The star," said Willie's friend, " is believed by some to be a real diamond. It is only on clear, starlit nights like this that it can be seen." " And no one has ever tried to find it ? " "Many have, and failed, and others have been fright- ened. Perhaps, Willie, it is nothing but a bit of glass after all, or a small crystal of quartz." Willie Grant was very young in years, but he was wise nevertheless. He glanced rapidly towards the mainland. The peak of Dtmgrat was barely visible above the top of the hill where the strange star shone. He looked behind him. The beacon on Trooma rock was in a line with the distant lighthouse. These facts Willie stored up in his memory. CHAPTER II. IN WOODS AND WILDS. WILDLY here, without control, Nature reigns and rules the whole ; In that sober, pensive mood Dearest to the feeling soul, She plants the forest, pours the flood." Sums. N his first appearance at Miss McBride's cottage, young Rutherford had received as cordial a welcome from Willie Grant as one boy could expect from another. Willie had been in his room when the carrier's hooded cart stopped at the cottage door, and he watched till the new arrival alighted, or rather till he was helped down. For it was an evening in winter : snow was lying on the ground, and the wind came sweeping down from the hills from a dozen different points at once; so at least one would have thought. It moaned and howled round the chimneys, and whistled through every chink and cranny that it could find in door or window. It blew the snow into all sorts of fantastic wreaths and hillocks, some of which were higher than the horse's Tn Woods and Wilds. 27 chest, so that the wonder was that the carrier ever arrived at all. Willie had taken a good look at the boy, and made up his rnind at once not to like him. " He's only an Anglo-Indian, and I'm a Scot," he said to himself. " Well, and for that very reason I must go and bid him welcome, though I'd much rather sit by the fire here and read ' Arabian Nights.' " So Willie had marched bravely down and shaken young Rutherford by the hand. It was a hearty shake enough; only when giving it, Willie stood as far away from the Anglo-Indian boy as possible. Large, dark, wondering eyes had the latter, but with nothing timid in them, and a pale, shapely and refined- looking face. He gave Willie his hand to shake, but he didn't shake Willie's. He seemed somewhat astonished at Willie's sturdy and robust appearance, so entirely different from his own. Willie felt a kind of pity for him. He couldn't help retaining his hand for a moment while he said, " Are you very cold ? How funny your fingers feel ! Do you know, it is just like shaking hands with a dead duck." The other looked and smiled, then they both laughed. " OS with you ! " cried Miss McBride, " and get ready for dinner. I see you'll be good friends." When they were both ready, and waiting till old Tibbie 28 In the Dashing Days of Old. should call them, Willie asked his new companion a question, one that had been uppermost in his mind since the carrier's arrival. "Can you fight?" he said. " Yes, with knives/' was the reply. "Oh! but you must learn to fight with fists, they wouldn't allow knives. I have gloves, I'll teach you ; for ours is a fighting school, and I dare say we'll have to haug together for a bit." "Thank you, much," said the Anglo-Indian. The dinner and the warmth made the new-comer as happy as could be wished, although he shuddered slightly whenever he looked towards the snowed- up windows, or when, in a pause of the conversation, he heard the wind howling like starving wolves around the house. The boys were friends before bedtime. Their cots were placed in the same room, and not far apart. There was a splendid fire on the great old-fashioned hearth, and oceans of wood with which to replenish it whenever it burned low. It was two if not three o'clock before they thought of sleeping, for Willie's conversation was intensely interest- ing to the Anglo-Indian ; and the tales the latter had to tell of the strange land in which he had spent his young life, Willie felt he could have listened to for ever and a day. I think about the last words that Willie spoke that night were these, " Don't you trouble thinking about anything that may In Woods and Wilds. 29 happen to you at school. The boys will certainly bother you at first ; but I'll be there. I know where to hit them to make the blood spring. Good-night." James Eutherford was the Anglo-Indian's name ; be- fore a week was over James became Jem, and before a fortnight Jem became Dem, and so remained. The boys had bothered Dem considerably when he first appeared at school. Boys of his own height challenged him to fight first, then smaller boys, and smaller still. Willie cuffed the tiny ones, and knocked the bigger down. But the biggest were more than his match; at least he thought so, although he himself was strong for his age, his muscles were like steel and his fists of iron, and he had all the agility of a wild cat. Willie tried to explain he spoke in the Gaelic, so that Dem could not understand that his friend was unused to fight, and ailing and sickly ; and that he himself would have to do all the fighting, if there must be fighting, till Dem grew strong. The boys only laughed at this. They put Dem down in their own minds as a coward, only they were good- natured enough, and determined to take but little notice of him. But when Dem turned story-teller to a select assortment of the oldest among them, then he became a favourite. They used to retire in conclave to an old churchyard to hear and to talk. The teacher was one of the old school, still common 30 In the Dashing Days of Old. enough in some parts of Scotland. His word was law, his word must be law. He was a pedagogue in every sense of the term, and a most strict disciplinarian. The tawse that leathern instrument of torture was never out of his hand, unless it were doubled up and reposing, like a sleeping snake, on a handy corner of the desk. If one boy complained of another, that other boy had a very short trial indeed, and a short shrift. A drum- head court-martial was nothing to it, and execution fol- lowed sentence with a celerity that was truly wonderful. One day our Anglo-Indian boy was telling some story or another in the churchyard, when a lad, one of the listeners, gave him the lie direct. Every one started up, expecting a fight; but Dem sat sullen and silent. "Leave him alone," cried the boy who had given him the insult, "he's only a foreigner. He looks too cold to fight." " He could warm you if he tried," said Willie, quietly. " No, nor you," was the defiant answer. Willie struck out at once, and the lad fell with bleed- ing teeth and nose. As fast as he could stand up, Willie could knock him down ; but Willie was presently tripped up from behind. About two minutes after, when the schoolmaster, suspect- ing something was wrong, raised himself by his hands and peered over the churchyard wall, much to his horror he witnessed the following tableau : One boy lying doubled up over a grave, his companions shrinking back affrighted beside a tree; Willie Grant In Woods and Wilds. 31 prostrate on the ground, and his friend Dem standing at bay over him, his long dark hair floating on the wind, his eyes as wild and wide as a panther's, and an upraised dagger gleaming in his hand. Had the pedagogue not sprang over the wall at that moment, that dagger miyld have tasted blood. Who knows ? Dem said in school that he had merely drawn the knife to frighten the coward who had struck his friend such fonl blows, but his punishment was none the less severe. From that day, however, no boy ever dared to give Dem the lie. Willie and he became faster friends than ever, and they were known at school by the name of 11 The Inseparables." We now go back or is it forward ? to the time when they were introduced to the reader. We left them sitting on two stones in the middle of the moor. Dem looked at his companion amusedly for a moment, then laughed. " It was foolish of you, Willie," he said, " to wet your feet simply because mine were wet." "Wouldn't you do the same for me, Dem?" asked Willie innocently. " I would do anything for you, Willie, that there was any sense in." " Ah ! but look, you see," said Willie, " there is sense in this; because if you catch cold with having your feet wet, so will I, and we won't be separated." 32 In the Dashing Days of Old. There was a pause for a few minutes in the conversa- tion, then Dem spoke again, " You have been exceedingly good and kind to me, Willie; you have taught me ever so many things all about this wild and beautiful country of yours. I have not been here quite six months, and I feel as if I could stay for ever never to leave it." " Don't talk about leaving," said Willie ; " I should cry my eyes out. No, though, I wouldn't cry at all, I would go with you all over the world. Wherever you went, I would be with you. Wouldn't it be nice to be always together ? " " It would/' said Dem. " But I know what would be even nicer," continued Willie. " It would be nicer if there were nobody at all in the world but just our two selves. Oh ! wouldn't we have fine times of it ? Eh ? We could go where we liked and do what we liked, and have whatever we had a mind to." " Yes, Willie, it would be nice. But mind, I am two years older than you ; that is a great deal, you know." " Yes, true, Dem, it is." "Well, and I shouldn't let you speak like this. We have fathers, haven't we ? " Ye es," assented Willie. " Well, if there was nobody in the world but you and I, where would our dear fathers be ? " " Oh ! " said Willie, as if he could easily see his way out of that difficulty, " they would be always abroad, you In Woods and Wilds. 33 know, as they arc now ; only they might come home just now and then to see us. Halloa ! look, did you see that bird ? It's a rose-lintie. On with your shoes. I know the very whin-bush it came out of." Perhaps he did know the very bush, but it took both of them fully half an hour to fiiid that rose-linnet's nest after all. It was hidden in such a cosy nook of the yellow-blossomed whin-bush. There were four eggs in it, sweetly streaked with carmine and brown. They marked the spot by counting the number of steps between the bush where the nest was and another one. Then they set off to look for more nests ; in fact, it was quite evident they meant to make a day of it, bird- nesting a day in the wilds. No other schoolboys came in that direction, or crossed the moor at all, so they had it pretty much their own way. In less that an hour they had found a tit-lark's nest, a heather-linnet's, a peewit's, and better than all, a water-hen's nest. They marked the position of them all, so that they might know the places again, for they were studying natural history; at all events they made themselves believe they were. Then they left the moor and made their way to the forest, or pine- wood, that grew in the glen between them and the school-house. They stalked through . this forest as silently and cautiously as if they had been a couple of red-skin Indians; for other boys, when playing truant, often came here to look for nests. 34 In the Dashing Days of Old. The forest was very still and silent, and even dark. The shafts of the great trees looked like the pillars that supported the roof of some mighty cavern. There was not a single bit of undergrowth of any kind, and the ground was all brown and bedded with the pine needles that had fallen from above the year before. The only sound that broke the stillness was the mourn- ful croodliog of the cushat, far down in the darkest corner of the spruce thicket. But sometimes they heard a twig snap ; then they hid at once behind tree-trunks, for they did not know who might be coming. Indeed, they were not at all certain that the schoolmaster might not send out a party of the bigger boys, to scour the wood in search of them. Presently they came to a large, very large, spruce tree. The broad green branches were so thick and close that they could not see any distance up. As the tree was situated among larches and pines, and quite away from any other spruce, they hardly expected a nest of any consequence, only they kicked the trunk of it to cause any bird that might happen to be there to fly out. Flap flap flap flap went the wings of a great grey-blue cushat, and off flew the bird with that rushing sound that boys in the country know so well. " A. cusliie ! " cried Willie. " Up I go." " Hist ! " cried Dem, with a finger on his lips. They both listened. Yes, sure enough, there was the sound of voices, and it came nearer every moment. In Woods and Wilds. 35 " Up ! up ! " whispered Willie ; " bufc shoes off first, so we shan't mark the tree." You see Willie was a far better savage than Dem. In a few seconds they had divested themselves of their shoes, tied them together by the laces, hung them round their necks, and mounted high up out of sight of any one below. It was well they did so. Hardly were they seated among the higher branches ere they heard the voices at the very tree foot. " No nest up there," said one. " Shoo ! " he cried, kicking the tree till it quivered all over. " No, never a nest," said the other ; " nor the tree hasn't ever been climbed. Look, there isn't a mark on the branches." They were two of the worst boys in the school, boys who played truant once at least in every week of their lives. They sat down beneath the tree and laid their plans. They meant to do the forest first, then go to the hills and fields. So Willie and Dem thought they had best stop up where they were for an hour or two, till the other lads took their departure quite away out of the forest. While sitting aloft up there, Willie tried to amuse his companion by telling him many of his bird-nesting and fishing adventures. Then all at once it suddenly occurred to him to tell Dem about the mountain star of Car- rickareen. So he told him all the story of the supposed diamond, and the buried treasure, precisely as the fisher- 36 In the Dashing Days of Old. man had related it to him. Dem was more than in- terested ; he was spell-bound. " Oh ! " he said, at last, " if this be only true, and if we can only find the diamond ! I know well what diamonds are, and it must be a large one to burn and shine like that. It must be worth tons and tons of gold. Willie, we must find it ; then we shall be so rich, we can do anything in the wide world we wish to. Oh ! we shall find it we must and shall find it ! " Willie was astonished to see his companion so excited, but he himself was not so sanguine. He sat silently thinking after that, so did Dem ; and presently back came the wild pigeon and her mate, and had a look at the nest of sticks and the two white eggs. " Troubled-with-you ! troubled-with-you ! " they both seemed to say. Then Willie coughed, and away flew the birds again with more noise than ever. " The boys must be gone," said Willie, " or the birds wouldn't have come back. Let us go down." There was a stream ran down through the wood, in which was many a round-nosed, dark, crimson-spotted trout. Willie knew every pool in it, and where the best fish were, and the pools where only eels lay, and the places where great frogs hid, and the banks under which voles or water-rats lived, and under which it would be dangerous to put your arm, for fear of getting a nasty bite. Willie proposed spending the rest of the day " guddl- ing ; " that is, damming the stream with turfs, stripping in Woods and Wilds. 37 off jacket and vest, rolling up sleeves and trousers, and catching fish with the hand. Oh ! guddling is rare good sport, and many a pleasant, happy hour Willie and Dem spent at it. " But not to-day," said Dem ; " no, not to-day, Willie. I have that diamond on the brain ; let us go towards the mountain. At all events we may find the cave and the buried treasure." The boys betook themselves to the hill where was the mysterious cave. It was wooded at the foot, but the trees soon gave place, as they ascended, to heather and stunted birches and myrtle, with here and there a small, weird- looking pine-tree, clinging, as if in a death-struggle, to the rocks. Then came bare, and in many places, inacces- sible rocks, among which they toiled and struggled for hours, to the no small danger of their necks ; but perhaps still more to the danger of any human being or creature that might be below them, for boulders often became detached by the slightest touch, and went hurtling down the mountain's side, dividing into a hundred pieces ere they reached the wood. But no cave or sign of a cave could they find, and tired, hot, and jaded, they returned about sunset to their cottage home. Old Tibbie, the servant, met them at the door. " Come in, quick," she said ; " there's a letter for one of ye. And Miss McBride has had a letter from the schoolmaster. Bad news in that, Fll warrant." "Bad news indeed!" thought the boys. 38 In the Dashing Days of Old. Dem shook his head to Willie, and Willie shook his head back to Dem, and together in silence and sadness they followed Tibbie into the parlour. CHAPTER III. ARRIVAL OF A STRANGE STRANGER. " THAT very morn From a far land I crime, Yet round me clung The spirit of my own." Mrs. Hemam. ISS McBRIDE received the boys in the parlour. She seemed full of importance swelling with it. " We have had no less than two letters to-day," she said. " One, Master James, is from your father in India to me, and he incloses one to you, which being open, as it ought properly to be, I took the liberty of reading. The other letter, boys, concerns you both. It is from your teacher, and you will be sorry to hear the contents of it." Dem and Willie clasped hands beneath the tab^e and waited in breathless suspense. " The purport of your schoolmaster's letter," continued Miss McBride, "is to convey to us the disagreeable, not 40 In the Dashing Days of Old. to say alarming, intelligence that two of the pupils are down with fever; that the complaint is spreading in the district, and that therefore the school will be closed, and not re-opened until after the harvest holidays." Both boys gave a heartfelt sigh of relief. " I feel sure you are very sorry, my dear boys." Miss McBride was not looking in their direction as she spoke, else she could hardly have helped noticing that the expression on their faces was quite the reverse of that of grief. " There, Master Rutherford, is the letter from your dear papa, only one portion of which is not quite clear to me. He says in the postscript, ' I enclose a letter from my dear friend, Captain Grant, to his son, which will no doubt be thankfully received.' That is what he says, but no letter came enclosed." "Fll come back in a moment," cried Dem, almost snatching the letter from the hands of Miss McBride in his joyous eagerness. " I'll merely glance at the letter all by myself first, then come back and read it to you, Willie." " Good boy ! " said Miss McBride. As soon as he was gone, Miss McBride turned round to Willie and addressed him, " We are about to receive the visit of a stranger," she said, with a very grave countenance, " a stranger, Willie, and what is more, a very strange stranger." " Indeed ! " said Willie, not knowing what else to say, Arrival of a Strange Stranger. 41 for Miss McBride sat for fully a minute gazing out at the window, but evidently seeing nothing, for her eyes had a far-away look in them, as if she were deep in thought. " A very strange stranger ! " she kept muttering. Then she turned slowly round to Willie again. " I lie under a very deep obligation to your dear father, Willie, " she said, " an obligation I shall never be able to repay, and of which some day or other we may talk. If it were not so, I would not receive this stranger." "But who is he?" Willie asked anxiously; and he added, "I'm sure, Miss McBride, my father would not like to do anything to annoy you/' " Dear boy, I know that," was the reply, " and it is so thoughtful of you to speak thus; so young too. No, your father would do nothing to annoy me, nor,. Willie, must he ever be told that the thoughts of the coming of this strange creature or man did annoy me. I have not an antipathy exactly Heaven forbid that I should have an antipathy to anything that God made, far less to any creature but I have a strange fear of foreigners, almost amounting to a horror." " Hurrah ! hurrah ! hurrah ! " cried Dem rushing into the room and waving the letter wildly aloft. " My dear Miss McBride ! O Willie, what glorious news ! Poodah is coming ! Poodah will be here in a few days ! Shake hands, Willie. I shall be happy now." But who is Poodah ? " said Willie. 42 In the Dashing Days of Old. " Is it the strange stranger ? " said Miss McBride. Willie was sitting at one side of the hearth and Miss McBride was at the other, and Dem, who had a good many Oriental ways about him, squatted down on the rug, Turk-fashion, between them, and turned his beaming face first towards the one and then towards the other. "Poodah is," he said, "why, Poodah is Poodah, don't you know ? " " That is hardly definite enough," said Miss McBride smiling. " Well, no, of course not, of course it isn't. But what I wanted to say was that Poodah is everybody ; that is, he has been everything and everybody to me, nurse and guide and tutor and all. And, Willie, he has been everywhere and done everything, and such stories he can tell. He can keep you spell-bound for hours together. Poodah, Miss McBride, is the best swordsman that ever waved a sword." " Oh ! dear me ! " exclaimed Miss McBride, " I do hope the foreigner won't wave any swords while he is here." " Oh, no ! " from Dem, " that I'm sure he won't, Miss McBride. I was only going to say that though he is such a very, very clever swordsman he could cut a horse's head off, Willie, with one blow he is also such an excellent cook." " That is better," said Miss McBride with a sigh of relief. "Yes," continued Dem, "the soups and omelettes and Arrival of a Strange Stranger. 43 curries and coffee he makes, would make you get up and eat and drink, even if you were dying. And here is papa's letter. It is such a long, delicious letter. But you won't care to hear much of it ; only he says in one part : 'Your friend and favourite, Poodah, has never ceased to speak about you since your departure. He told me at last he should die if he could not come to you. But I found out that at the very time he made this remark to me he was packing up his few traps to go to you, whether I gave him leave or not. So you see I had to make a virtue of necessity. There always was some mystery about Poodah ! ' " Here Miss McBride sighed slightly, and muttered something that sounded like "a man with a mystery about him, of all things ! " " Dear me ! dear me ! " continued Miss McBride aloud, but wringing her hands in a kind of a nervous, distracted sort of way. " I'm sure I hope it will be all for the best, boys, and that it will all end aright. But I don't know, and I can't tell. And this creat I mean, this man with the mystery, may come any day or hour. I must go at once and see about the spare bedroom." "Mind, Miss McBride," said Dem, "no feather-bed for Poodah ; no bed at all, only a rug on the floor, and one pillow." " No bed ! " exclaimed the old lady. " No bed ! Oh, the heathen ! " Miss McBride had hardly finished speaking, and was 44 In the Dashing Days of Old. just turning to leave the room, when in rushed the big tabby cat with his tail like a bottle-brush, and made a wild plunge to get up the chimney. About the same moment a shriek, that seemed to well up from the very heart of someone in dire distress, resounded from the neighbourhood of the kitchen. It died away in a kind of moan of terror, like what a person in a fearful nightmare gives vent to. Almost immediately afterwards hurried footsteps were heard in the corridor, and poor old Tibbie, with blanched face and staring eyes, ran into the room, and it took the united strength of both Willie and Dem to prevent her from falling flat on the carpet. " The spirit ! the evil spirit ! " was all she could say. " The spirit ! Look, look, there it comes again ! " Tibbie went off now into a dead faint, and Miss McBride took up the screaming. And no wonder ! The apparition that now stood in the parlour doorway was quite frightful enough to scare the senses out of any two old women who lived in so wild and lonesome a country as this. He, the apparition, was tall and well though not stoutly formed, arrayed from shoulder to ankle in what appeared to be a long white nightdress. Around the waist was a girdle of scarlet silk, in which jewelled knife and pistols were stuck. On the feet were ornamental sandals, on the head a splendid gilded turban. The face was of a dark copper colour, but beautifully formed in every feature ; and from beneath the turban behind, Arrival of a Strange Stranger. 45 there escaped and flowed down, as far as the waist,, heavy ringlets of grey-white hair. The apparition stood smiling and bowing in the doorway, and on his shoulder was a small but lovely jet- black Persian cat. She, too, was trying to appear amiable. She had her back up and her tail curled, and was siuging aloud and rubbing her head against her master's turban. Willie was startled, but it was very differenj; with Dem. He rushed to meet the apparition. " Poodah ! " he cried, seizing his arm and fairly hugging it. " Poodah ! my dear friend Poodah ! Miss McBride, this is Poodah himself, Poodah we were talking about, Poodah that we were all expecting." , Poodah's eyes were filled with tears. He took his young master's hand, bent reverently over it, and placed it to his brow, a very beautiful form of salutation common in many parts of the East Indies. " Come in, Poodah," continued Dem. "I daresay you are cold." Poodah kicked off his sandals and advanced. Tibbie recovered sufficiently to make her exit, and Miss McBride so far as to tell Poodah he was welcome. Dem thanked her with his eyes. " He is my tutor, you know," he said. It was not long before Poodah settled down and made himself thoroughly at home at Gowan Lodge, as Miss McBride's cottage was named. He even ingratiated 46 In the Dashing Days of Old. himself into favour with old Tibbie ; and Miss McBride candidly acknowledged that in every way Poodah was a gentleman, and quite unlike any negroes she had ever heard of or read of before. Even Poodah's black Persian cat became a pet of the household, and was graciously permitted by the old tabby to recline in front of the fire, and at times to repose on the footstool. The only thing that Miss McBride could not quite forgive Poodah for, was his sleeping on a mat on the floor, in what she was pleased to term, a heathenish way, instead of going to bed like a Christian. If the truth must be told, Dem was at first very much afraid that his friend Poodah would be relegated to the kitchen, and that was the reason why he told Miss McBride so pointedly, on Poodah's first arrival, that he was a tutor to him. Bat Poodah knew well how to behave at table, and though an East Indian, he did not eat rice and curry with his fingers, but was an adept with the knife and fork. He would never touch meat, however nothing, as he himself expressed it, that had ever had blood flowing through it. His curries were therefore vegetable ones, but he did not hesitate to cook curries of meat for the rest of the household, never commencing to do so, how- ever, until he had engaged in some mysterious devotions on a little morsel of carpet in a remote corner of the kitchen. Poodah's own room was in a gable of the house or Arrival of a Strange Stranger. 47 cottage. This gable abutted on to a green lawn snr- rounded with hedges, that now in summer time were all a- smother with wild roses and honeysuckles. There was a large French window looking on to the lawn, and as often as not Poodah used this for a door. The lawn itself was seldom cut, it was rank with the white blossoming gowans the wee, modest, crimson- tipped flowers of the immortal Burns ; clover, white and red, bloomed there too, and the blue and yellow crow-pea, and the blazing celandine. There were many trees on it as well, one enormous yew tree in particular. The lawn ended in a pine-wood, but so quickly did this wood slope downwards to the bottom of the deep glen beneath that the view of the lovely strath that stretched away for many miles westward was not interrupted. The bed had been taken out of Poodah/s room, all the furniture therefore in it consisted of the sofa or lounge, a rocking-chair, and a few other chairs and Poodah/s bookshelf, which was a very small one indeed ; but Miss McBride had done everything she could to make this room look bright and cheerful by means of a carpet, skin mats, curtains, and pictures on the walls. And bright and cheerful it was, especially in the summer evenings, when the casements were thrown wide apart, and the glorious light of the glowing west shone iu. Dem and Willie made themselves very much at home here, and many were the strange wild stories they listened to from Poodah's lips. 48 In the Dashing Days of Old. Three whole weeks passed away, and during all this time neither Dem nor Willie cnce thought about the mountain cave and the strange star, both of which they had previously made up their minds to spend their whole lives, if that were necessary, in trying to find. For both boys put implicit faith in the story of the hidden treasure. But one evening they were all three together as usual in Poodah's room. It was shortly after sunset, and the Indian had been telling them story after story of his strange life and wild adventures in many lands. " The young sahib must tell a little story now," said Poodah at last. "I haven't got one to tell," said Willie. Then ho corrected himself and said, " Oh, yes ! by the bye, I have though." So he began, and told Poodah all the story of Carriclrareen Castle, the murdered McDonalds, and the tale of the buried gold and the star sometimes seen on clear nights, and supposed to mark the site of the cavern. Willie was astonished at the amount of interest he seemed to have awakened in the breast of Poodah by his simple story. As soon as he had finished, Poodah jumped up, " The night is fine," he said ; " let us get a boat and pull out to sea ; perhaps we may behold this strange star. I would fain feast my eyes on its beauty." " Saunders, ' the hermit fisherman/ as people call " Right in his pathway stood a strange apparition, black in face, white as to raiment, and with arms erect in air." [Page 61. Arrival of a Strange Stranger. 49 him," replied Willie, " has gone to the south. He left the very day after your arrival, Poodah." " But the boat ? " said Poodah. " He did not take the boat." "No," laughed Willie; "but would it be right to borrow it ? He would forgive me, though, I know," continued Willie after a moment's consideration, " Yes, let us go at once." The fisherman's little cottage looked very lonesome to-night, with no smoke curling up out of the chimney, and no light in the window. They found the boat easily enough, and had no diffi- culty in launching it. Willie was surprised at Poodali's expertness with the oars. He made the boat bouud over the waters. Willie himself took the tiller, and Dem did nothing but sit and look around him. He was the passenger, he said, and meant to enjoy himself. Willie was not much of a sailor, or he might have found the place from which alone the star could be seen, without the trouble of going all the way round to the island. He thought he would make sure, however, so oars were never taken in until the boat rasped on the beach of the only possible landing-place iu all the island. The long twilight of these northern regions had not yet given place to night, but stars were beginning to appear in the east, and more and more came into sight every minute, for the sky was beautifully clear. They 50 In the Dashing Days of Old. wandered about the little rocky island for quite an hour. There was grass thereon, a few sheep, and a shepherd's hut, but no shepherd. They managed to scare the rabbits; after one glance at the intruders these timid creatures cocked their little white flags, and went scurrying away to their burrows in the stony soil. They scared the wild birds too, the gulls and puffins and majestic solan geese. The gulls flew round them in flocks, screaming in terror and anger, and apparently making attempts to frighten them away from the place. They embarked at last, and as soon as they had gone a little way, the gulls settled once more on the rocks, the coneys came peeping out of their holes, and the island resumed its wonted calm. Keeping the beacon on Trooma as much as possible in a line betwixt the boat and the distant lighthouse, Willie steered straight for the shore about a mile to the north of the fisherman's cottage. Right over the white rocky peak of Dungrat, which lay many miles in'and, shone a bright planet. By that planet AVillie steered. Now the distant peak begins to sink and sink behind the rugged mountain that overhung the sea-beach, the mountain in which was the mysterious cave. " Pull easy," cried Willie, glancing behind him ; " we are near the spot now." His heart was beating and thumping against his side with anxiety. Would the star be visible to-night, he Arrival of a Strange Stranger. 51 wondered ? Fifty times, if once, lie glanced behind Inrn 3 to make sure lie was steering ariglit. Yes, the boat and beacon lighthouse were still in a line, and yonder was the peak of Dungrat barely showing above the hill. This was the place. But where was the mountain star ? Gone ! CHAPTER IV. ON INDIAN SHORES. " KNOW yc the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine, Where the light Avings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in her bloom, Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky, In colour though varied, in beauty may vie, And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye ? 'Tis the clime of the East the land of the sun." OR a brief space the scene of our story changes. We stand on Indian shores. Here no purple heather clads the hill?, no scarlet poppies peep up through rising corn, no dewy-eyed bluebell or modest primrose glints through the grass's green, by covert or hedgerow. But a bluer, brighter sky gleams over us, above us burns a fiercer sun ; the groves of orange and citron and plantain look to us foreign j the forest trees themselves are strange ; strange forms of insect life fill the air with musical hum ; brilliantly plumaged birds flit, mostly in silence, from bough to bough. Those birds we think are lovely ; but why so mute ? why do they not awake the On Indian Shores. 53 woodland echoes, as do our mavises, Unties, and laverocks at home in bonnie Scotland? Because up in yonder dark trees hide many a hideous hawk and bird of prey, and so those little bright-winged birds must tell their love in whispers for even the snakes and reptiles that lurk beneath the fairest flowers would find them out did they not woo in silence. Out yonder, towards the south, if we cast our eyes, we may look upon an ocean far brighter and more pellucid in its waters than any we have ever dreamt of, and in tiny ripples its wavelets are breaking on a snowy beach of coral sand. Were the brightness of the day to tempt us to bathe, we might swim or wade a mile from land without getting beyond our depth; and if naturalists, or even lovers of nature, we might never tire of being lapped by the warm, soothing waters of that sunlit sea ; for down there beneath lie submarine gardens more beautiful far than an Arab's dream of Paradise. Describe them? Would that I were able to. But they rise up before my eyes, even now as I write; I have but to pause and shut my eyes, to see them once again, see them with their brightness hardly dimmed by the lapse of years, see them as I used to see them while leaning over my boat and gazing entranced for hours. Surely the English language is singularly destitute of words descriptive of beauty. I at least can find none capable of giving the reader an idea of one half the love- liness that waves on coral sands 'neath Indian seas. <( Waves" is just the word^ for every branchlet, every In the Dashing Lays of Old. twig 1 , every stem and flower, are clothed with a rainbow brightness of colour, sparkle with light, and seem instinct with a half animal power of life and motion, and even in weather so calm that there is not so much as a ripple on the ocean's breast, you may see them gently waving to and fro, But beautiful though these gaily-tinted coral algae be let us hasten back to the beach, nor be tempted to swim in the deeper water; for where the shore suddenly shelves, where we lose sight suddenly of our sea.flowers, and the waves get black around us, we may perchance catch glimpses of monsters whose shapes, even should we escape their slimy, deadly embrace, would haunt us in our dreams for aye, Let us hasten back to the shore then, and there in somo cool grotto await the day's decline. And now comes the gentle breeze, fans our heated brows, and almost woos us to sweetest slumber. But scenes of beauty still surround us. Look away over the ocean yonder towards the distant horizon, at that solitary light gently rising and falling on the billows. It is a vessel homeward bound, a little world in itself afloat on the deep, filled with its own fears, cheered by its own hopes. Care and sorrow, joy and gladness, all are there a little city on the sea. Let us pray God speed her ; then turn our eyes to the east. Yonder, from an emerald sky, gleams out the evening star, the star of love, the bright- eyed, happy, gloaming star. Behind us, if we glance, we shall be surprised to see many other stars, less bright it is On Indian Shores. 55 true, but restless, moving, gliding, flitting, dancing round every bush, and wheeling in fiery flight around the feathery palm trees. Need I say they are fire-flies ? But there ! we have stayed long enough out on the beach ; for sweet and cool as is the evening, the night winds in these latitudes often bear clammy death upon their wings. Let us walk inland then, for from above the distant forest- covered mountains the moon is already shedding her silvery beams over the land and over the seas. Up the path that leads through the jungle we take our way. The road is broad, but brown, not green as our woodland walks at home are. There ! we stop to wonder what lies yonder right in our path. It is as large and round almost as an ordinary footstool, dark and glisten- ing in the moon rays. We have room to avoid it, and we do so, for its bite is deadly. It is the common black snake coiled up and asleep. By-and-by it will measure its length on the ground, creep off to find a frog, and thence back to its evil cave in some black corner of the jungle or forest. Yes, there are sounds enough in the forest to frighten any novice. The yelping bark of jackals, the sullen roar- ing boom of wilder beasts than they. Hark ! what was that spirit-like shriek ? Was it a warning cry ? Nay, it is but the voice of a harmless bird. And many strange birds emit more terrible hair- stirring sounds by night in the woods than all the beasts contained therein. The sudden, ear-splitting yell close 56 In Hie Dashing Days of Old. in the bush beside us is not the war cry of Indians, but the voice of a bird ; so is that wild, unearthly laugh that ever and anon rises and swells on tho night air. The silence of a few minutes may be suddenly broken by screams and shrieks from some dark thicket, as of some poor mortal in agony shrieks loud, prolonged, most mournful; the sounds come from some birds holding nocturnal revel. But here we are, out in the open plain. We can see the mountains better now, and they do not seem so very far off in the glimmer of this joyful moon. But what are those lights we now see twinkling not far ahead ? It is the bungalow of Colonel Rutherford, Dem's father. We pass the white-frocked sentry who paces slowly up and down, as silent as a cat, before the gates, and enter. In n lofty-roofed room, whose many windows were wide open that the evening breeze might steal in and cool the atmosphere, at a table on which burned a great oil lamp, sat two gentlemen discussing dessert, while over it waved a great punkah, set in motion by a little nigger boy, who crouched like a white- robed sprite in a corner of the apartment. What a luscious feast of fruit that was ! What splendid sun-tinted mangoes, rich and delicious looking bananas, and piles of fruit that a stranger from England could not even have named ; while the very air seemed oppressed with the perfume of the lordly pine-apples, mingling with On Indian Shores. 57 tlio scent from beautiful flowers that filled and trailed over a magnificent epergne, chief among them orange blossoms. The table itself was large, the cloth was white as mountain snow, and the glass shone like dia- monds, rivalled only by the brilliancy of the silver itself. Both gentlemen were smoking great hookahs, or hubble-bubbles, that stood by their sides on the floor. It was the colonel and his friend, Captain Grant Willie's father that sat here in comfortable tete-a-tete. " Well, Grant," the colonel was saying. " I'm glad I took your advice, and sent my lad home, though I can tell you I miss him badly enough." " So you will, for a time." " Yes, and I've half a mind to go home with you next time you go." " Six mouths hence ? " " Yes. I've sailed with you so often, I don't care to go with any one else." "Well, Rutherford, I needn't say I'll be delighted to have you ; the Queen of the Waves is as good a ship as when you first came on board of her ; what is it five years ago ? " "Ay, it is six, my friend." " How time flies to be sure ! But never mind ; the hurricane never blew that I was afraid of in the old Queen, that is when I have plenty of sea room." " But," said the colonel, ' ' is it perfectly safe to sail as you do, without convoy ? " " It is the cheapest and quickest way, anyhow j and I 58 In the Dashing Days of Old. think I could show a clean pair of heels to any Frenchie that ever left the dock." " You have been chased ? " " Ay, my lad, more than once." " Poodah." " Yes, sahib," said Poodah, advancing from, the win- dow. " Another bottle of yellow seal claret ; or would you rather have brandy-pawnee, Grant ? " " No brandy-pawnee for me, thank you. Brandy digs British graves, and claret is the only safe drink for India." "Do you know," said Colonel Rutherford, "I've thought more than once about that strange story you told me of the supposed diamond and hidden treasure of the mountain of Carrickareen." " So do I think of it, Rutherford. Yes, oftener than I ought to, for it may be all a myth. But if there be a diamond, and if there be buried treasure, it belongs by rights to me." " Certainly ; for as you say, your wife who has no re- lations alive was the only descendant of those unhappy murdered McDonalds." " Yes, and often and often I lie awake building castles in the air about it. Can you wonder ? " " No, Grant, I can't." " There are few lives harder than that of the sailor's, Rutherford, much, though I love it ; and there is myself, toiling away on this ocean wave, when if But what On Indian Shores. 59 is the use of ' when's ' and ' if's ' ; no, no, my lot is cast, and I'll have to be content with it. But there is my poor boy. Heigho ! " It was not the first time that Grant had told his friend about the supposed diamond and the buried gold of Carrickareen } and strange to say, there had been no more attentive listener than Poodah, the faithful valet of Colonel Rutherford. The friends sat to-night and talked of home and of long ago, till past midnight. A day or two after this Poodah, when he brought his master's shaving-water, appeared gloomy and depressed. He had been to see his priests, and his brow was be- daubed with a spot of yellow clay. "Why, Poodah, old man," said the colonel laughing, '' you look about as happy this morning as a bull-frog in a rat-trap. Wife been pitching into you again ? " "No, sahib, not dis time; pVaps iu a day or two she break my head again with the box iron, same's before. Same, sahib, as she do ebery moon. But I not care much now," he added with a sigh. " Why, Poodah ? why ? " " 'Cause I going to die. Oh, surely, surely I die. I not care to lib now, since young sahib he go away." " I'm sorry, truly sorry, Poodah, to hear you talk so." " Yes, and suppose I not die quick, I jump into de great well. Die plenty soon. ' Croak-croak-croak/ 1 cry, down below de water, like de frogs ; den lie quiet and still." GO In the Dashing Days of Old. Colonel Rutherford considered the matter well. He did not forget that his boy was just as fond of Poodah as Poodah was of him. When Poodah appeared with the tray and breakfast, the colonel addressed him. " Suppose I say to you, Poodah, ' Go and remain with my boy till I return/ what then ? " Poodah's eyes got wider at every word ; then he rushed tablewards and deposited the tray in its place, and next minute he had fallen at his master's feet, hugging his very legs in the exuberance of his joy. There were real tears trickling down his cheeks too. He rose next to a kneeling position, placed the colonel's two hands on his head for a moment, and then springing up, rushed headlong out of the apartment. " He has taken it for granted that he is going," said Colonel Rutherford to himself, " so go he must. Perhaps it is best." In three weeks more Poodah was afloat on the ocean, and we know the way he appeared at Gowan Lodge, to the joy of Dem and the discomfiture of poor Miss McBride and old superstitious Tibbie. * * * * * * Keeper McGregor was late out one evening, not long after the arrival of Poodah at Gowan Cottage, and be- fore the boat cruise described in last chapter. McGregor was oftentimes abroad after dark, even in summer, for poachers were rife in these old days. To snare or shoot the hares or rabbits, or even the deer, on another man's On Indian Shores. Gl property, was considered no sin. They the poachers were but "killing God's own cattle on God's own hills." Only when they cauie across sturdy keeper McGregor, he put matters in a very different light for them. On this particular night the tnoon was shining " as brightly as day," and although very superstitious, McGregor marched boldly along the footpath that led along round by the wooded foot of the hill of Carrie- kareen, a favourite Gordon setter following closely at his heels. His gun was over his shoulder, both barrels loaded, with the triggers at half-cock. He was making his way homewards, for there was no trace of poachers to-night, and hitherto he had heard no noise which he could not easily account for. But suddenly a sound came from the woods close by, that made his heart thump against his sides, the blood run cold along his spine, and his very hair feel rising beneath his blue bonnet. The very dog stood still, and his hair stood up from crown to tail. A long drawn, quavering, unearthly shriek ! McGregor quickly crossed himself and essayed to go on. But next moment, right in his pathway stood a strange apparition, black in face, white as to raiment, and with arms erect in the air. McGregor fingered his gun. The apparition stood stock still, and the man's hands refused duty. Another yell rent the air; then the keeper a man 62 In the Dashing Days of Old. who, single-handed, had fought ere now against half a dozen sturdy poachers fainted and fell. When he recovered, the dog was licking his face, but there was nothing to be seen or heard, only the moon- light bathing the hills and the woods and the distant sea. CHAPTER V. THE MOUNTAIN CKUSOES. " VERILY, I think Such place to me is sometimes like a dream." Wordsworth. ' Here, \vith no thirst but what the stream can slake, And startled only by the rustling brake, Cool air I breathe." Idem. T isn't a bit of use/' said Willie Grant, that same niglit on which they had been to look for the diamond-star; " I can't sleep, I've been trying for half an hour, and all to no purpose. Dem, are you asleep ? " " No ; I've been thinking, Willie." " Just exactly what I've been doing, Dem, and you know a fellow can't think and sleep both." " Quite true, Willie." " Well then, I'll tell you what I propose. It is this : let us get up and talk it out." "I'm ready!" cried Dein, jumping on to the floor. " There is no need to dress, is there ? " "No; light the candle." 64 In the Dashing Days of Old. " Shall we both lie in bed and talk across to each other ? " " No, I think not," replied Willie ; " we should have to talk too loud, and you know what kind of ears Miss McBride has." " Oh ! for an old lady they are wonderful." " But I say, Dem," continued Willie, " I know how to light the fire. Here are all the bits of dry wood old Tibbie left for the morning, and the morsel of peat as well. And here are all the dry peats. You just watch for a minute, and see how nicely things can be done when you only know the right way." As he spoke, with deft and lissom fingers he arranged the wood on the fireplace, and with his mouth blew up the kindling peat, and in a minute or two they all began to burn. Crack, crack, went the blazing wood, and little v.icked sparks flew all over the room. " What a noise the wood makes, Willie ! " said Dem. " Yes," replied Willie ; " but the peats are caught now. It will soon be all right. Now get up." Willie went to the back of the door and got a great Highland plaid that hung there. Then he arranged the bolsters for a seat, and down in front of the blazing fire, well rolled up in the Highland plaid, sat Willie and Dem. " Won't it be jolly ! " said Willie. "It will be everything that is romantic and delightful," replied Dem. " Of course we must furnish the cave." "Yes; we must have seats, anyhow." The Mountain Crusocs. 65 "And a fireplace." " Well, yes a fireplace, but a " " I know what you are thinking about, Dem/' said Willie. " Tell me then." " You are thinking that if we have a fireplace the smoke might discover us to some of those roving brats of bird-nesting boys." "That is just it, you see," said Dem. " Ah, but," said Willie, " I have thought of a plan." "Well?" " Do you know, Dem, whom that mountain belongs to ?" " No ; the King, perhaps." "So far, the hill does itself, but the woods and game rabbits I mean belong to Miss McBride's cousin." "Well, what of that?" " Only this," said Willie, " we will go and ask per- mission to make that cave our study, then the other boys will have no business there at all." " Capital ! " cried Dem. " And if they dared to come, after a fair warning, then we could pretend to roll down stones on them. They couldn't roll them back again, you know." " No," said Dem, laughing. " You are very wise, Willie." " Oh," said Willie, carelessly, " I was brought up in the wilds, you know." From the above conversation, the reader will be aware that the boys had found the cave, or a cave at all events, E G6 In the Dashing Days of Old. on the mountain side. The disappearance from the hill of the mysterious shining star had not deterred the boys, in company with their friend Poodah, from instituting a search for the cave. They had done so very scientifically. They had taken their bearings from sea as well as they could, then on the very next day had started their search expedition. Far up the mountain brow they clambered, as light- footed and as nimble as so many cats, but Willie was quite surprised at the agility displayed by Poodah. He bounded from rock to rock and from crag to crag as if he had been a wild deer. Across and across the mountain the trio went, and up and down, and this they continued until all were tired and weary. Then they sat down to eat their modest luncheon, for the sun was already beginning to decline in the west. "If there is a cave, we'll have it," Dem had said doggedly. " We sliaVfc give in," said Willie. "No," from Dem; f "'we shouldn't leave a stone un- turned to find it." Now this expression of Dem's about not leaving a stone unturned was purely figurative, but no sooner had the words escaped than Poodah sprang up. " I have it ! " he cried. " Come with me, come ! Dere is a loose stone not far from where we sit. I touched he, moved he, but never thought to roll he back. Come ! " He led them a little way down the hill. Here was a patch of furze and myrtle, and near the bottom of it lay TJie Mountain Crusoes. 67 a great stone. It took all Poodah's strength to move it aside. No sooner was it moved, however, than both Willie and Dera uttered exclamations of delight : the entrance to the cave lay before them ! They crawled in, and as soon as they got accustomed to the dim light, they found themselves in a large though not spacious room At one side or corner light glim- mered in from the top. There had evidently been a fire- place and chimney, and they were not a little astonished to find evidence that a fire had been burning here at no very remote date. Young as he was, Willie could not help connecting this new discovery with the disappearance of the moun- tain-star and with the hermit fisherman and his sudden departure. He said nothing to Poodah about that at the time, but he mentioned his thoughts to Dem as they sat by the fire in their bedroom that night. " Well/ 1 said Dem, " never mind. We've found the cave, and we have a good right to make use of it* The hermit, I suppose, doesn't pay any rent." " What if he comes back and tries to turn us out ? " "Roll down stones on him," said Dem, laughing. Old Tibbie had to knock and re-knock and finally enter the boys' room next morning, before she could get them to awake. " My dear bonnie laddies," said Tibbie, " the sun has been shinin' o'er Dungrat for mony and mony an hour." But the truth is the sun had begun to shine over 68 In the DasMng Days of OU. Dimgrat before the boys had gone finally to bed, only they didn't tell Tibbie that. " Now, boys," said Miss McBride at breakfast, " I'm sure you miss school very, very much." Neither spoke. So Miss McBride, said pointedly, "Don't you?" " We don't, Miss McBride." The lady looked disappointed, but said, after a pause : " I'm glad, at all events, you so frankly tell the truth about it." " Poodah is teaching me Hindoostanee," said Willie. " And I'm learning Sanscrit," added Dem. " Well, well, boys, I hope it will do you good ; but I could never see any use in these dead languages." Both the boys laughed heartily, and then Willie proceeded to tell her all about the cave, and their intentions and hopes and wishes about it ; and though there was nothing at all romantic in Miss McBride's nature, she did not see that any harm could come to her boys by letting them have their own way in the matter. So an hour or two after, Willie and Dem were making their way to Harthill House, the residence of the landed proprietor mentioned in this chapter, and they carried with them a note from Miss McBride. The gentleman was old and an invalid. He kept Willie and Dem to lunch, laughed and chaffed with them about the cave, told them they were going to turn troglodytes, and finally sent them off very happy boys indeed. The Mountain Crusoes. 69 They had not the slightest idea what a troglodyte was, but they soon turned up the word in a dictionary, and then they knew. They called on the keeper in the evening, and ex- plained to him that they had taken possession of a cave nearly at the top of the mountain, where they could get a lovely view of the sea, and where they would be able to study natural history and Hindoostanee. McGregor, the keeper, knew not what either of these studies represented, but he turned up his hands in as- tonishment and his eyes in horror. "Go not near the hill," he said, "nor near the cave, if there be one. An evil spirit haunts that hill and wood." " Have you seen ifc ? " Willie asked him. " I have seen it once," said the keeper, " and many others have seen and heard it. And the wilder the night, the more fearfully and mournfully that spirit howls. Go not near the hill, boys; be advised by me, lest harm befall you." "Well, anyhow," said Willie stoutly, "we have liberty to go there from the proprietor. And mind, Mr. McGregor, no other boys have." "No other boys would dare to go to the wood or hill, even by day. One went once to seek for a white owl's nest. His mangled body was found at the foot of the crag, a fortnight after." Now, although he had lived so long in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands, Willie Grant was not super- stitious. He believed not in the supernatural, and so 70 In the Dashing Days of Old. as the keeper told him the story about the evil spirit, he could not help thinking of what the hermit fisherman had also told him. Dem and he talked it over that same evening. " There is something in it, Dem," said Willie. " That fisher fellow," replied Dem, "is at the bottom of it." " That is just what I think myself/' Willie said ; " but time will tell." Even Robinson Crusoe did not set himself more earnestly to get his house in comfortable order than did Dem and Willie to furnish their cave ; and Poodah assisted them, and like a good fairy did ten times more work than either of them. The big stone was rolled on one side ; then, by means of some picks and spades they had brought from Miss McBride's cottage for the purpose, they proceeded to enlarge the entrance to something like the size and shape of a real doorway. "It wouldn't be difficult to make a doorway, I think," said Dem ; " then you know, we could have a lock or a bolt to it, and nobody could come in." " Capital ! " said Willie, looking at Poodah. Poodah shook his grey ringlets and smiled. The work, he knew, devolved on him. So the door was made at home, and carried to the cave in pieces, and finally put up. It fitted beautifully, but Poodah was not content until he had planted bushes on each side, in such a way as to The Mountain Crusoes. 71 entirely conceal the doorway. The next thing was to thoroughly clear out the cave; this was nob a difficult task, for the walls and floor were of solid stone, and the marks of tools on the rock gave ample evidence that the place had either been entirely excavated, or at all events enlarged, by human hands. It might have been a smuggler's den, or a prison-house, or a hiding-place of some of the chiefs of the clans in by-gone troublesome times. Several great bats were dislodged from the roof, and many strange creeping things had to take the hint and betake themselves to other quarters. Then a great fire was lighted, and the boys were astonished to find that every particle of smoke found its way up the rude chimney. " This is first-rate ! " said Willie. " Now, in order to be thoroughly comfortable as troglodytes, we must furnish our cave." " Oh, yes ! " cried Dem, " we must furnish, and the more rudely it is furnished the better, I think." " So long as it is reasonably comfortable." " Yes, to be sure, it must be that." " I know/' said Willie, " that Miss McBridc would let us have a few chairs." " But I know we won't have them," said Dem. " Let us make the seats." Once more the services of Poodah, the good fairy, were called into requisition; tools and nails were borrowed from home, there were any number of branches of tree? 72 In the Dashing Days of Old. to be had, of all sorts and sizes, to say nothing of whole fir trees that had blown down years ago, and lay lumber- ing the ground. So Poodah set to work in right good earnest, and before a week was over he had made not only three good rough but nseful chairs, one of which was a rockiug one, but a light if not graceful kind of a lounge as well. They went to the cave now every day, but they did not always take the same route : they wished to avoid making a beaten track, as they feared this might discover their sanctum to the many bands of predatory bird- nesting boys who were almost daily on the prowl along the sea-shore, and even in the wood at the foot of the hill. They spent nearly all the day at or about the cave, taking luncheon with them when they left in the morning, and returning to dinner in the evening as hungry, and quite as happy, as hunters. Miss McBride knew they were safe, and that they were enjoying themselves, so her mind was at ease. While Poodah was making the chairs and the dais, Dem and Willie busied themselves manufacturing a book- case. The construction of this was simple in the extreme. They got a large flat box from Tibbie, and a quantity of old wall-paper, and this they carried in triumph to the cave. Then they shaped two shelves and fitted them into the box ; next they lined these shelves and the whole of the inside with the wall-paper. When set on one end now, it really looked a very respectable little bookcase ; The Mountain Cmsoes. 73 but Willie got hold of another idea, which he forthwith proceeded to carry out. He stripped pieces of rough elm bark from trees, and shaped them with his knife, and nailed them with tacks all along the exposed edges and sides and top of the case. Dem was surprised at his ingenuity, and when the thing was finished even Poodah confessed that it looked most artistic ; and so indeed it did. Thus encouraged, Willie got more wood and made pretty shelves for the walls, and little brackets for the corners of the cave, covering them all in the same way with rough bark. The furnishing of the cave was rapidly approaching completion. "What a pity," said Willie one day, "that we can't have a carpet. The floor seems so cold and hard, doesn't it, Dem ? " "It does feel rather bare," Dem replied. Poodah smiled. " We shall have one carpet," he said quietly. The very next day, much to their delight, Poodah despatched Dem and Willie to the distant village to make some purchases. All that Poodah had told them to get was a kettle, a coffee-pot, some cups and saucers, and the requisite groceries. But the boys didn't stop at this. Going shopping was a treat that did not come in their way very often. " Who knows," said Dem, " but that we may catch a rabbit, and get Poodah to curry it." 74 In the Dashing Days of Old. " A grand idea ! " said Willie. " So we want a stew- pan." "To be sure," said Dem, "and some plates and things." " Then we can always catch fish." "Yes," cried Willie. " What fun ! We shall want a frying-pan." And so they went on, baying and baying, until their money was all done, and the old carrier had quite a number of packages to leave at Miss McBride's. When they went with Poodah next day to the cave, they could hardly believe their eyes ; the floor was covered with a carpet as soft as any Turkey mat, and far more fragrant. It was most ingeniously woven from the Smallest branches of the spruce fir. The cave was far away up on the mountain brow, and as they determined to spend whole evenings there, and it would be cold after sunset, they laid in a store of nice dry wood and peats to burn. One of the purchases consisted of a huge lamp, which they managed with some difficulty to affix to the wall of the cave, and when it was lighted, it made all the place as bright as day. Now during the time the furnishing and doing up of the cave was going on, books and reading had been quite forgotten. This was not right ; both Willie and Dem knew that ; so they determined to get up early every morning, and devote a few hours to study, after which they could have all the golden day to themselves, and be Mountain CrusoeS. 75 as free as the wind to do as they pleased. The plan answered admirably, because having done their work, they could enjoy the rest of the day with easy minds. Now, all about the mountain where the cave was, the rabbits ran in thousands. .Seldom or never did the keeper or any one else come to shoot them, because the ground was so stony that however many you might see at a time, no sooner was one shot fired than all the bunnies disappeared into their holes, as if by magic. Babbits were vermin here, and the keeper McGregor could have all he killed to sell or to give away. Yet McGregor much preferred not to trouble about them. But Poodah proved himself quite an adept at snare-work. So every other day Dem and Willie took to the keeper's house in the wood some rabbits. The keeper's little boy, Josh, brought back the skins, and he used to bring to the cave both milk and butter as well; so upon the whole the troglodytes were nob badly off. The rabbits' skins were cured, and lined with red flan- nel, and thus made very delightful rugs for the chairs and the sofa or dais. I don't think any boys were ever so truly happy before, as Dem and Willie were in their strange abode in the wilds. And Poodah was never tired ministering to their wants and comforts. Oh ! the delicious fries and stews and curries he used to prepare for their luncheon and supper ! 76 In the Dashing Days of Old. " It is delightful, isn't it, Dem, to catch one's own fish and have them cooked in one's own cave ? I would rather be a troglodyte than anything else; wouldn't you, Dem ? " " Yes," replied Dein. There is no doubt it was all very romantic, but a storm was brewing that they little thought of. CHAPTER VI. THE ATTACK ON THE CAVE, AND HOW IT ENDED. " On, aid me then to seek the pair, Alone I dare not venture there, Where walks, they say, the shrieking ghost." Scott. HE parish school of Glengair was one of the best on all the western coast of Scotland, and boys were sent from far and near to this Highland seat of learning. The pedagogue who ruled as king and priest therein, the rattan cane or leathern tawse being his sceptre was really clever, and his heart was in his work and with his boys. In these bygone times it was usual to conduct the services of the school in Gaelic although English had to be used when addressing the master on every day of the week except Friday. But Dominie Reed reversed the order of things, and with the exception of Saturdays, the whole week was devoted to study in the English language. The teacher did not consider that his duties were ended when school was over. No ; for almost every 77 78 In the Dashing Days of Old. evening all the year round, he visited the home of some boy. The parents were invariably glad to see him, es- pecially as he always brought his fiddle with him, on which instrument he was a most excellent performer; so that Dominie Reed's appearance at any house was always the signal for a dance in the barn, or even out on the green in summer evenings. But always before the old fiddle was taken out of the green baize bag, the Dominie had his tea with the old folks, a prayer having been previously offered up and a chapter in the Bible read. So it may well be conceived that this old-fashioned schoolmaster was a favourite. As before hinted, how- ever, he was a most strict disciplinarian. And Dominie Reed was like Goldsmith's curate, surpassing rich not on forty, but on thirty pounds a year. To be sure he had his firing free, and house-rent was paid for him. The firing was thus procured : every day one half of the schoolboys had to bring each a nice dry peat in his hand. And sure enough, if any one forgot his duty in this respect, he was likely to be reminded of it in modo flagellante, a method of improving the memory which was exceedingly common in Scottish schools of the olden times, when, if a boy escaped a caning on any one day, he was very much astonished indeed, and quite sure in his own mind that the teacher would make up for it on the next by administering to him a double dose. One good custom in those days still kept up in many- country schools was that of making the Book of books a subject for everyday study; the Psalms, and many The Attack on the Cave, and How it Ended, 79 chapters of the New Testament having to be got by heart and repeated on the Saturdays. The duties of the day were always ushered in by prayer, and closed in the same way. With all this much-to-be-admired religious feeling, there were practices customary at those schools which we cannot now-a-days read of without a feeling akin to horror. It is only because I desire to tell the truth and hide nothing, that I mention one of these, namely, cock-fighting. On a certain day the first of the year usually nearly every boy was supposed to bring a cock to school with him, and that day the inhuman sport commenced. The slain birds and the beaten and cowed birds all belonged to the teacher, while the cock that was declared victorious was taken home by his owner, the owner himself being dubbed king of the school for a year to come. We must not, however, think too hardly of the teach- ers and pupils, of those schools of long ago, for remember, that in the matter of cruelty to animals, people err for "... want of thought, As well as want of heart." Let us rather be thankful the times have changed, and that we no longer regard our pet animals, whether biid or beast, as creatures to be tormented or even made fun of, but as creations of that great Being who, even in the beginning of the world, looked upon His work and saw that it was good. 80 In the Dashing Days of Old. Now at this same school of Glengair, I arn not going to aver that there were not bad boys as well as good. There always have been the good and the bad at schools, just as there is in that great school called the world, which every one has to enter when the days of his pupilage are over, and he would be a false chronicler or historian who should describe the good only, and leave the bad alone, or to be inferred. Archie Clark and Tom Sinclair, then, were the two most daring and mischievous boys in all the parish, school, though strange to say there were in the inmost hearts of these lads a kernel of virtue which I sincerely hope, for their own sakes, was more fully developed in after-life. But for all that I am bound to say, that you might have searched all the parish, and not have found another pair to match them in mischief. I have given the names by which they were entered on the school register, and by which the teacher and pupil-teachers always designated them. But their schoolmates had manufactured other and shorter names for these lads, with which, whether they liked them or not, they were obliged to be content; Archie came, or had originally come, from the far-off town of Peterhead, celebrated not only for its herring boats and its fleet of splendid ships, that year after year leave the port to try conclusions with seals, whales, and Arctic bears in the stormy regions around the Pole, but for a species of very hard, reddish stone, beautifully ticked and flecked, and capable of takin- the finest The Attack on the Cave, and How it Ended. 81 polish imaginable. The stone is known all over the world as Peterhead granite. "Well, Archie Clark had hair of a fiery red, his face was also red, and like the stone of his native town, well ticked and flecked. No wonder then that the other boys called him " Granite." His head was like granite in another way, it was dreadfully hard; but there the similitude ended, for Archie's head was not capable of taking the finest polish. Clever in a good many ways, you might have called Archie, but polished no ! Hard ? Yes, indeed, that head of his was hard. His schoolmates, or rather the very few among them who were bold enough to try fisticuffs with Granite, hurt their knuckles on his head, and made no impression on it either. You might as well have tried to box with the village pump. Granite had a method of fighting that was peculiarly his own. He used to run in against his antagonist with his head down, and his arms whirling round on each side like two flails. Few boys could stand such an onslaught. Even if they hit him from under, it did not stay the charge, though it might bleed his nose. Granite cared nothing for a bleeding nose. His nose was as often bleeding as not, and he seldom wanted a black eye. I think he preferred it. He was a naughty boy; but a plucky one for all that. He was caned every day of his life, and sometimes twice, but he was never known to cry. F 82 In the Dashing Days of Old. Granite was guilty of about half the mischief that was done within the school walls and within a radius of half a mile around it; and Tom Sinclair was guilty of the other half. There is no mistake about that, for even the tricks they did not play themselves, they incited or led on other boys to perform. Tom Sinclair and Archie were always together. Tom was a "long" boy. I use the adjective "long" in pre- ference to " tall/' because, .^ojn. spent nearly as much of his existence on all fours as-; erect. This earned for him the name of Foumart.* During school hours you might very often miss Tom out of his place, and look around in vain for him. Tom would be down under somewhere. Possibly he might be merely lying asleep under a desk, but more likely he would be creeping around among the legs of the other lads, pinching calves, sticking pins in ankles, spilling ink, sketching the schoolmaster, or carry- ing on a conversation with some boy nearly as bad as himself, relative to mischief to be transacted after school hours. I don't tliiuk that either Granite or Foumart shed any tears of regret when they found that the school was to be closed for months. To their way of thinking, indeed, it was a piece of unheard-of luck; for would they not Lave all the long, glorious days of summer before them, to roam through the country, to bird-nest, to fish, to climb trees, to dig for rabbits, for foumarts and whitte- * Scottice, foumart = polecat. The Attack on the Cave, and How it Ended. 83 rits,* and to enjoy life in their own wild way, free and unfettered! To be sure they would not have so many companions ; but they knew where several boys of their own stamp lived, and if they wanted assistance, they could always make certain of it. Granite and Foumart lived in the same small village or " clachan," and of course they met every day. " Oh, I say, Grannie ! " cried Foumart, one morning, "I've such news for you. Such rare news ! " " Go on, tell us/' " Well, young Grautie and that Indian boy have made a house of some kind near the top of Carrick Hill." " They wouldn't dare, they'd be afraid. There's the boddack, you know." "Yes, I know; but I saw them go up, both of them, with books in their hands, and I followed them and watched them, and saw the smoke. Oh, they've got a regular nice place, I feel quite sure." "Well," said Granite, " what right have they up there any more than we ? I don't like that Indian chap, you mind he drew his dirk at me ? and I never liked Grant. Ilurrah ! we'll rouse them out. I feel all over full of fighting." " So do I," said Foumart. " I can guide you to the place. But we better make sure, we'll get Bob and Benjie and Webster to go with us>" * Whitterits - weasels. 84 In the Dashing Days of Old. The boys named were like themselves, Bedouins. The five lads met at the riverside that very evening, and held a council of war, at which it was determined to storm the cave, to thrash Dem and Willie, and occupy their house. Benjie was the smallest, and he was sent up the hill to reconnoitre. He got near enough, the cave, without being discovered, to see the smoke curling up through the bushes, and to hear the sounds of talking and laugh- ing in the cave itself; but he could see no doorway. Benjie returned, and duly gave in his report to Granite, and next day, about noon, was appointed as the time for the attack. " For," said Granite, " about that time they will very likely be having something to eat. Don't I wish it were to-morrow, just." Then they went away along the shore, and eacli cut for himself a stout hickory stick, and filled his pockets with small round stones, "I wonder what mischief they can be after now," said wee Josh, the keeper's boy. "I expect somebody's going to catch it, else they wouldn't be cutting those sticks and gathering stones. I'll creep a little nearer and hear what they say." Josh was a strange little fellow ; perhaps no one has ever seen before or since so perfect a little waif of the wilds. He was very tiny, never wore a cap, his yellowish sun-bleached hair was all the protection his head re- quired. He had a face like a ferret's, clothes the colour The Attack on the Cave, and How it Ended. 85 of the dun earth he was always creeping in, and bare legs and feet, usually torn and bleeding with thorns. He was small enough to get into a rabbit's burrow ; or if he could not quite get in, he enlarged the hole with a long-shafted little mole-spade he seldom went without. The conspirators did not perceive Josh, or it might have been bad for him. Now Josh dearly loved Dein and Willie, in his own way, and no sooner had he found out what was going to happen, than he sought them out in the cave and told them all about it. Cl Forewarned is forearmed/' said Willie. Dem's eyes shot fire. " The scoundrels ! " he said,