“I haven’t the remotest idea, Harry, what it is all about, nor who or what Towsie Jock, as you call him, or it, is.”
“Oh, haven’t you, Guvie? Well, you shall see. Mind you it isn’t a hedgehog. Something, oh, ever so much bigger.”
As he spoke Harry slipped like an eel down from the tree. He accomplished this by sliding out to the tip of the branch, out and out till it bent with his light weight, and dropped him on the ground.
Harry went straight to the gate, the top bar of which he had previously, in one of his lonely rambles, taken the precaution to tie down. He looked now to see that the fastening was all secure, then commenced to shout.
“Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie! Towsie!”
Jock was at a distant corner of the field, his favourite corner, on high ground, where he could see the country for miles around. He was standing there chewing his cud and looking at the sky. Perhaps he was wondering what kind of a day it was to be to-morrow.
Suddenly he thrust one ear back to listen.
“Towsie! Towsie!” came the shout in shrill treble.
“It is that monkey again,” said Towsie, to himself. “If I can only pin one horn through him, I’ll carry him all round and round the field, at the gallop too.”
Miss Campbell, from the tree, first heard a dreadful bellowing roar, which ended in one continuous stream of hoarse explosions, as it were.
“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow,” and next moment, to her horror, she saw a gigantic horrid homed bull coming tearing towards the gate, his nose on the ground, and his tail like a corkscrew over his back.
“Harry, Harry!” she screamed. “Oh! fly, Harry, fly!”
“He can’t get over, Guvie,” cried Harry, coolly. “Let me introduce you, as papa says. That is Towsie Jock. Towsie! Towsie! Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock!”
“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”
On came the bull as mad as ever bull was.
Miss Campbell shouted again, and screamed with terror.
“Harry, come, oh, dear Harry, come up. For my sake then.”
“But he can’t get over, I tell you, Guvie.”
“But I’m fainting, Harry.”
“Oh, in that case I’ll come, Guvie. Papa says, ‘Always, whatever you do, Harry, be kind and polite to ladies.’ I’m coming, Guvie. Don’t fall till I get hold of you.”
And none too soon.
“Wow-ow —woa!”
Next moment the gate flew in splinters with the awful charge of that Highland bull.
Miss Campbell’s head swam, but she clutched the rash boy to her breast, and thanked God he was saved.
Meanwhile the bull was at the foot of the tree. He first commenced an attack upon it with head and horns; every time, he battered it he shook it to its uttermost twig and leaf. But Miss Campbell and Harry had a safe seat in a strong niche between two great branches, with another branch to sit on and one behind.
At every blow the bull reeled back again.
The governess was white and trembling.
Harry was as cool as a hero.
He looked down and enjoyed the performance.
“Isn’t he naughty and wicked!” he said.
“Won’t he have a headache in the morning, Guvie!”
While attacking and battering the tree, Towsie Jock was silent, only the noise of the “thuds” resounded through the forest.
“If I had a big turnip now,” said the boy, “to throw down, Towsie would eat it and go away, oh! so well pleased, and not naughty at all.”
Towsie soon saw that to knock down that sturdy old beech was impossible; he commenced, therefore, with angry bellowings to root round it with his feet.
But even of this he soon tired. He stood up, red-eyed and furious-looking, and sniffed and snorted.
“May I cry ‘Towsie’ again, Guvie?”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
“He can’t climb the tree, you know. He’ll go away presently, then we can get down and run, Guvie dear.”
But Towsie had evidently no such intentions. He stood there for quite half an hour, then he began to chew his cud again. That was a pacific sign, and Miss Campbell gave a sigh of relief.
Towsie Jock was a good general. He had tried and tried in vain to storm the citadel, that is, the tree; he had tried to batter it down, and he had tried to undermine it; now the only thing to do was simply to lay siege to it.
And this he did by quietly lying down.
Meanwhile, far away in the east, they could see, through the greenery of the branches, red or crimson streaky clouds, and they knew that gloaming was falling, and that gloaming would soon be followed by night.
The red clouds grew a lurid purple, then grey, then seemed to melt away, and only a gleam of light remained in the west. That also faded, and next a bright, bright star peeped in through the leaves at them, and all grew gloomy around.
Still the bull lay still.
Miss Campbell took a scarf from her neck and bound one of Harry’s arms tightly to a branch, lest he might sleep and slip from her grasp. For Harry had grown very silent.
“Harry, dear,” said Miss Campbell, “say your prayers.”
“Guvie,” replied the boy, “papa tells me I should bless my enemies; must I pray for Towsie Jock?”
“If you like, dear.”
Then Miss Campbell bethought her of a story, the funniest she could remember, and began it.
Harry laughed for a time. But he soon grew suddenly silent.
He was fast asleep!
Meanwhile more and more stars came out, cushat’s croodle and song of bird gave place to the deep mournful notes of the brown owl, and the gloaming deepened into night.
Book One – Chapter Three.
The Search for the Lost Ones – an Ugly Fight
Great was the anxiety at Beaufort Hall, as Harry’s home was called, when the shadows fell and the stars peeped out from the sky’s blue vault. Poor fragile Mrs Milvaine was almost distracted, but her husband took matters more easily, more philosophically let us call it.
“Don’t fidget, my darling,” he said, “they’ll turn up all right in a short time. Just you see now, and it won’t do the triflingest morsel of good to worry yourself. No, nor it won’t bring them a minute sooner.”
“They may have fallen into the river,” said Mrs Milvaine.
“Well, I don’t deny that people have fallen into rivers before now, but the probability is, they haven’t,” replied the farmer-laird. (A farmer who owns the acres he tills.)
“They may have lost themselves in the forest, and may wander in it till they die.”
“Nonsense, my love.”
“Harry may have climbed a tree, fallen down and been killed, and Miss Campbell may even now – ”
“Stop, stop, dear! what an imagination you have, to be sure?”
“They may both be gored to death by that fearful bull, their mangled bodies may – ”
Mr Milvaine put his fingers in his ears.
But when eleven