“Yes, I’ll come back in a few months, and you will meet me, oh! so joyfully. Then we’ll roam and rove and run in the beautiful forest once more, and fish by the river, and shoot on the moorland and hill. Goodbye, Eily. Be good, and watch. Good-bye, goodbye.”
A great tear fell on Eily’s mane as he bent down and kissed her brow.
Eily stood there by the gate in the starlight, watching the dark retreating figure of her beloved young master, until a distant corner hid him from view, and she could see him no more.
Then she threw herself down on the snow; and, reader, if you could have heard the big, sobbing sigh she gave, you would believe with me, that the mind of a dog is sometimes almost human, and their griefs and sorrows very real.
Hastily brushing the tears from his eyes, Harry made the best of his way along the road, not daring to look behind him, lest his feelings should overcome him.
He kept repeating to himself the words he had heard his uncle make use of the evening before. This kept his courage up. When he had gone about a mile he left the main road and turned into a field. A little winding church-path soon brought him to a wooded hollow, where there was a very tiny cottage and garden.
He opened the gate and entered.
He went straight to the right-hand window, and, wetting his forefinger, rubbed it up and down on the pane.
The noise it made was enough to awaken some one inside, for presently there was a cough, and a voice said —
“Who’s there?”
“It is I, Andrew: rise, I want to speak to you.”
“Man! is it you, Harry? I’ll be out in a jiffy.”
And sure enough a light was struck and a candle lit. Harry could see poor faithful Andrew hurrying on his clothes, and in two minutes more he had opened the door and admitted his young friend.
“Man! Harry,” he said, “you scared me. You are early on the road. Have ye traps set in the forest? D’ye want me to go wi’ ye?”
“No such luck, Andrew,” replied the boy. “I’ve no traps set. I won’t see the forest for many a long day again.”
“Haud your tongue, man!” cried Andrew, looking very serious and pretending to be angry. “Haud your tongue. Are ye takin’ leave o’ your reason? What have ye in that bag? Why are ye no dressed in the kilt, but in your Sunday braws?”
Then Harry told him all – told him of the determination he had for many a day to go to sea, and of the conversation he had overheard on the previous evening.
Andrew used all the arguments he could think of or muster to dissuade him from his purpose, and enlarged upon the many dangers to be encountered on the stormy main, as he called it, but all to no purpose.
“Mind ye,” said Andrew, “I’ve been to sea myself, and know something about it.”
Honest, innocent Andrew, all the experience he had of the stormy main was what he had gained in a six hours’ voyage betwixt Granton and Aberdeen.
But when Andrew found that nothing which he could adduce made the slightest impression on his young friend, he pulled out his snuff-horn, took two enormously large pinches, and sat down in silence to look at Harry.
The boy pulled out a letter from his breast-pocket.
“This is for my dear mother,” he said. “Give it to her to-day. Tell her how sorry I was to go away. Tell her – tell her – .”
Here the boy fairly broke down, and sobbed as if his heart would break.
My hero crying? Yes, I do not feel shame for him either. The soldier or sailor, ere journeying far away to foreign lands, is none the less brave if he does pause on the brow of the hill, and, looking back to his little cottage in the glen, drop a tear.
Do you remember the words of the beautiful song —
“Mid pleasures and palaces tho’ we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met elsewhere.
“An exile from home, splendour dazzles in vain,
Oh! give me my lowly thatched cottage again!
The birds singing gaily that came at my call,
And give me the peace of mind dearer than all?”
Andrew, when he saw Harry crying, felt very much inclined to join him. There was a big lump in his throat that he could hardly gulp down. But then Andrew was a bit simple.
Harry jumped up presently and took two or three strides up and down the floor of the little room, and so mastered his grief.
“It won’t be for such a very long time, you know, Andrew,” he said.
“No,” said Andrew, brightening up. “And I’ll look after your garden, Harry.”
“Thank you, Andrew, and the turning lathe and the tools?”
“I’ll see to them. You’ll find them all as bright as new pins on your return.”
“And my pets, Andrew?”
“Yes.”
“Well, look after those too. Sell them all as soon as you can – rats, mice, guinea-pigs, and pigeons, and all.”
“Yes.”
“And, Andrew, keep the money you get for them to buy snuff.”
“Good-bye, Andrew.”
“Good-bye. Mind you take care of yourself.”
“I’ll do that for my mother’s sake.”
Andrew pressed Harry’s soft hand between his two horny palms for just a moment.
“God bless you, Harry!” he muttered.
He could not trust himself to say more, his heart was too full.
Then away went Harry, grasping his stick in his hand and trudging on manfully over the hills, with his face to the east.
By and by the sun rose, and with it rose Harry’s spirits. He thought no more of the past. That was gone. He felt a man now; he felt he had a future before him, and on this alone he permitted his thoughts to rest.
Now I do not mean to vindicate that which my hero has done – quite the reverse. Obedience to the wishes of his parents is a boy’s first duty.
Still, I cannot help thinking that my young hero had a bold heart in his breast.
See him now, with the sun glinting down on his ruddy face, on which is a smile, and on his stalwart figure; he is more like a boy of fifteen than a child under twelve. How firm his tread on the crisp and dazzling snow, how square his shoulders, how springy and lithe his gait and movement! No, I’m not ashamed of my hero. Hear him. He is singing —
“There is many a man of the Cameron clan
That has followed his chief to the field,
And sworn to support him or die by his side,
For a Cameron never can yield.
“The moon has arisen, it shines on that path,
Now trod by the gallant and true —
High, high are their hopes, for their chieftain has said,
That whatever men dare they can do.
I hear the pibroch, sounding, sounding,
Deep o’er the mountains and glens,
While light-springing footsteps are trampling the heath —
’Tis the march of the