Chapter VI (2)

There was nobody to answer. The servants were all at a loss,--Boy and Alister were out in the grounds, so it was said,--no one had touched the gun,--it must have gone off by itself.

“D----d nonsense!” roared the Major, forgetting the presence of Miss Leslie, who stood looking at the broken window in perplexity,--“I put the gun up in a safe corner out of harm’s way. If it had gone off by itself the charge would have lodged in the ceiling, not through the window. I am not such an ass as not to see that! Some one has been playing pranks with it! Where’s Boy?”

“Oh, Boy wouldn’t touch it,” protested Miss Letty, “I’m sure he wouldn’t!”

“Well, where is he?” persisted the Major: “he may know something about it!” and marching outside the door he called, “Boy!” in a voice strong enough to awaken all the fabled sleeping giants of the hills.

Boy answered the call with quite an amazing promptitude.

“Yes, Major!”

The Major stared.

“Where did you come from so suddenly?” he demanded. “You young rascal! You have been meddling with my gun!”

“I’m sure I haven’t!” replied Boy coolly.

“Then who has?”

“How can I tell?” said Boy, with airy indifference.

“Boy!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Look at me straight!”

Boy obeyed. The clear eyes met the Major’s stare without flinching.

“You swear on your honour--now, sir, remember! I am a soldier, and ‘on your honour’ is a very serious thing to say--swear on your honour that you never touched that gun!”

Boy hesitated--just a second’s pause. And suddenly a high piping voice called out,--

“Own up, Boy! Own up! Don’t be caddish!”

Boy flushed crimson to the roots of his fair curls, and cast down his eyes. He had no occasion to speak. The Major’s face grew grave and stern.

“You may go, sir!”

“Oh, Boy!”

The cry came from Miss Letty, and Boy tried to shuffle past without looking at her, but she caught him by the arm.

“Boy,” she said, her sweet voice shaking with suppressed excitement, “how could you tell a lie?”

He stopped--uneasily shifting one foot against the other, and keeping his eyes cast down. She stretched out her soft, kind little hand.

“Come with me,” she continued. “Come and talk to me alone, and tell me why you were so wicked, and then we will go and ask the Major’s pardon.”

She looked at him steadily. And her sweet face, and tender eyes full of tears, were more than the child’s unnatural stoicism could bear. His little chest heaved--his lips quivered.

“I---- I----” and he got no further, but broke down in a wild fit of sobbing. Miss Letty put her arm round him, and gently led him away. The Major, who had stood grim and rigid in the hall, watched her go, and coughed fiercely, unaware that the ubiquitous Alister McDonald was standing on the threshold of the hall where the little scene had taken place, and was watching him inquisitively, with his little hands in his little trouser pockets as usual.

“Hullo, Major!” said this imp: “Don’t _you_ cry!”

“Eh--what? Cry! Me! God bless my soul! Go to---- the North Pole with you!” snapped out the Major irascibly. “What business have you here, sir, staring at me?”

“Oh, come now, I say,” returned the unabashed Alister. “Don’t be raspy! I suppose I can look at you as well as anybody else, can’t I? I like looking at you!”

The Major gave a short laugh.

“Oh, you do, do you!” he returned. “Much obliged to you, I’m sure!”

He coughed again, laughed, chuckled--and then settled his features into gravity.

“Now, look here, you scamp,” he said, resting his big hand on Alister’s small shoulder: “How did it happen?”

“Well, we were playing soldiers,” explained Alister, “and I was the Britisher, and he was the Britisher’s enemy. He was half starved, and he had to get behind an entrenchment. The entrenchment was the hall, and he was in a terrible way, because you see he had no water, no food, and he was run down with fever and ague. You see, I was the well-fed Britisher, and I had everybody looking after me, and all the world watching what I was going to do,--and I had prayers put up for me in all the churches, and he was only a savage and a brother. But he said, ‘I have got a way to surprise you,’ said he, and he turned a somersault, and he said, ‘Yah!’ as savages do, you know,--and he ran behind his entrenchment (the hall door), and just without thinking took up the gun and fired it through the window. I was lying low, waiting attack, and I was nearly killed--not quite--and then he was frightened, and ran out, and he said, ‘We’ll be brothers,’ and we hid in ambush, and then you called----”

“Yes, that’s all very well!” said the Major, suppressing his strong desire to grin at this account of warfare; “But why did he tell a lie?”

“Oh, I suppose because he was the enemy!” replied Alister calmly. “You see, in the camp he had nobody watching him, and no churches to pray for him,--he was only a savage! I expect that’s what it was!”

The Major looked reflective.

“Well, now you had better go away home,” he said. “There’ll be no more fighting or games between Christian brotherhoods to-day. Boy will have to be punished.”

Alister’s small face became exceedingly serious.

“I say, don’t be hard on him!” he said, expostulatingly. “He’s such a little chap!”

The Major preserved his solemnity.

“He’s only two years younger than you are--quite old enough to know how to tell the truth!”

“Has he got a mother?” asked Alister.

“Yes.”

“Well, you see, she isn’t here, and he can’t go and ask her about it, so perhaps he got a bit muddled like. I hope you will let him down easy!”

The Major bit his lips under his fuzzy white moustache, to hide the smile that threatened to break into a roar of laughter, as the young gentleman, after giving expression to these sentiments, sauntered off somewhat dejectedly; and then, turning into the house, put away the gun that had been the cause of all the mischief, and went round to the stables to devise some means of stuffing up the broken window in the hall for the night. And his thoughts were touched with sorrow as well as pity.

“Unfortunate little chap!” he muttered. “Once let him take to lying, and he is done for. All the Lettys in the world could not save him. I wonder now how the devil he came to begin it? It is not his first lie--he did it too well, and looked too cool for it. I should like to know how he began!”

And this was just what Miss Letty was finding out, bit by bit, as she sat in her own quiet room with Boy on her knee clasped in her arms, and talking to him gently. She heard all about his life on the sea-shore, and the little scavengers he met there who had taught him how clever it was to “do” people, and to cheat, and generally mislead and deceive the simple and unsuspecting,--and as she listened to the strange moral axioms he had picked up, and gradually gathered from him as he talked some idea of the lonely life he led, uncared for and untaught, save in the most superficial and slipshod fashion, her heart warmed to him more and more with an almost painful tenderness, and when with a short sigh he paused in his disjointed narrative, the tears were heavy in her eyes. She set him gently down from her knee and kissed him.

“We’ll say no more about it, Boy,” she whispered. “Run to the Major and tell him you are very sorry, and that you will never tell a lie again.”

Boy hesitated a moment. Then, impulsively throwing his arms round her neck and kissing her, he ran quickly away. He found the Major in the billiardroom reading his newspaper and smoking, and went straight up to him,

“I’m very sorry, sir,” he faltered.

Major Desmond laid down his paper and looked at him full in the face, with the straight steel-blue eyes that had in them as much command as tenderness.

“Sorry for what?” he demanded,--“For touching the gun, or for telling a lie?”

Boy’s heart swelled, and his eyes were misty and aching.

“For both, sir,” he said.

The Major held out his hand, and Boy laid his own little trembling hot fingers in that cool clean palm.

“That’s right!” said Desmond: “Disobedience is bad, but a lie is worse,--don’t do either! Is that agreed?”

“Yes, sir!”

Boy answered bravely enough, but his spirit sank as he thought that if he never disobeyed, his obedience, instead of a virtue, would oblige him to do the most foolish and unnecessary things under his mother’s orders,--and if he never told a lie, his hours of freedom and play would be considerably if not altogether curtailed, and he would be made the poor little peg on which his parents would hang their many quarrels and discussions. The Major noticed the touch of hesitation in his answer as well as in his manner, and did not like it. But he repressed his own forebodings, and smiled cheerily down upon the small forlorn lad in whom lay the budding promise of a man who might, or might not, be fit for good fighting in the combat of life.

“When you are bigger and stronger I’ll show you how to handle a gun,” he said,--“At present you are too small a chap. You would blow yourself into bits as easily as you blew out the hall window. Now come along with me and I’ll show you the birds we got to-day.”

He strode out into the grounds, and Boy followed him with an odd mixture of feeling. Sorrow and shame, united to wonder and scorn, put him into a mental condition not easy to explain. To his childish mind it seemed difficult to understand why Major Desmond and Miss Letty should be such straight, honest, sober folk, and his own father and mother such shiftless, indifferent, careless people.

“They don’t seem to see that a boy can’t do just as well with a father who doesn’t care about him, as he could with a father who does!” he mused. “I suppose I’m bound to be a lonely boy!”

And he trotted on in silence beside the Major, and looked at the beautiful shot grouse and blackcock, and was very attentive and docile and respectful, and the Major felt a twinge of pain in his good heart as he realized that Boy had plenty of material in him for the making of worthy manhood, material which was being thrown away for want of proper management and training. He confided his feelings on this subject to Miss Leslie that night, in the company of a brother officer, some years younger than himself, who had few joys left in life save the love of sport and a good game of chess or billiards. Captain Fitzgerald Crosby--or “Fitz” as he was generally called--was a fine, upright personage, with a most alarmingly grim and rigid cast of countenance which rather repelled timid people on first introduction. He was “a cross-looking old boor” with all the ladies until he smiled. Then such a radiance played in his quiet grey eyes, and such a kindness softened the lines of his mouth and smoothed away the furrows of his brows, that he was voted a “darling” instantly. On this occasion, when Major Desmond started off expatiating on the waste of Boy’s life, and Miss Letty paused in her knitting, listening to his remarks with sorrowful attention, Fitz looked particularly glum handling his billiard cue thoughtfully, and staring at its point as though it were a magic wand to conjure with.

“There’s a good deal of waste everywhere, it seems to me,” he said slowly. “The scientific fellows tell us that nothing is wasted in the way of matter,--every grain of dust and every drop of dew has got its own special business, and is of special use; but upon my word, when you come to think of the finer things--love and hope and goodness and charity and all the rest of it, it seems nothing but waste all along. There’s a great waste of love especially!”

The Major coughed, and hit a ball viciously.

“Yes, there’s a great waste of love,” went on the unheeding and still gloomily frowning Fitz. “We set our hearts on a thing, and it’s immediately taken from us,--we work all our days for a promising son or a favourite daughter, and they frequently turn out more ungrateful than the very dogs we feed--and as Byron says, ‘Alas, our young affections run to waste and water but the desert!’ Byron was the only poet who ever lived, in my opinion!”

Major Desmond gave a short laugh.

“Upon my word, Fitz, you’re a regular old croaker this evening, aren’t you? You’re making our hostess quite miserable!”

“Oh no,” said Miss Letty, brightly, for with her usual sweetness she never thought of her own “wasted young affections” at all, but only of the disappointments of her friends, and she knew that Fitz had suffered. “I feel with Captain Crosby, that some things are very hard for us to understand. But I think myself that just as no drop of dew or grain of dust is wasted, so no kind action or true love is wasted either. It may seem so,--but it is not. And let us hope poor Boy will be all right. But he certainly ought to be sent to school. I think”--here she paused and looked up smiling--“I think I shall have another try.”

The Major paused in his game, while his friend Fitz glowered sullenly at the balls.

“You will, Letty? You mean you will try to give the little chap another chance of proper education?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Miss Letty, bending over her knitting, while her needles clicked cheerily in her small, pretty hands. “I will write very earnestly to both Captain and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, and make a perfectly plain, practical, business proposal to them. If they refuse it, well, I shall have relieved my feelings by asking.”

A sudden radiance seemed to illuminate the billiard-table, but it was only Fitz smiling across it.

“Just like you, Miss Letty,” he said. “Whenever there is something good to be done you are the one to do it!”

Miss Letty shook her head deprecatingly and went on with her knitting for a while,--then presently she retired to bed after sending in whiskies and sodas to the two gentlemen to refresh themselves while finishing their game. Fitz had turned crusty again, apparently. Jerking his head backward towards the door through which Miss Letty had disappeared after saying her gentle good-night, he demanded,

“Why didn’t you marry her?”

“Because she wouldn’t have me,” replied the Major promptly.

“Why wouldn’t she have you?”

“Because she is keeping faith with a dead rascal. Expects to meet him somewhere in heaven by-and-by! Lord, if ever a liar and scamp deserves to wear a crown of gold and sing ‘Hallelujah,’ then Harry Raikes is a real live angel and no mistake!”

“Upon my word!” said Fitz slowly, “I think it’s liars and scoundrels generally who consider that they’re the very people fitted for gold crowns in heaven. Now _I_ don’t expect a gold crown. I don’t consider myself worth an angel’s feather, let alone a pair of angel’s wings. But I have a pious uncle--old as Methuselah--who goes to church three times a day and slangs all his neighbours who don’t--and will you believe me, he has an idea that God is thoroughly well pleased with him for that. What a blasphemous old beggar it is!”

He laughed, and in his enjoyment allowed the Major to win the game at billiards. Then putting up his cue he mixed a mild glass of whisky and water and drank it off.

“I’ll go to bed now, Dick,” he said; “I don’t stay up as late as I used to!”

“We’re getting on, Fitz, that’s why,” replied Desmond. “We’re getting on, that’s what it is.”

“Yes, that’s what it is,” returned Fitz cheerily. “But I really don’t mind. Getting on means getting out--getting out of this world into a better. Good night, old chap!”

“Good night!”

And the two worthy fellows went to their respective rooms and slept the sleep of the just. But there were two other people in the house who could not sleep at all that night--these were Miss Letty and Boy. Miss Letty was grieving for Boy, and Boy was grieving for himself. What was she to do about Boy? Miss Leslie thought. What was he to do about himself? Boy thought. Miss Letty felt that if she could only get Boy away from his home surroundings, and place him at a good English preparatory school, she would perhaps be the saving of him. Boy felt that if he could only run away somewhere on one of those ambitious expeditions which Alister McDonald was always telling him about, he might, to put it grandly, make a career. But the world was broad and wide, and he was very small and young. Difficulties bristled in his path, and he had not the heart nor the strength to face them even in thought. The spark of an aspiring intelligence was within him, but the influences were all against its kindling up into a useful or brilliant flame.

The next day saw him again at play with Alister, and the two boys went out on Loch Katrine together in a boat to fish for trout. They were not very skilled fishermen, and there was a good deal more splashing about with the line, and patting the water with the oars than anything else. They stayed wobbling about on the friendly lake till sunset,--and then as they saw the majestic king of the sky descend into the west, glorious in panoply of gold and crimson, with fleecy white clouds rolling themselves into a great canopy for his head, and a wide stretch of crimson spreading beneath him like a carpet for his march downward, both the children were suddenly overcome by a sense of awe, and watched the brilliant colours of the heavens, and the purple shadows of the mountains reflected on the water, in silence for many minutes.

“I say, Boy, what are you going to be?” asked Alister, after a long pause.

Boy answered with truth, “I don’t know.”

“I’m going to be a soldier,” said Alister. “It’s a fine thing to be a soldier. Though father says a soldier can’t get a drink if he wants to, unless he takes off his uniform first. Isn’t that battish? But whenever we have another war we’re going to keep our uniforms on and drink in them whenever we want to.”

“And will you go and fight?” asked Boy wistfully.

“Rather! Let me hear any one abusing England, and I’ll run them straight through with my sword in no time!”

“Will you--really?” And Boy looked respectfully at Alister’s round face, already seeing the martial hero in the saucy physiognomy of his friend,--the sparkling eyes, the defiant little nose, and the chubby dimpled chin.

“When you’re a soldier, you’re a defender of the country,” went on Alister, “and the Queen says, ‘Thank you very much, I hope you’ll do your duty!’ And you get medals and things, and the Victoria Cross. That’s what’s called a V.C. I know a man who’s got that, and he’s just as proud as Punch. He’s one of father’s friends. But he’s awfully poor--awfully. And he’s got rheumatism through having slept out several nights on a field of battle--and he’s all cramped and funny, with twisted legs and crooked fingers, but he’s just as proud as Punch of his V.C.”

Boy tried to grasp the picture of a gentleman who was “all cramped and funny, with twisted legs and crooked fingers,” who was “just as proud as Punch.” But he could not do it. And Alister putting up his oars said, “Let’s have some music!” and forthwith drew out a concertina from the bottom of the boat and discoursed thereon a wailful ear-piercing melody. Boy had heard him play this distressing instrument before, but never quite so dolefully. The melancholy snoring sounds emanating from between Alister’s fat fingers seemed to cast a gloom over the landscape--to make the mountains around them look darker and more eerie--to give a melodramatic effect to the sinking sun, and to suggest the possibility of bogies and kelpies trooping down on the Silver Strand to perform a fantastic dance thereon. Alister thought his own playing quite beautiful; Boy considered it lovely too, but dreadful. When he could bear it no more he ventured to disturb the performance.

“I say, Alister!”

Alister’s eyes had closed in a dumb ecstacy over a particularly prolonged and dismal chord, but he opened them quickly and stopped playing.

“What?”

“How do you start being a soldier?”

“You go to school first--preparatory,” said Alister, putting away the concertina, much to Boy’s relief. “I’m there now. Then you go to a regular public military training school, and you learn heaps and heaps of things,--then you are measured and weighed, and your chest is thumped and your teeth looked to, then if that’s all right, you perhaps go to Sandhurst, and then you pass all sorts of stiff exams. In fact,” said Alister, warming with his subject, “you learn _everything_! There’s _nothing_ that you’re not expected to know. Think of that! And you must keep your teeth all right, and your chest sound, and you must grow to a certain height. Oh, there’s lots to do all round, I can tell you!”

“I see!”

Boy’s heart sank, but he determined to ask to be sent to school directly he went home again. He would not, if he could help it, remain under the tuition of Rattling Jack.

“Aren’t you going to school?” queried Alister.

“I hope so.”

“Come to mine,” said Alister. “It’s awfully jolly,--we play cricket and football and hockey, and we have supper-fights and no end of larks. Ask your father to send you to mine. I’ll give you the address when we get home.”

“Thanks,” said Boy, with an attempt to look as if the going to Alister’s school would be the easiest thing in the world,--“I will see if I can come.”

Poor little lad! He had no more hope of being sent to Alister’s school than of being carried off in a fairy boat to the moon. But he thought a great deal about school that night when he had parted from his chum.

“I’ll tell mother I want to go to school,” he said to himself. “That can do no harm. If she won’t send me I’ll have to run away.”

Meanwhile Miss Leslie wrote long and very earnest letters to both Captain and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir. Once more she offered to make Boy her heir, on condition that she should be allowed to take care of him, and control his education. Her letters arrived at their destination when the “Honourable Jim” was snoring the hours away in a heavy drunken sleep, and naturally Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir read the one intended for her husband as well as the one addressed to herself. She smiled a fat smile as she consigned the one written to Jim (“Like her impudence!” she murmured to herself) to the convenient flames, and resolved to say nothing about it (“For the education of my son,” she said, “is my affair!”). She laid her large hand on her large breast with an approving and consolatory pat. To be a “mother” was a great thing.

“Silly old woman!” ejaculated Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, her stout bust heaving with matronly offence. “She has lost all her own matrimonial chances--she would insist on sticking to the memory of Harry Raikes--and there she is, of course, all alone in the world, and wants my boy to be a son to her. Poor dear child! A nice time he would have of it, a slave to an old maid’s fads and fancies!”

So she sat down and wrote the following letter. She had a shocking handwriting,--it sloped downwards and sideways all over a sheet of paper, in very much the way her mind sloped and went sideways likewise:--

“MY DEAR LETITIA,

I am sorry to see from the tone of your letter that you are still
feeling so lonely. Of course it is very hard for you to be all
alone at your age, and I am very sorry for you. But to part with my
son to you as you suggest is quite out of the question. A mother’s
claims are paramount! I am sure you would be very nice to him, and
the dear boy deserves everything that can possibly be done for his
advantage, but his mother must preside over his education. I am
sure that, though unmarried yourself, you will see the force of
this. If, however, you still decide to make him your heir, I am
sure he will be very worthy of it, and always remember you
affectionately after you are gone. We shall expect our son home
next week, and hope that Major Desmond will be able to escort him.

Yours very sincerely,

AMELIA D’ARCY-MUIR.”

This letter was the charter of Boy’s doom. Not all the stars in their courses would be able to alter his fate from henceforth. Miss Leslie cried quietly to herself in her room for nearly an hour,--then bathed her eyes, smoothed her hair, and attended to her household duties as placidly and sweetly as ever. She never spoke to Boy at all on the subject. To Major Desmond and his friend Fitz she said simply,--

“I wrote to Boy’s mother and father. But it is no use!”

“I thought not!” said the Major gruffly.

“Poor little chap!” said Fitz.

And by tacit consent they dropped the subject.

But one day before Boy went back to his loving parents, Miss Leslie took him out by himself for a walk with her through the beautiful Pass of Achray, and there sitting down by the dry and fragrant heather brilliant with bloom, she talked to him gently, holding his little grimy hand in her own.

“Boy,” she said, “if you ever want anything, will you write to me? You _can_ write now, can’t you?”

Boy nodded, looking a trifle pale and startled.

“Suppose,” went on Miss Leslie, feeling something like a wicked conspirator as she suggested it,--“Suppose you wanted to go to school and your father wouldn’t let you, do you think--do you think--you could run away to me?”

And the gentle lady’s soft cheeks crimsoned at the audacity of this proposal.

But Boy’s eyes glittered. This was like one of Alister’s adventures.

“Yes,” he replied breathlessly, “I’m sure I could!”

“Well, well--we will hope that won’t be necessary,” said Miss Leslie hastily. “You mustn’t of course _ever_ do such a thing unless you are quite driven to it. But if you _are_ in trouble of any sort write to me, and I will--I will meet you anywhere.” This with a hazy notion that if it were the North Pole she would somehow manage to be there.

Boy threw his arms round her neck and kissed her.

“Oh, you are good--good!,” he said: “I wish I were _your_ Boy!”

Miss Letty patted him with a trembling hand--but was silent.

The bees buzzed drowsily in the heather bells,--the blue sky was flecked with beautiful white clouds, and the lights and shadows changed the aspect of the mountains every few minutes. A little “burnie” chattered at their feet, gurgling over the stones and pebbles, and chuckling among the ferns and grasses, and over its silver ribbon-like streak two gorgeous dragon-flies chased each other, the sunlight flashing gold upon their iridescent wings.

“I wish I could stay with you altogether,” said Boy, taking off his cap and ruffling his pretty fair hair with his hands in a sort of nervous agitation--“I feel so happy with you! See how lovely it all is to-day!--God seems really good out here!”

“God _is_ really good always, darling,” said Miss Letty.

“Yes, I suppose He is--but where we are He doesn’t seem good a bit. The people are dirty and miserable and poor,--and even the sea looks cruel!”

“Poor Boy!” murmured Miss Letty to herself, quickly understanding the sense of loneliness and bitterness which sometimes overpowered the child’s mind. Aloud she said, as cheerily as she could,--

“That’s only fancy, Boy! Everything is good and beautiful in the world as God made it and intended it to be; it’s only the bad dispositions and wickednesses of men that make things seem difficult. But if you are good and straightforward everything will come right, and you will perhaps understand why you are sometimes a little bit sad and lonely now. I daresay it’s all for the best....” She paused, because in her own clear soul she could _not_ think it was quite for the best that the little fellow should have a drunken father and a sloven mother. “Promise me one thing, Boy,” she went on,--“Never tell a lie. Liars come to no good,--and when you go to school--for I expect you will go to school--you will find that all nice English boys are brought up to be frank and true, and to stand upon their honour. If a boy tells a lie to shield himself, he is looked upon as a coward by all his school-fellows. Remember that! No matter what scrapes you get into, tell the truth right out, without the least fear, and you may be sure you are doing well. Even if you get punished, a day’s punishment is much better than a lie on your conscience.”

Boy listened reverently.

“I’ll remember,” he said.

“That’s right!” And Miss Letty took him again in her arms and kissed him--“God bless you, dear! Try and grow up a good man! You will have a great many troubles and difficulties, I daresay--we all have; but go on trying--try always to be a good brave man!”

Boy returned her embrace with fervour, and promised. After this they went home, and the end of the week saw Boy back again in the remote fishing village with his mother only. His father had gone away on a yachting trip with a friend as fond of the bottle as himself, and some unkind people said what a good thing it would be if the yacht should go down quietly in the waves and make a speedy end of the two convivialists. Boy was personally rather glad of his father’s absence, as he thought it gave him a better chance to discuss things with his mother. For the first one or two days after his return he was very reticent,--he did not say much about his holiday in Scotland--but only mentioned his little friend Alister McDonald.

“Who _is_ he?” demanded Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir.

“Oh, he’s just Alister McDonald,” answered Boy.

“Don’t be stupid, Boy. I mean who is his father?”

“Does that matter?”

“Matter! Of course it matters. Family is everything. You must belong to a good family for you to be anybody.”

“Must you? Then how about Robert Burns?”

“Robert Burns?” Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir’s mouth opened in astonishment.

“Yes,” went on Boy dauntlessly,--“I heard all about him in Scotland. They’re always talking about him. Robert Burns was a ploughman--and he wrote such beautiful things that everybody, even now, though he is dead ever so long ago, wants to try and make out that they’re connected with him in some way or other. Is that what you mean by a good family?”

“No, I don’t--certainly not!”--snapped out his mother. “Robert Burns was a very disreputable person. People who write poetry usually are. I didn’t ask you who Robert Burns was. I asked you who your friend Alister’s father was.”

“Colonel McDonald,” answered Boy,--“of the Gordon Highlanders.”

Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir “looked up” his regiment at once, and found that Colonel McDonald was a very distinguished person indeed--quite good blood, in fact--really quite. Whereupon she graciously approved of Alister as Boy’s friend; and Boy, emboldened by this, said,--

“Couldn’t I go to school where Alister is, mother? I do want to go to school!”

Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir asked the name of the school, and when she heard it, pursed her lips together dubiously. It was a famous school, and an expensive one. It boasted of some of the finest teachers in England, whose services were not to be had for nothing.

“I’ll see about it,” she said grandiloquently,--“I’m not sure I should approve of that school. But of course you must go to school somewhere--and I’ll arrange it for you as soon as I can.”

Having put the idea into her head, Boy waited with tolerable equanimity. He would write, he thought, to Miss Letty when everything was settled. In the meantime his mother, in her own peculiar pig-headed way, set to work reading all the advertisements of cheap schools in all the papers, and hit upon one at last that particularly seemed to appeal to her,--one which provided knowledge with physical and moral training for life generally, at the humble cost of about twenty pounds--board and lodging were included--a year. That would do, she resolved. An exchange of letters between herself and the proprietor of this “first-class educational establishment” soon settled the matter--“for,” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, “there is no occasion to consult Jim. He is too sodden with whisky to know what he is about--he will have to pay the money,--and I shall have to get it out of him, and--and that’s all.”

And one morning she informed Boy of his approaching destination.

“I have managed a school for you, Boy,” she said. “I’m getting your clothes ready, and next week you are going to France.”

“France!” cried Boy, and his little heart sank almost into his little boots.

“Yes, France!” said his mother. “There’s a charming school at a place called Noirville in Brittany, and I have arranged for you to go there. You’ll learn to speak French, which is always a great advantage to a boy. Why, what are you crying about?”

Poor Boy! He tried hard to keep back his tears, but it was no use--and the more he fought against them, the faster they fell.

“Oh, mother, mother!” he said, at last giving way to his sobs, “I did want to be a real English boy!--a real, _real_ English boy!”

Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir’s little eyes almost shot out of her head in the extremity of her staring astonishment.

“What a ridiculous child you are!” she burst out at last. “How can you be anything else than a real English boy? Isn’t your father English? Am not I--your mother--English? And were you not born in England? Good gracious me! I never heard such nonsense in my life! Silly cry-baby! Do you think going to school in France will alter your birth and your nature?”

Boy choked back his sobs, and controlled his tears,--but not trusting himself to speak, he went straight out of his mother’s presence, and ran as hard as his little legs could carry him down to the sea-shore. There he sat, a forlorn little figure, on the sand close to the fringe of the sea, and tried to think. It was a difficult task, for he was too young to analyse his own emotions. His hazy idea that he could not possibly be ‘a real English boy’ if he went to school in France was purely instinctive--he knew nothing about foreign countries or foreign customs of education. But he was hopelessly, bitterly disappointed,--deplorably, cruelly cast down. He knew it would be no use appealing to his mother. And he did not know where his father was. Even if he had known, he could have done nothing with that estimable parent. It seemed very useless to try and do one’s best, he thought. Since he had come back from Scotland he had been so thoroughly determined to follow Miss Letty’s precepts--to attempt by small degrees the work of becoming ‘a good brave man,’ that he had avoided all the dirty little scavenger-boys of the place he had used to foregather with, and he had not even been to see Rattling Jack. He had remained nearly all day with his mother, doing the lessons she gave him to do, and obeying her in every trifling particular, and had been most gently docile and affectionate in his conduct. The silly woman, however, had taken all his loving attention as a proof that he had found Miss Leslie so ‘faddy,’ and her house in Scotland so dull, that he was glad and grateful to be at home again with ‘his own dear mother,’ as she herself put it. And now---- she was going to send him away to France! His wistful eyes scanned the ocean and the far blue line of the distant horizon,--there was a storm coming up from the north, and the first gusts of wind ruffled the waves and gave them white crests, over which three or four seagulls flew with doleful screams, and Boy’s heart grew heavier and heavier. Presently he got up from the sand, dusting his little clothes free from the sparkling grains.

“It’s no use,” he said hopelessly,--“it isn’t a bit of use! I shall never be anything--neither a soldier nor a sailor, nor anybody. But I’ll write to Miss Letty.”

He had begun to retrace his steps homeward, when he saw a figure coming along the stretches of sand,--a figure that stooped and shuffled, and carried a basket on its back. Boy recognized it as the visible form and composition of Rattling Jack, and went straight up to it.

“Hullo, Jack!” said he with a little smile.

The old gentleman turned his bent head round on one side.

“Who be ye?” he demanded. “My back is that stiff with rheumatiz, and my neck is that wincy that I can’t lift myself up anyhow!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said Boy, in his sweet little childish voice. “Couldn’t I carry your basket for you?”

Stiff in the back and “wincy” in the neck as he declared himself to be, Rattling Jack did manage to raise his stooping figure a little at this question, and to stare through fuzzy tangles of hair, eyebrow, and whisker at his small friend, whom he gradually recognized.

“Oh, it be ye, be it?” he grunted then, not unkindly. “Ye went to Scotland, didn’t ye, awhile sen?”

“Yes,” said Boy. “And--and--next week I’m going away again,--to school.”

“That’s right!” said Rattling Jack approvingly. “That’s the best thing for yer! There be nothin’ like a good English school for boys----”

“But it isn’t an English school!” said Boy. “I’m going to France----”

“Fra--ance!” roared the old seaman. “What d’ye know of France?”

“Nothing!” said Boy dispiritedly. “I shall be all alone out there,--and I don’t speak a word of French!”

Rattling Jack surveyed him for a few minutes in grim silence. The situation appeared to interest him, for he unslung his basket and set it down on the shore. Whatever the basket’s business, it was evident it could wait. Then partly straightening himself with an effort, he said slowly,--

“Who be sending ye to school in France?”

“My mother,” responded Boy.

“Poor little devil! May God help yer,” said Rattling Jack with hoarse solemnity; “for ye’ll come back never no more!”

“Oh yes; I shall come back for the holidays, I suppose,” said Boy practically.

“Stow that!” said Jack, with a sudden stentorian vigour which was quite alarming. “What’s ’olidays! Yes, ye’ll come back mebbe for ’olidays, but it won’t be you!”

“Won’t be me?” echoed Boy wonderingly. “It must be me!”

“It can’t be!” persisted Jack,--“France ain’t a turnin’-out establishment for Englishmen. Never a bit of it! Ye’ll go to France a poor decent little chap enough as yer seems to be, but ye’ll never come back _that_ way,--ye’ll come back a little mincin’, lyin’ rascal, parly-vooin’ like a hass, an’ hoppin’ like a frog! That’s what ye’ll be. Ye’ll be afraid of cold water, and skeered-like at the sight of yer own skin--and ye’ll never look any livin’ creetur in the face agin! And ye’ll be a dirty, mean, creepy-crawly little Frenchy--that’s what ye’ll be!”

“No, I won’t!” cried Boy, quite appalled at this vivid picture of himself _in futuro_. “Don’t say I will! I know you’ve travelled a lot, and that you’ve seen France----”

“Seen France!” And Rattling Jack snorted indignation at the air. “Rather! And seen Frenchmen too! And licked them into the bottom of their own shinin’ boots! Seen France! Yes!--it’s a great place for frogs--hoppin’ round, and all alive oh!

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?

Thank you marm, kindly, but frogs ’as eaten me out of ’ouse and ’ome an’ garden too! Hor--hor--hor!”

And Rattling Jack began to indulge in those deep, uncouth sounds which he produced as laughter. Always deeply impressed by his own wit, he liked to appreciate any joke he thought he had perpetrated to its full extent and flavour, and Boy waited patiently till his ‘hor--hor--hor’ decreased in volume and died away in a snuffle.

“Yes, I’m sure you’re quite right about France,” he then said timidly--“because you have been there. But you see, I can’t help it. I shall have to go there if my mother sends me!”

Rattling Jack laid a big hand on Boy’s small shoulder.

“Yes, I suppose you’ll hev to do as yer mother bids. I don’t know yer mother, and don’t want to. If I did, mebbe I’d give her a bit o’ my mind. What I thinks is this--that the ways of natur are best, and in the ways of natur mothers don’t interfere when they’ve done their nussin’. See!” And he stretched out an arm with a roughly eloquent gesture towards the ocean, where the seagulls screamed and flew--“They birds has to take the rough-and-tumble of the storm and the sea. Born and bred in a hole of the cliffs, they’ve got to larn to fly--and larn they do,--and when they flies, they flies their own way--they takes it and they keeps it! And so with all birds and animals ’cept man. Man’s the idiot of the universe, always a worritin’ of himself. He wants his chillun to be just like himself, and a mussiful Lord makes ’em as different as chalk from cheese. For which let’s be joyful! And when they wants to go their own way, man, the idiot, pulls ’em back, and says, ‘you shan’t!’ An’ then it’s more than likely old Nick steps in an’ says, ‘you shall!’ And away they go, straight to the devil! When I was a boy I took my own way--and wal!--here I am!”

“And do you like yourself now?” asked Boy respectfully.

“Like myself? Of course I like myself! I ain’t got no one else to like me, so why shouldn’t I like myself?”

“_I_ like you,” said Boy,--“I always have liked you! I think you so--so clever!”

Rattling Jack was not often shaken from the cynical attitude he chose to assume towards all mankind, but this innocent remark certainly touched him in a weak spot. He was not insensible to flattery,--and the evident fact that Boy did not intend to flatter, but spoke with the simple conviction of his own heart, moved the old seafarer to a sudden stirring of more fervent feeling than was customary with him.

“Ye’ve a good deal o’ sense for a little chap,” he observed condescendingly, “and I don’t mind sayin’ that I’ve rather took to ye. Now, look’y ’ere! If ye don’t want to go to school in France, why don’t you do as they seagulls do, and fly away?”

“Fly away!” repeated Boy,--“you mean, run away!”

“Fly or run, it’s all the same, bless yer ’eart!” said Jack. “Get out of yer little hole in the rock and spread yer wings to the sun and the breeze! Hain’t yer got any friends?”

“Yes, I’ve one very good friend,” said Boy, thinking of Miss Letty. “She’s a very kind lady, and I’m going to write to her. But you see if I ran away I should be brought back again--I’m not very old--I’m not quite ten yet.”

“Not quite ten, ain’t yer!” said Jack, suddenly becoming conscious of the extreme youth and helplessness of his small friend. “That ain’t much, for sartin! Wal!--look ’ere,--I’ll tell you what I’ll do for ye--I’ll give ye a tiger’s tooth!”

Boy stared.

“Will you?” he said. “What’s it for?”

“A tiger’s tooth,” said Jack solemnly, “takes the owner through the forests o’ difficulty. A tiger’s tooth protects him agin his enemies! Mark that! Take it with ye to France! A tiger’s tooth bites traitors! A tiger’s tooth! Lord love ye!--a’most anythin’ can be done with a tiger’s tooth! Look at it!”

He fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a shining white object of pointed ivory.

“That come from Bengal,” he said. “An’ ’e as give it to me was what they call a ma-geesan! He could swallow sarpints and fire quite promiskus-like,--seemed his nat’ral food. An’ ’e sed to me, ses ’e, ‘’Ere’s a tiger’s tooth for ye,--keep it in mem’ry of the world-famous Oriental conjurer Garoo-Garee!’ And then ’e guv a screech an’ was gone!”

Boy listened to this interesting narrative with awe. “What a wonderful man!” he said. “And his name was Garoo-Garee!”

“Just that!” answered Jack. “Will ye have the tooth?”

“Indeed I will!” said Boy gratefully, taking the mystic talisman out of Jack’s horny palm--“you’re awfully good to me! I’m ever so much obliged! And if I have to go to France, I will come and see you directly I get back.”

Rattling Jack shouldered his basket again slowly, and with difficulty.

“No, ye won’t!” he said dismally. “No, ye won’t think no more o’ me among they Frenchies. God bless my ’eart! An’ not yet ten ye ain’t! Wal, good-bye to ye! I’ll not be seein’ ye agin in this mortal world,--so I’ll just think o’ ye kindly, as a little chap wot’s dead!”

Boy’s heart sank, and his young blood seemed to grow cold.

“Oh, don’t do that, Jack!” he cried; “don’t do that!”

“I must,” said Jack with dreary gravity, looking a melancholy figure enough as he stood on the wet sand, with the gray storm-clouds scudding overhead, and the wind tossing his scanty white locks of hair. “For when a child is a child he’s one thing--and when he ain’t, he’s another. First there’s a baby--then there ain’t no baby, but a child,--and the baby’s gone. Then by-and-by there ain’t no child, but a boy--and the child’s gone. Then, afore ye can so much as look round, the boy’s gone, and there’s a man. Argyfyin’ my way, ye see baby, child, boy is all gone, which is to say, dead--for what’s bein’ dead but gone, and what’s bein’ gone but dead? And only the man is left, which is generally a poor piece of work. There’s wise folk writin’ in the newspapers wot calls it ever-lotion, but wot it is the lotion’s good for, God only knows. Anyhow I’ve seen a darned sight many more decent chillun than I have men. Which it proves that the chillun is dead. But my talk is too deep for ye--I kin see that! Ye poor little skinny white-faced chap,--ye can’t be expected to understan’ Feel Osophy.”

“No,” said Boy humbly, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. But I hope you’ll think of me just as if I were here,--you see you have given me the tiger’s tooth--and I shall never forget you!”

“M’appen the tooth will do somethin’ in the way of nippin’ the memory,” said Jack thoughtfully,--“mebbe so! Good-bye t’yer! There’s a cloud just a-goin’ to burst in the sky, and ye’ll be drenched to the skin afore ye knows where ye are!” and he turned up his quaint old physiognomy to the darkening heavens, from which already big drops of rain were beginning to fall. “Run ’ome, little ’un! Run ’ome! That mother o’ yourn ’ll be down on ye if ye wets yer clothes. Shake ’ands?” For Boy had timidly extended his small hand. “Sartinly!” And the old man grasped the tiny child fingers within his own rough dirty ones. “For it’s a long good-bye! Sartin sure of that I am! Don’t let ’em make a frog of ye out there in France, if ye can ’elp it. Good-bye! I’ll just think o’ ye as if ye were dead!”

The rain now began to fall in heavy earnest, and Boy could not stop to protest further against this obstinate final statement of his seafaring friend. He put the tiger’s tooth in his pocket, smiled, lifted his cap, and ran, a little light figure flying across the sand, some of his curls escaping loose and gleaming like the sunshine that was now lacking in the sky. Rattling Jack stood still and watched him go, heedless of the rain that began to drift in sweeping gusts round and round him. The sea uprose and lashed the flat shore with fringes of yellow foam, angrily murmuring and snarling like some savage beast of prey. But Jack heard nothing, or if he heard, he did not heed. Equally he saw nothing, but that small child figure racing through the rain over the glistening sand, till at the corner of an old jetty where the mists of the land and sea hung low like a curtain, it turned and disappeared.

“There ye go!” said the old man, talking to himself--“there ye go--away for ever! An’ the rain fallin’, and the mists a-gatherin’. There ye go! The way of all the chillun--a bit of sunshine, and then the mist and the rain! There ye go--and good-bye to ye! Ye wor a nice little chap--quiet, yet speerety-like--a nice little chap ye wor, an’ I’ll think o’ ye kindly, as if the good God had took ye,--just as if ye wor dead!”