Chapter XIII

"A STRANGE, STRANGE STORY," SAID FRANK. "I WONDER
HOW IT WILL ALL END."

The loss of nets and boats had been a severe blow to the honest folks of Methlin.

Gladly would Eean have made good his neighbours' losses; but, alas! he was poor. Sitting in his cave one evening, however, composing a poem on the recent disaster for a well-known American magazine that knew the fisherman bard's worth, he was looking around him at his picture-hung walls.

"Why not," he thought, "dispose of a few of these, and head a subscription with the funds thus raised?"

It was an intention that did him infinite credit, for he dearly loved those strange scenes; they were in reality the painted history of his life.

"Well, go they must," he said. "It is in a good cause."

As he was placing five of them on his table he heard footsteps on the stone stairs, and immediately after the white-haired old doctor entered.

"Good morning, poet," he said. "Versifying, eh? Well, there is five yellow boys towards a subscription for boats and nets for your poor people. If I were rich I'd give you more. No, I won't have thanks. I'll run away if you begin. But what are you bundling up those quaint and curious pictures for? Ah! good Eean, I see it in those shy eyes of yours. Nay, nay, you cannot deceive a doctor. But I tell you what, you shan't make the sacrifice."

"I must, and will."

"You shan't. Look here, I know a trick worth two of that. Have an exhibition of all the lot in Edinburgh. There is a character about them, and when people know it is for a good cause they will flock to it.

"Do it, man, do it," added the doctor emphatically.

And Eean took his advice. The newspapers took the affair up, and in a month Eean had raised nearly £700.

Bonfires blazed on every hill on the night Eean, the bard, brought back his pictures, and a huge bonfire in the village square as well.

On the Sunday after, every man, woman, and child marched in a body to the parish church to return thanks to Heaven for all His mercies sent them, the old minister preaching a special sermon for the occasion.

Frank was there along with Fred, and so was little Toddie and Tip. Oh, yes, Tip went! He refused to stay at home.

But the most noticeable figure of all was Bunko in a bran-new scarlet coat and Highland bonnet with which the villagers had presented him. Keelie marched solemnly beside him, and lay at his feet in the kirk till the blessing was said. For remember Keelie was a Scottish collie, and therefore knew what was required of him on the Sabbath-day.

* * * * * *

Nearly three years passed away.

This does not seem a long period of time to the grown-up or the aged, so at the end of it there was very little difference indeed in either Eppie or Eean; but Toddie had stretched up, as the good people of Methlin said. She was nearly ten--quite old she thought herself--and she had grown less round-faced, more delicate in features, very much longer in the hair, and had lost her pretty prattle, that is, she could talk better English. Oh, dear reader, I do assure you I would rather have had her always the wee, droll, lisping Toddie! but my heroine and my heroes will shoot up and grow in spite of me. There is Fred and Frank for instance, fourteen or fifteen years of age respectively, quite men almost. Well, so they thought anyhow. And, without complimenting them in any way, two sturdier, brisker, or bolder-looking lads you would hardly meet in a long day's march.

"What do you think, Fred," said Frank one day, "mamma wants me to be?"

"Couldn't guess," said Fred. "Not a minister."

"Fred, don't be foolish. I'm not good enough for that."

"I know you're not. I was only joking. Well, a lawyer; but then you're hardly bad enough for that."

"Just what I told dear mamma. She is so foolish you know. But I'm to be a barrister; so I suppose I'll have to enter some old mildewed office in London, with a red-faced, white-haired solicitor as my slave-driver, and never see the sun shining except through the cobwebs. Then I'll have to work my way to the bar; but oh, Fred, just imagine me with a flappy old black gown and a stiff white wig on! But I'm going to another good school first, and then to Oxford, so a lot of things may happen before I'm called to the bar. Oh, I hate the very idea!"

Toddie was feeding her blennies in the aquarium while this conversation went on, and the boys were lying on the floor of the cave near by.

What a happy three years that had been though! How many delightful sails they had had in the yacht, musical evenings in the poet's cave, and tea with stories to follow in the inside of their dear old Johnnie whale.

On this particular day, as soon as Toddie had fed her dolly-fish, they all went together to spend the afternoon in the igloo.

The little garden never looked more gay nor lovely, the cosy wee room had never looked brighter or cosier, and yet both Toddie and Fred were sad; for on the morrow Fred was going far away to Glasgow, to spend five months at a school previous to passing his examinations as a midshipman in the merchant service.

He might have gone as an apprentice, but Eean greatly loved the lad. He had given him the education of a gentleman, and wished to hurry him on; for after all, in the race of life at sea, the middie has fewer hurdles to leap than the apprentice. And Eean well knew what a sailor's life really meant, and how wild and rough it was in the forecastle. Tippetty wouldn't keep out of his mistress's lap to-night. He seemed to know there was grief of some kind afloat in the air.

"You'll come often and see Toddie, won't you, Frank?"

"Oh, Frank," said Toddie innocently, "I can't live if you don't."

Frank patted her hand, and as he did so Tippetty took the opportunity of licking both their hands at one and the same time.

Then Bunko came in to lay the tea, and by-and-by Daddy Pop himself arrived, and Mammy Mop too, and there were story telling and singing, so that the night did not pass so sadly after all.

The tide was a long way back at nine o'clock, so they all went home to Eean's cottage across the sands, and there Frank stopped all the night.

* * * * * *

Three months passed away and it was winter, a hard and frosty one too; for weeks and weeks the ground was like adamant, and the rocks were masses of crystal. Peat became scarce in the village, and much driftwood and logs of pine were burned.

The yuletide came round, and Fred came home for a few days' holiday.

"We maun keep good fires on while you're here," said Bunko one day in the wood shed. "Here's a log noo," he said, "that'll mak' a fine lowe (blaze)."

It was a piece of a spar or ship's mast. As he spoke Bunko pulled it down and commenced to saw it through the centre. When half-way through the tool struck on something hard, and Bunko took a big axe and finished the work the saw had begun.

To his utter astonishment and that of Fred there rolled out a handful of gold coins, and the head of a rusty axe.

"Oh!" cried Fred, "that is the log dear Toddie came ashore on. Daddy would never have it touched, but he couldn't have known of the coins. I'll run and fetch him."

"Leave me, lads, for a few minutes," were the first words old Eean spoke when he entered the shed. Then he sat down on the wood pile. Scarcely could he have stood just then had he tried. His feelings were not altogether those of excitement, though he was much moved. Something told him that the mystery of the little waif Toddie was to be revealed to him. The gold that had fallen from the log he felt sure was but a portion of the store therein, and he felt certain also that he would find papers of some kind relating to the child who had so woven herself round his heart, that to tear her away would be an affliction he could not survive. He tried to pray--this was ever his solace in life; but how hard it was just then to say from the heart those words, "Thy will be done."

Now he nerves himself to action.

Why, he wonders as he proceeds to examine the log, did he not think of doing so at the very first, when it was washed in from the wreck supporting its little burden, that but for his wife's skill in bringing back the apparently-drowned to life would now be slumbering in the quiet kirk-yard?

The axeheads in the old log had not only served as a keel, he soon found, but also to keep in position a piece of wood supporting a long belt of canvas. It was this latter Eean now hauled hastily forth, though with trembling hands. It was damp and decayed, and the gold coins--Portuguese they were, he could see at a glance--that rolled out lay unheeded on the ground, while he quickly unfolded a piece of paper that had lain among them.

It was written in Spanish, a language with which he was well acquainted. Before he began to read it a strong wave of temptation passed through his mind, but was bravely resisted. "Why," whispered the tempter, "not burn the letter before reading it? It could but tell the child's history, and he would have in conscience and honour to give his darling up."

Eean had need of a strong will at that moment, the will that in times of trial like this can boldly say, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

He muttered a word or two of prayer once more, then reseating himself on the wood proceeded to read the document.

It was very much frayed, and the writing in part obliterated. Evidently it had been written during the agony of the brief time between the striking of the ship against the rocks, and her heeling back and sinking.

All the portion that has connection with our story may be briefly told. The vessel was the _Santa Maria_, homeward bound from the West Indies. The mother of the child had died, and been buried at sea. The crew had mutinied, partially robbed the ship, and left in boats, all but a devoted few. Hence the mismanagement and the running on a lee-shore. The child's only living relative was or "would soon be"--so ran this strange epistle, written in the hour of death--"her uncle----" only decipherable word.

"If----" here was a blank, "is spared by the waves, may heaven be good to those who are good,----" a blank again, and the letter went but little further, only a word here and there being readable, these were, "uncle----villain----malediction----."

The signature itself was frayed out, no letters of it remaining except four, "_PINT_."

The gold in all, which for the time being Eean left lying where it was, hardly amounted, as far as he could judge, to £150 sterling.

"Gold!" he said, actually spurning it with his foot. "What is gold to the love and companionship of my little girl? My own now, it is evident."

Then he shuddered as he thought how nearly he had yielded to temptation, and done that which would have made him miserable for life.

His wife and he had a long talk that evening over the fire, and next day the fisherman bard started for Edinburgh. It was evident to all the villagers--from whom he kept nothing back--that he was going to consult his advocate, and the look of contentment on his face when he returned two days later showed plainly enough that his interview had been of the most successful character.

Nor had he returned alone, and Toddie and Tip were both wild with joy when, from the spring-cart that had brought them all the way from the nearest big town, not only the poet himself, but the two boys descended. Eean had met Frank by accident in Edinburgh. It was getting near Christmas-time, so the lad was as usual on holiday. Both ran through to Glasgow to see Fred, and at Frank's intercession he was permitted to accompany daddy and his friend back to Methlin.

The group around the fisherman bard's fire that night was an interesting one. Just as on that summer's evening long ago when Frank had first entered this humble cot, Eean sat in his tall chair, Eppie was there at the everlasting wheel, Toddie, Fred, and Frank, and even Bunko, were here too, while side by side on the earth lay Bunko's dog Keelie and honest little Tippetty.

Bunko replenished the fire with peats and wood, till the little oil-lamp that hung in the corner seemed sadly superfluous; the bright red gleams lit up the cosy old-world room, made every face seem doubly happy, and were reflected even from the dark, smoke-varnished rafters overhead.

To-night Eean told Toddie's story all over again, much to Frank's delight.

Toddie herself took an interest in it now, and that is what she had never, never done before.

"Weel," said Bunko, "you're a good man, Mr. Arundel, and I'll niver but believe it was an angel o' the Lord that put the saw in my hand, and made me cut up Toddie's log."

Frank had taken Toddie's hand as Bunko spoke, and he still retained it as he said, "But what a strange, mysterious story! It is just like what we read of in books. And, Toddie, there is no saying what you may turn out to be, you know, when the mystery gets all cleared up. Perhaps some Spanish princess, and a chariot and six white horses, all caparisoned with blue and gold, may come some day to take you off."

Toddie drew away her hand, and nestled her head against her Daddy Pop.

"I would not leave you, daddy," she said, "if they did come."

"What would you do, then?" said Frank, laughing.

"Oh, send Bunko away instead!"

"Well, anyhow," said Frank, after gazing thoughtfully at the fire a few moments, "it is a strange strange story. I wonder how it will all end."