In Touch with Nature Part 18

Sometimes Charlie would have a bone, and when done with it, would hide it in a corner. Well, p.u.s.s.y would settle down behind it, and presently when Charlie came back:

"Come away, Charlie," p.u.s.s.y would say, or seem to say. "Come away, dear; I've been watching your bone. Those thieving rats, you know."

"O, thank you, Tom," Charlie would say.

But half a minute later Charlie would be once more rushing madly up the back stairs, and p.u.s.s.y after him, clawing him all the way.

p.u.s.s.y's favourite seat was the footstool, and in a winter's evening, when tea was on the table, a bright fire in the grate, the kettle singing on the hob, and Tom half asleep, but singing all the same, on the ha.s.sock, our parlour looked _so_ cheerful. But sometimes Tom would say to Charlie:

"I'm going away to the woods to-day, Charlie, for a long, long hunt after the rats and weasels, so you can curl up on my footstool all day."

"O, thank you!" Charlie would say.

Then away Tom would trot, and Charlie would be up on top of the ha.s.sock, and asleep in five minutes, for on the whole Charlie was a shivering little fellow when the weather was cold--just like your Tiny.

Well, p.u.s.s.y would not go farther away than the paddock gate; she would sit there for perhaps ten minutes, making little funny faces at the sparrows, and at c.o.c.k-robin. Then back she would come.

"He'll be asleep by this time," Tom would say to himself, as he came stealing to the parlour.

Next moment there would be another race up the back stairs, and Charlie would be howling most dismally.

This was very naughty of p.u.s.s.y, and it was not at all pleasant for Charlie; no wonder he preferred sitting in the chair.

I'll never forgot the day Charlie caught and killed his first rat. It was a very big one, and he was as proud as any deer-stalker. He must needs bring it into the parlour and lay it on the rug before us all.

Tom smacked him, and took the rat away to a corner, and gloated and growled over it, and told Charlie that _all_ the rats and mice about the place belonged to him.

Charlie could swim as fast as a Newfoundland, he could follow the carriage for miles, and whenever it stopped he used to jump up and sit on the horse's back, and perhaps go to sleep there, for he was a sleepy little fellow at times--just like your Tiny.

Charlie used to fetch and carry. Does your Tiny do so? He would carry things much, _much_ bigger than himself. A carriage rug, for example.

And this was funny, if the rug were very heavy Charlie would stop pulling it and give it a good shaking, growling all the time as if the rug were alive. Then he would stop and look at it for a minute or two, with his head first on one side and then on the other, as much as to say:

"Will you come now, then? I'll give you more if you don't."

Bright, loving, brave, and gentle was Charlie. You see I say "_was_ Charlie," so you will know that Charlie is not alive now; I will tell you how it happened.

It was a winter evening. Our house, The Grange, is a good mile from the station, across a wild bleak common. It would be quite three miles round by the road, so we seldom go that way. Some of our friends were coming to spend a week with us. They ought to come by the 4:30 fast train, and I was there to meet them. It was eight before they arrived, however, and O! such a dreadful night. The snow had come down and was already fully a foot deep, and lay on the road in great wreaths that no horse could pa.s.s. Then the wind blew a perfect hurricane, and the drifting snow almost took our breath away. We must go by the common or remain at the station all night. Our friends were only two, a young lady and her father, but both were very brave.

Alas! we never could have crossed the common that night, had it not been for Charlie. Many a life was lost in that terrible storm, which will long be remembered in our shire. I had not taken Charlie with me, but when in the very middle of the moor, with poor Miss B--all but dead and my friend and I sinking, and not knowing which way to turn--we had probably been going round and round in a circle--I spied something black feathering about among the snow. It was Charlie! I leave you to imagine with what joy we received him.

"Go home, Charlie!" we cried.

And away went our little guide, sometimes quite invisible, but always coming back to encourage us. Half an hour afterwards we were all at home in our bright and cheerful parlour.

But poor Charlie never recovered it. He must have been out in the snow for hours. Next day he was ill, and got rapidly worse. Strange to say that Tom the p.u.s.s.y was now actually kind to him.

"I fear," I said one evening, "Charlie is worse than ever."

Charlie _was_ worse--one pleading look at us, one slight shiver, and our pet was no more.

There is a little gra.s.sy grave down in the orchard, that the children always cover with flowers in spring-time and summer.

That is Charlie's.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

PROFESSOR d.i.c.k'S ACADEMY: A STRANGE ADVENTURE.

"Bodily rest is sleep--is soothing sleep, Spirit rest is silence deep, O daily discord! cease, for mercy cease, Break not this happy peace."

The caravan lay high up on a lonely moorland, amid the solitary grandeur of the Grampian mountains--a thousand good feet and over above the level of the sea.

The scenery around us was desolate in the extreme, for no vestige of human life, no house, no hut, not even a patch of cultivated land, was anywhere to be seen around us. Above was the blue sky, with here and there a fleecy cloud, and yonder an eagle soaring. Around us, as a horizon, the eternal hills, many of them flecked and patched with the snows, that never melt. Far beneath, at one side, was a stream; though not visible, we could hear its drowsy chafing roar, as it tumbled onwards, forming many a foaming cataract, to seek for outlet in some distant lake. On the other side was a good Scotch mile of heathery moor, blazing purple and crimson in the sunshine.

Here and there, on gra.s.sy banks, great snakes glittered and basked in the noontide heat, while agile lizards crept over the stones or stood panting on the heath-stems, to stalk the flies.

It was strangely silent up here. We could listen to the lambkins, bleating miles away, and the strange wild cry of mountain plover and ptarmigans, while the song of insects flitting from alpine flower to alpine flower was pleasant music to the ear.

On the right I could see the dark tops of pine-trees. But they were far away. Never mind, I would walk towards them. I so love forests and woodlands.

No, I would have no companion save my trusty friend Bob. A word was sufficient to deter Maggie May from accompanying me in my ramble. That word was "Snakes!" Frank was not so easily shaken off; but when I told him I was probably going to write verses, he refrained from forcing his company on me. So Bob and I set out on our rambles alone. Verses?

Well, verses come sometimes when least expected. Better than wooing the muse, is being quiet and letting the muse woo you.

But a sweet spirit of melancholy was over me to-day. I wished for silence, I longed for solitude. A breeze was murmuring and sighing through the weird black trees of the forest when I entered it, and I sat me down on a stone to listen to its wail. Nature seemed whispering some sad tale to my ears alone. This to me was spirit rest.

It was indeed a strange forest. The trees were all dark firs, though not tall and not close together. But I had never seen such trees before. Gnarled and bent and fantastic, taking shapes and casting shadows that positively looked uncanny. I had not walked an hour among them till I fancied myself in some enchanted wood, and almost wished myself out of it and away. I stooped down more than once to smooth and talk to the great Newfoundland, to rea.s.sure myself; and once, when pa.s.sing an ugly brown pool of water, I started almost with fright as some water-birds sprang whirring into the air in front of me.

Still I had as yet no thoughts of retracing my footsteps.

When, at last, I climbed a rocky mound and saw the sun going right away down behind a hill, like a ball of blood, I made up my mind to get homewards at once.

But in which direction did the caravan lie? My answer to this was a very hazy one. However, standing on this mound would not help me, so I set out to retrace my steps.

For fully half an hour I walked in what I considered the right direction, but I did not come to the pond again, and the trees seemed different--more close together, and more weird-looking and uncanny, if that were possible.

I got tired at last and sat down.

I had been pensive when I started, I was now perplexed. No wonder, for night was coming on. Stars were glinting out in the east, a big brown owl flew close over me, with a most melancholy shriek of "tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo," that made my blood feel cold.

_I was lost_!

Yes, but what had I to fear? I thought I had been lost before, lost in Afric wilds, on prairie lands, and in Greenland mists: was I going to be baffled by a Highland forest and moorland?

"Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!"

A sweet spirit of melancholy is very nice, but one may have too much of it.

"Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!"