The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 20

Another is out in the field up there watching the people making hay, while still another is lying on his master's coat, while that master is at work. His master is only a ditcher. What does that matter? He is a king to Collie.

At Aberuthven was a retriever-collie who--his master, at whose farm I lay, told me--went every day down the long loaning to fetch the letters when the postman blew his horn. This dog's name is Fred, and it was Fred's own father who taught him this, and "_in two lessons_" Fred's father always went for the letters, and never failed except once to bring them. On this particular occasion, he was seen to disappear behind a bush with a letter in his mouth, and presently to come forth without it. No trace of it was to be found. But a week after another letter was received asking the farmer why he had not acknowledged the bride's cake. So the murder was out, for the dog's honesty had not been proof against a bit of cake, and he had swallowed it, envelope and all.

Gipsies' Dogs.

These are, as a rule, a mongrel lot, but very faithful, and contented with their roving life. They are as follows:--

1. The bulldog, used for guard and for fighting, with "a bit o' money on him" sometimes.

2. The retriever, a useful and determined guard dog and child's companion.

3. The big mongrel mastiff. The fatter and the uglier he is the better, and the greater the sensation he will create in country villages.

4. The whippet: a handy dog in many ways; and to him gipsies are indebted for many a good stew of hare or rabbit.

5. Lastly, the terribly fat, immensely big black Russian retriever.

His tail is always cut off to make him resemble a bear, and give an air of greater _eclat_ to the caravan that owns him.

A Midnight Attack on the "Wanderer."

We were lying in a lonely meadow, in a rough country away up on the borders of Yorkshire, and did not consider ourselves by any means in a very safe place. The Wanderer was pretty close to the roadside; and there were no houses about except a questionable-looking inn, that stood on the borders of a gloomy wood. The people here might or might not be villainous. At all events, it was not on their account we were uneasy.

But a gang of the worst cla.s.s of gipsies was to pa.s.s that night from a neighbouring fair, and there was a probability that they might attack the carriage.

Foley before lying down barricaded the back door with the large Rippingille stove, and I myself had seen to the chambers of my revolver, all six of them.

I had one lookout before lying down. It was a still and sultry summer's night, with clouds all over the stars, so that it was almost dark. In ten minutes more I was sound asleep.

It must have been long past midnight when I awoke with a start.

Hurricane Bob was growling low and ominously; I could distinctly hear footsteps, and thought I could distinguish voices confabbing in whispers near the van.

It was almost pitch dark now, and from the closeness of the night it was evident a thunderstorm would burst over us.

Silencing the dog, I quickly got on my clothes, just as the caravan began to shake and quiver, as if some one were breaking open the after-door.

My mind was made up at once. I determined to carry the war into the enemy's quarters, so, seizing my sword, I quietly opened the front door, and slid down to the ground off the _coupe_.

I got in beneath the caravan and crept aft. There they were, whoever they were; I could just perceive two pairs of legs close to the caravan, and these legs were arrayed in what seemed to me to be white duck trousers. "Now," said I to myself, "the shin is a most vulnerable part; I'll have a hack at these extremities with the back of the sword."

And so I did.

I hit out with all my might.

The effect was magical.

There was a load roar of pain, and away galloped the midnight marauders, in a wild and startled stampede.

And who were they after all? Why, only a couple of young steers, who had been chewing a bath towel--one at one end, the other at the other-- that Foley had left hanging under the van.

Such then are some of the humours of an amateur gipsy's life.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

SUNNY MEMORIES OF THE BORDER-LAND.

"Pipe of Northumbria, sound; War pipe of Alnwicke, Wake the wild hills around; Percy at Paynim war.

Fenwicke stand foremost; Scots in array from far Swell wide their war-host.

"Come clad in your steel jack, Your war gear in order, And down hew or drive back The Scots o'er the border."

Old Ballad.

"I tell you what it is, my boy," said a well-known London editor to me one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer,--"I tell you what it is, you'll _never_ do it."

He was standing a little way off my caravan as he spoke, so as to be able to take her all in, optically, and his head was c.o.c.ked a-trifle to one side, consideringly. "Never do what?"

"Never reach Scotland."

"Why?"

"Why? First, because a two-ton caravan is too much for even two such horses as you have, considering the hills you will have to encounter; and, secondly," he added with a sly smile, "because Scotchman never 'gang back.'"

I seized that little world-wise editor just above the elbow. He looked beseechingly up at me.

"Let go?" he cried; "your fingers are made of iron fencing; my arm isn't."

"Can you for one moment imagine," I said, "what the condition of this England of yours would be were all the Scotchmen to be suddenly taken out of it; suddenly to disappear from great cities like Manchester and Liverpool, from posts of highest duty in London itself, from the Navy, from the Army, from the Volunteers? Is the bare idea not calculated to induce a more dreadful nightmare than even a lobster salad?"

"I think," said the editor, quietly, as I released him, "we might manage to meet the difficulty."

But despite the dark forebodings of my neighbours and the insinuations of this editor, here I am in bonnie Scotland.

"My foot in on my native heath, And my name is--"

Well, the reader knows what my name is.

I have pleasant recollections of my last day or two's drive in Northumberland north, just before entering my native land.

Say from the Blue Bell Hotel at Belford. What a stir there was in that pretty little town, to be sure! We were well out of it, because I got the Wanderer brought to anchor in an immensely large stackyard. There was the sound of the circus's bra.s.s band coming from a field some distance off, the occasional whoop-la! of the merry-go-rounds and patent-swing folks, and the bang-banging of rifles at the itinerant shooting galleries; but that was all there was to disturb us.

I couldn't help thinking that I never saw brawnier, wirier men than those young farmers who met Earl P--at his political meeting.

I remember being somewhat annoyed at having to start in a procession of gipsy vans, but glad when we got up the hill, and when Pea-blossom and Corn-flower gave them all the slip.

Then the splendid country we pa.s.sed through; the blue sea away on our right; away to the left the everlasting hills! The long low sh.o.r.es of the Holy Isle flanked by its square-towered castle. It is high water while we pa.s.s, and Lindisfarne is wholly an island.