Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy

“Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie! Towsie!”

Jock was at a distant corner of the field, his favourite corner, on high ground, where he could see the country for miles around. He was standing there chewing his cud and looking at the sky. Perhaps he was wondering what kind of a day it was to be to-morrow.

Suddenly he thrust one ear back to listen.

“Towsie! Towsie!” came the shout in shrill treble.

“It is that monkey again,” said Towsie, to himself. “If I can only pin one horn through him, I’ll carry him all round and round the field, at the gallop too.”

Miss Campbell, from the tree, first heard a dreadful bellowing roar, which ended in one continuous stream of hoarse explosions, as it were.

“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow,” and next moment, to her horror, she saw a gigantic horrid homed bull coming tearing towards the gate, his nose on the ground, and his tail like a corkscrew over his back.

“Harry, Harry!” she screamed. “Oh! fly, Harry, fly!”

“He can’t get over, Guvie,” cried Harry, coolly. “Let me introduce you, as papa says. That is Towsie Jock. Towsie! Towsie! Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock!”

“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”

On came the bull as mad as ever bull was.

Miss Campbell shouted again, and screamed with terror.

“Harry, come, oh, dear Harry, come up. For my sake then.”

“But he can’t get over, I tell you, Guvie.”

“But I’m fainting, Harry.”

“Oh, in that case I’ll come, Guvie. Papa says, ‘Always, whatever you do, Harry, be kind and polite to ladies.’ I’m coming, Guvie. Don’t fall till I get hold of you.”

And none too soon.

“Wow-ow —woa!”

Next moment the gate flew in splinters with the awful charge of that Highland bull.

Miss Campbell’s head swam, but she clutched the rash boy to her breast, and thanked God he was saved.

Meanwhile the bull was at the foot of the tree. He first commenced an attack upon it with head and horns; every time, he battered it he shook it to its uttermost twig and leaf. But Miss Campbell and Harry had a safe seat in a strong niche between two great branches, with another branch to sit on and one behind.

At every blow the bull reeled back again.

The governess was white and trembling.

Harry was as cool as a hero.

He looked down and enjoyed the performance.

“Isn’t he naughty and wicked!” he said.

“Won’t he have a headache in the morning, Guvie!”

While attacking and battering the tree, Towsie Jock was silent, only the noise of the “thuds” resounded through the forest.

“If I had a big turnip now,” said the boy, “to throw down, Towsie would eat it and go away, oh! so well pleased, and not naughty at all.”

Towsie soon saw that to knock down that sturdy old beech was impossible; he commenced, therefore, with angry bellowings to root round it with his feet.

But even of this he soon tired. He stood up, red-eyed and furious-looking, and sniffed and snorted.

“May I cry ‘Towsie’ again, Guvie?”

“Oh, no, no, no.”

“He can’t climb the tree, you know. He’ll go away presently, then we can get down and run, Guvie dear.”

But Towsie had evidently no such intentions. He stood there for quite half an hour, then he began to chew his cud again. That was a pacific sign, and Miss Campbell gave a sigh of relief.

Towsie Jock was a good general. He had tried and tried in vain to storm the citadel, that is, the tree; he had tried to batter it down, and he had tried to undermine it; now the only thing to do was simply to lay siege to it.

And this he did by quietly lying down.

Meanwhile, far away in the east, they could see, through the greenery of the branches, red or crimson streaky clouds, and they knew that gloaming was falling, and that gloaming would soon be followed by night.

The red clouds grew a lurid purple, then grey, then seemed to melt away, and only a gleam of light remained in the west. That also faded, and next a bright, bright star peeped in through the leaves at them, and all grew gloomy around.

Still the bull lay still.

Miss Campbell took a scarf from her neck and bound one of Harry’s arms tightly to a branch, lest he might sleep and slip from her grasp. For Harry had grown very silent.

“Harry, dear,” said Miss Campbell, “say your prayers.”

“Guvie,” replied the boy, “papa tells me I should bless my enemies; must I pray for Towsie Jock?”

“If you like, dear.”

Then Miss Campbell bethought her of a story, the funniest she could remember, and began it.

Harry laughed for a time. But he soon grew suddenly silent.

He was fast asleep!

Meanwhile more and more stars came out, cushat’s croodle and song of bird gave place to the deep mournful notes of the brown owl, and the gloaming deepened into night.

Book One – Chapter Three.

The Search for the Lost Ones – an Ugly Fight

Great was the anxiety at Beaufort Hall, as Harry’s home was called, when the shadows fell and the stars peeped out from the sky’s blue vault. Poor fragile Mrs Milvaine was almost distracted, but her husband took matters more easily, more philosophically let us call it.

“Don’t fidget, my darling,” he said, “they’ll turn up all right in a short time. Just you see now, and it won’t do the triflingest morsel of good to worry yourself. No, nor it won’t bring them a minute sooner.”

“They may have fallen into the river,” said Mrs Milvaine.

“Well, I don’t deny that people have fallen into rivers before now, but the probability is, they haven’t,” replied the farmer-laird. (A farmer who owns the acres he tills.)

“They may have lost themselves in the forest, and may wander in it till they die.”

“Nonsense, my love.”

“Harry may have climbed a tree, fallen down and been killed, and Miss Campbell may even now – ”

“Stop, stop, dear! what an imagination you have, to be sure?”

“They may both be gored to death by that fearful bull, their mangled bodies may – ”

Mr Milvaine put his fingers in his ears.

But when eleven o’clock rang out from the stable tower, and still the lost ones did not appear, then even the laird himself got fidgety. He threw down his newspaper.

But he did not permit his wife to notice his uneasiness. He quietly lit his pipe.

“I’ll go and look for them,” he said, and left the room. He returned presently wrapped in a Highland plaid, with a shepherd’s crook in his hand, much taller than himself, and that is saying a good deal, for this Scottish laird stood six feet two in his boots, and was well made in proportion.

He bent down and kissed his wife.

“Don’t fret, I’ll soon find them,” he said. “They have gone botanising, I suppose, and have lost themselves, and are doubtless in Widow McGregor’s cottage, or in the cleerach’s hut.”

Out he went. Rob Roy McGregor himself never had a more manly stride.

He went to the stable gallery first, or rather to the foot of the stair.

“John!” he cried, – “John! John!”

“Yes, yes, sir,” was the reply, and a stream of light shot out into the darkness as John threw open the door.

“Miss Campbell and Master Harry are lost somewhere in the forest. Bring a bull’s-eye lantern, and let us look for them. Bring the rhinoceros-hide whip, too; we may come across some poachers.”

In five minutes more master and man had started.

John was nearly as tall as his master. This was partly the reason why the laird had engaged him. Coachmen do not often have great brown beards and moustaches, but John had; coachmen do not often wear the Highland dress, but John did, and a fine-looking fellow he was when so arrayed. But every horse and every cart about this farmer-laird’s place was big. The dog-cart had been specially built for him, and there was not another such in the country.

Away they went then.

It was half-past eleven when they started, and twelve by watch when they found themselves in the forest.

“It is always hereabout they do be,” said John. “Just hereabouts, sir.”

Then they shouted, singly.

Then they shouted again – together this time; shouted and listened, but there was no answering call.

There was a rushing sound among the tall spruces, and a flap-flap-flapping of wings, as startled wild pigeons fled from their nests away out into the dreary depths of the forest.

There was the too-whit, to-who-oo-oo of an owl in the distance, but no other sound responded to their shouting.

“We’ll go straight on to the widow’s,” said the laird.

“Right, laird.”

So on they went again, often pausing to wave the bull’s-eye, to shout, and to listen.

All in vain.

When they reached Widow McGregor’s cottage all was darkness and silence within.

They knocked nevertheless, knocked again and again, and at last had the satisfaction of hearing a match lighted, then a light shone through the door seams, and a voice – a somewhat timorous and quavering one – demanded:

“Wha’s there at this untimeous hoor o’ nicht?”

“It’s me, Mrs McGregor; me, Laird Milvaine. Don’t be alarmed.”

The bolt flew back, and master and man entered.

Of course the lost ones were not there, and the widow shook and trembled with fear when she heard the story.

She had only to say that the cleerach, who was a kind of forest ranger or keeper, had seen both the lost ones that afternoon gathering wild flowers.

“We’ll go to his house at once.”

It was only two miles farther on.

They bade the widow good-night, and started. She told them, last thing, that she would go to her bed and pray for them.

But they had not gone quite one mile and a half, when a brawny figure sprang from behind a tree, and a stentorian voice shouted:

“You thieving scoundrels, I have you now! Stop, and hold up your arms, or by the powers above us I’ll blow the legs of you off!”

The flash of John’s lantern revealed a stalwart keeper with double-barrelled gun presented full towards them.

“It’s me and my man John,” said the farmer, quietly. (The author is not to blame for the honest laird’s bad grammar.)

“Heaven have a care of me, sir,” cried the cleerach. “If I’d fired I’d ne’er have been forgiving mysel’. Sure it was after the poachers I was. But bless me, laird, what brings you into the forest at such an hour?”

The story was soon told, and together they marched to the cleerach’s cottage. A one-roomed wooden hut it was, built in a clearing, and almost like that of a backwoodsman. The only portion not wood was the hearth and the chimney.

All the information the cleerach could give them was hardly worth having, only he had seen Miss Campbell and young Harry, and they were then taking the path through the forest that led away to the river and past the field where the bull was.

“Then goodness help us,” exclaimed the farmer. “I fear something has happened to them.”

Nothing could be done till daylight. So the three sat by the fire, on which the cleerach heaped more logs; for, summer though it was, the night was chill, and a dew was falling. It was quite a keeper’s cottage, no pictures on the walls except a Christmas gift-plate or two from the London Illustrated Weeklies, and some Christmas cards. But stuffed heads and animals stood here and there in the corners, and skins of wild creatures were nailed up everywhere. Skins of whitterit or weasel, of foumart or pole-cat, of the wild cat itself, of great unsightly rats, of moles and of voles, and hawks and owls galore.

Scotchmen do not easily let down their hearts, so these men – and men they were in every sense of the word – sat there by the fire telling each other wild, weird forest tales and stories of folk-lore until at length the daylight streamed in at the window – cold and comfortless-looking – and almost put out the fire. “Will you have breakfast, laird, before you start?” The laird said, “Yes.”

The fire was replenished, and soon the keeper’s great kettle was boiling. Then in less than five minutes three huge dishes of oatmeal brose was made, and – that was the breakfast, with milk and butter.

Towsie Jock never moved from under the tree all the night long. Poor Miss Campbell was weary, tired, and cramped, but she dared not sleep. Once or twice she caught herself half-dreaming, and started up again in fright, and thanked Heaven she had not gone quite to sleep.

How long, long the stars seemed to shine, she thought! Would they never fade? Would morning never, never come?

But see, through the green leafy veil a glimmer of dawn at last, and she lifts up her thoughts in prayer to Him who has preserved them.

How soundly Harry sleeps in her arms! How beautiful the boy looks, too, in his sleep! The young image of his stalwart father.

The light in the east spreads up and up, and the stars pale before it, and disappear. Then the few clouds there are, begin to light up, and finally to glow in dazzling crimson and yellow.

She is wondering when assistance will come. But the sun shoots up, and help appears as far away as ever.

“Towsie, Towsie,” mutters the boy in his sleep, and smiles.

A whole hour passes, and hope itself begins to die in the poor girl’s breast, when oh! joy, from far away in the forest comes a shout.

“Coo-ee-ee!”

Then a shrill whistle. Then silence. She knows that assistance is not far off, if she can only make them hear. She knows that the silence which succeeds the shouting means that they are listening for a response.

She tries to answer, but no sound much louder than a whisper can she emit. The cold dews have rendered her almost voiceless.

Now she shakes and tries to arouse Harry.

“Harry, Harry, awake, dear!”

“Whe – where am I?” cries the boy, rubbing his eyes.

“In the forest, Harry; in a tree.”

“Oh, I remember now,” says Harry, smiling, and looking down; “and there’s Towsie. What a jolly sleep I’ve had, Guvie! Have you?”

Again came the shout, this time somewhat nearer.

“Answer, dear; answer, I’m so hoarse. Cry as loud as you can.”

Harry did as told. It would hardly be heard fifty yards away, however.

But it had one effect. It roused Towsie Jock. All his wrath seemed at once to return, and he prepared once more to attack the tree.

“Towsie Jock, Towsie, Towsie!” sang the boy.

For the life of him he could not help it.

“Wow-ow-ow-wo-ah!” roared the bull.

That was a sound that could be heard for one good mile at least.

The three men advancing to the rescue heard it.

For the first time since he had left home the farmer-laird felt real dread and fear. In his imagination he could see the mangled bodies of his son and the governess, with the bull standing guard over them.

“Come on, men. Great heavens! I fear the worst now.”

Milvaine had his strong, tall crook, John his terribly – punishing hide whip, the cleerach had a double-barrelled gun.

The bull – infuriated now beyond measure – came roaring to meet them.

The cleerach fired at his legs. The shot but made him stumble for a moment; it had no other effect. On he came wilder than ever. He seemed to single the farmer himself out, and charged him head down. Mr Milvaine met the charge manfully enough. He leapt nimbly to one side, striking straight home with the iron-shod end of the crook. It wounded the bull in the neck, but ill would it have fared with the farmer had he not got speedily behind a tree.

Whack, whack, whack. John is behind the bull with his whip of hide.

The bull wheels round upon him ere ever he can escape, and runs him between his horns against a tree.

John has seized the horns, and thus they stand man and brute locked in a death grip.

The farmer has stumbled and fallen in running to John’s assistance. The cleerach is loading again, when help comes from a most unexpected quarter, and Eily herself rushes on the scene.

She at once seizes the bull by the hock. The roar he emits is one of agony and rage, but John is free.

Eily easily eludes the bull’s charge. He follows a little way towards the gate, then turns, when she fixes him again. And this game continues until the bull is fairly into the field.

Whenever the bull turns Eily seizes his hock; whenever he gives her chase she runs farther into the field, barking defiantly.

“I think, men, we may safely leave the brute to Eily,” said Laird Milvaine; “but where can the dear children be!”

“Safe, safe, safe!” cried a voice from the tree.

Miss Campbell could speak now.

“Thank God!” was the fervent ejaculation breathed by every lip.

An hour afterwards Harry was in his mother’s arms, laughing and crowing with delight as he related to his mamma all the fun of what he called the jolly match with Towsie.

His mother’s eyes were red with weeping, but she was laughing now nevertheless.

Book One – Chapter Four.

Harry Milvaine, Landed Proprietor – His Bungalow, and how he Built it – “I’ll be a Sailor, to be Sure.”

Were I to tell one-half of the adventures of the child Harold, as his father called him, I would fill this whole book with them, and would not have space to say a word about his career as a youth and young man. So I shall not begin.

No more vivacious reader of books of biography, travel, and adventure, perhaps ever existed than Harry Milvaine was when about the age of ten. I have often wondered when he slept.

At midsummer in the far north of Scotland there is light enough all night to read by. Harry took advantage of this, and would continue at a book from sunset till sunrise.

The boy had a deal of independence of character and real good feeling.

“I must have light to read by all night in winter,” he said to himself, “but it would be unfair to burn my father’s candles. I’ll make some.”

There was an odd old volume in Mr Milvaine’s library, called “The Arts and Sciences,” which was a very great favourite with Harry because it told him everything.

It taught him how to make moulded candles. He possessed a tin pen-and-pencil case. This made a first-rate mould. He collected fat, he got a wick and fixed it to the bottom of the case and held it in the position described by the book, then he poured in the melted fat, and lo! and behold, when it cooled, a candle was the result. He worked, in his own little tool-house, away down among the shrubbery at the bottom of the lawn, and made many candles. John, the coachman, admired them very much, and so did the female servants.

“Dear me?” said one old milk-maid, “it’s your father, Master Harry, that should be proud of his bonnie, bonnie boy.”

This old milk-maid had a beard and moustache that many a city clerk would have envied, and she was reputed to be a witch accordingly, but she dearly loved little Harry, and Harry loved her, and made a regular confidante of her.

She did not give him bad advice either. One example in proof of this. Harry came to her one day in great grief. He was not crying, but his mouth was pursed up very much, and he was very red in the face.

“Oh, Yonitch, Yonitch!” he exclaimed, in bitterness, “what shall I do? I’ve shot papa’s favourite cock.”

“Shot him dead? Have you, dear?” said Yonitch.

“Oh, dead enough, Yonitch. I fired at him, and my arrow has gone clean through his breast. I don’t think I really meant it, though.”

Yonitch ran down with him to the paddock to view the body, and there certainly never was a much “deader” cock. The arrow was still sticking in his breast.

“What shall I do? Shall I bury the cock and run away?”

“That would not be brave, dear. No Highlander runs away. Go straight to your father and tell him.”

Harry did so.

“What’s the matter, lad?” said his father. “Hold up your head. What is it?”

“Papa,” replied the boy, not daring to look up, but speaking to a plough that stood near. “Papa, I took my bow and arrows – ”

“Yes, boy.”

“And I went down the paddock.”

“Well?”

“And I fired at the cock.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m afraid he – wants to be – buried.”

“Well, well, well, never mind, boy; I forgive you because you’ve come like a man and like a Highlander and told me. We’ll put the poor cock in the pot and have him for dinner.”

“Oh, no, no, dear papa,” cried Harry, looking up now for the first time, “I could not bear to see him cooked.”

“Well, go and bury him yourself, then.”

Harry ran off happy, and Yonitch and he dug a grave and buried the poor cock’s corpse, and it took Harry a whole week’s work in the tool-house to fashion him a “wooden tombstone,” and write an epitaph. The epitaph ran as follows: —

here liespapa’s poor cotching chiney cockcroolly slane by harrywith his bow and arrie.he sleeps in peas.

That tool-house and workshop of Harry’s was quite a wonderful place. And wonderful, indeed, were the things Harry turned out of it. I’m not joking. He really did make good useful articles – boxes, picture frames, a footstool for his mother, a milking-stool for Yonitch, and an extraordinary rustic-looking, but comfortable, arm-chair for his father. It had a high back and a carpet bottom, and seated in it, on the verandah on a summer’s evening, with his pipe and his paper, papa did look the very quintessence of comfort and jollity.

But Harry might often have been seen at the village carpenter’s shop, taking lessons in the useful art of joinery.

In return for the high-backed chair, his father presented him, when Christmas came round, with a turning lathe. Then I think that Harry’s cup of bliss was full to overflowing.

But his workshop soon proved too small to hold all his belongings. He secured a piece of ground from his father in a quiet and sheltered corner of the paddock, and within this he determined to do great things, as soon as spring brought out the daisies, and the ground was dry.

Now let me tell the reader, before I go a line farther on with my story, that though I am bound, in justice to my young hero, to say that he never neglected his lessons, nor his prayers, dear lad, still I do not wish to make him out a greater saint than perhaps most boys of his age are.

He is painted from the life, mind you, and I have not hid his failings from you. Nor need I hesitate to say that a fight between Harry and some village lad was of no very rare occurrence, and it was no uncommon thing to meet him coming homewards after one of these tulzies, with his jacket all covered with mud and his face all covered with blood.

So there! I hide nothing, good or bad.

Harry was going to do great things then with his bit of ground. He felt himself to be a small landed proprietor, a laird in miniature. He thought and planned in his spare moments all the livelong winter. He even put his plans on paper. This he did in the stillness of night, by the light of his own moulded candles.

Harry was immensely rich – at least he thought himself so. He had a money-box in the shape of a dog-kennel that stood on the mantelpiece of his own room, and goodness only knows how much money it did not contain. For years back, whenever he had received sixpence or a shilling from a relation or friend, pop! it had gone into the kennel. Half-crowns were too big to go in, but he changed them for smaller coins, and in they went. There was one whole sovereign in and one half one.

But Harry had not depended altogether for his riches on the charity of friends and relations. No, for he was a wealthy dealer in live stock. Not cattle and horses, nor sheep and pigs. Harry’s was a London market, and a world-wide market. His medium for sale was a paper called The Exchange and Mart, and his stock consisted of canaries, siskins, and British birds of all kinds. The latter he found in the woods and wilds, and reared by hand. He also sold guinea-pigs, white rats, piebald mice, hedgehogs, and snakes.

So no wonder he had amassed wealth.

And now spring came. The robin left the gateway where he had been singing so sweetly all the winter, and went away to the woods to build himself a nest. The primroses came out in the copses, and as soon as the blackbird and thrush saw them they started singing at once.

The trees all burst into bud and then into leaf. The young corn grew green in the fields, seeing which the lark tried how high he could mount and how loud he could sing.

And the wind blew soft and warm from the west, and the sun shone forth bright and clear, and dried up the roads and the fields, and chased every bit of snow away from the glens and straths, only permitting it to remain here and there in the hollows on the mountain tops.