Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy

You have to hold out your hand. The teacher says “Pande” (in Latin). Then he lets you have it again and again, sometimes till he is out of breath, and your hands and wrists are all blistered.

I remember receiving six-and-thirty “pandeys,” because I had smashed a tyrant boy who had bullied me for months. It was a cruel injustice; for the bully got no punishment except that which I had given him.

Dominie Roberts was a pedagogue, then, of this class.

All the boys were afraid of him. Harry was not. Though only eleven years of age, Harry was nearly as tall as the dominie.

There was a consultation one day as to who should steal the tawse.

No boy would venture, but at length —

“I will,” said Harry.

“Hurrah! for the Hermit!” was the shout.

The dominie went out of the schoolroom every forenoon for half an hour to smoke. A pretty hubbub and din there was then, you may be sure.

The day after the theft of the tawse was determined on, as soon as the pedagogue had stumped out of the school – he wore a wooden leg from the knee – Harry went boldly up to the desk and seized the tawse.

“What shall I do with it?” he asked a schoolboy.

“Pitch it out of the window.”

“No,” cried another, “he would get it again. Put it in the fire.”

Harry did so, and covered it up with burning coals.

By and by back stumped the dominie. He held his nose in the air and sniffed. There was a shocking smell of burning leather.

The dominie went straight to the fire, and with the poker discovered the almost shapeless cinders of his pet tawse!

He grew red and white, time about, with rage.

“Who has done this thing?” he thundered.

No reply, and the dominie thumped on the floor with his wooden leg, and repeated the question.

Still no answer.

“I shall punish the entire school,” cried Dominie Roberts.

He stumped out again, and many of the boys grew pale with fear, and the smaller ones began to cry.

Presently the dominie returned. In his hand he bore a long piece of a bridle rein, and this he fashioned into a tawse in sight of the whole school. Then he called the biggest class, and once more demanded the name of the culprit.

No reply, but every lad in the class began to wet his hands and pull down his sleeves.

“All hands up,” was the terrible command.

The punishment was about to commence when forth stepped Harry the Hermit into the middle of the circle.

“Stay a moment, if you please, sir,” said Harry.

“You know, then, who committed the crime?” asked the dominie, sternly.

“I do; it was myself.”

“And why?”

“Because the other boys wanted to, but were afraid.”

“Which other boys? Name them.”

“I will not.”

“Pande, sir, Pande.”

Five minutes afterwards Harry staggered back to his seat, pale-faced and sick.

He sat down beside his class-mate, and was soon so far recovered as to be able to whisper —

“How many did I have?”

“Two-and-twenty,” was the reply. “I counted.”

“And that new tawse is a tickler, I can tell you,” said Harry.

He did not climb any trees that day going home. He could not have held on. Nor was he able to eat much supper, but he did not tell the reason why.

But, apart from his fondness for corporal or palmar punishment, Dominie Roberts was a clever teacher, and Harry made excellent progress.

Autumn came round, and stormy wet days, and many a cold drenching our hero got, both coming to and going from school. But he did not mind them. They only seemed to render him hardier and sturdier, and make his cheeks the ruddier.

Then winter arrived “on his snow-white car,” as poets say, and often such storms blew that even grown-up people feared to face them. But Harry would not give in. On evenings like these John would be dispatched to meet Harry, and many an anxious glance from the dining-room window would his mother cast, until she saw them coming up the long avenue, Eily always first, feathering through the snow, and barking for very joy as she neared the house.

Sometimes the roads would be so blocked with snow, that Harry found it far more convenient to walk along on the top of the stone fences, often missing his feet, and getting plunged nearly over his head in a snow-bank.

In the early part of January, 186-, I forget the exact day and date, one of the most fierce and terrible snowstorms that old men ever remembered, swept over the northern shires of Scotland.

When Harry left for school that morning there seemed little cause for alarm. There was no sunshine however, and the whole sky was covered by an unbroken wall of blue-grey cloud. Towards the forenoon snow began to fall – a kind of soft hail like millet seeds. The ground was hard and dry to receive it, so it did not melt.

The schoolboys tried to mould it into snowballs, but it would not “make,” it would not stick together – evidence in itself that the frost was intense.

Gradually this soft, fine hail changed to big, dry flakes. Then the wind began to rise, and moan around the chimneys, and go shrieking through the leafless boughs of the ash trees and elms. The snowfall increased in density every minute. Looking up through the falling flakes, you could not have seen three yards.

Dominie Roberts at two o’clock began to get uneasy, and gave many an anxious glance towards the windows, now getting quickly snowed up. So great, too, was the frost that, though a roaring fire of wood and peats burned on the hearth, the panes were flowered and frozen.

At half-past two it began to get rapidly dark, so the dominie dismissed his class with earnest injunctions to those boys who had far to go, not to delay on the road, but to hurry home at once.

It might have been thought that on an evening like this, Harry would have been glad of companionship on the road. Not he. He went off like a young colt, with Eily galloping round him, as soon as ever he got outside the gate.

The wind blew right in his face, however, and the drift was whirling like smoke right over every fence. The roads were also barricaded every few yards with high wreaths of snow, blown off the fields and hills.

The wind blew wilder, and every minute the cold seemed to grow more and more intense.

Harry’s face and hands were blue and benumbed before he had gone a mile and a half, Eily’s coat was white and frozen hard; but on went the pair of them, battling with the storm, Harry holding his head well down, and keeping his plaid up over his nostrils.

Often he had to turn round and walk backwards by way of resting himself.

The snow-wreaths were most difficult to get through, the smoking drift cutting his breath and nearly suffocating him.

So ere long his strength began to fail. Hardy though he was, Highlander though he was, bred and born among the wild, bleak mountains, and reared in the forests, his powers of endurance gave out.

He crouched down and took the half-frozen dog in his arms. He talked to her as if she had been a human being, and the probability is that she did know what he said.

“Oh, Eily,” he said, “I do feel tired.”

The kindly collie licked his face.

“But come on,” he cried, starting up again; “we must not give in. We have only about a mile and a half to go if we cross through the wood. We’ll soon get home. Come on, Eily, come on.”

In a short time he had reached the wood. It was mostly spruce and fir, and the branches were borne half to the ground with the weight of snow at one side, while the other was bare, and the wind tearing through them.

He leaped the “dyke,” (a stone fence) and was glad he had done so. There was far more shelter here, and the blasts were less fierce and cutting. He walked faster now. The wood was about half a mile wide. Arrived at the other side, a path by a stone fence led all the way down to his own home in the glen beneath.

He hurried on. How strange the wood looked under its mantle of snow! But he could not see any distance ahead owing to the drift. Sometimes the wind would catch a tree and roar through it, and for the moment he would be almost suffocated with the smother of falling snow.

He had gone on quite a long way, when he suddenly came to a clearing. He had never seen it before; never been here before. Then the awful truth flashed at once across the boy’s mind —he was lost!

How long he wandered in the wood before he sank exhausted beside a tree he never could tell.

Night and darkness came on, the storm roared through the wood with ever-increasing force, but Harry knew nothing of it. He slept – slept that sleep that seldom knows a waking in this world.

And the drift banked up – the cruel drift – up around him. It hid his legs, his arms, his shoulders, and at last his head itself.

Still the snow fell and the wind blew. It blew with a moaning, whistling sound through the tall pine-trees, as it does through rigging and cordage of a ship in a gale. It blew with a rushing noise through the closer-branched spruce trees, and ever in a momentary lull you might have heard the frozen tips of the branches knocking together as if glass rattled.

It was a terrible night.

As usual on stormy evenings, stalwart John had gone to meet young Harry; but he kept the road. It never struck him that the boy would have ventured through the wood in such a night.

Harry’s parents were sitting in the parlour anxious beyond all expression, when suddenly the quick, sharp, impatient bark of the collie rang out high above the howling wind.

In she rushed whining when the door was opened. But out she flew again.

“Oh, come quickly,” she seemed to say, “and save poor young master!”

Mr Milvaine well knew what it meant. Five minutes after, with lanterns and poles, he and two trusty servants were following close at the honest dog’s heels.

Up the hill by the fence side, up and up and into the wood, and never did the faithful animal halt until she led them to the tree where she had left the boy.

For a moment or two now she seemed lost. She went galloping round and round the tree; while with their lanterns Mr Milvaine and his servants looked in vain for poor Harry.

But back Eily came, and at once began to scrape in the snow. Then something dark appeared, and Eily barked for joy.

Her master was found.

Was he dead? They thought so at first. But the covering of snow had saved him.

They poured a little brandy over his throat, wrapped him tenderly in a Highland plaid, and bore him home. Yet it was days before he spoke.

Dear reader, did ever you consider what a blessing our loving Father has given us in a faithful dog? How kind we ought to be, and how considerate for the comfort of such a noble animal! And ever as they get older our thoughtfulness for their welfare and care of them ought to increase. Mind, too, that most good thinking men believe that dogs have a hereafter.

“I canna but believe,” says the Ettrick shepherd, in his broad Doric, “that dowgs hae souls.”

My friend, the Rev. J.G. Wood, in his book called “Man and Beast,” has proved beyond dispute that there is nothing in Scripture against the theory that the lower animals will have a hereafter.

And note how the goodly poet Tupper writes about his dear dog Sandy:

“Shall noble fidelity, courage and love,    Obedience and conscience – all rot in the ground?No room be found for them beneath or above,    Nor anywhere in all the universe round?Can Fatherhood cease? or the Judge be unjust?    Or changefulness mark any counsel of God?Shall a butterfly’s beauty be lost in the dust?    Or the skill of a spider be crushed as a clod?“I cannot believe it: Creation still lives;    The Maker of all things made nothing in vain:The Spirit His gracious ubiquity gives,    Though seeming to die, ever lives on again.We ‘rise with our bodies,’ and reason may hope    That truth, highest truth, may sink humbly to this,That ‘Lo, the poor Indian’ was wiser than Pope    When he longed for his dog to be with him in bliss!”

Book One – Chapter Seven.

Leaving Home

From what I have already told the reader about Harry Milvaine, it will readily be gathered that he was a lad of decided character and of some considerable determination. A boy, too, who was apt to take action at the first touch of the spur of a thought or an idea.

What I have now to relate will, I think, prove this still further.

He left his uncle – a younger brother of his mother – and his father one evening talking in the dining-room. He had bidden them good-night and glided away upstairs to bed. He was partially undressed before he noticed that he had left a favourite book down in the library.

So he stole silently down to fetch it.

He had to pass the dining-room door, and in doing so the mention of his own name caused him to pause and listen.

Listeners, they say, seldom hear any good about themselves. Perhaps not, but the following is what Harry heard:

“Ha!” laughed Uncle Robert, “I tell you, brother, I’d do it. That would take the fun out of him. That would knock all notions of a sailor’s life out of the lad. It has been done before, and most successfully too, I can tell you.”

“And,” replied Harry’s father, “you would really advise me to – ”

“I would really advise you to do as I say,” said uncle, interrupting his brother-in-law. “I’d send him to sea for a voyage in a whaler. They sail in February, and they return in May – barely three months, you see.”

“Indeed, then I do think I’ll take your advice. But his mother loves the dear, brave boy so, that I’m sure she’ll feel the parting very much.”

“Well, well, my sister’ll soon get over that.”

Harry stayed to hear no more. He went back to his room without the book, and, instead of going to bed, lay down upon his sofa with the intention of what he called “doing a good think.”

For fully an hour he lies there with his round eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Then he starts up.

“Yes,” he cries, half aloud, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. My father will see whether I have any courage or not.”

He goes straight to the little money-box kennel that stood on the mantelpiece.

The canary and pigeon business had been profitable with Harry for some time past.

He was very wealthy indeed. More so even than he imagined, for now when he counted his horde it ran up to 4 pounds, 15 shillings, 6 pence.

“Splendid!” said Harry to himself; “I couldn’t have believed I was so rich.”

Then he knelt down and said his prayers, far more fervently than he was wont to do. Especially did he pray for blessings to fall on his dear mother and father.

“I don’t think it is quite right,” he said to himself, “what I am going to do, but it will be all right again in a few months.”

He lay down in bed and slept soundly for hours. But the stars were still shining thickly when he awoke and looked out of the window.

There was snow on the ground, hard, crisp snow.

Harry lit his candle, then he got out his small writing-case, and, after some time and considerable pains, succeeded in writing a letter, which he carefully folded and addressed.

Young though he was – with his tiny fowling-piece – a gift from one of his uncles – the boy could tumble either rabbit or hare, or bring down a bird on the wing, but he was not particularly clever with the pen. I wish I could say that he was.

He now got a small bag out of the cupboard, and into this he put a change of clothes. Having washed and dressed, he was ready for the road.

He opened his door quietly, and walked silently along the passage, boots in hand. He had to pass his mother’s room door. His heart beat high, it thumped against his ribs so that he could almost hear it. How he would have liked to have gone in, and kissed his dear mother good-bye! But he dared not.

Not until he was quite out of doors among the snow did he put on his boots. Eily, not knowing him, made a rush, barking and fiercely growling.

“Hush, Eily! hush!” he cried; “it’s me, it’s Harry, your master.”

Eily changed her tune now, and also her attitude. The hair that had been standing up all along her back was smoothed down at once, and as the boy bent to tie his boots she licked his hands and cheek. The poor dog seemed really to know that something more than usual was in the wind.

There was a glimmer of light in the east, but the stars everywhere else were still very bright.

Harry stood up.

Eily sat motionless, looking eagerly up into his face, and her eyes sparkled in the starlight.

She was waiting for her master’s invitation to go along with him. One word would have been enough to have sent her wild with joy.

“Where can he be going?” she was asking herself. “Not surely to the forest at this time of night! But wherever he goes, I’ll go too.”

“Eily,” said the boy, seriously, even sadly, “I’m going away, far, far away.”

The dog listened, never moving ear nor tail.

“And, Eily, you cannot come with me, dear, dear doggie.”

Eily threw herself at his feet, or rather fell; she looked lost in grief.

He patted her kindly.

This only made matters worse. She thought he was relenting, that his words had been only spoken in fun. She jumped up, sprang on his shoulder, licked his ear, then went gambolling round and round him, and so made her way to the gate.

It was very apparent, however, that all these antics were assumed, there was no joy at the dog’s heart. She was but trying to overcome her master’s scruples to take her along with him.

Harry followed her to the gate.

“It must not be, Eily,” he said again; “I’m going where you cannot come. But I will come back, remember that.”

His hand was on her head, and he was gazing earnestly down at her.

“Yes, I’ll come back in a few months, and you will meet me, oh! so joyfully. Then we’ll roam and rove and run in the beautiful forest once more, and fish by the river, and shoot on the moorland and hill. Goodbye, Eily. Be good, and watch. Good-bye, goodbye.”

A great tear fell on Eily’s mane as he bent down and kissed her brow.

Eily stood there by the gate in the starlight, watching the dark retreating figure of her beloved young master, until a distant corner hid him from view, and she could see him no more.

Then she threw herself down on the snow; and, reader, if you could have heard the big, sobbing sigh she gave, you would believe with me, that the mind of a dog is sometimes almost human, and their griefs and sorrows very real.

Hastily brushing the tears from his eyes, Harry made the best of his way along the road, not daring to look behind him, lest his feelings should overcome him.

He kept repeating to himself the words he had heard his uncle make use of the evening before. This kept his courage up. When he had gone about a mile he left the main road and turned into a field. A little winding church-path soon brought him to a wooded hollow, where there was a very tiny cottage and garden.

He opened the gate and entered.

He went straight to the right-hand window, and, wetting his forefinger, rubbed it up and down on the pane.

The noise it made was enough to awaken some one inside, for presently there was a cough, and a voice said —

“Who’s there?”

“It is I, Andrew: rise, I want to speak to you.”

“Man! is it you, Harry? I’ll be out in a jiffy.”

And sure enough a light was struck and a candle lit. Harry could see poor faithful Andrew hurrying on his clothes, and in two minutes more he had opened the door and admitted his young friend.

“Man! Harry,” he said, “you scared me. You are early on the road. Have ye traps set in the forest? D’ye want me to go wi’ ye?”

“No such luck, Andrew,” replied the boy. “I’ve no traps set. I won’t see the forest for many a long day again.”

“Haud your tongue, man!” cried Andrew, looking very serious and pretending to be angry. “Haud your tongue. Are ye takin’ leave o’ your reason? What have ye in that bag? Why are ye no dressed in the kilt, but in your Sunday braws?”

Then Harry told him all – told him of the determination he had for many a day to go to sea, and of the conversation he had overheard on the previous evening.

Andrew used all the arguments he could think of or muster to dissuade him from his purpose, and enlarged upon the many dangers to be encountered on the stormy main, as he called it, but all to no purpose.

“Mind ye,” said Andrew, “I’ve been to sea myself, and know something about it.”

Honest, innocent Andrew, all the experience he had of the stormy main was what he had gained in a six hours’ voyage betwixt Granton and Aberdeen.

But when Andrew found that nothing which he could adduce made the slightest impression on his young friend, he pulled out his snuff-horn, took two enormously large pinches, and sat down in silence to look at Harry.

The boy pulled out a letter from his breast-pocket.

“This is for my dear mother,” he said. “Give it to her to-day. Tell her how sorry I was to go away. Tell her – tell her – .”

Here the boy fairly broke down, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

My hero crying? Yes, I do not feel shame for him either. The soldier or sailor, ere journeying far away to foreign lands, is none the less brave if he does pause on the brow of the hill, and, looking back to his little cottage in the glen, drop a tear.

Do you remember the words of the beautiful song —

“Mid pleasures and palaces tho’ we may roam,Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,Which, seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met elsewhere.“An exile from home, splendour dazzles in vain,Oh! give me my lowly thatched cottage again!The birds singing gaily that came at my call,And give me the peace of mind dearer than all?”

Andrew, when he saw Harry crying, felt very much inclined to join him. There was a big lump in his throat that he could hardly gulp down. But then Andrew was a bit simple.

Harry jumped up presently and took two or three strides up and down the floor of the little room, and so mastered his grief.

“It won’t be for such a very long time, you know, Andrew,” he said.

“No,” said Andrew, brightening up. “And I’ll look after your garden, Harry.”

“Thank you, Andrew, and the turning lathe and the tools?”

“I’ll see to them. You’ll find them all as bright as new pins on your return.”

“And my pets, Andrew?”

“Yes.”

“Well, look after those too. Sell them all as soon as you can – rats, mice, guinea-pigs, and pigeons, and all.”

“Yes.”

“And, Andrew, keep the money you get for them to buy snuff.”

“Good-bye, Andrew.”

“Good-bye. Mind you take care of yourself.”

“I’ll do that for my mother’s sake.”

Andrew pressed Harry’s soft hand between his two horny palms for just a moment.

“God bless you, Harry!” he muttered.

He could not trust himself to say more, his heart was too full.

Then away went Harry, grasping his stick in his hand and trudging on manfully over the hills, with his face to the east.

By and by the sun rose, and with it rose Harry’s spirits. He thought no more of the past. That was gone. He felt a man now; he felt he had a future before him, and on this alone he permitted his thoughts to rest.

Now I do not mean to vindicate that which my hero has done – quite the reverse. Obedience to the wishes of his parents is a boy’s first duty.

Still, I cannot help thinking that my young hero had a bold heart in his breast.

See him now, with the sun glinting down on his ruddy face, on which is a smile, and on his stalwart figure; he is more like a boy of fifteen than a child under twelve. How firm his tread on the crisp and dazzling snow, how square his shoulders, how springy and lithe his gait and movement! No, I’m not ashamed of my hero. Hear him. He is singing —

“There is many a man of the Cameron clan    That has followed his chief to the field,And sworn to support him or die by his side,    For a Cameron never can yield.“The moon has arisen, it shines on that path,    Now trod by the gallant and true —High, high are their hopes, for their chieftain has said,    That whatever men dare they can do.        I hear the pibroch, sounding, sounding,        Deep o’er the mountains and glens,    While light-springing footsteps are trampling the heath —        ’Tis the march of the Cameron men.”

Poor brave, but rather wayward, boy! the gallant ship is even now lying in Lerwick Bay that soon shall bear him far o’er Arctic seas.