Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy. Stables Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

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