'Well, Snap, how are you this morning? You look very down in the mouth.'
'Yes, sir, I don't feel very lively,' replied Snap.
The speakers were Admiral Christopher Winthrop and our old friend Harold, or Snap Hales. The mid-summer term had come to an end, and the boys were all at home at Fairbury for the holidays. Frank and Billy Winthrop were somewhere about the home-farm, and the old Admiral was down at the bottom of the lawn, by the famous brook, intent on the capture of a certain 'sock-dollager' who had been fighting a duel with the sailor for the last three weeks. So far the cunning and shyness of the trout had been more than a match for the skill and perseverance of the red-faced, grey-haired old gentleman on the bank, but the Admiral had served a long apprenticeship in all field-sports, and it would go hard with him if that four-pounder did not, sooner or later, lie gasping at his feet.
'Try an alder, sir,' suggested Snap, who, though no fisherman himself, had long since learnt the name of every fly in the Admiral's book.
'No,' replied that worthy disciple of Walton, 'I'll give him just one more turn with the dun,' and, so saying, he proceeded with the greatest care to strain the gut of another of Ogden's beautiful little flies.
'But what is the matter with you, Snap, that you are not, as you say, very lively?' urged the Admiral, speaking with some difficulty, his mouth being at the moment full of dry gut.
'Characters came to-day, Admiral,' replied Snap; 'didn't you get Frank's and Billy's?'
'Yes, and a precious bad one Master Billy's was; the only good part of it was the writing. Mr. Smith writes:—"Hand-writing shows great improvement; is diligent and anxious to improve." Unfortunately Billy's writing speaks for itself, even if, like me, you can't read a word of it.' And the old man chuckled to himself at his own shrewdness.
'Frank's was good enough, I suppose, sir?' asked Snap.
'Yes, Hales, as good as it could be. Frank is one of the right sort. He can work like a—like a Winthrop (and the old boy swelled with pride), and play like a——'
'Vernon,' said a soft, sweet voice behind the Admiral, who, turning, found himself face to face with his sister-in-law, a slight, graceful woman, who was beautiful still, in spite of the grey in her hair and the lines which showed that trouble had not spared even sweet Dolly Vernon, as her friends had called her before she married the dead squire of Fairbury.
'Ah, Chris! Chris!' she cried, shaking her finger at him, 'what a vain old sea-dog you are! So, all my boy's virtues are Winthrop, and all his vices Vernon, are they? For shame, sir!'
The Admiral had been supreme on his own quarterdeck; he was still supposed to be supreme about the home farm and in the coverts. As a matter of fact, he was nothing of the kind, but simply his fair sister's most loyal henchman and most obedient slave. When his brother had died, leaving Mrs. Winthrop with two great boys to bring up and the estate to manage, the Admiral had at first acted as his sister-in-law's agent from a distance. As the years went on, and the boys grew up, the Admiral found that the management of the estate from a distance was more than he could undertake, so that at last he had settled in a little cottage in the park, and practically lived with his sister-in-law at the Hall.
'Yes, sister, yes,' replied the old gentleman apologetically, '"plays like a Vernon," of course that's what I meant; and you know,' he added slyly, 'that Dr. Foulkes said that his cricket was, if anything, better than his classics.'
'And how about his vices?' persisted Mrs. Winthrop.
'Pooh! Frank hasn't got any,' asserted her brother-in-law.
'Hasn't he?' she asked with a little doubtful smile; 'and what do you say to that, Harold? You are his bosom friend.'
Snap reddened up to the eyes.
'No, Mrs. Winthrop, I don't think he has. Dr. Foulkes seems to think they all belong to me. My uncle says that according to my character I have a monopoly of all the qualities undesirable in a boy who has his way to make in the world.'
Although he spoke jestingly, Mrs. Winthrop knew enough of Snap to see that there was a good deal of earnest in his jest. His guardian, Mr. Howell Hales, a solicitor in large practice, had never had time or inclination to do more than his bare duty by his fatherless nephew, so that Fairbury Court had become the boy's real home, and Mrs. Winthrop almost unconsciously had filled the place of mother to him.
'What is it, Snap,' she said now, laying her hand on his strong young arm, and looking up into his face inquiringly, 'have you got a worse character than usual?'
'Yes! worse than usual,' laughed Snap grimly; and then, seeing that his hard tone had hurt his gentle friend, his voice softened, and he added, 'Yes, Mrs. Winthrop, it is very bad this time, so bad that the Head doesn't want me to go back next term.'
'Not to go back next term? why, that's expulsion,' blurted out the Admiral.
'No, sir, not quite as bad as that; it's dismissal,' suggested Snap.
'I don't see any difference. Chopping straws I call that,' said old Winthrop.
'Splitting hairs don't you mean, Chris?' asked Mrs. Winthrop with a half-smile; 'but I see the difference, Snap. There is no disgrace about this, is there?'
'No, I didn't think so,' replied Snap, 'but my uncle says I am a disgrace to my family and always shall be.'
'He always did say that,' muttered the Admiral. 'Never mind what your uncle says; I mean,' added the old gentleman, correcting himself, 'don't take it too much to heart. You see he has very strict ideas of what young lads should be.'
'What is it that you have been doing, Snap? Is it too bad to tell me?' asked Mrs. Winthrop after a while.
For a moment the boy hung his head, thinking, and then raised it with a proud look in his eyes.
'No, dear,' he said, dropping unconsciously into an old habit, 'it isn't, and so it can't be very bad!' And with that he told the whole foolish story of his share in the smoking orgy, of his reprieve, of the mop incident and the bolster fight, and, last of all, of that Fernhall ghost.
At this part of the recital of his wrongdoings the Admiral's face, which had been growing redder and redder all the time, got fairly beyond control, and the old gentleman nearly went into convulsions of laughter. 'Shameful, sir; gross breach of discipline, sir; ha! ha! ha! "Don't like me in the spirit, had better take me in the flesh." Capital—cap—infamous, I mean, infamous. Your uncle never did anything like that, sir, not he,' spluttered the veteran; 'couldn't have done if he had tried,' he addedsotto voce.
'But,' said Mrs. Winthrop, after a pause, 'what are you going to do, Snap?'
'My uncle wants me to go into the Church or Mr. Mathieson's office,' replied the boy.
'The Church or Mr. Mathieson's office—that is a strange choice, isn't it?' asked his friend. 'Which do you mean to do?'
'Neither,' answered Snap stoutly; 'I'm not fit for one, and I should do no good in the other. I shall do what some other fellows I know have done. I'll emigrate and turn cow-boy. I like hard work and could do it,' and half consciously he held out one of his sinewy brown hands, and looked at it as if it was a witness for him in this matter.
'What does your uncle say to that, Snap?' asked the Admiral.
'Not much, sir, bad or good. He says I am an ungrateful young wretch for refusing to go into Mr. Mathieson's office, and that I shall never come to any good. But, then, I've heard that from him often enough before,' said Snap grimly, 'and I think he will let me go, and that is the main point.'
'And when do you mean to start?' asked the Admiral.
'Oh, as soon as he will let me, sir. You see, my father left me a few hundred pounds, so that I dare say when Mr. Hales sees that my mind is made up he will let me go. You don't think much worse of me, I hope, sir, do you?'
'Worse of you?' said the old sailor stoutly, 'no! You are a young fool, I dare say, but so was I at your time of life. Come up to lunch!' And, planting his rod by the side of the stream, he turned towards the house, Mrs. Winthrop and Snap following him.
At lunch Snap had to tell the whole story again to Billy and Frank, but when he came to the point at which he had decided to 'go west,' instead of eliciting the sympathy of his audience, he only seemed to rouse their envy.
'By Jove,' said Frank, 'if it wasn't for this jolly old place I should wish that I had got your character and your punishment, Snap!'
For a week or more both the Admiral and his sister had been very unlike their old selves, so quiet were they anddistrait, except when by an effort one or the other seemed to rouse to a mood whose merriness had something false and strained in it, even to the unobservant young eyes of the boys. Why was it that at this speech of Frank's Mrs. Winthrop's sweet eyes filled with sudden tears, and that piece of pickle went the wrong way and almost choked the Admiral? Perhaps, if you follow the story further, you may be able to guess.
After lunch they all wandered down again to the trout-stream, where 'Uncle's Ogden,' as they called the Admiral's rod, stood planted in the ground, like the spear of some knight-err ant of old days. It was a lovely spot, this home of the Winthrops—such a home as exists only in England; beautiful by nature, beautiful by art, mellowed by age, and endeared to the owners by centuries of happy memories. The sunlight loved it and lingered about it in one moss-grown corner or another from the first glimpse of dawn to the last red ray of sunset. The house had been built in a hollow, after the unsanitary fashion of our forefathers; round it closed a rampart of low wooded hills, which sheltered its grey gables from the winter winds; and in front of it a close-cropped lawn ran from the open French windows of the morning-room to the sunlit ripples of the little river Tane as it raced away to the mill on the home-farm.
For five centuries the Winthrops had lived at Fairbury, not brilliantly, perhaps, but happily and honestly, as squires who knew that their tenants' interests and their own were identical; sometimes as soldiers who went away to fight for the land they loved, only to come back to enjoy in it the honours they had won. It was a fair home and a fair name, and so far, in five centuries, none of the race had done anything to bring either into disrepute. No wonder the Winthrops loved Fairbury.
THE ADMIRAL FISHINGTHE ADMIRAL FISHING
But I am digressing, and must hark back to the Admiral, who has stolen on in front of his followers and is now crouching, like an old tiger, a couple of yards from the bank of the brook. Above him, waving to and fro almost like that tiger's tail, is the graceful, gleaming fly-rod, with its long light line, which looks in the summer air no thicker than gossamer threads. In front of the old gentleman's position, and on the other side of the stream, is a crumbling stone wall, and for a foot or two from it, between it and the Admiral, the water glides by in shadow. Had you watched it very carefully, you might, if you were a fisherman, have detected a still, small rise, so small that it hardly looked like a rise at all. Surely none but the most experienced would have guessed that it was the rise of the largest fish in that stream. But the Admiral was 'very experienced,' and knew almost how many spots there were on the deep, broad sides of the four-pounder whose luncheon of tiny half-drowned duns was disturbing the waters opposite. At last the fly was dry enough to please him, and Admiral Chris let it go. A score of times before, in the last few days, he had had just as good a chance of beguiling his victim, and each time his cast had been light and true, so that the harshest of critics or most jealous of rivals (the same thing, you know) could have found no fault in it. Each time the fly, dry as a bone and light as thistle-down, had lit upon the stream just the right distance above the feeding fish, and had sailed over him with jaunty wings well cocked, so close an imitation of nature that the man who made it could hardly have picked it out from among the dozen live flies which sailed by with it. But a man's eyes are no match for a fish's, and the old 'sock-dollager' had noticed something wrong—a shade of colour, a minute mistake in form, or something too delicate even for Ogden's fingers to set right—and had forthwith declined to be tempted. But this time fate was against the gallant fish. The Admiral had miscalculated his cast, and the little dun hit hard against the crumbling wall and tumbled back from it into the water 'anyhow.'
Though a mistake, it was the most deadly cast the Admiral could have made. A score of flies had fallen in the same helpless fashion from that wall in the last half-hour, and as each fell the great fish had risen and sucked them down. This fell right into his mouth. He saw no gleam of gut in the treacherous shadow, he had seen no upright figure on the bank for an hour and a half; he had no time to scrutinise the fly as it sailed down to him, so he turned like a thought in a quick brain, caught the fly, and knew that he too was caught, almost before the Admiral had had time to realise that he had for once made a bad cast. And then the struggle began; and such is the injustice of man's nature that even gentle Mrs. Winthrop did not feel a touch of compassion for that gallant little trout, battling for his life against a man who weighed fifteen stone to his four pounds, and had had as many years to learn wisdom in, almost, as the fish had lived weeks. No doubt she would have felt sorry for the fish if she had thought of these things, but then you see she didn't think of them.
'By George! I'm into him,' shouted the Admiral.
Anyone only slightly acquainted with our sporting idioms might have taken this speech literally, and wondered how such a very small whale could have held such a very large Jonah. But the Admiral never stopped to pick his words when excited, as poor Billy soon discovered. An evil fate had prompted Billy to snatch up the net as soon as his uncle struck his fish, and now, as the four-pounder darted down stream, the boy made a dab at him with it.
'Ah, you young owl! You lubberly young sea-cook,' roared the infuriated old gentleman. 'What are you doing? Do you think you're going to take a trout like a spoonful of porridge? Get below him, and wait till I steer him into the net.'
Frightened by Towzer's futile 'dab,' the trout had made a desperate dash for the further side of the stream, making the Admiral's reel screech as the line ran out. Skilfully the old man humoured his victim, now giving him line, now just balking him in his efforts to reach a weed-bed or a dangerous-looking root. People talk of salmon which have taken a day to kill; it is a good trout which gives the angler ten minutes' 'play.' The Admiral's trout was tired even in less time than that, and came slowly swimming down past a small island of water weeds, beyond the deep water on the house-side of the stream, submissive now to his captor's guiding hand. Gently the Admiral drew him towards the shallows, and in another moment he would have been in the net, when suddenly, without warning, he gave his head one vicious shake, and, leaping clear out of the water, fell back upon the little island, where he lay high and dry, the red spots on his side gleaming in the sun. It was his last effort for freedom, and now, as he lay gasping within a few inches of the clear stream, of home and safety, the treacherous steel thing dropped out of his mouth, the current caught the belly of the loose line and floated it down stream, and the Admiral stood on the further bank dumb with disgust, the last link broken which bound his fish to him. In a moment more the fish would recover from his fall, and then one kick, however feeble, would be enough to roll him back into the Tane, and so good-bye to all the fruits of several weeks' patience and cunning, and good-bye, too, to all chance of catching 'the best trout, by George, sir, in the brook!' It was hard!
But there was another chance in the Admiral's favour which he had not counted upon. Even as the fish fell back upon the dry weeds Snap slid quietly as an otter into the stream. A few strong, silent strokes, and he was alongside the weeds, and as the fish's gaping gills opened before he made what would have been to the Admiral a fatal effort Snap's fingers were inserted, and the great trout carried off through his own element as unceremoniously as if it really was an otter which had got him.
'I'm not a bad retriever, sir, am I?' asked the hoy as he laid his prize down at old Winthrop's feet. That worthy sportsman was delighted.
'No, my boy,' he replied, 'you are first-rate, though perhaps Mr. Hales would call you a sad dog if he saw you in those dripping garments. Be off and change into some of Frank's toggery.'
'All right, sir; come on, Frank,' replied Snap, and together the three boys raced off to their own domain in one of the wings of Fairbury Court, given over long ago to boys, dogs, and disorder.
Meanwhile the Admiral retired to weigh his fish, which he did most carefully, allowing three ounces for its loss of weight since landing—an altogether unnecessary concession, as it had not been out of the water then more than five minutes. However, he entered it in his fishing journal as 3 lbs. 11 ozs., caught August 2, and retrieved by Snap Hales. As he closed the book he sighed and muttered, 'That is about the last trout I shall take on the Tane.'
The day after the Admiral's triumph over his fishy tenant he and his sister called a meeting in the morning-room after breakfast. It was an informal meeting, but, as he said that the business to be done was important, the young squire restrained his impatience to go and see the men about rolling the cricket pitch in the park, and waited to hear what his uncle had to say.
'I'm sorry, Frank,' the old man said, 'that you will have to put off "the Magpies" for next week, but I am afraid we can't have any cricket here this August.'
'Why, uncle,' expostulated Frank, 'it is the very best fun we have, and the Magpies are capital good fellows as well as good cricketers.'
'Yes, I know,' replied his uncle gravely, 'but even cricket must give way sometimes, and now it happens that your mother and I are suddenly called away on business, on very important business,' and here he looked sternly at his sister-in-law, who turned her face from the light, and appeared to busy herself with the arrangement of a vase of flowers on the old oak over-mantel.
'But, uncle,' put in Towzer, 'couldn't Frank take care of the Magpies even if you and mother were not here? Of course it would not be half such fun as if you were here to score and Mother to look on, but Humphreys (the butler) would see that the dinners were all right. I'm sure he could,' added the boy more confidently, catching at a sign of approval in his brother's face.
'It wouldn't do, my boy,' asserted Admiral Chris, 'it would not do at all; it would be rude to your guests, you wouldn't be able to manage, and besides,' he added, as if in despair for a convincing argument, 'we might be able to get back, and then neither your mother nor I need miss the match.'
This was quite another story, and so the boys consented, albeit with a very bad grace, to postpone their cricket.
'What I propose now instead of the match,' continued the Admiral, 'is a little travel for you two, and I've asked Snap Hales's uncle to let him go with you. I want you to go off and try a fishing tour in Wales, whilst your mother and I finish our business in London, and then we'll all meet again in a fortnight's time.'
'Bravo, uncle!' cried Frank, 'but what am I to do for a rod?'
'Oh, if yours is broken you had better take mine,' replied the Admiral.
'What, your big Castle Connel? Thank you, sir; it would be as much good to me in such cramped places as you used to tell us about as a clothes-prop!' replied Frank.
'No, not the Castle Connel, the Ogden; I shan't want it, and you will take care of it, I know,' was the unexpected reply.
'Your Ogden, sir!' said Frank; 'why, I thought no one might look at it from less than ten paces.'
'You're an impertinent young monkey, Frank,' laughed the Admiral, 'but still you may have it.'
And so it was settled that the Magpie match should be given up, and Frank and Billy be packed off on a fishing tour in Wales, whilst their mother and the Admiral went up to town and transacted the troublesome business which had had the bad taste to demand their attention during the Midsummer holidays.
A little later in the day a man came up from the village with a note from Mr. Hales for the Admiral. The boys did not see it, but it was understood to contain his consent in writing 'to the proposal that Snap should join the expedition.' For the rest of that day all was excitement and bustling preparations for a start. It seemed almost as if they were preparing for something much more important than a fortnight's trip into Wales. Snap was up at the house all day. That with him was common enough. His own packing had not taken him long. The boy was keener-eyed than his young companions, and, in spite of an apparent roughness, was more sensitive to external influences than either of them. Hence it was perhaps that he noticed what they overlooked; noticed that Mrs. Winthrop's eyes followed her sons about from room to room, that she seemed to dread to lose them from her sight, that the dinner that night was what the boys called a birthday dinner, that is, consisted of all the little dishes of which Mrs. Winthrop knew each boy was specially fond, and what struck him more than anything was that two or three times he was sure her eyes filled with tears at some chance remark of Frank's or Willy's which to him had no sad meaning in it. He was puzzled, and, worse than that, 'depressed.'
The start next morning was even less auspicious than 'packing-day' had been. The midsummer weather seemed to have gone, and the gables of the old house showed through a grey and rainy sky; rain knocked the leaves off the roses, and battered angrily at the window-panes. The pretty Tane was swollen and mud-coloured, and, altogether, leaving home on a fishing trip to Wales felt worse than leaving home the first time for school.
The Admiral had determined on seeing them on their way as far as the county town, and drove to the station with them in the morning. If it had not been so absolutely absurd, Snap would have fancied once or twice that the old gentleman did not like any of the boys to be alone with his neighbours, or even with the servants. It would have been very unlike him if it had been the case, so of course Snap was mistaken.
'Towzer,' asked Frank in a whisper as they drove away, 'what was the Mater crying about?'
The Admiral overheard him, and replied:
'Crying, what nonsense, Frank; your mother was waving good-bye and good riddance to you with that foolish scrap of lace of hers; that's all. Crying, indeed!' and the old seaman snorted indignantly at the idea.
It was all very well for the Admiral to deny the fact, and to go very near to getting angry about it, but Snap at any rate knew that it was a fact, and that Admiral Chris knew it too. It was the first untruth he had ever heard from the upright old gentleman by his side, and Snap's wonder and dislike to this journey grew. As Snap looked back a turn in the road gave him another rain-blurred glimpse of Fairbury, with a little drooping figure which still watched from the Hall steps, and a conviction that something was wrong somewhere forced itself insensibly upon him, though as yet he was not wise enough to guess where the evil threatened.
The rain had an angry sound in it, unlike the merry splash of heavy summer showers: there seemed a sorrow in the sigh of the wind, unlike the scent-laden sigh of summer breezes after rain. Nature looked ugly and unhappy, and the boys were soon glad to curl themselves up in their respective corners of the railway carriage, with their backs resolutely turned upon the rain-blurred panes of the carriage window.
At the station the Admiral had met his favourite aversion, Mr. Crombie. What Mr. Crombie had originally done to offend the Admiral no one knew, but he had done it effectually. Crombie gave Admiral Chris the gout even worse than '47 port or the east wind.
Crombie was on the point of addressing Frank when the Admiral intervened and carried off the boys to get tickets. A little to Frank's surprise, his uncle took third-class tickets, for, although on long journeys the old gentleman invariably practised this wise economy, Frank had been accustomed to hear him say, 'Always take "firsts" on our own line, to support a local institution.'
As the Admiral took his tickets the voice of his persecutor sounded behind him. Crombie had followed his foe.
'What!' he said—and the sneering tone was so marked that it made the boys wince—'an Admiral travelling third!'
'Yes, Sir,' retorted the Admiral fiercely. 'God bless me, you don't mean to say there is a "fourth" on? Only persons who are afraid of being mistaken for their butlers travel first nowadays,' and with an indignant snort the old gentleman squared his shoulders, poked out his chin, and walked down the platform with a regular quarter-deck roll, leaving Mr. Crombie to meditate on what he was pleased to call 'the "side" of them beggarly aristocrats.'
At Glowsbury, the county town for Fairbury, Admiral Chris left the boys, hurrying away with an old crony of his, who, in spite of nods and winks, would blurt out, 'I'm so sorry, Winthrop.' But the Admiral let him get no further. 'Good-bye, lads,' he sang out, and then away he trotted, holding on to his astonished friend, whom he rapidly hustled out of earshot, so that the boys never knew the cause of that old gentleman's sorrow.
It didn't trouble them much either, for, once in Wales, the weather grew fine again—provokingly fine, the boys thought. If ever you go to dear little Wales, O Transatlantic cousin, to see the view, you may bet your bottom dollar that you won't see it. You will be like that other tourist who 'viewed the mist, but missed the view.' If, however, you can jockey the Welsh climate into a belief that you are going there solely for fishing, you may rely on such weather as the Winthrops got, that is to say, clear skies, broiling suns, and tiny silver streams calling out for rain-storms to swell their diminished waters, and crying out in vain. The waters will be clearer than crystal, the fish more shy than a boy of fourteen amongst ladies, and the views perfect. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to jockey anything Welsh: Wales is very unbelieving, and especially does it disbelieve anglers.
The boys opened their campaign on the Welsh borders, fished successfully for samlets—bright, silvery little fellows, which had to be put back—and with a miserable want of success for the brown trout, which they were allowed to keep if they could catch them. Sometimes they walked from point to point, but then they found that their expenses in gingerbeer were almost as great as if they had spent the money in a third-class ticket; once they tried a long run by rail on the—well, I dare not tell you its real name—so I'll say the Grand Old Dawdler's line. They bought third-class tickets, but travelled first, because the line had only three coaches in at that time, and they were all first. Two rustics travelled with them; it was rather a busy day with the Grand Old Dawdler's line. The station-master at the starting-point, who sold them their tickets, went with them as engine-driver and guard, and at each of the little stations which they passed he acted as station-master. This system of centralising all the service in one person had its advantages: there is only one person to tip, and if he is sober the travelling, if slow (say seven miles an hour), is very fairly safe.
Once, and once only, they tried tricycles. Wales is not as level as a billiard-table. Towzer, careless of the picturesque, wished that it was. On tricycles, he explained, if you were not used to them, you could travel on the flat rather faster than you could walk; uphill you had to get off and shove, and downhill you were either run away with, or, if you put on the brake, the tricycle stopped, you didn't—on the contrary, you proceeded upon your journey by a series of gyrations through the air, until suddenly planted on your head in the next county but two. Besides all this it cost more to send back your tricycle by rail than a first-class ticket would have cost, whereas if you didn't send it back you were liable to be tried at the next assizes.
A letter which I insert here, and which Mrs. Winthrop still keeps, for the sake, not of its melodious metre, but for the sake of auld lang syne, will give the reader some idea of the Winthrops' fishing adventures. I am inclined to think that Frank wrote it. Big, strong fellow as he was, he had a habit of constantly writing to the Mater, and I happen to know that Snap was too bad-tempered at that time to write anything. He had passed all that morning in trying to cast on a certain wooded reach. He had caught the grass; he had cracked his line like a coach-whip, and lost a score of flies by so doing; and had at last settled solemnly down to dig up with his penknife a great furze-bush on the bank which appeared to his angry imagination to rise from behind at every fly which he tried to throw.
'Aug. 12, 1874.
'DEAR MATER,—-
'Snap Hales arose, from his night's repose,In the midst of the Cambrian mountains,Where from cliff and from crag, over peat-moss and hag,The Tanat shepherds her fountains.
(Observe here the resemblance to Shelley.)
'He rolled in his tub, and tackled his grub,He booted and hatted in haste,Then said, "If you're wishing, boy Bill, to go fishing,There isn't one moment to waste."
'He strode to the brook, and with lordly lookQuoth, "Now, little fish, if you're in,Let some grayling or trout just put up his snoutAnd swallow this minnow of tin."
'As if at his wish, up bounded a fish,Gave one dubious sniffle or snuff,Thought 'It's covered with paint, I'll be hooked if it ain't,And the fellow who made it's a muff."
'Then Harold had tries with all sorts of flies,Which were brilliant, gigantic, and rare,But among them were none which resembled a "dun,"So the fish were content with a stare.
'To a tree by that brook many flies took their hook,Many more were whipped off in the wind;One fixed in the nose, several more in the clothesOf that angler before and behind.
'Then his cast-line broke, and Harold spoke,Right wrathful words spoke he,"Very well! you may grin, but I'll just wade inWhere there's neither briar nor tree."
'With naked foot, without stocking or boot,Right into the stream he strode—With a splash and a splutter, with a murmur and a mutter,And he frequently "Ah'd" and "Oh'd."
'Alas, as he tripped his bare feet slipped,They slipped on those slimy stones,And down he came (I forget the nameOf the very identical bones
'Upon which he sat); but he'd flies in his hat,And as he went down the streamThe fish arose, and tugged at his clothes,Until he began to scream.
'Round his hat's broad brim they began to swim,And into his face did stare.His mouth they eyed, they peeped inside,Much wondering who lived there.
'Their victim cried, "In vain I've triedTo snare these fishes free.Alas, for my sin, as they've got me in,I fear they'll swallow me."
'But, "Alack, this Jonah's a fourteen-stoner,"'Twas thus that the fishes cried."If we gape till we split, there will still be a bitOf the monster left outside."
'So Will landed him safe, our fisherman waif,In safety he landed him;With gobble and munch he chawed up his lunch,He was hungry after his swim.
'He has sworn he will never again endeavourThose innocent fish to hurt,For all he can get is thundering wet,And any amount of dirt.
'Your truthful'FRANK.'
After this, perhaps, it is not surprising that the boys voted fishing very poor fun, and took to mountaineering instead. They had climbed Cader Idris (a very pretty climb from its more difficult side) and Snowdon, and were resting at a first-rate hotel not far from Snowdon's foot, when they found the following letter on their breakfast-table from the Admiral:—
'DEAR FRANK,—As your mother is not very well, I intend to bring her down to Dolgelly for a few days. Take some nice quiet rooms where we can all be lodged together at less expense than at an hotel.
'Your affect. uncle,'CHRISTOPHER WINTHROP.
'P.S.—I have some important news to give you, and should like you all to be at home when we arrive by the 12.50 train to-morrow.'
Frank read the letter out to the rest at breakfast, and then laid it quietly down by his plate.
'Snap,' he said, 'there is something wrong at home. I can't make out what the Admiral is always harping on economy for. Surely our mother' (and unconsciously there was a tone of pride in that 'our mother') 'can afford to go to any of these wretched little hotels if she likes. I shan't take rooms. It's all nonsense; I'm not going to have her murdered by Welsh cooks, especially if she is ill.'
No one having any explanation of the Admiral's letter to offer, or any objection to staying where they were, the conversation dropped, but the boys were restless and unhappy until the 12.50 train was clue in.
When that train pulled up with a jerk at the platform the three had already been waiting for it half an hour, for their impatience had made them early, and long habit had made the train late. As soon as they could find their mother and Admiral Chris the boys pounced upon them, and in the first burst of eager welcome the cloud vanished. But it reappeared again before the party reached the hotel, and the Admiral was as nearly angry as he knew how to be on finding that the rooms taken for himself and sister were, as usual, just the best in the hotel.
The dinner was a poor and spiritless affair, and Snap noticed that the old gentleman, instead of lighting a cigar after leaving the table, took at once to a pipe.
'Why, sir,' remonstrated Snap, 'you are false to your principles for the first time in my experience of you; I thought that you always told us that the cigar was a necessary appetiser, to be taken before the solid comfort of the evening pipe.'
'Nonsense, my boy, nonsense, I never said that. A cigar is a poor thing at best. Nothing like a pipe for a sailor,' blurted out the Admiral, looking annoyed at Snap's innocent speech, and glancing nervously in Mrs. Winthrop's direction, while over her sweet face a cloud passed as she too noticed for the first time this little change in her brother-in-law's habits.
Coming up to her eldest boy's chair, and leaning caressingly against him, the little mother turned Frank's head towards her, so that she could look down into his honest blue eyes.
'What is it, little mother; do you want a kiss in public? For shame, dear!' laughed Frank.
'Tell me, Frank,' she said, taking no notice of his chaff, 'do you want very much to go to Oxford?'
'Right away, mother? No, thank you. I am doing very well here.'
'But when you leave Fernhall, Frank?'
'Well, yes, mother! You wouldn't have me go to Cambridge, because, you see, all my own friends are at the Nose,' replied Frank.
'The Nose?' asked Mrs. Winthrop, looking puzzled.
'Brazen Nose, dear, Brazen Nose!—the college, you know, at which Dick and the Rector's son now are.'
'But what should you say, Frank, if you could not go either to Oxford or Cambridge?' persisted his mother.
'Conundrum, mother. I give it up,' answered the boy lazily; 'call me early, dear, to-morrow, and ask me an easier one.'
Poor little lady, the tears came into her eyes as the smile grew in his, and at last Frank saw it. Jumping up and putting his arm round her, he asked:
'Why, mother dear, what is it? I was joking. I'll go anywhere you want.'
'Yes, my boy, I know,' sobbed the little woman, 'but you can't go either to Oxford or Cambridge. There, Chris, tell them the rest,' and, slipping out of Frank's arms, she left the room.
After this beginning the whole story was soon told. The Admiral's pipe had gone out, his collar seemed to be choking him, but, now that he was fairly cornered, he didn't flinch any longer.
'Yes!' he said, 'that is about the truth of it. We are all ruined. Fairbury was sold three days after you left it. That is why we sent you down here. We wanted to spare Frank the wrench, and we didn't want any of you punching the auctioneer's head, or any nonsense of that sort. We have all got to work now, lads, for our living.'
Here the old man rose and put his strong hands on Frank's shoulders, and looked him full in the face.
'With God with them, my boys aren't afraid, are they?'
Frank gripped the old man's hand, and Billy crept up close to him, while Snap, watching from a distance, felt hurt to the heart that he had not lost and was not privileged to suffer with them.
And yet 'Fairbury sold' seemed too much for any of them to realise all at once. Fairbury seemed part and parcel of themselves. It was to them as its shell to an oyster. The Winthrops (the whole race) had been born in it, and it had grown as they grew. After a while Towzer broke the silence.
'Then, uncle, where are we going home to?' he asked.
'Home, my lad! Well, I suppose we must make a new home somewhere. It should not be difficult at our age, should it, Frank?' added the gallant old man, as if he were the youngest of the young as well as the bravest of the brave.
'But, uncle, won't mother's tenants pay their rent?' asked Frank.
'My boy, your mother has no tenants,' said Mrs. Winthrop, who had re-entered the room, 'and you'll never be Squire of Fairbury, as you should have been. It does seem hard.'
And so it did, and one young heart, of no kin to hers, felt it almost as much as she did, and Snap swore then, though it seemed a ludicrous thing even to himself, that, if ever he could, he would put back that sweet woman and her boy in their own old home.
But I must hurry over this part of my story. Sorrow and tears are only valuable for the effects they leave behind. Without the rain there would be no corn; without misfortune and poverty there would be very little effort and achievement in the world. But it is more pleasant to dwell on the happy results than on the causes.
When Frank had insisted on seeing his mother to her bedroom, with a quaint assumption of authority which she never resisted, the Admiral explained how all their troubles had arisen. A friend to whom Mrs. Winthrop had lent 500l.had repaid that sum to her agent in Scotland. The agent (a lawyer), acting on the Admiral's instructions with regard to small sums paid in the absence of Mrs. Winthrop on the Continent, had invested the 500l.in some bank shares. The shares were bought, he believed, much under their value. Alas, the public knew better than that lawyer. The bank was an unlimited affair, and broke soon after he had bought its shares, and Mrs. Winthrop became responsible for the payment of its debts to the last penny which she possessed. Without any fault of theirs, without warning, the Winthrops had to give up their all. This is one of the dangers of civilised life, and, unfortunately, company promoters, swindling bankers, and such like are not yet allowed to hang for their sins.
Luckily, the Admiral was not involved in the general ruin, and was as staunch and true as his kind generally are in the time of trouble. 'My dear,' he had said to his sister, when he had finished abusing the bank, the bankers, the Government, and every person or thing directly or indirectly connected with banking, 'it was my fault for not looking after the money myself. Nonsense! of course it was. What should a poor devil of a lawyer know about banking, or law, or anything except bills? However,' he added more calmly, 'there is my little property and pension for you and the boys, and, as for me, I dare say that I can get a secretaryship to a club or something of that sort in town.'
The Admiral had a hazy idea that the letters E.N. behind his name were sufficient qualification and testimonial for any public office, from the directorship of a guinea-pig company to the secretaryship of the Royal Geographical Society.
'And now, lads,' he was saying an hour after Mrs. Winthrop had retired for the night, 'think it all well over. There is a stool in an office for one of you, if you like. No place like the City for making money in; or, if you don't like that, Frank, we can find money enough somehow to send you to the Bar. We have employed attornies enough in our time, and of course some of them would send you briefs enough to give you a start' (would they? poor Admiral!); 'or there is young Sumner's craze—cattle-ranching or farming in the far West—a rough life, no doubt, but—— Ah, well, it's not for me to choose. I'm not beginning life. I wish I was—as a cowboy,' and the old man picked up his candle and trotted off to bed with almost enough fire in voice and eye to persuade you that he was still young enough to begin another round with Fate.
That night the boys sat up on the edges of their beds until long after midnight, talking things over. Frank was very grave, and inclined to persuade his younger brother to take to the office-stool.
'And you, Major?' asked Towzer; 'are you going to the Bar?'
'Well, no,' replied his brother, 'I don't think that I could stand being buried alive in those dim, musty chambers yet, and I've no ambition to conquer Fortune with the jawbone of an ass.'
'Very well, then, if you won't set me an example, let's drop London and talk cattle-ranching,' said Towzer. 'Snap, you've got an old "Field" in your bag, haven't you?'
'Yes, here you are,' replied the person addressed, producing an old copy of that one good paper from his portmanteau.
'Look in the advertisement-sheet,' suggested Frank, 'there is always something about ranching there.'
'"Expedition to Spitzbergen,"' read Snap; 'that won't do. "Wanted another gun to join a party going to the Zambesi." Ah, here you are, "Employment for gentlemen's sons. The advertiser, who has been settled at Oxloops, on the north fork of the Stinking Water, for the last ten years, is prepared to receive two or more sons of gentlemen upon his ranche, and instruct them in the practical part of this most lucrative business, a business in which from 35 to 50 per cent. can easily be made, whilst leading that open-air, sportsmanlike life so dear to English country gentlemen. All borne comforts found, and instruction given by the advertiser in person. Premium, 200l."'
'There!' cried Towzer, 'what do you think of that? The 200l.will be part of the start in life which Uncle talked about, and after the first year we can just buy cattle and start for ourselves. You'll come, of course, Snap?'
'Well, I don't know,' replied Snap; 'I've not got the 200l.in the first place, and in the second place, if cattle-ranching pays so well, I don't see why this cattle-king wants to bother himself with pupils for a paltry 200l.a year; besides, I fancy Sumner said that you could learn more as a cowboy than as a pupil, and the cowboy is paid, while the pupil pays for learning. I'll come if you go, but not as a pupil.'
'I half suspect that Snap is right, Billy,' said Frank; 'but, anyhow, we must talk this over with the Admiral.'
'Very well,' assented that young enthusiast; 'but I say, Major, wouldn't it be jolly if it was true? Fifty per cent., he says. Well, suppose the mother could start us with 1,000l.apiece, that would be 1,000l.profit between us the first year. Of course we would not spend any of it. Clothes last for ever out there, and food costs nothing. By adding what we made to our capital we could make a fortune and buy back Fairbury in no time.'
'Steady there, young 'un; optimism is a good horse, but you are riding his tail off at the start, and I expect that cattle-ranching wants almost as much work and patience as other things,' replied his more sober brother.
But Billy's enthusiasm had won the day in spite of reason, and they all turned in to dream of life in the Far West, and easily won fortunes.
Only one of them lay awake for long that night, watching the clouds drift across the mountain, and, if anyone had put his ear very close to Snap's pillow, he might have heard him mutter, as he tossed in his first restless slumbers, 'Poor little mother! it has almost broken her heart. If we could only win it back! If we could only win it back!'
And yet Snap was no kith or kin of the Winthrops, Fairbury was no home of his, nor the gentle lady of whom he dreamed his mother.
This tale is written for boys, and if the writer knows anything at all about them they like sunshine as much as he does. That being so, we will skip, if you please, a certain foggy morning in Liverpool, when the heavy sky over the Mersey seemed as full of gloom and rain as men's eyes of tears and sorrow. The great lump in the old Admiral's throat kept getting up into his mouth in a most confusing way, and required a good many glasses of something which he never drank to keep it down. Poor Mrs. Winthrop, strong in a woman's courage to bear suffering, seemed to be thinking for everyone. There was no tear of her shedding on her son's check, and her pretty lips were firm if they were white. 'Don't forget, boys, your father's last written words—'Bring up my boys as Christians and gentlemen,' he wrote. You're out of my keeping now, but, whatever your work, remember you are Winthrops.'
And then the last signal to those aboard sounded, and those who had only come to say 'good-bye' hurried off the ship. A party of schoolboys who had come to see a chum leave for the great North-West struck up 'For he's a jolly good fellow' as the steamer left her moorings, and, carried off their balance by the heartiness of the chorus, the Admiral himself and everyone not absolutely buried in pocket-handkerchiefs took up the refrain. The last the boys could remember of England was that busy, dirty pier, a crowd waving adieus, and the dear faces of mother and uncle with a smile on them, in which hope and love had for the moment got the better of sorrow.
And then they were out on the broad bosom of old Ocean, with limitless stretches of green waves all round, and all life in front of them. As the ship sped on, the air seemed to grow clearer and more buoyant, the possibilities of the future greater, and success a certainty. Everyone on board seemed full of feverish energy. If they talked of speculations or business they talked in millions, not in sober hundreds, and before they were half across the Atlantic the boys were beginning to almost despise those who stayed behind in slow and sober England—all except Snap, at least, who annoyed them all by his oft-repeated argument, 'If it is so good over there, why do any of these fellows come back?'
The voyage itself was an uneventful one; that is to say, no one fell overboard, no shipwreck occurred, and, thanks to the daily cricket match with a ball of twine attached to fifty yards of string, the Atlantic was crossed almost before our friends had time to realise that they had left England.
On landing, the two Winthrops had to make their way to the ranche of a Mr. Jonathan Brown in Kansas County, to whom the Admiral had sent something like 300l.as premium for the two boys. For this they were promised 'all home comforts, and a thoroughly practical education in cattle-ranching and mixed farming, together with the benefit of Mr. Brown's experience in purchasing a small place for themselves at the end of their educational period.' Snap, not having money to waste, or faith in 'ranching and mixed farming,' was to proceed further west and try to find employment along the new line until he could obtain day labourer's work on a ranche. The Admiral had insisted on paying the railway fare for the three of them, and, contrary to his custom, had paid first-class fare, arguing that thus they might possibly make a useful friend on the way, and at any rate sleep soft and warm until the moment came for the final plunge.
So the boys entered upon their first overland stage together, gazing with big eyes of wonder at the fairy land which seemed to slip so noiselessly past their carriage windows. It was almost as if the dry land had taken the characteristics of the ocean, all was so big, so boundless, around them. First there seemed to come a belt of great timber near the sea; then they passed through that and came into an ocean of yellow corn, of which from the windows of the train they could not see the shore. Most of the time the lads sat in the smoking-car, not because they smoked, but because the smokers were friendly and told such marvellous yarns and amused them.
On the third day there was an addition to the little party in the smoking-saloon, a very 'high-toned' person in a chimney-pot hat and gloves. This gentleman was a great talker, and, having tried in vain to got up an argument on the merits of some politician, whom he called a 'leather-head' and a 'log-roller,' with the big-bearded man or his two hard-bitten companions, who until then had shared the room with the boys, the new-comer expectorated politely on either side of Snap's feet, evidently enjoying the boy's look of annoyance, and then opened fire on him thus:
'Say! I guess you're a Britisher now, ain't you?'
'I am, sir,' answered Snap with a good-tempered smile.
'Getting pretty well starved out over there, I reckon, by this time?'
'Well, no! we haven't had to take to tobacco-chewing to stop our hunger, yet,' replied Snap, with a wink at Winthrop.
'Wal,' retorted the Yankee, 'you look mighty lean, fix it how you will. If it's all so bully in England, why do you come over here?' This the Yankee seemed to think a clincher, but Snap was ready for him.
'Well, you see, sir, we are only following the examples of our forefathers, who came over and made America, and founded the race you are so justly proud of.'
'Founded the race! fiddlesticks! The American race, sir, just grew out of the illimitable prairie, started, maybe, by a few of the best of every nation, but with a character of its own, and I guess the whole universe knows now that our Republic can lick creation, as it licked you Britishers in 1781. Perhaps you'll tell me we didn't do that?'
By this time the other occupants of the carriage were all watching Snap Hales and the top-hatted one, a curled and smooth-looking fellow ('oily,' perhaps, would describe him better than smooth) of thirty or so. The Yankee cattle-men were looking on with a grin at seeing the English boy's 'leg pulled' as they called it—the other two English boys in blank amazement at the quiet good-temper of fiery Snap Hales, under an ordeal of chaff from a perfect stranger. Could it be that the sight of that ugly little revolver, which the stranger had exhibited more than once, had cowed their chum already? Whatever the reason, Snap's unexpected answer came in his sweetest tones.
'Oh no, I'll not deny that; it's historical, and, besides, it served us right. We didn't recognise that a big son we ought to have been proud of had grown up.'
'Oh, then, you'll allow we licked you at Sarytogy and Yorktown?'
'Yes, certainly.'
'And perhaps you'll allow that if you tried it on again we'd lick you again?' persisted poor Snap's enemy, whilst the glance Snap gave Frank could hardly keep that indignant Briton quiet on his seat.
'Yes, I'll allow that too, if we came to invade your big country at home with a mere handful of men of the same breed from over the seas.'
Somehow, Snap's quiet way was rousing the American's temper, and he retorted hotly: 'That's the way you talk, is it; and I tell you, and you'll have to allow, that, man to man, an American citizen can always whip a blooming Britisher.'
Snap gave an actual sigh of relief, or so it seemed to the boys, and his eyes lit up with a glad light, that those who know the breed don't always like to see. He had done his duty; had kept his temper as long as he could be expected to; and now he might fairly follow his natural instincts. Still quite cool, although his knees were almost knocking together with eagerness, which others might have mistaken for funk, the boy took up the challenge.
'Are you a good specimen, sir, of an American citizen?' The man looked puzzled, but replied, unabashed:
'Wal, as citizens come, I guess I'm a pretty average sample.'
'I'm sorry for that, sir,' answered Snap, 'as I'm only a very poor specimen of those Britishers of whom you speak so politely; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I never fired a revolver in my life, but you said just now that Heenan had whipped all England with his fists, and America could lick the old country at that as she can at everything else. Well! we stop at Bismarch for twenty minutes soon, I see. It isn't time for lunch yet, so, if you'll give your revolver to that gentleman to hold, I'll fight you five rounds, if I can last as long, and these gentlemen shall see fair play. Only, if you lick me, mind I am not a typical Britisher.'
The American looked from one to another in an uncomfortable, hesitating way, and then at the long, slight, boyish figure before him. He had gone too far to draw back—he was three stone heavier than his young adversary—so with a blasphemous oath he handed the derringer to his bearded fellow-countryman, adding:
'It don't seem hardly fair, but, if you will have the starch taken out of you, you shall.'
As the pistol-holder left the smoking-room to put the property with which he had been entrusted into his valise he gave Frank Winthrop a sign to follow him. When he and the boy were alone he turned quietly round and said:
'Can your pal fight?'
'Like a demon,' answered Frank; 'he was nearly cock of our school, young as he was.'
'All right, then, I'll not interfere. He is a good plucked one, but tell him to keep out of the man's reach for the first round or two. I don't suppose he has much science, but one blow from a man so much bigger would about finish your friend.'
'I don't believe it,' answered Frank hotly; but the kindly cattle-man only smiled, and, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, led him back into the smoking-car.
In another ten minutes the warning-bell on the engine began to toll, and the train ran through a street of rough wooden shanties and pulled up just outside the 'city' (a score of houses sometimes make a city out west), by a little prairie lake. In such a city as Bismarch, in the early days of which I am speaking, even half a dozen pistol shots would not have attracted a policeman, principally because no policemen existed. Sometimes a scoundrel became too daring in his villainies even for such tolerant people as the citizens of Bismarch. When this happened someone shot him, though probably he shot several other people first. At the back of the little group of shanties there used to be a long row of palings about eight feet high. 'Hangman's palings' they called these, because upon them, for want of trees, the first vigilance committee had nine months previously (the 'city' was only fifteen months old) hanged its first batch of victims to the necessities of civilised law and order. In such a city as this a quiet spar would cause no sensation, and certainly would not be interrupted, so Snap quickly stripped, as if he was behind the old School chapel, and Mr. Rufus E. Hackett, his opponent, did the same. Stripped of gloves and hat, Hackett looked less at his ease than his young enemy, and would probably be still waiting to begin if the boy had not stepped in and caught him on the point of the nose with a really straight left-hander.
Now, the writer of this story has been hit very frequently upon the nose. After years and years of practice the sensation is still annoying in the extreme. Your eyes fill with water as if you had inadvertently bolted the mustard-pot; the constellations of heaven are seen with alarming clearness; and if you are one of the right sort you come back after that blow like a racquet-ball from the walls of the court. If this is the effect on a nose inured to the rough usage of five-and-twenty years, what must you expect from the owner of a delicately tip-tilted organ, which had been held all its life high above the brutalities of a vulgar world?
Like a wounded buffalo, with his head down and blind with rage, the Yankee went for Snap, and, in spite of a well-meant upper cut from that youngster, managed to close with him, and by sheer weight bore him to the ground. There Snap was helpless, and before the big cattle-man could interfere the boy had a couple of lumps on his face, which bore witness to the good-will with which Mr. Hackett had used his beringed fists. But for Snap himself, Mr. Rufus E. H. would there and then have received a sound hiding from the cattle-man, but, though somewhat unsteady on his feet, Snap pleaded that he might have his man left to himself.
Again Hackett tried the rushing game, this time only to meet the boy's left and then blunder over his own legs on to his nose. As the fight went on, Snap recovered from his heavy punishment. Quick as a cat on his feet, he never again let the big man close with him. Every time he stirred to strike, Snap's left hand went out like an arrow from the bow, true to its mark, on one or other of Hackett's eyes. Not once did the boy use his right—that quick-countering left was all that seemed necessary; and, though the American was more game than his appearance would have led his friends to believe, it was evident before the end of the third round that he was at the boy's mercy. From that moment Snap held his hand, simply taking care of himself and getting out of his enemy's way, and carefully abstaining from administering that brutalcoup de grâcewhich a less generous nature would have inflicted.
'Say, mate,' quoth one of the cowboys who was Hackett's second, 'it's not much use foolin' around here, is it? You can't see the Britisher, and he don't seem to cotton to hitting a blind man. Let's have a drink and be friends.'
Almost before he could answer, Snap had the fellow by the hand with a hearty English grip.
'You'll allow we're the same breed now, Mr. Hackett, won't you?' he said. 'It wasn't really a fair fight, you know, because I've learnt boxing, and you haven't.'
In spite of a bumptiousness which acts on a Britisher like a gadfly on a horse, your real American is a right good fellow at bottom; and for the rest of the two days during which Hackett and Snap travelled together nothing could exceed the kindness of the beaten man and his fellow-countrymen to the three English lads.
'He isn't much account,' apologised one of the cattle-men, 'just a school-teaching dude from the Eastern States, I reckon; but you mustn't bear him any malice for hitting you when you were down; there ain't any Queensberry rules out here in a row, and it's no good appealing to the referee on a Western prairie.'
Snap had no intention of bearing malice, nor, indeed, of fighting any more fights, either according to Queensberry rules or the rough-and-tumble rules of the prairie, if he could avoid it, though this one fight was for him an exceedingly lucky event.
Soon after leaving the scene of his encounter the train pulled up at Wapiti, and was met by a man in the roughest of clothes, driving the rudest of carts. He had come for the 'farm pups' from England, he said, and if they weren't blamed quick with their luggage he was not going to wait for them. An offhand sort of person, thought Snap, but, no doubt, when his master, Mr. Jonathan Brown, is near, he will be a good deal more civil. It was not until months later that Snap learnt that this dirty rough, a common farm-labourer in all but his ignorance of farming, was Mr. Jonathan Brown, 'professor of ranching and mixed farming in all its branches.'
When Frank and Towzer had vanished out of sight Snap turned from the window with a sigh, and found the good-natured eyes of the bearded cattleman fixed inquiringly upon him.
'So you are not going to learn farming, my lad?' he inquired.
'Not with my friends, I can't afford it,' answered Snap.
'Don't think me rude, but what are you going to do?'
'Try to get work at Looloo, on the line, until I can find out how to get paid work as a cowboy up country.'
'Have you any money to keep you from starving till you get work?' asked the American.
'A little; but I mean to earn my food from the start if I can.'
'Well, you've the right sort of grit, my lad,' replied the cattle-man, 'and you're 200l.richer than your friends now, poor as you are, for they have thrown their premium clean away. Look here, my name is Nares, and I own the Rosebud ranche in Idaho. I like the look of you, lad, and I'll give you labourer's wages if you can earn them, and grub anyway, if you like to try.'
'Like to try?' of course Snap liked to try. It was just a fortune to him, and he said so.
'But,' added his friend, 'when you write home tell your friends not to fool away premiums, but to give a lad enough to live on for the first six months, whilst he is looking for work. You would, maybe, have got nothing to do at Looloo for long enough.'
Winter is not, perhaps, the best time to introduce a boy to the Far West, fresh from all the cosy comforts of home—at least, if he is a boy of the 'cotton wool' kind. To a boy like Snap the keen air was worth a king's ransom; the forests of snow-laden pines through which the train passed were full of mystery and romance; his eyes ached at night from straining to catch a glimpse of some great beast of the forest amongst their tall stems, or at least a track on the pure snow.
The day upon which Frank and Towzer left him was too full of incident for him to find much time to sorrow after his old friends. The train was passing through a district in which great lakes—unfrozen as yet, except just at the edges—lay amongst scattered rocks and pine forests bent and twisted by the Arctic cold and fierce storms of former winters. Inside the cars all was warmth and comfort, although the gaiety of the travellers was sobered down by the presence amongst them of a poor fellow who had lost his wife and two children in a railway accident a week before this. He was now returning from the rough funeral which had been accorded to them at the station of Boisfort. A strong, gaunt man, his days had been spent as a Hudson Bay runner, and later on as a watcher upon the railway, or manager of Chinese labour. In spite of his harsh training, even his strong nature had succumbed temporarily to the blow from which he was now suffering. His lost family seemed ever before his strained, wild eyes, and the throbbing and rattle of the engine and its cars seemed to beat into his brain and madden him. From time to time he would spring to his feet, clap his hands wildly to his head, and peer out into the snow. Then, moaning, 'No, it's not them, it's not them,' he would sink down again into his seat, limp and lifeless. Snap had been watching the man, fearing he was going mad, until his friend Nares touched him and said, 'Don't keep your eyes on the poor chap like that, maybe it fidgets him.'
Ashamed of what he at once considered an unintentional rudeness on his part, Snap withdrew into another corner of the compartment, and had just wandered off into day-dreams, in which Fairbury and 'the little mother' took a prominent place, when he was recalled to himself by a scream and a shuddering exclamation of horror which seemed to pass all along the compartment. Looking up quickly, he had just time to see a wild figure, hatless and grey-haired, hurl itself from the footboard at the end of the cars into the snow, and to hear a wild cry, 'I am coming, chicks, I am coming.' In spite of air-brakes and patent communicators it was some minutes before the train could be brought up all standing, and the passengers who hurried out to see after the unfortunate suicide had a good many hundred yards to go before they reached the spot at which he threw himself from the train, and when they reached the spot an expression of wonder spread over every face. Although the embankment upon which he alighted was considerably below the level of the train, although the train was travelling at express speed for an American line, there was no dead man to pick up from the snow, no man even with fractured limbs or strained sinews, but just the mark of a falling body, and then the tracks of a running man leading straight away through the silent snows to the lake-edge.
Close to the point at which the man had sprung from the train was a labourer's shanty, just one of those rough wooden structures which the Irish out West set up alongside their labours on the line. Round this, when Snap and Nares came up, was gathered an excited little group of passengers and railway-men.
'Are you sure Madge isn't in the house?' someone asked of a little boy of seven, the Irishman's child.
'No, Madgy ain't in the house; I heerd her hollerin' just when the engine went by; hollerin' as if someone had hurted her badly,' the child added.
'Where's your father, little man?' asked Nares, pushing his way to the front.
'Down the line at the bridge, working; father won't be back till night, and mother's gone this hour or more to take him his dinner.'
Nares turned to the men round him, and, speaking in low, quick tones, said:
'We must follow that poor devil; he is stark mad, and heaven only knows what he will do with the child.'
'With the child! why, you don't mean to say he has got the child?' cried one.
Nares was busy arranging something with the guard and didn't answer, but it was evident that the men agreed with him, and were prepared to obey him.
'Then you'll hand over Mr. Hales to Wharton, my stockman at Rosebud,' Nares said to the guard, 'and tell him to leave a horse at the station shanty for me. I'll be in, most likely, to-morrow.'
'You know this labourer is a relation of Wharton's, boss?' asked one of the railway men.
'No! is he?' was the reply.
'Yes, a nephew, they tell me, or something of that sort. Wharton will be wanting to come and help you, I guess.'
'Well, then, I'll tell you what to do. Don't say anything to my man. Mr. Hales can stay here at the cottage until I come back, and we'll come on together to-morrow. Good-bye.'
The guard shook hands, the crowd moved back to the train, the bell tolled as the cars began to move off, and in another minute Snap and Nares were left with one labourer, named Bromley (who had volunteered to help Nares); a solitary little group, with a crying child and an empty hut as the only signs of life around them, except for those ominous tracks leading away into the silence and the snow.
After some demur it was determined that Snap should be one of the search-party, and that a message should be left with the boy for his father, telling him to follow on Nares' track as fast as possible with food and blankets.
This done, the three started at a swinging trot; first Nares, then Bromley, following the man's tracks, and making the road easier for the boy jogging along in the rear. From the moment of starting the silence of the forest seemed to settle down upon the three. No one spoke; no bird whistled; the bushes stood stiff and frozen; no animal rustled through them; all the little brooks were jagged with frost; the only sound was the regular crunch, crunch of the snow beneath their feet, and the laboured breathing of Bromley, who, though willing enough, was not such a 'stayer' as either Nares or Hales. It was late when the child was stolen, and they had already been some two hours on the trail. The tracks still led steadily on towards the Thompson River, the day was fast darkening and Bromley 'beat.' Nares called a halt and proposed that they should stop where they were until Wharton came up with food and blankets, and then (prepared with these necessaries) follow the madman by starlight.
Just as they were discussing this course of action a rustling in the bush ahead drew Snap's attention. 'There he goes, there he goes,' cried the boy, dashing forward, as with a crash a tall grey form with something in its arms rushed through the forest on the other side of a broad dell by which the party were sitting. If an indistinct shout of warning reached Snap he neither understood nor heeded it. From time to time he saw the hunted man ahead of him, and once he distinctly saw the little girl in his arms. Surely he was gaining on him. At any rate he was leaving his own companions far behind. Even the tough cattleman's frame had no chance against the legs and lungs of a schoolboy of eighteen.