[Illustration: Cover art]

[Frontispiece: "The boat was suddenly caught up by a huge wave, and
hurled into a chaos of broken water."--Page 222.]

  _Two Sailor Lads._

  A STORY OF

  STIRRING ADVENTURES ON SEA AND LAND

  BY

  GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M.

  (_Surgeon, Royal Navy_),

  AUTHOR OF "FOR ENGLAND, HOME, AND BEAUTY;"
  "IN THE DASHING DAYS OF OLD;" "ON TO THE RESCUE;"
  ETC. ETC.

                    "The story of my life,
  Even from my boyish days
  To the very moment that he bade me tell it."

  NEW EDITION.

  JOHN F. SHAW AND CO., LTD.,
  _Publishers,_
  3, PILGRIM STREET, LONDON, E.C.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I. "Hush! Do you Hear that Cry?  What can it be?"

II. "But Looking Back, Boys, it is all Like a Dream"

III. An Aimless Life--Peace at Last

IV. Sitting up to Think--The Dignity of Labour

V. At the Fisherman's Cave--Fred's Aquarium

VI. Taking Tea inside a Whale--The strange Story of the Stranded
Leviathan

VII. "Five Years Ago this very Night"

VIII. Pleasant Surprises--Frank's Yacht--The Launch of the
"Water-Baby"

IX. Playing at Being Pirates--A Storm at Sea--The Wreck

X. On the Desert Island--Toddie's Adventure on the Cliff--the Bonfire

XI. "Friends for Life"--Round the Camp Fire

XII. That Awful Night at Sea--A Ride for Precious Life

XIII. "A Strange, Strange Story," said Frank. "I Wonder how it will
all End"

XIV. "Duty, Lad, Duty. Stick to it through Thick and Thin"

XV. The Good Ship "San Salvador."--A Mystery of the Southern Seas

XVI. Deakin and Co. and the Lost Brig "Resolute"

XVII. Southward Ho! to the Sea of Ice

XVIII. Señor Sarpinto

XIX. A Fairy Isle--The Lost Boat

XX. "What their Fate was to be they could not even Guess"

XXI. "A Land flowing with Cocoanut-milk and Honey"

XXII. A Terrible Apparition

XXIII. A Swim for Dear Life--Pursued by Sharks

XXIV. Stingaree

XXV. "Row, Brothers, Row"--Quambo's Shark Story--Fast to a Sword-fish

XXVI. "What was the Mystery surrounding that Strange Vessel?"

XXVII. Frank gazed Aghast

XXVIII. Could he be----Dead?

XXIX. The Arrival of Savages

XXX. "There is no going Back now," Frank said

XXXI. In Cannibal Islands

XXXII. The whole Beach was lined with Yelling Savages

XXXIII. South and South sailed the good Barque

XXXIV. Fighting in Earnest

XXXV. "Would she see their Signals?"

TWO SAILOR LADS.

CHAPTER I.

  "HUSH!  DO YOU HEAR THAT CRY?
  WHAT CAN IT BE?"

There is no more beautiful bay than that of Methlin on all the wild
west shores of Scotland; there is no quainter or more old-fashioned
little town than the fishing village that clusters around its shores,
its wee little whitewashed cottages half hidden in the green of
waving elders and drooping silver birch trees.  Behind the village is
a wealth of woodland, stretching for miles away up the valley,
between hills so high that at sunrise they cast their darkling
shadows far across the sea.

But our story opens at eventide.  The sun has already gone down
behind the waves, leaving a sky and sea of such gorgeous and
startling colours--such a mad mixture of crimson, orange, purple, and
grey--as never surely was seen on artist's canvas.

And not only from the water, but even from the wide expanse of wet
sand, are these colours reflected.

The sea is very calm, yet the Atlantic Ocean, that swells and heaves
and breaks along this coast, never falls quite asleep; and if you
glance to-night across the sands at the far-receding tide, you may
note long moving lines of orange, and hear the gentle boom of the
breaking wavelets.

Right in the centre of this mixed mass of radiant light and
colour--darkling against it, and throwing long shadows on the wet
flat beach--are two figures.  How tall they look!  Yes; but they are
but boy and girl.  Even the sea-gulls that run across the sands
appear gigantic birds in that painted haze.  Children both they are;
he but ten, and she but six.

In looking seaward there is something else one will not fail to note;
namely, a long dark wall of rocks, forming the southern horn of the
bay, and running straight out into the ocean a mile and more.

There are a few fishing-boats drawn up upon the beach, and this is
all the view.

Young though they are, both Fred Arundel and his foster-sister Toddie
must be impressed by the solemnity and beauty of the scene, for they
are unusually silent, as hand in hand they come homewards across the
soloured sands.

But suddenly they start, and stop and listen.

"Hush, Toddie!  Did you hear that cry?  What can it be?"

"Only a Tatywake, Fled."

"No, Todd, it was no Kittywake.  It was no bird at all Hark!  There
it is again."

Yes; borne towards the beach on the evening breeze, and falling on
their listening ears, comes once again a faint but plaintive cry,
that anyone less a child of the ocean than Fred, might well have
mistaken for the scream of some sea-bird, a gull, or tern, or skua.

Toddie clung fearfully to Fred now.

"O Fleddie," she cried, "I is so flightened.  What is it?  Some poor
man dlowning out there all by his self.  Yun home, Fled, and tell
daddy.  O Fleddie, yun, yun!"

"No," said Fred boldly.  "Whoever it is, must be clinging to the
rocks.  The tide is rising fast, Todd; but the little cobble is
handy, and I'll pull out and see."

"And I must come too," insisted Toddie.

"All right," said Fred.  "I'll ship the tiller, and you can steer."

"Yes, I'll teer, Fled.  Oh, be twick!"

Fred was quick; no boy could have been quicker; and in less than five
minutes, impelled by his strong young arms, the cobble was bounding
over the rising tide.

Fred had got wet to the waist in launching the boat, but he did not
mind that.  Something told him there was a precious life to be saved,
and he could think of nothing else.

For fully half a mile straight out to the sea ran the rocks and
cliffs, ending in a bold and rocky promontory nearly seven hundred
feet in height.

Bight along by the rocks rowed Fred, Toddie grasping the tiller in
her tiny hands, her anxious, pretty face strained with listening.

Every now and then Fred rested on his oars for a few moments to
listen, and ever as he did so, rising high over the screaming of the
gulls, they could hear that piteous cry for help.

Quicker and quicker now rowed Fred.  He was a good oar, and was
warming to his work.  No extra finish was there about Fred's rowing,
no feathering of oars or any such folly, but a long pull and a strong
pull, dipping his blades into the water deep enough to get good
purchase, but not an inch deeper, and bending well to every stroke.
Right steadily too the lad rowed, so that verily there was music and
rhythm 'twixt rowlock and oar.

The clouds had lost their gorgeous colours, and from a rift of blue
on the eastern sky one single star looked down.

Night was coming on apace, and there was not wanting evidence that it
would be a stormy one.  The swell was rising high out here, the
surging seas broke white against the cliff foot, and little angry
catspaws were already ruffling the water.

Fred rested on his oars and listened once more.

All was still.  The wandering sea-birds wheeled near and shrieked
their dismal shriek, but no human sound could the children hear.

Fred himself began to get frightened now.  The silence was like the
silence of death, and even the voices of the birds had a ghostly ring
in them.  Was it all over then?

No; for even at that moment Fred's quick ear caught the sound of
something moving in the water.

"Look! look!" cried Toddie.  "A seal, Fled, coming this way all by
his self."

Yes, there was a black head yonder, coming rapidly on towards the
boat.

Fred quickly shipped his oars now, and stood by to give assistance;
for he soon discovered that the black head was human, the face pale
and startled-looking.

Presently the swimmer stopped, and trode water not four yards away
from the boat's bow.

"Please were you co-co-coming for m-m-m-me?"

"Of course," cried Fred.  "What else?  Swim nearer and I'll help you
up.  Mind, Toddie, we don't capsize."

Toddie held the helm grimly amidships, and sat on the gunwale, and in
a moment more Fred had pulled a lad apparently a year or so older
than himself in over the bows.

A tallish, gentlemanly-looking boy, dressed in a dripping kilt, and
with a strongly English accent.

"It's awfully go-go-good of you," he began.  "Oh," he added, "you
have a li-li-little la-la-lady on board.  Good evening, m-m-miss.
The tide was r-r-rising over the rocks, and soon would have drowned
me."

Then he raised his hand as if to pull his cap off, but there was no
cap there.

"I do-do-don't s-s-stutter, mind," he said, "it is only the
co-co-cold."

And Toddie felt she could have cried for this handsome boy, whose
teeth were chattering in his head.

"Mammy Mop will soon wa'm oo," said Toddie consolingly.

"Oh, thanks!  And may I take an oar?  Thanks awfully."

Before the boys had beached the boat and hauled her up the stranger
had quite recovered his speech.

"I can never thank you enough," he said, "for rescuing me from what
would have been a watery grave."

"Give me oo hand now," said Toddie.  "We will all yun home, and oo
can tell the stoly to Mammy Mop."

"But really I mustn't----," began the boy.

There was nothing else for it, however; for Fred had seized his other
hand, and between Toddie and him they ran him right up the beach,
along the road a little way, and through a bonnie garden, towards the
door of a cottage, the light from which was streaming out into the
gloom of the falling night.

Half an hour afterwards, had you peeped in through the four-paned
window of the fisherman's cottage, this is what you would have seen:
A bright and cheerful fire of peat and wood burning on a low hearth,
a pot with a steaming and savoury stew in it hanging from a
soot-blackened chain above it; in one corner, sitting in an
old-fashioned high-backed chair, a tall and elderly man, with
finely-chiselled features, long hair floating over his jersey, an
almost wild look in his eyes, but kindness in every lineament
nevertheless.  This is Papa Pop, and on his knee sits Toddie, one arm
round his neck, but her great wondering blue eyes fixed on the face
of that handsome English-looking boy, who, to her way of thinking,
seems like the prince of some fairy tale, suddenly dropped out of the
clouds.  In the other corner sits Fred himself, and at his feet a
sonsy cat and a dachshund dog.

Standing on the floor behind this group is the fisherman's wife, tall
and bony, rough, but kindly-looking withal, and in front of her, with
the firelight streaming on his strangely uncouth face, is Bunko, the
fool of the village.

But "fool" is too harsh a word to use; for although but half-witted,
there is a deal of sense and shrewdness under that towsy mop of his.
Bunko holds in one hand a rough stick or pole higher than himself.
This is his rod of office; for Bunko takes all the village cows away
to the hills every morning, and besides this he does all kinds of odd
jobs that few save he could accomplish.

"Weel, Bunko," the fisherman's wife is saying as she crams his pocket
with buttered scones, "you'll tak' the road right over the hills."

"Umphm!" says Bunko.

"And ten miles and a bittock will bring ye to the hoose o' Benshee.
Knock at the door--d'ye understan'?"

"Fine that."

"And tell the laird's folk that Master Fielding is safe for the nicht
at----"

Bunko strode across the floor and laid a huge red hand on the young
stranger.

"Master Fielding--that's this wee blinker, isn't it noo?"

The lad laughed, and put something in Bunko's hand.  Bunko looked at
the coin.

"A bonnie white shillin'!" he cried.  "Hurrah!  Noo I tell ye, sirs,
the grass winna grow aneath poor Bunko's feet till he's at
Benshee-house and back again.  Keelie, laddie, whaur are you?"

A wall-eyed collie dog sprang up at the summons.  Bunko struck his
pole once on the floor, then he and Keelie went out into the
darkness, and were seen no more that night.

"I really ought to have gone with Bunko," said Frank Fielding, for
that was the stranger's name.  "But it doesn't matter much," he
added, "only mamma will be quite pleased to hear of our adventure.
Fred, you will be a hero, and Miss Toddie a heroine.  For mamma is
very romantic.  And I'm sure, Fred, I'll never forget it.  I had been
fishing, sir"--he was addressing the old fisherman now--"and was
overtaken by the tide.  It was very dreadful with the night coming
on, and the sea birds moaning and screaming around that cold grey
rock, and the water rising, rising, rising.  Heigho! it would soon
have covered me; so you see, Miss Toddie, you saved my life."

"Well," replied little Miss Consequential, "when oo says oo players
to-night, of tourse oo'll thank the dood Lord?"

"Yes, Toddie, I must," said Frank with a little sigh.  Well might he
sigh!  Prayers in the family circle were unknown at Benshee Hall.

Frank was already strangely interested in the inmates of this little
cot, and when Mammy Mop, as the children called her, handed down the
great old Bible, and when this brown-faced fisherman read a portion,
and afterwards prayed more earnestly and in loftier language than
ever the parish minister used, Frank looked at him in reverent wonder
not unmixed with awe.

Then they all sat round the fire again.

The wind had now risen and was moaning round the cot, and the rain
rattled dismally against it.

Fred shuddered a little as he listened to the wind.

"I'm so glad," he said, "that we went down to-night to our aquarium,
to feed the blennies, and a new pet of Toddie's that she called Tom."

"Tom has been naughty," said Toddie, "so Tom has been sent home."

"Yes, that is true," said Fred, "very naughty, and we had gone down
to the rocks to put Tom away, else we never should have heard your
cry."

The children's aquarium, I may tell you, was a marine one in a cave
down by the sea.  The cave was a shallow one in the south side of the
ridge of high cliffs that ran out to sea, but far removed beyond the
avaricious clutch of a rising tide unless something out of the common
should occur.  Bodily the sea had never risen so high as Fred's cave
in his time, although in days of storm and tempest, when great green
waves broke and thundered on the beach, the spray was often carried
far along the face of the cliffs with force enough to drench anyone
to the skin who ventured as far as the cave; once inside, however,
one was safe enough.  Not more than ten feet in depth or width was
the cave, though more than nearly twenty feet high, and a very
pleasant place to spend an hour or two in by day during the summer
months.  At noon the sun shone right into it, and penetrated the
water of Fred's aquarium at the end.  This latter was a natural basin
in the rock, a kind of hollow shelf about three feet above the floor,
which these children kept filled with water, and stocked with many
curious creatures, that they found upon the beach, such as shell
fish, tiny medusæ, sea anemones, and little fishes of many kinds.
Toddie delighted in droll, weird-looking water things, and used to
shout aloud for joy when she found any new form of youthful marine
monster left in a pool of the rocks when the tide went back.  She
never went seawards without Fred, and he carried a little hand
landing-net, and whenever a fresh specimen was discovered ugly enough
to commend itself to Toddie, she peremptorily ordered her chaperon to
fish it out and convey it to the cave aquarium.

Things throve here very well indeed, owing perhapa to the fact that
they kept the water constantly changed and carefully removed any wee
creature that died.  Singularly enough, however, soon after the
arrival of Tom, specimens began to disappear in the most mysterious
manner.

But it is time to explain who Tom was.  Watching the fishermen
drawing in their nets one day, in which was a goodly quantity of
bonnie silver herrings, Toddie noticed one of the men pull a
strange-looking fish out of the net and throw it inland to die.
Toddie went straight away after it.  The creature had fallen among a
lot of dry seaweed, so it was none the worse, though it wriggled
alarmingly when the girl lifted it up and put it in her apron.  In
ten minutes' time she had placed it in Fred's cave aquarium, where it
rested on its side a short time, then began a tour of inspection much
to Toddie's delight.  A long stone-grey, light-spotted thing, with a
semicircular mouth away under its chin, and a tail with one half of
it much longer than the other.  In fact it was that species of small
shark that abounds round British coasts, called the dog-fish.

Toddie and Fred had determined to make a great pet of it, so they fed
it on sand-hoppers and earthworms, and bait generally.  Tom ate
everything they gave him greedily enough, and seemed to look for more.

But since his arrival the other specimens began to disappear, and the
pretty little sea-minnows, as Fred called them, that had been placed
beside Tom to keep him company, had gone also.

On this evening when Fred and Toddie had gone to the cave they found
Tom waiting expectantly.

I'm afraid Tom was a very sly fish.

"Just look at me now," he seemed to say, as he gazed at them with
that slit of an eye of his, "you see before you one of the most
innocent and kind-hearted trouts in all creation.  To be sure my
shape is rather against me, and so is my colour; but for all that I'm
the most gentle and----"

It is a pity that at this very instant the last newcomer, a
sea-minnow, should have darted out from under a bit of sea-weed, and
sailed to the front.

All Tom's virtue and goodness were forgotten in a moment.  He
quivered all over from stem to stern, his very eyes appeared to flash
fire.  Next moment he had thrown himself on his side, the water
rippled, the sea-minnow was gone at a snap.

Toddie threw up her hands and screamed.  Fred stood firm.

"What do you think of that, Todd?" he said.

"Oh, Tom, Tom," cried Toddie, "you naughty dolly fish!"

"It was all a mistake I assure you," Tom seemed to say.  "I opened my
mouth to yawn, you know, and----"

"Fred!  Fred!" said Toddie, "tatch that naughty Tom and put him in
the sea."

So Tom's doom was sealed at once.

He was caught, therefore, in the landing-net, carried away to the
deeper water close by the rocks, and dropped into the sea.

And that was the last Toddie saw of her "dolly-fish."

"And now," said Frank, addressing Eean, "I know you have a story to
tell.  Do tell it, sir, and make it as dreadful as possible."

The fisherman laughed as he looked at Frank.

"I don't think," he said, "I must tell you anything very terrible;
but if I tell you a story, I promise you it shall be a true one.  And
a true story is better than a terrible one.  Ahem!"

CHAPTER II.

"BUT LOOKING BACK, BOYS, IT IS ALL LIKE A DREAM."

Was it a gleam of pleasure, or the flush from the firelight, that
spread over old Eean's face as Frank Fielding made his quiet but
ingenuous request, to be favoured with a story?

The fisherman smiled, and now the rugged lineaments of his face
softened wonderfully.  He did not answer directly, however.

Eppie, his wife, had drawn near to the circle round the fire with her
great black spinning-wheel, and it was towards her that Eean turned.
Surely too it was for her that smile was intended.

He stretched out his left arm, the one that was nearest to his wife,
and laid his hand on her lap.  There was something very touching in
this simple act, and in the tender look that accompanied it.  For a
moment or two the birring of the spinning-wheel ceased as Eppie took
her husband's hand in both of hers.

He had really asked a question, though not in words; but it was in
words that Eppie replied.

"Yes, Eean, yes," she said.  "What for no tell the story?"

"Our story, Eppie."

"Ay, ay, our story, Eean."

Birr--rr--rr went the spinning-wheel again; and I'm not sure there
was not some moisture in Eppie's eyes as she bent once more over her
work.

It was a very old-fashioned pipe of clay that Eean now lit with a
morsel of burning peat, and when he got it to go he placed over the
bowl the white iron lid which was attached by a tiny chain to the
stalk.  Then he leaned back in his chair, and for a time seemed
intent only on watching the blue rings of smoke, that went curling up
towards the blackened rafters of the humble cottage.

"Boys, boys," he said slowly at last, "it is a long, long time ago
since my real life-story began.  Thirty years and over, lads.  Is
that not so, Eppie?"

Birr--rr--rr! went the spinning-wheel.

"Imphm," assented Eppie.

"But go on, Eean," she continued; "and if ye ravel in the thread o'
your discoorse, I'll try to pit ye straight again."

Thus encouraged, Eean took a few more pulls at his pipe and went on.

"Thirty years seem a long time to look forward to; but looking back,
boys, why it's all like a dream.  Yet, my lads, life has no business
to be a dream.  'Life is real, life is earnest,' as the hymn says;
and if your eyes don't open before you are out of your teens, I tell
you this, it is a poor look out for you in after-life.

"I notice a weary kind of a light in your eyes, young Master Frank.
I know what you're thinking: 'The old man is not telling a story,
he's only preaching.'  But the ways of old men must be borne with.
So patience for a moment, boy; patience!

"I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  Oh, not a big one, I
assure you!  But I knew right well that when twenty-one I should have
a few thousands to begin life with; and it was this very knowledge, I
believe, that made me careless and a dreamer.

"My father was a Highlander, like myself.  He _had_ been rich, but he
had also been a soldier, and squandered all his own money, though he
retired on half-pay with fame and glory; for on many a blood-red
field in India his sword had rang and clashed, and his slogan been
heard wherever the battle raged the fiercest.

"That was my father, and I was his only son.  I had a dear mother
that doted on me, and could scarcely bear to have me out of her
sight.  She would have me to be a child even when I was seventeen
years of age.  I tell you that up till that age I did nothing on
earth but dream my life away.  I was to be something great _in
futuro_.  There was a castle building for me somewhere, in which I
should live when a man.  The good fairies were building it, I
suppose; but woe is me, boys, fairy promises are but like
soap-bubbles that rise and float on the soft summer air, all glitter
and beauty, then--burst.

"I was a poet in those days--they tell me I am a bard still--but I
fear my verses have lost the fire and frenzy of youth.  Never mind,
in those dear foolish days I learned nothing that was not pleasant, I
did nothing I could not find pleasure in.  With gun on shoulder I
used to start for the hill.  Too often my gun was thrown on the
heather, and I lay down beside it in the sun to versify and dream.
Or I might take my fishing-rod, and with my dog Kooran at my heels,
set off for the lonesome tarn or mountain burn; but, ah, me! the fish
seldom rose to my flies, and the streamlet sang to me, and I to the
streamlet--there was music in everything around me, in the sailing
clouds, in the waving broom, the drooping birch-trees and dark solemn
pines themselves.

"Did my conscience never tell me I was doing wrong?  It did at times.
There were moments when the stern realities of life used to force
themselves upon my thoughts.  Surely man was made and meant for
something better than to be an idle dreamer.  Then I would start and
awake as if from a lethargy.  I would look around me, and even blush
to see all men busy but myself, all creatures toiling, yet all, all
happier even than I.

"What should I be?  What should I be?  How often the question would
keep recurring to my mind.  Be a soldier like my father?  No, I cared
not for camps and fighting.  Be a sailor, and go sailing over the
world.  Yes, that was better; but the work, it was the work I feared.
To sail on, on, on, for ever over sunlit summer seas would have
suited me.  But seas are not always sunlit, and storms arise,
and--no, I would not be a sailor.

"Why not live to sing as Byron, Ossian, and Burns had done?  But I
must have some one else save the birds and streams and trees to sing
to.  Then a gloomy spell came over the spirit of my dream, and I
thought myself the most miserable of all created beings.  The linnet
that sang among the golden furze, his nest not far away, seemed to
laugh at me.  The linnet had love.  The wild deer in the forest shook
their antlered heads, and appeared to despise me in my forlornness,
they were as happy as the summer's day was glad and long.  The eagle
that floated high above the clouds mocked me.  He could soar.  Oh,
how I wished and wanted to soar!  Everything too about me was so
lovely, I had a poet's eye for beauty.  Even the metallic lustre on
the beetles that crept through the grass shot rays of pleasure to my
heart.  'Was it possible,' I said to myself one day, as I lounged by
a river side.  'Was it possible for me to transfer some of the beauty
I saw around me to canvas?  Why not?  Others have done so.  I had
been to the great city of London, I had revelled in
picture-galleries, all the memory of pictures I had seen came back to
me now with a force I had never felt before.  Hurrah!' I shouted,
starting up, 'I will be an artist.  I will build my own castles.
Away, fairies, away I'll dream no more.  I'll be a man.  I am a man.'

"My poor dog must have thought I'd gone mad.  I broke my fishing-rod
across my knee and flung it far into the dark brown stream, and once
more shouted till the wild coneys fled into their holes on the
cairney hill sides.

"No, my mother did not object; I should have the best of teachers;
the best of teaching; I should go to London; go to Rome.  My pictures
should be hung, I'd make wealth and fame, her darling boy should
be----"

Here old Eean paused for a moment.  He shook the ashes from his pipe
with a gesture almost of anger.

"Dreams!  Dreams!  Dreams!" he muttered.

"Boys, I had not learned the art of application early enough in
youth, I was thoughtless, my dear mother said in excuse for me, and
thoughtlessness was natural to youth.

"But, oh, lads, listen!  Thoughtlessness is not, should not be,
natural to youths.  Life's stern battle is all before them; should
they be thoughtless or careless as they gird up their loins to meet
the foe?  Life's stormy ocean is rolling resistlessly on towards
their frail barques; how shall they mount those heaving seas, how
fight against wind and tempest, if they trust all to blind chance?  I
tell you what--and he who tells you knows--that thoughtfulness must
be your guide to every good in life; ay, and to the world beyond as
well, Oh, my dear lads, grasp these truths, and never, never forget
them!  Act on them too, and they will make you men, yes, heroes.

"But I am preaching now.  Forgive me, and my tale--alas! it is an all
too common one as far as it regards myself--shall soon be told.

"I was not by any means what is called a wild youth, while pursuing
my studies under masters in London, and elsewhere: the ordinary and
sinful frivolities of youths about town had no charm for me.  I
loathed them, and despised the empty-headed fools who gave way to
them.  I did not quarrel with these men, I simply avoided them.  I
preferred my own company to theirs, and my own thoughts.  I was often
to be seen alone at the play, or opera, or alone in the picture
galleries.  It was a pity for me I did not visit the latter in
company with art critics, but I had found out that some of these were
lacking not only in knowledge but in honesty, so I avoided them all,
as a child who has been burned fears flame in any and every form.

"Did I work well?  I worked fairly well.  My fault, and it is a
radical one, was, that I was in too great a hurry to be a
painter--the rudiments of drawing were to me a weary task.  Like a
boy I gloated over colour and effect.  But I had one picture hung.
Oh, bless that day for just one reason--it made my poor dear mother
happy!  When she received the letter in which I announced my success,
she shed more tears over it than if the missive had been one
announcing the death of a dear friend.  Yes, they were tears of joy.

"Did my single success have a good effect on me?  Alas! no, the very
reverse.  I fancied myself--fool that I was--upon a mountain top of
fame and glory.  High up among the rosy clouds of sunrise, with all
the world at my feet.  I determined to do no more work for a time,
not genuine study at least--I should set out on a grand walking tour!
What a happy idea I thought this was!  Mind you, I still was the poet
at heart, and Nature in every form still appealed to me.  I had come
to hate my sky-high studio in London, the dusty winding stairs that
led to it, its furniture and furnishings, and even the outlook from
its windows.

"I was like a boy while preparing for this grand tour.  For more than
a week my time by day was occupied in shopping.  All my purchases
might soon have been made had I been content with the ordinary outfit
of a walking artist.  But this would not suit my vanity.  I believe I
was a rather handsome young man then.  Was I not, Eppie?"

Birr-rr-rr went the wheel.  No word came from Eppie, only a smile lit
up her face for a moment.

"So," continued Eean, "I determined to take heavy baggage as well as
a knapsack and cudgel.  This I would arrange to be sent on by train
or coach.  Guns, fishing-rod and tackle, books, the best of novels,
the best of poets, I even took dress suits.  Yes, boys, I feel
ashamed now when I think of it, but my vanity led me to believe that
I should be fêted and feasted at the houses of the wealthy.

"Away I went, and for many weeks of wandering I was truly happy.  I
worked too by fits and starts, and my portfolios were getting filled
with pretty bits that I culled upon my rambles.  I had not yet found
out, nor could I have believed, that rural England was so charmingly
sweet and pretty.  No great wonder that I lingered therein for months
and months.  True, my dress suits were never once taken out from the
trunk that contained them, nor was any squire or nobleman ever
likely, I began to think, to invite the wandering artist to dinner or
give him even a day's fishing or shooting.  Was this fame then?
Surely everyone had heard of the rising artist who had had a picture
hung.  And prettily criticised too.  Well, I did not break my heart.
I ate my humble meals and slept at village inns, and if I was taken
for anything at all by the villagers, it was either for 'a kind of
surveyor,' a 'strolling sign painter,' or 'something in tea.'

"But during these long rambles there had been the glamour of spring,
and the glory of summer, over all the land, and I was contented and
happy.

"I hardly ever thought of writing even, wicked that I was, to my
mother.  But when at last the summer commenced, and I saw one day a
pale yellow splash of foliage on a green ash tree, as if some tint of
last night's sunset had fallen on it and lingered there, I bethought
me of the purple and crimson heather on the bonnie Highland hills of
my wild native land.  And in a week's time I was home at my father's
house.

"Oh, I had been working hard, I told my mother.

"'I know,' she said, 'and I expected to see you wan and pale, dear
boy, instead of rosy red.'

"Then I told her all--where I had been, and spread out before her my
portfolios of crude unfinished bits.

"'They will work up, and work into noble pictures when I return to
town,' I said.

"It was thus I deceived myself and her.

"I next set out to study the beauties of hill scenery of straths and
glens, of loch and stream and torrent, of weird pine forests, far in
the depths of rugged mountain passes, of sheep and shepherds'
shielings, and of everything that makes up the stern silent grandeur
of the Scottish Highlands.

"One day I found myself seated high up the glen here with the reek of
this same wee village rising blue above the birchen trees, with the
great Atlantic Ocean sobbing on the sandy beach, or breaking into
whitest foam against that long ridge of darkest rock that runs
westward yonder to meet and welcome the rolling seas.  There were
white clouds afloat in the sky's blue, there were white sails dotting
the blue of the sea, there was the buzz of insect life in the heather
all around me, and the afternoon was warm and soft.  Had I fallen
asleep I wonder?  I know not.  But I started up at last inspired with
a new idea.

"It was an idea that made my cheeks tingle with pleasurable emotion.

"I should write a book, a book that would make me famous.  I should
in this book wed together the harp and the easel, the thistle and the
rose.

"Let me explain to you, boys, for I can see you hardly catch my
meaning.  The book, then, was to embrace both poetry and painting,
the wild songs I should sing of my own mountain land; the
illustrations all from my own pencil and brush, hence _The Harp and
the Easel_.  But the scenery should be touches from Nature in both
Scotland and England, hence the title of _The Thistle and the Rose_.

"I went down the mountain side at the rush, vaulting as vaults the
deer, so strong, so well, so happy was I that my very feet seemed to
spurn the turf on which I trode.

"But was it turf?  No, surely it was air.  So filled with the
inspiration of my grand idea was I, that I appeared no longer on
earth or even belonging to it.

"Boys, these last words of mine contain a grim kind of a joke which
you will at once see.  I made just one vault too many, then I was
indeed walking on air, and no longer on earth.  I was falling,
falling, falling!  Oh, it did seem such a long, long time ere I
reached the foot of that rocky cliff!  Then all was a blank.

"I had fallen as it were into sudden darkness, and but for a
pine-tree on which I bad luckily alighted, and which lowered me
earthward all torn and bleeding, it might have been the darkness of
death.

"Eppie, wife, heap more peats upon the fire and stir the blazing
drift-wood.  Listen, lads, to the moaning wind; surely that is hail
that rattles so against the panes.  Frank, it is well you haven't to
make your way through moor and forest to-night with Bunko."

"I shouldn't have minded being with poor Bunko, sir, I assure you,
because I like to be out in storms; but then I could not have heard
the conclusion of your story."

"And must I conclude to-night?"

"Oh, sir, yes!  You're just coming to the best of it."

"Well, boys, well," said the old bard, "you must be humoured."

CHAPTER III.

AN AIMLESS LIFE--PEACE AT LAST.

"The darkness seemed to lift at last, and I gradually became
sensible.  Everything around me was hazy for a time--a kind of a
gauze curtain seemed to hang 'twixt me and as pretty a rustic picture
as I ever yet had seen.

"I was not lying at the cliff foot, I was in a soft, warm bed, all
hung round with snow-white curtains.  It was so near the gloaming
hour that I could see the firelight dancing on the plain deal
furniture, and on the pictures of ships and boats that hung on the
whitewashed wall.  There was a stuffed sea-gull in a case, and the
model of a fishing-boat also under glass, and on a little table a big
ha' Bible and other devotional books, surmounted by a vase of
freshly-culled wild flowers.  Then I turned my aching eyes towards
the little window, prettily festooned with curtains of dimity, and on
the sill of which pot-flowers were growing, the red radiance of
sunset lighting up and strangely altering the green of their leaves.
But my eyes fell on a picture of a different sort at the same time: a
young girl seated by the window sewing, her head bent towards the
white seam, her dark hair half hiding a face that to me was as lovely
as an angel's.

"Some movement on my part caused her to glance towards the bed, and
seeing me awake she put down her work and came towards me.

"'Where am I?' I asked faintly.

"She put her fingers on my lips.

"'You are where ye maun lie,' she said, smiling, though I'm sure
there were tears in her eyes; 'where ye maun lie till well, but ye
must not speak.'

"Poor, simple lassie!  I knew then as I knew after that she was doing
her best to talk in English, though far dearer to me was the
expressive language of Burns the poet.

"She now put something to my lips in a spoon.  I drank, and slumbered
again.

"When once more conscious, there stood the village doctor, and an
old, white-haired, pleasant-faced dame in a fisher's cap.

"'Will he live, doctor?'

"'Live! yes, if he has plenty of good nursing.'

"'He'll want for naething here, puir laddie, that we can gie him.
Ech, sir, but I'm thankful.'

"My young nurse was not there, so I slept for a time, and when I
awoke she sat there again.

"'May I talk just a little?'

"'Yes, just a little,' she said.  'Tell me,' she added, 'who your
people are, because ye ken they must be told?'

"'Plenty of time.  Plenty of time,' I murmured.

"Then bit by bit I told her all my story.

"'I would rather,' I said, 'my mother knew nothing till I am up and
about.'

"'But will she not be----'

"'No, no, child,' I said.  'She is used to my wandering ways, and
oftentimes I do not write for months.'

"'Isn't that unkind?'

"'I fear so,' I said.

"'Are you _good_?' she asked pointedly.

"'Not too good I fear.'

"'D' ye say your prayers nicht and mornin'?  Had ye said your prayers
on that day ye fell o'er that fearfu' cliff?'

"I was silent.

"Only a simple Scotch lassie would have preached to me thus.  But she
looked so saint-like as she sat there, gazing almost mournfully at me
with her calm, tender grey eyes, that really I was thinking then more
of painting her in a subject than anything else.

"'No,' I said at last, 'I am not good as you understand it, but you
shall teach me.'

"'The way of transgressors is hard,' said the little Puritan; 'but
oh, sir, the plan o' salvation is sae simple a bairnie can understan'
it.  What's your name, sir?'

"'Eean.'

"'I'll pray for ye, Eean, and so will mother.'

"It was a month after this conversation ere I could stroll about the
beach, and paint rock and cloud effects.  The girl was seldom with
me.  She would be away out at sea casting nets with her father, and
in her simplest attire, to my eyes, she always made the prettiest
picture.

"Boys, this story of mine is in some measure a confession.  I have at
all events confessed to you already how idle and how vain I was, and
now I am going to give you another illustration of my vanity I made
up my mind then to make this girl my wife.  I positively thought I
had only to go in and win.

"I was well now, and it was only for her sake I still lingered in the
village.  I had taken up my abode at the village inn because, though
they had nursed me back to life, those kindly fisher people
positively refused to accept of anything in the shape of pecuniary
reward.  All that I was permitted to do was to paint the old couple
sitting together Bible in hand on the stone dais in front of their
little cottage door.

"So one day I called on the mother, but was not displeased to find
the girl there too.

"I soon stated the object of this particular visit.

"'I _intended_,' I said, 'to make her daughter my wife.'

"A quick flush came over the girl's face.  She glanced just once in
my direction, then bent again over her white seam.

"'You intend,' said the old lady, 'to make my daughter your wife.  O,
sir, do you think sae little of us, that ye imagine ye hae only to
command?  We are only poor fisher-folks, sir, but we have the pride
of honesty in our hearts.  Na, na, na, sir, there is a great gulf
fixed 'twixt you and us.  Gang awa', sir, gang awa', and marry some
gentle dame, that ye can introduce to your dear lady mother.  May
every blessin' on earth he yours, sir.  We're nae insensible to the
honour ye would do us.  Dinna think us ungrateful--' here the good
old soul broke down and cried--'but gang and leave us to our poverty
and our honest toil.'

"'So be it, madam, so be it,' I said.  'I have yourself and daughter
to thank for my life, but it was not to show my gratitude I made the
proposal, but because I am wise enough to discover sterling worth and
goodness even beneath a humble garb.  Good-bye.  I'll never think of
marriage more.'

"I shook the mother's hand warmly.  I but touched the girl's.  To
have looked even once in her sweet tearful face would have unmanned
me, so I all but fled.

"I left the village long before daylight.  I went home.  Then I told
my mother all.

"My muse was now my only comfort, for months went by before I thought
again of painting.

"Then the same old idea recurred to me that had so nearly cost me my
life on the mountain side.

"The book, _The Easel and the Harp_.  _The Thistle and the Rose!_

"I commenced work in earnest now.  But, alas! misfortune befell me.
My soldier father died.  He died in debt, and one short year
afterwards I laid my darling mother in the church-yard beside him.

"I was alone in the world now--alone and with only a few thousands of
pounds betwixt me and want, should I fail with my brush.

"I was awakened at last to the reality of life, and tried hard to do
my best to face its storms.

"My great book!  I laid my plans before publisher after publisher.
Some of these received me kindly, praised the idea, but did not see
their way.

"One told me that the people were not educated yet up to such a work,
and it was to the people he had to look for success.

"I laid my plans before great artists.  Each and all of these
dissuaded me from any such undertaking.  I called this envy.  O the
vanity of young manhood!

"I visited printers and lithographers next, as well as engravers.
Each and all of these assured me the world was ripe for such a work,
and by publishing it myself I should not only secure fame, but all
the profits.

"I went home rejoicing, and at once commenced to work out my scheme.
I soon after retired to a quiet rural village, and here I lived like
a recluse for a whole year, working but dreaming as well.

"My work was finished.

"My book was published.  _The Easel and the Harp_.  _The Thistle and
the Rose!_

"It did _not_ go like wild-fire.  The critics hardly noticed it, not
even to revile.  I wished they had.  Hardly a copy was sold, and I
was all but ruined.

"I saw my vanity when it was too late.  How bitterly now I felt the
truth of the scriptural text, 'Pride goes before a fall, and
haughtiness before destruction.'

"I had not been like the moth that seeks glory by courting a too
close acquaintanceship with the candle, and falls groundwards with
singed wings; but like the moth that set out to fly to the evening
star, when, lo! clouds arose and rain fell, then down came the all
too ambitious flutterer, every gossamer featherlet in its downy body
draggled and wet, to lie in the grass and suffer sorrow.

  "In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
  All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
  Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
  Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

"I hardly cared now to meet my old associates, much less my old
masters.  They had warned me in my overweening pride, I spurned their
warning, and now I was crushed and hopeless.

"I believe to this day that I took my punishment like a man, I did
not even pretend to laugh and treat my discomfiture lightly; so many
of my friends would have stuck to me, and assisted me up again once
more.  But I shook the dust of London from my feet, and went away
once more into the country to meditate and think.  There still was
hope for me.  I was young, why should I mourn?

"The moth that tried to reach the star was able to fly again next
evening, though it never could be the same moth as before.  I had
aimed at a too high ideal.  I thought I had almost reached it.  I
fell.  But I should rise again.  Yes; but never the same man.

"I should leave this country, however and begin life anew in some far
distant clime, and--so I vowed--endeavour to climb the ladder of fame
one step at a time, instead of foolishly trying to rush it as I had
done.

"And now I did the only wise thing I had yet done in my life.  I took
the little remains of my fortune--it consisted only of hundreds
now--and placed it in a bank, keeping but enough to last me with
economy a year.  Then I left my native land, taking ship for the
Antipodes as a steerage passenger.  I even changed my name, so
determined was I to forget all my past life.

"There was one portion of it, however, I never could forget, and that
was the short but happy time I had spent during my convalescence in
the little village, and the humble fisher lassie's last tearful looks
of adieu.  That would be the loadstone that should draw me back to
Britain if anything ever could.

"But I became strangely enamoured of a sea life and of ships and
sailor men.  We had a long, dreary passage out around the Cape in a
sailing vessel, and before I had been out a fortnight I asked
permission of the captain, and obtained it too, to go before the mast.

"Perhaps I had found my vocation at last.  I almost believed I had,
for in a month's time there was scarcely any part of a seaman's duty
I could not perform, and before we reached Australia I was dubbed a
sailor.

"I had been a favourite with my messmates, and even with the few
passengers aft, and I believe all were sorry to part with me.

"But the gold fever was then at its height, and what more natural
than I should catch it?  Not all at once, however.  I stayed around
Sydney for a time.  I managed to beat up several newspaper men and
artists like myself.  But this work was all too slow, the
remuneration too small, for me.

"One day I found myself standing alone in the street in the drizzling
rain, without hope, without a home, and nothing belonging to me
except the somewhat tattered clothes I wore.  I was near a newspaper
office, and was about to enter to beg--not for money, boys, I'd have
died sooner--but for work, when I found myself face to face with a
man who was, like myself, an artist.

"'Off to the diggings!' he cried merrily.  'Join me, old fellow, join
me.  We will return as rich as Croesus.'

"'I'd go,' I said, 'but I'm----'

"I turned out my empty pockets.

"'I'll wait for you a week,' he said, 'and you shall work.  Come in
here.'

"He pulled me inside the very office I had been about to enter; and
in a fortnight's time we were both marching away to the diggings,
with hopes as high as the fleecy clouds and hearts as--well, as light
as our purses.

"Did we succeed?  At last we did, after ten years of a life of
back-breaking slavery.  We stuck together all this time, and our
adventures would have filled a lordly volume.  We found time, too, to
write to the papers, and send many a sketch of life at the diggings.

"We made a pile at last, and gladly agreed to leave this
rough-and-tumble life and settle in some town, or come back--this was
my idea--to Scotland.

"Fools that we were, we gave what was called a 'glorification' to our
friends the night before we were to start on horseback with our pile
away through the bush.

"I hate to dwell on this part of my story.  But there came that
evening to our camp two Irish strangers.  They seemed green-hands,
and I and my friend took them in and treated them well We talked too
freely about our wealth of gold, and we lived to repent it.

"We bade all the camp good-bye next day, and with our convoy started
for Melbourne.

"Day after day, day after day, through forest and bush, living on
damper and wretched tea, and sleeping by night under the stars, but
light-hearted and happy.

"'Hold!  Put up your hands!'

"It was a shout of command, given by two men on horseback as we rode
through a beautiful gully one day.

"We had no time to draw and defend ourselves, and our servants were
paralysed with fear.

"The robbers were the self-same Irish green-hands we had entertained
in camp.

"Of all our pile they left us barely fifty pounds a piece, and this,
they told us, they gave us out of charity.

"Two months after this I was serving as a common sailor on a merchant
ship bound for San Francisco.

"During the long, hard years in the Australian bush I had not quite
forgotten my art, and I hoped to make it pay in a new land.

"Once more I was partially successful.  Once again, boys, I began to
dream dreams of greatness, and once again my dreams worked my ruin.

"My art was praised by some, my verses were said by others to have
about them the ring and rhythm of the born bard.  I forgot or
neglected art for poesy, and soon found myself penniless and without
work itself.

"Ambition, lads, is a grand thing; but it must be guided by a steady
hand at the tiller, or it is a ship that will never sail into the
haven of success.

"I need not tell you all, nor any of my wild adventures for the next
eight years of my life by sea or land.  You have heard the
mythological tale of the man who prayed that everything he touched
might turn into gold, and how the gods granted his prayer, and how
his very food became gold as he tried to lift it to his lips, so that
he died of starvation.  Nothing I touched turned to gold, but, like
Dead-sea fruit, every scheme of mine turned to dust in my attempt to
grasp it.

"At last, in a fight with lions in the forests of Africa, I was
seized and carried away by a man-eater.  The monster was wounded,
and, though he lacerated me fearfully, he laid down and died at my
side.  My companions soon followed and found me, and after a weary
time I recovered a tithe, but not more, of my former life and spirit.

"The adventure had made almost an old man of me, and in my weakness
and debility I had but one wish, one desire--to return to my native
land and die!

"I did return.  Providence was good to me, and the sea had in some
measure restored me a portion of my pristine strength.

"I visited my Highland home and my mother's grave.  Then an
irresistible longing stole over me to visit this little wild glen.

"I stood one day on the very hill-top where well-nigh twenty years
ago I had dreamt of nought save glory.

"All seemed the same on this sweet summer's day, the sea, the hills,
the rocks, the wee whitewashed houses standing among the greenery of
the waving birches, and the blue smoke trailing over the trees.

"Then I went quietly down the hill.  Alas! where now was the bounding
fire and fury of my youth?  I almost shuddered when I saw the
precipice over which I had fallen, and the pine tree still denuded of
branches that had saved my life.

"In a few minutes more I stood at the door of the village inn.  There
were new people here now, but the old folks could scarce have known
me, so changed had I become.

"While I munched my morsel of bread and cheese, washed down with
milk, a tall figure passed the window leading a child.  I knew her
step at once, though she too was sadly changed.  But I wondered to
notice that her hair was sprinkled with gray.

"All my heart seemed to go forth to her.

"'That,' said the landlady, 'is the kindliest creature in all the
parish.'

"'Her name?' I almost gasped.

"'Miss Elspet Deane.'

"'Miss?  Ah, then she is not married?'

"'No; there is some sad story about her--about an artist she ought to
have married, but who went away and was drowned at sea.'

"'And you say she is good and kind?'

"'Good and kind, sir!  What would the clachan do without her?  We all
call her auntie.  I don't know why.  Some bairnies began it, I
suppose.  Ah! don't the bairnies love her, sir!  And she lives all by
herself, and that wee laddie in the house where her parents died.
Never a child is ill in the village, sir, that she doesn't attend.
She gathers the herbs and simples on the moors, and mixes them with
her own honest hands, and little toddlers will take physic from her
who would spurn it from the doctor.'

"'Dear sir,' continued this somewhat garrulous landlady, 'death
itself doesn't seem so dreadful when she is in the room.  And she has
aye a word of comfort for poor wives, when their boats are detained
at sea or blown far, far away by the raging storm.  On that terrible
Tuesday, sir, and all the dark drear night that followed, when the
wind blew louder and the sea was wilder than anybody ever remembered
it before--when out of eleven boats and their brave crews but only
five regained the shore, Miss Elspet was everywhere, directing, sir,
and comforting, praying with the widows and the fatherless bairns,
and sometimes even scolding the women for their want of trust in the
Maker--like a very angel in the midst of the great grief that wailed
around her.'

"'The boy, sir?  He had no mother, and his father was drowned on that
stormy night----"

"I stopped to hear no more,

"In ten minutes' time I was in the well-remembered wee room in
Elspet's house, and she stood before me.

"I thought that, hardy and strong as she was, she would have faulted.

"'Eppie,' I said, 'it is _me_!'  Yes, boys, I forgot my grammar just
then.  'You could not marry me when I was rich and young, now I am
old--though not in years--and I am poor and ill.  You nursed me once,
Eppie.  Will you nurse me again?'  Ah! lads, it has been a new life
to me since the village bells rang on our wedding morn.  I have found
peace and contentment at last, and after the fever of life I can rest
me here.  Are we not happy, Eppie?"

He did not give Eppie time to reply.

"Yonder sits the drowned fisherman's son, Fred, who saved your life
to-day, Frank Fielding."

"And the wee thing who has gone to sleep on my lap," said Frank
Fielding, "she is?"

"A shipwrecked waif; a stray from the sea.  But now, lads, to bed."

Then the birr-rr-rr of the wheel ceased, and Eppie, rising, took wee
Toddie from Frank to carry her off to bed.

But Toddie was wide awake now, and all dimples, smiles, and yellow
hair.

She pointed a fat little forefinger at Frank as she was being borne
away on Eppie's shoulder.

"Be a dood boy, Flank," she cried, "and mind oo say oo players."

CHAPTER IV.

SITTING UP TO THINK--THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR.

Frank Fielding wondered where he was when he awoke next morning, and
found the sun shining in through the window of the little cosy room
in which he had slept so soundly after his adventure, the night
before.

Fred's room was in a back wing of the cottage that looked right away
out to sea.  But Fred had not slept so well, and the reason was not
far to seek.  He had often before heard his Daddy Pop, as he called
the old fisherman, tell snatches of his life story, but never had
listened to its complete recital.  And when he retired that night to
his little chamber he was as full of thought as any boy of his age
can be.  The feeling uppermost in the lad's innocent mind was one of
sorrow for Daddy Pop's sadly wasted life.  The old man had made it so
plain to his listeners what the cause of his failure had been.  He
had been a dreamer instead of a student and a worker.  Would there,
he thought, be any chance for a humble lad like himself doing well in
the world if he worked and studied?  The question kept him awake half
the night, and even then he hadn't half answered it.  But long before
this he had made up his mind that he would work and study, and he
really felt thankful he had the chance, for the parish church school
he attended was excellent--in other words, it was thoroughly
Scottish--it sent at least half a dozen lads every year straight from
it away to the University, and more than one of these had become
senior wranglers at Cambridge or double first classes at Oxford.

But what, thought Fred to himself that night, was the good of being a
wrangler? whatever the somewhat pugilistic word might mean.  He
supposed, however, it meant that the wranglership opened the way to
one through the thorny jungle of life, and softened many a difficulty.

He thought, nevertheless, he shouldn't care much to be a wrangler.
One wrangler, he remembered, had come back to his own Highland parish
to die.  That was what wrangling had done for him.

Fred did not care a very great deal for either Latin or Greek, both
of which languages he was already well versed in.  But then Daddy Pop
had told him--and didn't Daddy Pop know everything?--that learning
and study made one active-minded, clever, and bright; that, in fact,
it wasn't so much what anyone actually did learn as the actual
learning of it, that did the good, and increased the size and
fertility of the brain just as--and these were Daddy's own words--the
ploughing and harrowing of a field fitted it to receive any sort of
seed that might be sown therein.  "But," Daddy Pop had added, "it is
as well to learn what will be useful in after life, and the so-called
dead languages would be so."

Fred perhaps ought to have gone to sleep as soon as he went to bed;
but having once commenced to think he could not.  He thought out all
Daddy Pop's story, first lying on one side, then he rolled over on
the other, and thought it all over again.  Then, as it was getting
late, he rolled over on his back and determined to sleep.  Pah! he
might as well have tried to fly.

"Well," he said to himself, "I don't see any good in lying here
tumbling all the bed.  It is hard work, and nothing good to show for."

So up he jumped, and drew aside his little window-blind.  The window
was in shadow; but he could sea that the moon was shining brightly
over the sea, so he quietly dressed himself, opened wide the window,
and sat down beside it.

Toddie's dachshund was out there under a bush, and coughed a low
enquiring sort of a bark at him.

"Down, Tippetty, down!" said Fred.

Tippetty did lie down, but not without a little growl of displeasure.

"You ought to be in bed, you know," the little wise fellow appeared
to say; "and I'm responsible for the safety of this establishment
after nightfall."

Fred gave himself up to thought now, just as heartily as in bed he
had tried to avoid it.  Of course there was a little castle-building
mixed up with these cogitations of his.  And I would not care much
for a boy who did not build a few castles in the air at times, and
inhabit them too; for what, after all, is castle-building but a kind
of budding ambition?

Now Fred Arundel's father had been drowned when the boy was far too
young to know the meaning of the sacred word "parent," while his
mother had been taken away quite in his babyhood.  But he had come to
love and respect his foster-parents very much indeed.  They were all
in all to him.  Fred was a good-natured lad, and there was nothing he
would not have done to give the kindly old couple an hour's happiness.

Well, but for them he might have been running about in rags and
wretchedness a "mitherless bairn,"

  "When a' other bairnies are hushed to their hame,
  By auntie, or cousin, or freckled grand-dame,
  Who stands lost and lonely, wi' nobody carin'?
  'Tis the poor doited laddie--the mitherless bairn,

  "The mitherless bairn gangs to his lone bed,
  Nane covers his cauld back, or haps his bare head;
  His wee hackit heelies are hard as the iron,
  And litheless the lair o' the mitherless bairn."

But Fred could not have been called "a mitherless bairn."  And indeed
if you were to have asked the lad confidentially he would have told
you he was not a "bairn" in any sense of the word, but almost a man.

"Daddy Pop is old," thought Fred, "but he may live for twenty years
and more yet, and so may Mammy too.  Twenty years, what a long time!
Why I shall be getting old myself in that time.  Now although Daddy
had some money in the bank before he went away on his long
wanderings, and found when he came back that it had grown into a heap
more; and although he had enough to build this cottage, and a fine
fishing-boat also, still I know he isn't rich.  His bed is not a very
soft one, he doesn't live so well as I would like him to; he says he
can't afford an easy chair, and that his Sunday coat is good enough.
Well, if I had money, Daddy would have such a lot of comforts, and so
would Mammy Mop.  Why shouldn't Mammy have a silk dress as well as
farmer Grigg's wife?  She shall have it.

"Why shouldn't Daddy have an easy chair and a better pair of specs,
and an easier seat in the cave among the rocks in which he writes his
beautiful poetry?  My Daddy shall be comfortable when I am older.
But what shall I be?  I can't be a fisher lad.  Oh, no!  I must
travel and see the world, and--but, dear me! common sailors don't get
rich, and Sandie Davis told me, after he came back from being all
round and round the world, that often and often he was not allowed to
put a foot on shore even in some of the prettiest places on the face
of the earth.  Sandie told me this because he likes me.  Sandie
wouldn't tell everybody, I'm sure of that.  It wasn't for the half
crown I lent Sandie that he likes me.  Oh, no!

"But what does Sandie do?  He comes home wearing his best blue
clothes, and a dandy tie, and silver rings and things, and to hear
him talk anybody would think he had been first officer of a ship.  He
smokes and takes beer--not that he pays for it, except by the
stories--yarns he calls them--that he tells those who treat him.  No,
poor Sandie never has a penny to bless himself with after he has been
two weeks at home.  That isn't the kind of sailor I'm going to be, if
ever I'm a sailor at all.  Sandie's mother has a lot of 'curios,' as
he calls them--some wonderful Japanese boxes, bottles of _eau de
Cologne_, a funny-looking tea-caddy made out of a nut, an ostrich's
egg, a savage's spear, and an old bow and arrow; but nothing she can
eat or wear.  She can't even eat the ostrich's egg, and funny she'd
look going about with that dirty old bow and arrow.

"He's not a bad fellow, though he boasts and brags, and talks through
his nose, and says words I never heard before, and don't wish to hear
again, for sailors like Sandie would make me sick of the sea.

"No, I'll be something--something.  I'm going to study and work to
begin with, and then----"

Only the moonlight lying clear on the sea, only the lisp of the waves
on the shore, only the whisper of wind in the trees, only--why, it
can't surely be daylight already!

But it is though, and has been for hours, though Fred still sits
there, his face and his arms, and his bare head exposed to the
morning breeze.

"Oh, you naughty Fred!" cried Toddie, discovering her foster-brother,
and pulling his hair to wake him.  "Oo has never been to bed.  I
declare oo'll bleak my heart; and Flank and I has been all wound the
beach and at the atwalium (aquarium) too.  Flank's a dear, dood boy.
Tome to bleakfast at once, I tell oo."

Fred looked up, smiling sleepily, then he gave himself a shake, as a
dog would, jumped right through the window, and patted Toddie's head.

"I'll be back in ten minutes, Toddie, old woman," he said.

Then straight for the rocks he ran, and divesting himself of his
clothes in a little recess, sprang in, had a good swim, and returned
home singing, and quite as happy as the skylark that was lilting high
above the woods.

Frank came out of the cottage to meet him, and the two lads shook
hands heartily.

"You're none the worse for your ducking," said Fred.

"No, all the better.  Ha! ha!  I wonder what mother will say?  But
tell me, are you always so late of coming down to breakfast?"

Fred laughed.

"It isn't coming down," he said, "because, you know, we haven't any
up.  Yours is a big fine house, I suppose?"

"It's a fair size.  Two story, you know, and all among woods and
gardens.  Oh, I'm sure you'll like it!"

It was time for Fred to laugh again.

"Very likely I shall see it," he said somewhat ironically; "but come
in till I sup my porridge."

"I've had mine long ago, and so has Toddie, and we've had such a game
of romps.  But of course you'll come often to Benshee House.  I have
a Shetland pony and a little trap, and can come over to you."

"Oh! but, Frank Fielding," Fred said solemnly, as he dipped his spoon
in a basin of creamy milk, "don't forget I'm only a poor working lad,
and you are a young gentleman."

The tears sprang to poor Frank's eyes in a moment but he manfully
kept even a single one from falling.  He stretched out his hand and
grasped that of Fred, even though he had the spoon in it.

"There," said Frank, "I've made you spill the milk.  But never mind.
Now, Fred, just listen.  Don't be a fool.  I'm not a cad, mind.  My
father is a Scotchman, though my mother is English.  My father made
his money in stocks, and might lose it to-morrow."

"_Avertit omen_," murmured Fred.

"I don't know Chinese, Fred; but I do know this, you and I are going
to be fast friends, and bother the rank and riches.  My father makes
me learn Burns's poems.  My mother thinks they are not _bon ton_."

"Bong tong," said Fred.  "Well, I don't know Japanese."

"Never mind.  Just listen to this.  I'm going to recite.  Father
makes me do it.  Now here is the scene.  You are a baronet and I am
Bobbie Burns.  I have been visiting you, you know, staying a few days
at your mansion, when a nobleman--a downright cad--comes also to
visit you, and you ask him if he would object to the ploughman poet
dining with him.

"'What!' cries this ignoble nobleman, 'a ploughman singing fellow
dining with you and me!  How very absurd to be sure!'

"Then you, Sir Fred, are awfully put about, and you come to me
sheepishly, and explain matters, and I bite my tongue and don't say
anything.

"Well, after dinner his lordship says, 'Now, pon honour, I'd like to
hear your singing fellow just for five minutes, don't-cher-know?'

"And so I--Robert Burns--am asked in.

"Of course I'm in a boiling rage at being treated thus.  So I strut
in and bow to you and his lordship, that is Toddie yonder.

"'Singing fellow,' says the lord, 'give us a specimen of your poetic
powahs.'

"And this is the specimen I give:

  "'Is there, for honest poverty,
    That hangs his head, and a' that?
  The coward-slave, we pass him by,
    We dare be poor for a' that!
      For a' that, and a' that,
        Our toils obscure, and a' that,
      The rank is but a guinea's stamp,
        The man's the gowd* for a' that.

  "'Ye see yon Birkie,† ca'ed a lord,

(Frank points at Toddie.)

    Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
  Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
    He's but a coof‡ for a' that:
      For a' that, and a' that,
        His riband, star, and a' that,
      The man of independent mind,
        He looks and laughs at a' that.

  "'A prince can mak a belted knight,
    A marquis, duke, and a' that;
  But an honest man's aboon his might,
    Guid faith he canna fa'§ that!
      For a' that, and a' that,
        It's coming yet, for a' that,
      That man to man, the warld o'er,
        Shall brothers be for a' that.

* Gold.

† Proud, silly fellow.

‡ Blockhead.

§ Manage.

"Oh!" cried little Toddie, clapping her pink hands, "oo is a pletty
boy when oo speaks like that."

"Now," said Frank, laughing, "I think like Burns, Fred, and if you
don't come and see me and be friendly it will be all your own fault."

"I'll come," said Fred, laughing, "and if I happen to be carrying a
creel of lobsters, I suppose you won't set your dogs at me?"

"Oh, no, because father talks about the dignity of labour, and that
would be the dignity of labour.  And you know--'a man's a man for a'
that.'"

"Bravo!  Frank Fielding," cried the old fisherman, entering the room,
"How I love your sentiments, my boy.  Why they are noble--noble.
Shake the old bard's hand."

"Now," said Toddie, "evelybody must hold his tongue, I'se goin' to
'cite a piece."

And this little waif and stray that the Atlantic waves had tossed up
on the beach as if she had been seaweed, stepped boldly into the
arena, that is, into the middle of the sanded floor.

She was a beautiful child, this Toddie, with large eyes, delicate
features, and such a wealth of glossy hair that one could not but
wonder how it could have grown on a head so young.

She held one wee arm aloft, and in slow and measured tones, with many
a brief but impressive pause, spoke as follows:

  "There once was a leetle, leetle dirl,
    Who--lived--in a shoe,
  And she had so many tsilden,
    She--didn't--know--what to do.

  But the Dood Lord sent a wild, wild stolm,
    An' the waves wose--mountains high.
  An lightenin's dleamed acloss the hills,
    An' sunders shook the sky.

  An' a dleat big whale dot vely sick,
    Wi' the wobblin' o' the sea,
  An' so he tumbled on the beach,
    As dead as dead tould be.

  But Bunko took the dleat whale's bones,
    As none but Bunko tould,
  And set them up adainst the rocks,
    And lined them all with wood.

  And when the whale was all tomplete,
    We named it the Ig-loo,*
  And there the little dirl lives,
    And all her tsilden too."

* The hut in which Eskimos live.

Frank looked much amused, but quite puzzled; the old bard patted his
foster-daughter, and smiled not a little proudly; while Fred roared
with laughter because Frank looked so enquiringly droll.

"Is there any meaning in all that?"

"Yes," cried Fred, "and it's all true; at least the last of it.
Toddie and I, and Toddie's children, that is her pets and things, do
really live in a whale."

"Oh, shouldn't I like to see it!" said Frank.  "Hullo!" he added, as
the rattling of wheels ceased at the cottage door, "here is mother in
the pony chaise, and--why look, there is Bunko himself driving my
pony carriage with the Shetland in it!  I wonder how the pony allowed
him."

"Why not?"

"Oh, because if anybody but myself drives him he nearly always lies
down to roll."

Frank ran to meet his mother, who lovingly embraced him.  She was a
very handsome lady and Toddie really stood in awe of her at first.

"Oh," Toddie said to Fred in a kind of stage whisper, "Oh, Fred, I
don't like her much, I weally must suck my fumb."

And so she did.

CHAPTER V.

AT THE FISHERMAN'S CAVE--FRED'S AQUARIUM.

"And where," said Mrs. Fielding, "are the dear brave children who
saved my darling's life?"

"Here is Fred, mamma, and yonder is Toddie, hiding behind her daddy's
legs."

"Toddie," said Fred, "take your thumb out of your mouth."

"Come to me both of you.  Dear, dear, it was quite an adventure I'm
sure.  What dear children!  I'm sure they ought both to have the
Society's medal.  Very poor, aren't they?  I must do something for
them."

These last words, though addressed quietly to Frank, were loud enough
for all to hear.

"Oh, ma!" he said.

But the lady heeded not.

"And you are the fisherman poet, are you not, sir?" she said, turning
to the bard.

The old man was standing as erect as a statue, his bonnet in his
hand, his hair streaming over his neck, and his face somewhat set and
stern.  He really looked noble.  Mrs. Fielding must have felt he did,
or she would never have added that little word "sir" in addressing
him.

"I've heard of you so often, in really good society too.  You write
those beautiful verses in a cave, do you not?  Why they are in every
good magazine.  Do you know I _should_ like to see your cave.  So
romantic!  Might I, Mr.----A----."

"Arundel.  My cave is a very humble place, Mrs. Fielding; but if you
will come with me you shall see it.  The road is rough though."

"Oh, I'm very strong!"

Away along by the top of the cliffs he led her for quite a quarter of
a mile.  Here some bushes grew, and among them was a half-hidden
staircase leading downwards into the very bosom of the rocks.  The
steps had been cut a hundred years ago perhaps by smugglers.  No one
ever yet found out the mystery of Talbot's cave.

The lady condescended to take the bard's hand, and he led her down.
It was almost dark at the bottom, but once in the strange cave it was
light enough.  Here were two windows, or rather ports, and one of
these the bard threw open.  Right down beneath was the deep sea, with
clear water over shining yellow sand, so clear you could see the
beautiful medusæ or jelly fish floating about like
splendidly-jewelled parasols.  Between the ports was the poet's rough
deal table.  Here was a bench of deal, and a tall-backed deal chair.
The floor was laid with wood, and a great ship-lamp swung from the
roof.

The irregular walls were the rough rocks, but much to Mrs. Fielding's
amazement, these walls were adorned with water-colour and oil-colour
paintings, that to her seemed priceless.

I had almost forgotten to say that there was a fireplace in this
cave, and evidence enough too that Eean often had tea here.

But it was the pictures that most attracted the lady's notice.

"These," she said, "are not mere copies?"

"Yes, madam," said the bard, smiling somewhat sadly, "every one of
them, but copies from Nature.  Mostly things I daubed when travelling
abroad, they serve just to remind me of scenes I have passed through
during a somewhat chequered career.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Fielding with innocent candour, "which to
admire the most, yourself or your surroundings."

"Round every one of these picture things, madam, I have to weave a
tale for my foster-children, who come here in the summer and even
winter evenings.

"How enchanting.  Might my dear boy come sometimes too?"

Eean stretched out his hand as if by sudden impulse, and Mrs.
Fielding clasped it cordially.

"Now you do delight me, madam.  I love children and your boy is a
gentleman."

"I'm so pleased."

Then turning to the windows.

"You will observe," he said, "that the glass in these ports is of
very great thickness.  Green seas have often dashed over them, yet we
have never been flooded.  Only on stormy nights I lower great wooden
ports."

He untied a chain as he spoke, and down with a thud came a shutter of
wood and iron.

"Safe you see against the mightiest gale that ever blew."

"How interesting.  The sea too looks charming to-day from your
windows.  Was it out yonder my poor darling was nearly drowned?"

"Yes, madam."

There was a moment's surcease of talking, during which nothing could
be heard but the gentle lap-lapping of the waves on the black rocks
beneath.

"Are you fond of animal life, madam?

"Will you be startled if I introduce to you one or two of my pets?"

"But they won't hurt?"

"No, they are good-mannered crabs."

As he spoke the bard took from his pocket a piece of string to which
was attached a morsel of fish.  This he lowered into the sea through
the open port, then slowly drew it up again.

A moment afterwards there came crawling up two immense crabs, and
they positively appeared to enter arm in arm, side by side certainly.
They paused for a moment on the outside rocky ledge, and gazed at the
lady with their stalky eyes.

Seeming perfectly satisfied, they then advanced, and Mrs. Fielding
noticed that each had a red cross painted across his dark shell.

The bard quietly spread before them their dinner, and they ate it
greedily, rolling their eyes about as they did so with an appearance
of great satisfaction.

"Shall I make them dance?" said the poet.

"Oh, do, sir!"

The poet held a morsel of white meat of some kind above them, and in
a moment they were standing on one end, hand in hand, or rather claw
in claw, dancing round and round and all about in the most comical
manner.

The lady laughed till the cave roof rang again.

"Of all things I have ever seen," she said, "that is the most
ridiculous."

Then one more morsel was given to each, a red handkerchief was waved,
and away the strange performers shuffled, and slowly disappeared over
the ledge.

"Now, Mrs. Fielding, what do you think of my red cross knights?"

"Delightful! oh, delightful!  But pray, Mr. Arundel, what are the red
crosses for?"

"Oh! so that they shall be known by fishermen.  They have often been
captured in the lobster creels, but no one would think of killing
them."

"I have to thank you for such a pleasant hour," said Mrs. Fielding,
as they once more emerged upon the cliff top.  "Oh, look!  Yonder
comes my boy with your dear mite on the Shetland pony."

Toddie waved her hand to Daddy Pop.

"Daddy!  Daddy!" she shouted as soon as near enough to be heard,
"I'se a weal lady now.  All I wants is a widing-habit."

"My dear," said Mrs. Fielding, "a riding-habit would hide the beauty
of those shapely legs and feet."

Toddie looked at her, and at once commenced to suck her thumb.

"Why do you suck your thumb, dear?"

"Oh, I always suck my fumb when I'se finking!"

"And what are you thinking about, child?  What makes you look at me
so?"

"Is oo Flank's mammy?"

"Yes, pet."

"Oh-h!  Well, I likes Flank mostest.  Flank," she added, with the air
of a young princess, "we will wide back adain, please."

And away they went at a mad trot, Frank shouting and Toddie screaming.

"Mamma," said Frank when they met at the cottage, "this is a school
holiday with Fred.  Please may I stay till evening?"

"Did ever I deny you anything, child?  But be sure you're home in
time.  Good-bye, Mr. Arundel.  Good-bye, dear children.  Drive on,
John."

"Dood-bye," shouted Toddie, so gleefully that it must have been
evident even to Mrs. Fielding herself that Toddie was glad to be rid
of her.

"Now," cried the little madcap, "I feels full of joy up to my mouf.
Tippetty and I is off for a wun on the beach.  When Tippetty and I
has our wun we'll come back for you boys, and to-night we'll have tea
in the whale.  Tippetty!  Tippetty! oh, here tomes Tip!"

And off bounded Toddy and Tip, and no one seeing the two scampering
across the level sands would have cared to say which was the wilder
or which the defter.

Toddie's little arms and legs were bare, she had pulled off her red
fisherman's cap to wave it above her head, and as she dashed on to
meet the roaring sea her hair floated straight behind her in the
breeze.  And Tippetty, the dachshund, barking with all his might,
came just a little in advance.

This spoke volumes for the strength of Tip's lungs.  Though lovely
and hound-like in head, like all dachshunds, he was bandy in legs,
very low to the ground, and of tremendous length.  So long and low
indeed was he, that when at the gallop his black body wriggled like
an eel.  So long was he that he could not jump on a chair.  He could
put his two paws and head up, but if asked to spring, he looked about
him wisely at his tail end, as much as to say,

"I would jump up willingly with my front part, don't you know? but
then the other end of the procession wouldn't come along."

Tippetty was one of the wisest and kindest-hearted wee dogs that ever
lapped milk.

He was the pet of the village, and no wonder, for Tippetty dug bait
for everybody.

"Is Tip at home?" a fisherman would say to Eppie as he passed
seawards.

"Tip, Tip," Eppie would cry, "you're wanted."  And off he would go.
He knew the worms' holes in the sand, and none could go too deep for
Tip.  With his little mole's feet and his wee bandy legs he would
throw the sand up behind him as if he were a living mitrailleuse, and
soon expose the coveted bait.

The first visit of the children to-day was to the aquarium, and Frank
listened with delight to the terrible story of Tom, the naughty
dolly-fish.

"But what a good thing," said Frank seriously, "that you were there
putting back the dolly-fish.  Else I should have been drowned."

"Oh," said Toddie, nodding her demure morsel of a head, "that was
Plovidence, Flank.  Oh, yes I 'ssure oo, Flank, it was Plovidence,
'cause Daddy Pop told me.  Now then."

After they had seen all the queer creatures in the aquarium, and
every creature's life history had been told to Frank by Toddie, they
went off to the woods.  "Dood-bye, dear, dear blennies," said Toddie,
stroking these marvellous wee fishes with a morsel of seaweed, "be
dood tsilden and oo mammy won't be long away."

Three of these were lying on the centre island of the aquarium, like
so many miniature walruses, and so tame were they that they never
moved when Toddie stroked them.

This children's aquarium had been got up by Daddy Pop, and he
explained the nature of every new pot that was put into it.  But he
had never seen the dogfish Tom.

Daddy Pop believed, and rightly too, that letting children have a
hobby keeps them out of many a danger, and when that hobby was the
keeping of living pets in a condition of nature, it became in itself
an education, and brought the bairnies into direct communication with
the Creator, who loves all things He has made.

What fun they had in the woods, but they went to show Frank the
terrible cliff over which Daddy Pop had fallen when a young man.

The tree beneath was marked by a cross deeply cut in the bark.

By the time they got back, Daddy was ready to accompany them all to
have tea in Toddie's whale.

CHAPTER VI

  TAKING TEA INSIDE A WHALE--THE STRANGE STORY OF
  THE STRANDED LEVIATHAN.

There were two persons who on this particular afternoon considered
themselves of the very greatest importance.  One was Bunko, the other
Tippetty.  And the most perfect understanding existed betwixt the
two.  Next to his little mistress, I feel certain that Tip loved
Bunko above all people, and Bunko loved Tip, and admired him too.
Like many peasants of his class, Bunko was fond of adorning his
conversation with Biblical phraseology, always, however, with the
greatest reverence and veneration.  Half-daft Bunko might have been,
but the Scriptures were indeed to him the Book of books, and the
beautiful and simple stories of the New Testament were not beyond his
childlike comprehension.

Therefore Bunko was really paying Tip a compliment when he told that
doggie he was more "subtle than any other beast of the field," and
like the serpent in the book of Genesis.

Nevertheless, although Bunko made a companion of "Tippie," as he
called him, whenever he could get him to make a companion of, he
would not have permitted anyone to say the dog had reason.

"I have na muckle reason mysel'," he told the old fisherman one day,
"but poor Tippie's only a breet" [brute].

Then he scratched his head as he looked at his four-footed friend.
"Ma! conscience though," he added, "just look at they bewitchin'
brown een [eyes] o' his.  What a lot o' wisdom the Good Lord _has
lent him_!"

The fisherman thought this was certainly a new light in which to view
the controversy of Reason versus Instinct.

Well, both the friends went to the igloo, as Fred called the
whale-house, early that afternoon, for Bunko had caught Tippitty and
carried him off in triumph.  It was no easy matter either, to carry
Tip; for if Tip chose to wriggle you couldn't hold him in one arm as
you might a terrier, you required both, and even then if the doggie
made up his mind to wallop but once, he was out of your grasp and off
like an eel.

"You're no goin' to the woods the day, I can tell you, Tippie," Bunko
had told him.  "We have gentry folks comin' to tea, so you maun come
and help me."

Bunko was dressed in his best, in his Sunday clothes in fact, and a
fearful and wonderful rig it was--a Scotch bonnet as broad as a
griddle with an immense red top on it, a soldier's scarlet coat, and
a pair of tartan trowsers rather frayed at the bottom.

If you had told Bunko that the bonnet was too big for him he would
probably have replied: "If ye dinna like it, ye can look the ither
road.  Anything sets [becomes] a weel-faured face, if it were only
the dish-clout."

In that great rugged wall of rocks that went stretching away out into
the western sea there was just one break, and this occurred a little
beyond the poet's cave.  A kind of glen or small ravine it formed.
At low-water you could approach it from the sea between two tall
frowning rocks, but if the tide were up you must descend into it by a
perilous little pathway leading from the cliff above.  Only once, in
the memory of the villagers then living, had this glen been invaded
by a high-tide.  This had occurred some years before the date of the
commencement of our story, and, strange to say, when the sea receded
it left behind it a stranded whale.

This whale was a Godsend to the poor fisher folks.  One way or
another, what with its whalebone, its oil, and its great jaws, it had
been sold piecemeal.  But there still remained leaning against the
cliff the huge ribs of the leviathan, and here the children used to
play till one day it occurred to Bunko to make these ribs the
framework of a good house.

Eean, the bard, took up the idea at once, and what with the help of
an idle hand or two, always easily to be had in a village, the ribs
were roofed and covered in all round, and when a floor and door had
been put in, not to mention a fire-place and a little window, why
surely never on earth was there a better or more romantic children's
play-house.

The bottom of the glen or gap in this wall of rocks was grass, so
Bunko's "mother-wit" came in handy once again.

"What for no' have a bit garden round the house?" Bunko had said.

"Certainly," said Eean; "but the soil isn't deep."

"Bide a wee, sir."

And, spade in hand, up he clambered to the cliff top.  It was well
for the old fisherman that he had divined Bunko's intentions and
stood clear from under, for presently the earth began to descend in
avalanches.  Bunko in his excitement had evidently quite forgotten
that anyone stood beneath.  In less than a quarter of an hour a heap
of mould big enough for the purpose lay alongside the igloo.

Meanwhile Eean had wandered round the corner, deeply absorbed in the
beauties of Ossian.  When he returned, much to his astonishment he
found that poor Bunko had descended, and was digging into that heap
of earth with his coat off as if his future life depended on it.
Eean walked quietly up behind him, for Bunko was talking aloud, a
word or two to each spadeful that he threw aside.

It is said listeners never hear any good of themselves.  This case,
however was an exception.

"O, poor Eean--O, poor dear old man--the best--and the wisest--and
the bonniest--auld man--'tween here and Perth--and I've--buried him
alive."

Eean had to laugh aloud now, and the look of astonishment blended
with joy on the half-witted lad's face, as he looked about, was
comical in the extreme.

Down went the spade, and Bunko seized Eean's hand and burst into
tears.  Poor fellow, never a word could he think of to utter at that
moment except his grace after meals:

"For these and a' Thy other mercies, Good Father, make us truly
thankfu'."

Having so far relieved his feelings, he picked up his broad bonnet
and threw it in the air, and as soon as it descended he leapt nimbly
on top of it, and cracking his thumbs danced the tenth step of the
Lonach Hielan' fling without ever getting off.

"D'ye feel better now?" said Eean, much amused.

"That I do; but, O, sir, if I'd killed ye, I'd----"

"What, Bunko?"

"Flung my body o'er the cliff for the partans [crabs] to pick."

But the garden was laid out with a rustic railing round it, and all
the summer through lovely flowers always bloomed therein, with roses
and honeysuckle, and wild convolvulus trailing over the fence.

On this autumn afternoon, the bright crimson Scotch tropæolum, that
refuses to grow out well of its native land, encircled the igloo
doorway with its masses of flame-like flowers.

"Tippie, Tippie, here's the gentry.  Run and meet them, Tip."

Yes, there they come--Fred and Frank and Toddie, and the sturdy old
weird-looking bard himself.

Bunko stood by the garden gate, pole in hand, as the party
approached.  "Shoulder arms," he shouted.  "Present arms."

And in due military style he stood there at the present till they all
filed past.

"Fancy taking tea in a whale!" cried Frank delightedly.  "And such a
tea!  Crisp oat-cakes, scones, butter, and honey.  Dear me, how
mother would enjoy this!"

Eean took off his bonnet, and holding it before his face asked a
humble blessing, and then the meal proceeded right merrily, Bunko
waiting as sedately as a butler, and Tippetty sitting on a stool with
a bib on him--Toddie's doings--as solemn as a judge.

Conversation never slackened all the time.

"What made you call it an igloo?" said Frank.

"Well, you know," Fred replied, "I wasn't sure what to call it at
first.  A wigwam puts you in mind of Red Indians, and there's no wild
Indians here except Toddie there.  A toldo is the tent that the
Patagonian tribes dwell in."

"Big men the Patadonians," Toddie told Frank confidentially, "all
diants, you know."

"Hush, Todd.  Well, I didn't like kraal because ito puts you in mind
of Hottentots, and Daddy Pop there said an igloo was the house the
Eskimos lived in, and as this whale must have come from there I
thought I----"

"Oh, I see now!" Frank interrupted.  "Good idea too."

Toddie was looking very much absorbed.  At last she turned to Eean.

"Daddy," she said, "oo don't think, does oo, that the whale will ever
tome alive adain?"

Then her bright eyes sparkled with merriment as she clapped her wee
pink hands.

"Oh, what fun," she cried, "if the whale would tome alive adain dust
now, and do [go] away to sea wi' us all sittin' here!"

Frank laughed and Fred too.  The idea was even too much for Bunko's
gravity, so he gave vent to a loud guffaw; and Tip took the
opportunity of barking for another piece of buttered scone, and got
it too.

Then, tea being over, they all sat round the fire, and the bard took
out his pipe.

"I'se dust wonderin'," said Toddie, looking wisely at the blazing
peats, "wherever this poor whale tame from.  Plaps," she added sadly,
"he had no mammy Mop to look after him."

"Oh, yes!" said Daddy, "he had a mother, Toddie."

"Tell us; oh, tell us," cried Frank, "another story!"

"No, no, master Frank; I'll only just talk a bit."

"You've been to Greenland, sir?"

"Oh, yes, Frank!  I've been blown about all over the world, and got
stranded on the beach here at last, just like the whale in which
we're now sitting so cosily."

"Yes," Eean continued, "with all due respect for Toddie's wisdom, I
must differ from her; the probability is, that this whale had a
mother.

"You know, children, that whales are not fish, but great beasts.
They couldn't live long beneath the water without being drowned; half
an hour at most.  When they are chased by boats and harpooned they go
through the water at a terrible speed, so quickly indeed that the sea
rises up from each of the boats' bows like two sheets of green glass.
But the whale soon gets so breathless that he can't go under water at
all.

"The male or he-whale is called a bull, the she one a cow, and the
young one a calf, and it takes milk from its mother just as any other
calf does from its mother.

"Now the bulls are very kind to the cows.  They are good-natured,
kind husbands.  So we may suppose that after this whale that we are
now sitting in was born, and was strong enough to swim funnily round
and round his big mammy, and knew enough to creep under her flipper
if he saw a ship coming, the bull said to the cow----"

"O Daddie," cried Toddie, "whales tan't talk."

"Yes, Toddie, they talk with their eyes, and their tails."

"Of tourse, of tourse," said Toddie, "dust like Tippetty does.  Do
[go] on, Daddy Pop."

"Says the bull to his wife--

"'What would you think of a little run to the south, my dear?  You've
been looking rather pale about the nose of late, and it would do you
good, and little Johnnie too.'

"'Little Johnnie was the calf, you know.'

"'But I don't really care to leave you,' says the cow.

"'O, nonsense, dear, go by all means.  Mind you, Johnnie isn't a
strong child, I don't believe he weighs more than ten tons now, and
he hasn't cut his whale-bone teeth quite yet.'

"'Well, my dear,' says the cow, 'I'll just go to please you.'

"So straight away down south comes the cow and her calf.  It was a
long, long journey for them.  Sometimes Johnnie, her big baby, would
fall sound asleep, and then his mother would spread one great loving
flipper over him, and paddle along with the other so quietlike as if
afraid of waking her darling.

"Then by-and-bye Johnnie would awake, and, like any other calf, begin
sucking at once, and nudging his mother all the time with his bottle
of a nose, raising her a little above the clear blue waves at every
nudge.  Yes, boys, I've often seen what I'm trying to describe to you.

"South and south went the mother and her calf, and aye and aye the
weather and the water grew warmer.  What gladsome times the two had
together in these sunlit seas! but Johnnie always kept close beside
his mother when sharks appeared, because the sharks would have killed
and eaten Johnnie.  But one stroke of the whale cow's tail would kill
five of the biggest sharks that ever swam, and the sharks knew that
and kept well away.

"When the holiday was over, back the two went to their own cold home
in the north.  The cow swam homewards as straight as an arrow.  She
had no compass to steer by, and the stars, if she went by those, were
often obscured; but the wonderful instinct implanted in her by God,
who makes and rules all creatures and things, never deserted her, but
guided her on and on and on, till the tall icebergs once more loomed
out of the dark sea, with stars and aurora shining and dancing above.

"Of course the husband was glad to see her.

"'How well you look, dear!' he said, as they rubbed noses.

"'Yes,' she answered; 'and hasn't Johnnie grown wonderfully!'

"'I hardly knew him, indeed,' said the bull.

"Well, now, when Johnnie was about a year old, a whales' ball took
place in Baffin's Bay.

"Yes, Frank.  Mind, this is not a fairy tale.  I'm speaking from the
great book of Nature.

"Well, it isn't a real ball, you know, Toddie, only Greenland sailors
call it so because the young whales all meet and dance about, and
leap and jump, and whack the water with their awful tails, till the
whole sea around is like a whirlpool, and covered with froth and
foam.  It is an interesting and a terrible sight.  Ships may view it
from afar off, but they know better than to go too close with boats,
else these boats would be smashed into match-wood in less than a
minute.

"Well, I suppose Johnnie danced too much at this ball, or ate too
many gallons of the little shrimp things that whales feed on.
Anyhow, next day he didn't feel at all well.

"'I tell you what it is, Johnnie,' said Johnnie's mother, 'you must
take a run south, it will quite brace you up again.'

"'What, all by myself?' cried Johnnie, wagging his tail.  'Oh, that
will be fun!'

"Johnnie's mother was very sorry to part with him, but she thought it
would be all for the best.  Ah! little did she think she would never
see her boy any more.

"Johnnie started off in great glee at first; but when he was fairly
clear of the ice, and the last white berg had disappeared behind the
horizon; when as he rose on the great tumbling billows he could see
nothing around him but an illimitable expanse of ocean, without a
vestige of life in or over it, then he began to feel very lonely
indeed, and half repented having come away at all.  There was
Providence, however, to guide and to guard him too, so he went
steadily on and on, south, south, south, by night and by day.  It was
dreariest at night, when the stars were all shimmering above, and not
a sound to be heard save now and then a sullen boom or plash, that
told Johnnie plainly enough there were his enemies the sharks
plunging about in the darkling sea not far off.  Sometimes he slept
and dreamt ugly dreams, and awoke with a start, to find
terrible-looking ocean monsters with awful eyes staring up at him
from the dark depths.  He could see them because they were all
covered over with a silvery, ghost-like light called phosphorescence,
which is very common up in these wild northern latitudes.  By day
sharks often met him--the huge hammer-headed sort--and pretended to
be friendly, and tried to lure him away into shallow water, where
they could easily have devoured him.

"But Johnnie thanked them, and said, 'No.'  He knew his way, and
would stick to it.

"Johnnie had many other enemies to encounter, such as the sea
unicorn, with its long spiral ivory horn--a bold beast that will
scarcely go out of its way even for a ship.  He tried to stab Johnnie
to the heart, and if he had done so the sharks would have come to the
banquet, and eaten the pair of them.  But Johnnie avoided the deadly
thrust, and with one blow of his tail pitched the unicorn nearly up
to the moon.  At least so the beast himself told the other unicorns
he met soon after.

"But Johnnie escaped all his enemies, and arrived at last within
sight of the Faröe Islands, where the water was delightfully mild and
the sun very bright.

"Now, had Johnnie done what his mother told him, and not gone a mile
further, all would have been well.  But these sunny summer seas were
so blue and pleasant that Johnnie went on and on.  His life passed
like a happy dream, the Shetland Islands hove in sight, bold black
rocky isles crowned with green fields, with millions of sea birds all
around them, then the lonesome Orkney, and then Scotland itself.
There were strange birds in the air that cried to Johnnie, 'Go away,
go away, away, away, away!' but Johnnie would not be warned and
wouldn't obey his mother, and so----"

Eean was not allowed to complete his story.

"Oh!" cried Toddie gleefully, "I know what is toming, Daddy Pop."

"Well, then," said Frank, "can you complete the story?"

"I don't know, you know," said Toddie, "if I tan 'plete the stoly,
but I tan feenis' it.  The Dood God rosed a dleat stolm, and poor
Johnnie was dliven on shore, and touldn't get back again to see his
mammy."

"That's it, Toddie," said Eean.

And with that up jumped Frank.

"It is getting near gloaming," he said.  "I'm sorry I must go; but,
Toddie, I must do as my mother told me."

"Of tourse oo must, or plaps oo be deaded too, like the poor Johnnie
whale."

Half an hour afterwards Frank Fielding had said adieu to his kindly
though humble fisher friends, and was rattling along through the
moonlit woods towards his home at Benshee.

CHAPTER VII.

"FIVE YEARS AGO THIS VERY NIGHT."

The bay of Methlin was a very beautiful one, wildly so in fact,
although that black beetling wall of rocks that went darkly
stretching seaward had at times a weird and uncanny look about it,
especially when half buried in mist, with the mournful boom of the
seas under it, and far away, coming landwards from the grey gloom,
the plaintive but eerie cry of sea-birds.

In summer days, when the sun shone clearly over the water, it was
cheerful indeed to stroll along that cliff top.  Whichever way one
looked there was something to cheer the sight--the far-off ships on
the ocean horizon, or a little island here and there that appeared to
float in the drowsy haze; the deep, deep green waves below the rocks,
rising and swelling as they rushed inland, as if measuring their
height against the slippery blackness, the glorious hills themselves,
changing ever in beauty of shade as cloud-shadows raced across their
majestic brows; and the wee white-housed village itself asleep in a
wildery of trees.

Even when storms lashed over the rocks and rose in snowy fountains to
the green turf above, when the hills were half-hidden in mixing
masses of inky clouds, and the sea's horizon lowered close in shore,
there was a beauty about both seascape and landscape that probably
only such a mind as that of Eean's could fully appreciate.  His had a
melancholy tinge imparted to it from the bitter memories of a life
that had been nearly all disappointment.  His too was the soul of the
bard of Ossian or Homeric type, only deeply imbued with religion.  No
dark mythology was called upon to account for the fierce war of
storms that often raged o'er sky and sea and land on this wild coast.
No; there was method even in the madness of the tempest, there was
golden light and beauty behind the blackness; no thunder could roll,
no lightning's flash could rend the mountain rocks, no waves could
swell and break without the will of his Father--and his Father was
mercy and goodness personified--despite the fact that He

  "----moves in a mysterious way,
    His wonders to perform,
  And plants His footsteps on the sea,
    And rides upon the storm."

Far away then, on that wild cliff top, the tall figure of the bard,
with his broad bonnet and his wind-tossed plaid, might have been seen
at gloaming-tide of the stormiest days.  His face at such times had a
sterner, more thoughtful aspect; his usually mild blue eyes seemed to
retreat beneath his lowering eye-brows; yet ever and anon that face
would soften, and a smile irradiate its every feature, as some happy
thought crossed his mind.  Such flashes were like the blinks of
sunshine that sometimes fall from rifts of blue in winter storms.

Or, tired of his walk, he would seek the entrance of his cave,
disappearing suddenly as if it were off the face of the earth--as he
really did, but a stranger noticing that tall figure one moment by
the cliff's side, and missing it the very next, would have made sure
the old man had been blown over the rocks.

It was one evening, about a fortnight after Frank Fielding had gone
home to Benshee, that Eean had retired from the green cliff above to
his cave below.  Though quite light above, the cave was every now and
then plunged in total darkness by the dashing waves.

The bard stirred up his fire till the red light gleamed fitfully on
the rugged grey walls, then he sat down in his chair leaning his chin
on his hand to think.

He had a habit of talking aloud, a habit that is very easily acquired
by those who delight in being much by themselves in very lonely
places.

"Yes," he was saying, "just this very night five years ago that my
wee pet came on shore."

Pit--pit--pit--pit.  It was the sound of softly-padded feet coming
trotting towards him, and next minute Tippetty with immense effort
had sprang on his knees.

"Why Tip," said Eean, "what are you doing here? and gasping too, with
a quarter of a yard at least of a pink ribbon of a tongue hanging out
over your snow-white teeth?"

Tip looked up with those speaking brown eyes of his.

"Oh!  Daddy Pop," he seemed to say, "it blows so high on the cliff
top, and I've been running hard."

"Where is your mistress, you scamp?  You didn't come all by yourself."

Tip's ears went away back on his neck in quite an apologetic sort of
way, and he glanced uneasily towards the door.

"Dad--_dee_!"  It was Toddie's voice on the stone stair staircase.

Tip sprang down to meet her, and next moment she came in with a rush,
her hair all a-toozle, her bare, naked feet and baton legs as red as
red could be, for never would Toddie wear shoe or stocking except on
high days and holidays.

Next moment she was seated on one of Eean's knees, and Tip on the
other.

Toddie put one arm round Eean's neck, and entwined her fingers in his
hair, then looking up--

"Isn't oo dlad I'se tomed?" she said.

"Very glad you've got here safe, dear."

"Well, tiss me.  Now, this is nice.  Nice file bulning there, and
all.  Plaps I'll make oo sing to me bye'm-bye."

Toddie was a very despotic little queen in her own wee way.  Queen
she was of that old man's heart, and she seemed to know it.

He was looking at her very fondly just then with a curious kind of
smile on his face.

"Wouldn't you rather I'd tell you a story, Toddie?"

Toddie put her thumb in her mouth and gazed into the fire.

"I fink," she said, "Plank likes stolies best."

"My own little Treasure-trove," said the bard.

"Daddy, don't oo make up such silly words."

"You _are_ my Treasure-trove.  Do you know where you came from,
darling?"

"The Dood God sent me, of tourse."

"Yes, pet, the Good God sent you to cheer this old man's heart, and
brighten his life.  But do you know you came from the sea?  That,
years and years ago, five this very night, you were stranded on the
beach down here?"

"Stlanded!  What does that mean, daddy?"

"Thrown up by the waves, my wee one."

Toddie was looking at him now with eyes that were very wide indeed.

"What, daddy, dust the same as the Johnnie whale, daddy?"

"Just the same as the Johnnie whale, dear."

"Oh!"

She nestled towards him now, and gazed thoughtfully at the fire, and
the old bard talked to her and to the fire at the same time
apparently.

"Yes, Toddie, it was a fearful night that.  There was a moon, but she
hadn't a chance of shining; for the grey-black clouds dashed over her
like the race of a mill-stream.  Early in the afternoon a brig had
been seen trying to round the point.  But the wind blew high, and,
alas! she tried in vain.  We had all been on the beach for hours and
hours watching her.  Oh, what an evening it was!  There had been
sea-gulls in our garden that day, darling, as tame as chickens."

"Oh!"

"And we knew, Toddie, something terrible would soon happen.  Mammy
had hot water and blankets ready ever so long.  Then the brig struck.
Long before then Bunko had been sent off on horseback to warn a
lifeboat.  But the lifeboat never came.  And small matter that she
didn't.  Hours after a spar floated up.  We saw something white
lashed to it, and all rushed to pick it up.  I was first, and found
you, Toddie."

"Oh!" thoughtfully.

"Mammy Mop took hours to bring you back to life.  We have the old
spar yet in the sail-house; it was loaded with iron--old axe
heads--to make a keel; so, Toddie, you floated face upwards.  That is
the way you came, Toddie."

"Oh!"

"Dear little Treasure-trove.  I hope you will not be taken from me."

He gathered her closer up to him.

"Sing now," she murmured, "sing soft and low, like mammy does."

He sat rocking her there, and singing low, sweet Scotch hits, till
her regular breathing and closed eyes told him she was fast asleep.

Then he gently laid her on the bench, while he put on his plaid.

Every moment now the waves dashed high over the ports of the cave,
and the wind shrieked like the voices of creatures in pain or despair.

Quietly he takes the sleeping Toddie up, and wraps her in the plaid
folds close to his breast.  "Come, Tip," he says, and crook in hand
goes up the steps and struggles out into the storm and darkness.

On nights like this Eppie always had a light burning in her gable
window to guide belated boats, and this was the star old Eean steered
by.

"Praise be to Providence you've come," said Eppie.  "D'ye mind what
nicht this is?"

"Right well I do," said Eean.  "Look at the innocent lamb.  Take her
gently, Eppie.  Take her gently."

* * * * * *

When Fred went in with a rush next morning to the room where Toddie
slept in a tiny cot, wondering why she had not come down to
breakfast, he found the little maiden standing half-dressed before
her little mirror, with a thumb in her mouth.

I dare say she had little womanly ways about her, else she would not
have been in front of that morsel of mirror.  But the thumb in the
mouth showed how deep in thought she was.

"Thinking again, Toddie."

"Yes, I'se finking, Fred.  Cause, you know, last night I was in
Daddy's cave, or was I dleaming?"

"You must have been dreaming, Todd."

"Yes, I must have been dleaming, Fred.  And I dleamt that Daddy told
me a stoly, that Daddy said I came ashole on the beach, dust the same
as the Johnnie whale."

CHAPTER VIII.

  PLEASANT SURPRISES--FRANK'S YACHT--THE LAUNCH OF
  THE WATER-BABY.

Winter had come and gone again, and a very hard one it had been.  Of
the ten boats that belonged to the bay, and were laid up when not in
use in a rock-girt harbour, about half a mile from the village, few
had gone out very often.  But seldom a day passed that Eean's boat,
the _Treasure-trove_ was not seen scudding about somewhere, if wind
and weather permitted; and always when Daddy went to sea--and this
was no means seldom--the two children went with him, so that Fred had
generally one complete holiday every week.

It must not be supposed that Eean was careless with regard to the
boy's education on this account.  No, indeed.  Fred's day at sea was
one of real utility, and, young though he was, he knew already how to
handle the great boat, and how to steer as well.  Toddie too was a
capital young sailor lass.  She was warmly clad; but though her brave
little face might be red, or even almost blue, she never feared to
look a storm in the teeth.

Frank had gone away south with his mother to attend a purely English
school, for sake of _bon ton_ and the pure English accent.  But the
children corresponded regularly.

Toddie's letters to Frank were marvels in their way.  She could not
write very distinctly, so every alphabetical letter was pen-printed.

Frank had not much to tell.  His life he was sorry to say was a very
humdrum one.  He was at a very humdrum school, where the pupils, all
"sons of gentlemen," were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased.
When they fell behind or lazed it was put down to delicate health.
The bold forcing system of the Scottish Church parish schools was
unknown at the so-called college at which Frank was engaged in his
so-called studies.

His dear mamma spent the winter in the south, that she might be near
to her dear boy and only son.  She even told the head-teacher, or
rather proprietor, of the school that her boy was not in robust
health, and that he must on no account be thwarted.  The fact is,
Frank was as hardy and manly a lad as there was at the college.

He went home to his mother's house every Friday evening, and Fred's
letter came punctually every Saturday afternoon, with wee Toddie's
printed scrawl enclosed.  Toddie's scrawls were really love letters
of a sort, and not badly put together on the whole, as regards
composition.  Daddy spelt every word for her, which she herself could
not manage.  Here is a brief extract, which shows really that she
could write better than she could speak:

"I thinks lots about you, Flank, in my bed and on the beach.  I dont
love the winter, I loves the summer, cause there is plenty flowers
and no chilblains.  I loves Daddy and Mammy Mop best, then Fred then
Tippetty, then my dolly fishes, and then Flank last, but O Flank the
last is a big big much.

  "Your 'ffection' friend,
      "Toddie Treasure-Trove."

Mrs. Fielding really was a good-hearted lady in the main, but
purse-proud, and not over deep in mind.

She always spoke of Frank's little friends as "those poor children."
This used to make Frank angry, though he loved his mother too much to
show it.  Well, Mrs. Fielding was also generous.  She had proposed
sending "those poor children" some clothes.

"Oh, mother, don't!" Frank had gasped, getting dreadfully red in the
face.

Frank's father was reading the newspaper.  He held it down for a
minute to smile and say:

"Frank's right, mamma.  It would be taken as a terrible insult.  You
forget that Eean Arundel is a gentleman though poor.  My countrymen,"
he added, laughing, "are all gentlemen."

"Well," Mrs Fielding had replied, "I don't care much for pride in
people who have nothing to keep it up with."

Young Frank was thoroughly roused now.  He had to keep striding up
and down across the floor to restrain his feelings.

"Mother," he said at last, "they have honesty."

  "A king can mak' a belted knight,
    A marquis, duke, and a' that;
  An honest man's above his might."

Frank went and kissed his mother, and then ran straight out of the
room.

Now Fred and Toddie, arrayed in their best, had several times visited
at the house of Benshee.  Frank had driven them over, and Fred at
Frank's request had always brought his flute.  For a boy of his years
he was a charming performer.  Frank played a little trick upon his
lady mother.  He went into her studio, which abutted on to the lawn,
leaving Fred behind a bush near to the open window.

When Frank was fairly seated beside his mother, Fred began to play
one of those sweet, sad Scottish melodies, that can draw tears to the
eyes of even an English audience.  Frank kept talking to his mother;
but he was soon silenced.

"Hush! hush, boy!" she cried.  "Have you no ear for the beautiful?"

She sighed when the air died in cadence away.

"Some poor tramp," said the lady.  "Run, Frank, and give him
sixpence."

But Fred now appeared at the window, laughing and holding out his hat.

"Oh, you dear lad," cried Mrs. Fielding, "come and kiss me!"

Fred did as told; but not quite so gracefully as an English boy would
have done.  Only this episode supplied Mrs. Fielding with an idea for
being generous without offering insult.

One day, therefore, while Eppie was preparing a nice creel of fresh
lobsters to be taken by Bunko to a neighbouring village, she was
greatly surprised to find the carrier's cart from T---- draw up at
her door.  The cart contained a large and wonderful-looking box.  If
it had not been addressed in a clear hand to "Master Fred Arundel,"
Eppie would have thought there must be some mistake.

She did not dare to look into it until Fred came from school, and
Daddy from his cave; and then, I do believe, half the village came to
see the opening of that box.

It contained, to the amazement of all, a charming little piano.
Toddie's face was a study at this disclosure; and Frank's was a
picture of mingled pride and joy.  As there was but little room in
the house, the piano was taken to the cave; a damp-proof covering
being made for it, lest it should be injured by the air of the sea.

All through the winter after school-hours, and after lessons at home,
Fred had studied systematically on his new instrument.  Playing was
one of Eean's accomplishments, and Fred proved so apt a pupil that it
was soon evident he possessed the gift of music.

And now spring had come.  The larch trees were already green, and
tasselled over with crimson; primroses and violets peeped out in
sheltered places, larks sang their glad lilts high in air; the
pigeons croodled low in the spruce thickets; but the mavis seemed to
have gone out of his mind, so madly and merrily did he sing.  The sea
was often calm now, and the sky very blue, though the heaving swell
of the great Atlantic broke in thunders on the beach.

And one day Fred came rushing in from meeting the post-runner, waving
a letter over his head, and Tip barking at his heels.

"Hurrah!" he cried; "Frank's coming."

There was real joy now in the fisherman's cottage.

But that night, after the children had gone to bed, Eean and Eppie
sat beside the fire to consider solemnly a letter of another kind.

It was from Mrs. Fielding.  It was like Mrs. Fielding.  It was
written in all sincerity; but was a very thunderbolt to poor Eean.

She had proposed to adopt Fred as a companion to her boy, and bring
him up as her own son, giving him a good start in life.

They talked the matter out from every point of view.  The Fieldings
were rich.  They could give the lad a good start in life.  Though it
would break their hearts to lose him, and Toddie's heart too, was it
right of them to be selfish?  Would it not be best for the boy if
they accepted?

Perhaps; but then perhaps not.  Riches do not always bring success in
life, and mixing in society that he was but little used to might
alter all the lad's character, and spoil him for life.

For two long hours they talked and talked.  Then Eean rose.

"Let us simply pray for God's guidance, Eppie."

And side by side they knelt, while Eean lifted up his open eyes and
prayed.

Next morning Eean seemed to receive an inspiration; all that was
doubtful the evening before seemed clear as day now.

"We'll leave it to the boy," he said.

"You like Frank very much, don't you?" Eean said to Fred after
breakfast.

"Oh, very much!"

"He is very happy, isn't he?"

"Happy, daddy?  I don't know.  O yes, I suppose so."

"Wouldn't you like to be rich just as he is?"

"I'm so very happy you know, daddy, and I've so much to do, I never
thought of that.  And I have so much to learn too.

"O daddy," continued the boy after a pause, "poor Frank's letters
almost make me cry sometimes."

"Now you surprise me.  But I'm going to the cave, so come along and
tell me all about it."

When seated by the open port--"You see, daddy," said Fred, "Frank
really wants to learn things all the time; and at the school he is at
there are so many holidays, and they get so much of their own way,
and so much time is spent at football and cricket, that they have no
leisure to learn much.  But, you see, he won't require to be well
educated, because he is rich.  Will he, daddy?"

Eean laughed at this idea.

"And," continued Fred, "he would hardly believe me when I showed him
my Latin and Greek exercises, and my books on algebra and history.
And he bit his lip and grew red, and the tears came rushing into his
eyes, daddy.  And, O Daddy Pop, though he writes in English, _he
can't spell_."

Fred was almost breaking down here in boyish grief for his friend.

Now was Eean's time.  He took Mrs. Fielding's letter from his pocket
and placed it in the boy's hand.

"It is very good of her," was all the poet said as he did so.

Eean watched him as he read.  Sometimes Fred's colour heightened, and
sometimes his pupils dilated, as if he saw not the letter before him.

"What, daddy, leave you and Mammy Mop and Toddie and Tippetty--and my
books?  Oh, Daddy Pop!"

"And what have you done about it, Pop?" he added.

"Mop and I talked hours about it; then we prayed to the Good God,
Fred."

"What did the Good God say, Daddy Pop?"

"He bade me leave it all to you, dear lad."

"Ha! ha!" laughed the boy.  "I'm so glad."

Then a funny notion came into his mind, which he proceeded at once to
put into execution.

"Daddy," he said, "you left it to me.  I'll leave it to the Corsican
Brothers."

As he spoke he deftly tied a bit of meat to the string, and lowered
it into the sea with a plash; about a minute after up over the ledge
straddled the Corsican Brothers--Eean's pet crabs.  They knew Fred,
and at once advanced.  Fred gave them a morsel or two of food to whet
their appetite, and not to deceive them; then the boy assumed a
semi-theatrical attitude, and addressed them.

"We have a very knotty point to solve, my dear twins," he said; "and
Pop says I may leave it to you.  Read that letter."

Both crabs seized it at once.  They thought it the biggest piece of
white meat ever they had turned their stalky eyes upon.  But finding
it flavourless and unprofitable they lost their tempers, and tore it
into shreds.  So indignant did they appear, they even clawed up the
pieces and tore them over again.

Then Fred brushed away the paper and gave the Corsican Brothers a
bigger feed than ever they had enjoyed in their lives before.

So that was an end to Mrs. Fielding's kind, but somewhat thoughtless
proposal.

* * * * * *

When Frank called in his pony-trap he found Fred in his shirt
sleeves, with a plane in his hand, and hard at work.  He was making a
table for the igloo, for carpentering was one of his chief hobbies.
On the table near him lay a Greek grammar.  He was conjugating the
irregular verbs, while he sent the curling shavings flying all over
Toddie and Tippetty, who were having fine fun on the floor.

That meeting was a very joyful one.  There was much to say and much
to be told on both sides.

Instead of going to the woods to-day the children got the cobble, and
went off round the point fishing.

Frank's most interesting bit of news was embodied in the following
words:

"I've been reading _Robinson Crusoe_," he said, "and I'd like to be a
sailor.  And what do you think?"

"I couldn't guess," said Fred.  "Toddie, put the helm down a bit, the
wind is shifting."

They had a sail on the cobble, and Toddie was bravely steering.

"Well, my mother has bought me a nice boat, and we are to keep it
here in a boat-house.  The boat is higher in the sides than this."

"Higher free-board," said Fred.

"And not quite so wide."

"Bloader in the beam oo means to say," said Toddie with a slight curl
on her lip.

"How do you know all that, Toddie?" said Frank.

"Hush!" cried Toddie.  "Tan't oo see I'se steeling [steering].  Oo
must not talk to the man at the wheel."

Fred's eyes began to beam, as they always did when he caught up some
new idea.

"O Frank," he cried, "I know what we can do.  But what size is she?"

"Let me see.  She must be yards and yards long."

Toddie began to laugh, and so did Fred.  Poor Frank was no sailor.

"Never mind, Frank.  I daresay she is big enough to deck over and
step a mast in, and make a yacht of.  Bunko and I can do it.  You
have no idea how clever Bunko is.  And I have tools and wood and all."

In less than a week the boat came round, and was stabled, as Frank
called it, in a boat-house on the beach.  The boys could do what they
liked with the boat, was Mrs. Fielding's request; but they must
always have a man with a lifebuoy close beside them in another boat
at sea.

Bunko took the village cows to the hill; but all day long the
faithful collie Keelie watched them.  The dog made a rapid run
homeward every day, ate his dinner, which was always ready, then back
to the hills he would scud again.  So until eventide, when he went to
take home his charge, Bunko's time was very much his own.

The decking and fitting out of the yacht, therefore, proceeded
merrily enough.  A fresh keel was put on her, and a good one too.
Eean himself had seen to this.  The mainsail was only a storm one,
there was no topsail, and just a single jib.  The rudder was very
safely shipped, and so, though the boys did most of the work, Eean
was the real ship-builder, and safety was consulted in every detail.

When all was complete, and the craft painted and furnished, a more
complete little boys' yacht it would have been difficult to conceive.

The fishermen all said she was a perfect picture, and lay like a duck
on the water, with a good many other complimentary allusions, all of
which were Greek to Frank, but not to Toddie and Fred.

No expense was spared in the upholstering of the little cabin, and
they even had a small galley, with a tiny spirit range, enough to
make tea and boil eggs.

It was indeed a proud day for the boys, and Toddie and Tippetty, when
they went for their first sail.

Their consort was a big cobble with a fisherman to row, and a silly
sort of a sailor-fellow with a lifebuoy.

The villagers gathered down by the beach and natural harbour, to give
them a cheer when they started away on their trial trip, with their
saucy little red flag floating at the peak.

Her name was the _Water Baby_, and with great pomp and ceremony she
had been duly christened by Toddie, a tiny bottle of eau de Cologne,
brought by Frank, having been duly broken on her bows before she left
the slip.

One day Mrs. Fielding herself went for a sail, and found it so
perfectly safe that at Frank's earnest request she allowed them in
future to dispense with the consort cobble, and the sailor-fellow
also.

But they had to carry a lifebuoy nevertheless, and this was only
right.

Boy though he was, Fred knew something about the signs of the
weather, and always got into harbour in time to avoid a storm, or
anything like one.

* * * * * *

So spring merged into summer; the days grew warmer and longer, and
the sea more calm and bright.  Then Fred's summer holidays came
round; and happier children than those three, Frank, Fred, and
Toddie, were surely not to be found in all broad Scotland.

CHAPTER IX.

  PLAYING AT BEING PIRATES--A STORM AT
  SEA--THE WRECK.

Frank Fielding's life was not quite like his friend Fred's in one
particular; for Frank could always have a holiday when he wanted one.
His father was an easy-going, non-ambitious man; he possessed all the
comforts of this world, and very much enjoyed them.  If you had asked
him about his son's prospects in life, he would have told you that he
was pleased enough to let the boy enjoy himself; that very likely
there was a career of some kind before him when he developed; but
that meanwhile he left all his educational affairs to his--the
boy's--mother.

Poor Frank!  The mother might have been doing her best, but to keep
constantly sending a lad from school to school was not advancing his
interests.

Fred had only the regular holiday given at Scottish schools, the
summer one being the chief, and indeed the only one worthy of the
name, because it lasted for six weeks.

Well, anyhow, Frank had found a companion after his own heart, and
Fred had found a real friend.  It was almost strange, a psychologist
would have thought, how very much those two lads had come to love
each other in so short a time.  It was in a good many ways a case of
extremes meeting, but they had a deal in common nevertheless.

Both loved Nature most ardently, although Fred knew ten times more
about the habits of the wanderers in wood and field than did Frank.
Every wild flower he met was an old acquaintance of Fred's, and so
was every bird that sang or did not sing.

Fred was a great bird-nester.  But, mark this, he never took a single
egg, far, far less a helpless fledgling.  But he knew where they all
built their nests or laid their eggs without ever bothering about
building a nest, in forest, in mountain, on moorland, or by stream.
There was no pine tree or larch high enough to prevent Fred from
getting to the top thereof, and in Scotland these trees are at home,
and grow their very tallest.  He and Toddie had other friends in the
wilds as well as birds, so numerous indeed that I begrudge space in
which to name them.  But there were bees of all kinds, and beetles of
every hue and shape; there were frogs and toads, charming lizards and
lovely great snakes.  Not adders.  Even in the heather Toddie was as
often barefooted as not, because she preferred "feelin' around with
her foots as Tippetty did."  So she said, and Eean would not thwart
her.

Well, during the holidays they had many a long day in the woods and
wilds; other days were spent at sea in the yacht, where they played
at being pirates, and ran down and pretended to capture
fishing-boats, and once they even overhauled a Royal Navy cutter that
was dodging off the point.  Fred lowered sail and boarded her, and
when asked what he wanted, he boldly pointed to a black flag with
skull and cross bones that Frank had hoisted; told the bos'n he was
"The Pirate of the Western Wilds," and he must submit to give up his
craft and walk the plank.  There was no little laughing at this; but
finally the _Water Baby_ was taken in tow, and the children spent a
downright madcap afternoon with the sailors on board the cutter.

When it was getting near sunset farewells were said, and over the
side went the pirates bold, the men giving them three cheers as their
fairy-like yacht bore away for Methlin Bay.

Once it was caught in a puff of wind, and had to run for harbour; but
the way Frank and Fred took in sail was a pretty sight indeed, while
Toddie sat at the tiller with Tippie at her side.

Oh, I can assure you this playing pirate was fine fun!  But I think,
on the whole, Frank had more sense of the humorous than had Fred.  He
took a less serious view of life in general, and was always up to
some lark or another.  Once, for instance, he met Bunko in a
neighbouring village with a creel of lovely lobsters, and, right or
wrong, Frank must have that creel, and did have it, and, with Fred
and Toddie following up in the rear, he marched boldly through the
little country town, crying, "Lobsters, all alive O!"  They were all
dead and boiled, but that didn't matter.  Frank--a laird's
son--selling lobsters!  Every woman and child ran out to see him, and
in half an hour he had sold the lot.

How proud he was of his success! and how Bunko did laugh to be sure!

Now Frank did not wear the ordinary Highland garb such as gentlemen
wear while shooting or fishing.  It pleased his mother to put him
into a real tartan kilt, with black jacket of velvet, skean dhu and
sporran, so you may fancy what sort of a figure he cut with a creel
on his back.  But it wasn't all over yet; for, another day he
actually bought a creel for himself, and having made some private
arrangement with Bunko, the two set off together to see who would
sell out the sooner.

Fred and Toddie were there as usual; but, lo and behold! just in the