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From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New

by Gordon Stables · English · Gutenberg #38277 · 476,087 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New

Author: Gordon Stables


        
Release date: December 11, 2011 [eBook #38277]
                Most recently updated: November 1, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38277

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM SQUIRE TO SQUATTER: A TALE OF THE OLD LAND AND THE NEW ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




From Squire to Squatter
A Tale of the Old Land and the New
By Gordon Stables
Published by John F. Shaw and Co., 48 Paternoster Row, London.
This edition dated 1888.

CHAPTER ONE.

BOOK I--AT BURLEY OLD FARM.

"TEN TO-MORROW, ARCHIE."

"So you'll be ten years old to-morrow, Archie?"

"Yes, father; ten to-morrow.  Quite old, isn't it?  I'll soon be a man,
dad.  Won't it be fun, just?"

His father laughed, simply because Archie laughed.  "I don't know about
the fun of it," he said; "for, Archie lad, your growing a man will
result in my getting old.  Don't you see?"

Archie turned his handsome brown face towards the fire, and gazed at
it--or rather into it--for a few moments thoughtfully.  Then he gave his
head a little negative kind of a shake, and, still looking towards the
fire as if addressing it, replied:

"No, no, no; I don't see it.  Other boys' fathers _may_ grow old; mine
won't, mine couldn't, never, _never_."

"Dad," said a voice from the corner.  It was a very weary, rather
feeble, voice.  The owner of it occupied a kind of invalid couch, on
which he half sat and half reclined--a lad of only nine years, with a
thin, pale, old-fashioned face, and big, dark, dreamy eyes that seemed
to look you through and through as you talked to him.

"Dad."

"Yes, my dear."

"Wouldn't you like to be old really?"

"Wel--," the father was beginning.

"Oh," the boy went on, "I should dearly love to be old, very old, and
very wise, like one of these!"  Here his glance reverted to a story-book
he had been reading, and which now lay on his lap.

His father and mother were used to the boy's odd remarks.  Both parents
sat here to-night, and both looked at him with a sort of fond pity; but
the child's eyes had half closed, and presently he dropped out of the
conversation, and to all intents and purposes out of the company.

"Yes," said Archie, "ten is terribly old, I know; but is it quite a man
though?  Because mummie there said, that when Solomon became a man, he
thought, and spoke, and did everything manly, and put away all his boy's
things.  I shouldn't like to put away my bow and arrow--what say, mum?
I shan't be altogether quite a man to-morrow, shall I?"

"No, child.  Who put that in your head?"

"Oh, Rupert, of course!  Rupert tells me everything, and dreams such
strange dreams for me."

"You're a strange boy yourself, Archie."

His mother had been leaning back in her chair.  She now slowly resumed
her knitting.  The firelight fell on her face: it was still young, still
beautiful--for the lady was but little over thirty--yet a shade of
melancholy had overspread it to-night.

The firelight came from huge logs of wood, mingled with large pieces of
blazing coals and masses of half-incandescent peat.  A more cheerful
fire surely never before burned on a hearth.  It seemed to take a pride
in being cheerful, and in making all sorts of pleasant noises and
splutterings.  There had been bark on those logs when first heaped on,
and long white bunches of lichen, that looked like old men's beards; but
tongues of fire from the bubbling, caking coals had soon licked those
off, so that both sticks and peat were soon aglow, and the whole looked
as glorious as an autumn sunset.

And firelight surely never before fell on cosier room, nor on cosier
old-world furniture.  Dark pictures, in great gilt frames, hung on the
walls, almost hiding it; dark pictures, but with bright colours standing
out in them, which Time himself had not been able to dim; albeit he had
cracked the varnish.  Pictures you could look into--look in through
almost--and imagine figures that perhaps were not in them at all;
pictures of old-fashioned places, with quaint, old-fashioned people and
animals; pictures in which every creature or human being looked
contented and happy.  Pictures from masters' hands many of them, and
worth far more than their weight in solid gold.

And the firelight fell on curious brackets, and on a tall corner-cabinet
filled with old delf and china; fell on high, narrow-backed chairs, and
on one huge carved-oak chest that took your mind away back to centuries
long gone by and made you half believe that there must have been "giants
in those days."

The firelight fell and was reflected from silver cups, and goblets, and
candlesticks, and a glittering shield that stood on a sideboard, their
presence giving relief to the eye.  Heavy, cosy-looking curtains
depended from the window cornices, and the door itself was darkly
draped.

"Ten to-morrow.  How time does fly!"

It was the father who now spoke, and as he did so his hand was stretched
out as if instinctively, till it lay on the mother's lap.  Their eyes
met, and there seemed something of sadness in the smile of each.

"How time does fly!"

"Dad!"

The voice came once more from the corner.

"Dad!  For years and years I've noticed that you always take mummie's
hand and just look like that on the night before Archie's birthday.
Father, why--"

But at that very moment the firelight found something else to fall
upon--something brighter and fairer by far than anything it had lit up
to-night.  For the door-curtain was drawn back, and a little, wee,
girlish figure advanced on tiptoe and stood smiling in the middle of the
room, looking from one to the other.  This was Elsie, Rupert's
twin-sister.  His "beautiful sister" the boy called her, and she was
well worthy of the compliment.  Only for a moment did she stand there,
but as she did so, with her bonnie bright face, she seemed the one thing
that had been needed to complete the picture, the centre figure against
the sombre, almost solemn, background.

The fire blazed more merrily now; a jet of white smoke, that had been
spinning forth from a little mound of melting coal, jumped suddenly into
flame; while the biggest log cracked like a popgun, and threw off a
great red spark, which flew half-way across the room.

Next instant a wealth of dark-brown hair fell on Archie's shoulder, and
soft lips were pressed to his sun-dyed cheek, then bright, laughing eyes
looked into his.

"Ten to-morrow, Archie!  _Aren't_ you proud?"

Elsie now took a footstool, and sat down close beside her invalid
brother, stretching one arm across his chest protectingly; but she shook
her head at Archie from her corner.

"Ten to-morrow, you great big, big brother Archie," she said.

Archie laughed right merrily.

"What are you going to do all?"

"Oh, such a lot of things!  First of all, if it snows--"

"It is snowing now, Archie, fast."

"Well then I'm going to shoot the fox that stole poor Cock Jock.  Oh, my
poor Cock Jock!  We'll never see him again."

"Shooting foxes isn't sport, Archie."

"No, dad; it's revenge."

The father shook his head.

"Well, I mean something else."

"Justice?"

"Yes, that is it.  Justice, dad.  Oh, I did love that cock so!  He was
so gentlemanly and gallant, father.  Oh, so kind!  And the fox seized
him just as poor Jock was carrying a crust of bread to the old hen Ann.
He threw my bonnie bird over his shoulder and ran off, looking so sly
and wicked.  But I mean to kill him!

"Last time I fired off Branson's gun was at a magpie, a nasty,
chattering, unlucky magpie.  Old Kate says they're unlucky."

"Did you kill the magpie, Archie?"

"No, I don't think I hurt the magpie.  The gun must have gone off when I
wasn't looking; but it knocked me down, and blackened all my shoulder,
because it pushed so.  Branson said I didn't grasp it tight enough.  But
I will to-morrow, when I'm killing the fox.  Rupert, you'll stuff the
head, and we'll hang it in the hall.  Won't you, Roup?"  Rupert smiled
and nodded.

"And I'm sure," he continued, "the Ann hen was so sorry when she saw
poor Cock Jock carried away."

"Did the Ann hen eat the crust?"

"What, father?  Oh, yes, she did eat the crust!  But I think that was
only out of politeness.  I'm sure it nearly choked her."

"Well, Archie, what will you do else to-morrow?"

"Oh, then, you know, Elsie, the fun will only just be beginning, because
we're going to open the north tower of the castle.  It's already
furnished."

"And you're going to be installed as King of the North Tower?" said his
father.

"Installed, father?  Rupert, what does that mean?"

"Led in with honours, I suppose."

"Oh, father, I'll instal myself; or Sissie there will; or old Kate; or
Branson, the keeper, will instal me.  That's easy.  The fun will all
come after that."

Burley Old Farm, as it was called--and sometimes Burley Castle--was, at
the time our story opens, in the heyday of its glory and beauty.  Squire
Broadbent, Archie's father, had been on it for a dozen years and over.
It was all his own, and had belonged to a bachelor uncle before his
time.  This uncle had never made the slightest attempt to cause two
blades of grass to grow where only one had grown before.  Not he.  He
was well content to live on the little estate, as his father had done
before him, so long as things paid their way; so long as plenty of sleek
beasts were seen in the fields in summer, or wading knee-deep in the
straw-yard in winter; so long as pigs, and poultry, and feather stock of
every conceivable sort, made plenty of noise about the farm-steading,
and there was plenty of human life about, the old Squire had been
content.  And why shouldn't he have been?  What does a North-country
farmer need, or what has he any right to long for, if his larder and
coffers are both well filled, and he can have a day on the stubble or
moor, and ride to the hounds when the crops are in?

But his nephew was more ambitious.  The truth is he came from the South,
and brought with him what the honest farmer folks of the Northumbrian
borders call a deal of new-fangled notions.  He had come from the South
himself, and he had not been a year in the place before he went back,
and in due time returned to Burley Old Farm with a bonnie young bride.
Of course there were people in the neighbourhood who did not hesitate to
say, that the Squire might have married nearer home, and that there was
no accounting for taste.  For all this and all that, both the Squire and
his wife were not long in making themselves universal favourites all
round the countryside; for they went everywhere, and did everything; and
the neighbours were all welcome to call at Burley when they liked, and
had to call when Mrs Broadbent issued invitations.

Well, the Squire's dinners were truly excellent, and when afterwards the
men folk joined the ladies in the big drawing-room, the evenings flew
away so quickly that, as carriage time came, nobody could ever believe
it was anything like so late.

The question of what the Squire had been previously to his coming to
Burley was sometimes asked by comparative strangers, but as nobody could
or cared to answer explicitly, it was let drop.  Something in the South,
in or about London, or Deal, or Dover, but what did it matter? he was "a
jolly good fellow--ay, and a gentleman every inch."  Such was the
verdict.

A gentleman the Squire undoubtedly was, though not quite the type of
build, either in body or mind, of the tall, bony, and burly men of the
North--men descended from a race of ever-unconquered soldiers, and
probably more akin to the Scotch than the English.

Sitting here in the green parlour to-night, with the firelight playing
on his smiling face as he talked to or teased his eldest boy, Squire
Broadbent was seen to advantage.  Not big in body, and rather round than
angular, inclining even to the portly, with a frank, rosy face and a
bold blue eye, you could not have been in his company ten minutes
without feeling sorry you had not known him all his life.

Amiability was the chief characteristic of Mrs Broadbent.  She was a
refined and genuine English lady.  There is little more to say after
that.

But what about the Squire's new-fangled notions?  Well, they were really
what they call "fads" now-a-days, or, taken collectively, they were one
gigantic fad.  Although he had never been in the agricultural interest
before he became Squire, even while in city chambers theoretical farming
had been his pet study, and he made no secret of it to his fellow-men.

"This uncle of mine," he would say, "whom I go to see every Christmas,
is pretty old, and I'm his heir.  Mind," he would add, "he is a genuine,
good man, and I'll be genuinely sorry for him when he goes under.  But
that is the way of the world, and then I'll have my fling.  My uncle
hasn't done the best for his land; he has been content to go--not run;
there is little running about the dear old boy--in the same groove as
his fathers, but I'm going to cut out a new one."

The week that the then Mr Broadbent was in the habit of spending with
his uncle, in the festive season, was not the only holiday he took in
the year.  No; for regularly as the month of April came round, he
started for the States of America, and England saw no more of him till
well on in June, by which time the hot weather had driven him home.

But he swore by the Yankees; that is, he would have sworn by them, had
he sworn at all.  The Yankees in Mr Broadbent's opinion were far ahead
of the English in everything pertaining to the economy of life, and the
best manner of living.  He was too much of a John Bull to admit that the
Americans possessed any superiority over this tight little isle, in the
matter of either politics or knowledge of warfare.  England always had
been, and always would be, mistress of the seas, and master of and over
every country with a foreshore on it.  "But," he would say, "look at the
Yanks as inventors.  Why, sir, they beat us in everything from
button-hook.  Look at them as farmers, especially as wheat growers and
fruit raisers.  They are as far above Englishmen, with their insular
prejudices, and insular dread of taking a step forward for fear of going
into a hole, as a Berkshire steam ploughman is ahead of a Skyeman with
his wooden turf-turner.  And look at them at home round their own
firesides, or look at their houses outside and in, and you will have
some faint notion of what comfort combined with luxury really means."

It will be observed that Mr Broadbent had a bold, straightforward way
of talking to his peers.  He really had, and it will be seen presently
that he had, "the courage of his own convictions," to use a hackneyed
phrase.

He brought those convictions with him to Burley, and the courage also.

Why, in a single year--and a busy, bustling one it had been--the new
Squire had worked a revolution about the place.  Lucky for him, he had a
well-lined purse to begin with, or he could hardly have come to the root
of things, or made such radical reforms as he did.

When he first took a look round the farm-steading, he felt puzzled where
to begin first.  But he went to work steadily, and kept it up, and it is
truly wonderful what an amount of solid usefulness can be effected by
either man or boy, if he has the courage to adopt such a plan.

CHAPTER TWO.

A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK.

It was no part of Squire Broadbent's plan to turn away old and faithful
servants.  He had to weed them though, and this meant thinning out to
such an extent that not over many were left.

The young and healthy creatures of inutility had to shift; but the very
old, the decrepit--those who had become stiff and grey in his uncle's
service--were pensioned off.  They were to stay for the rest of their
lives in the rural village adown the glen--bask in the sun in summer,
sit by the fire of a winter, and talk of the times when "t'old Squire
was aboot."

The servants settled with, and fresh ones with suitable "go" in them
established in their place, the live stock came in for reformation.

"Saint Mary! what a medley!" exclaimed the Squire, as he walked through
the byres and stables, and past the styes.  "Everything bred anyhow.  No
method in my uncle's madness.  No rules followed, no type.  Why the
quickest plan will be to put them all to the hammer."

This was cutting the Gordian-knot with a vengeance, but it was perhaps
best in the long run.

Next came renovation of the farm-steading itself; pulling down and
building, enlarging, and what not, and while this was going on, the land
itself was not being forgotten.  Fences were levelled and carted away,
and newer and airier ones put up, and for the most part three and
sometimes even five fields were opened into one.  There were woods also
to be seen to.  The new Squire liked woods, but the trees in some of
these were positively poisoning each other.  Here was a larch-wood, for
instance--those logs with the long, grey lichens on them are part of
some of the trees.  So closely do the larches grow together, so white
with moss, so stunted and old-looking, that it would have made a
merry-andrew melancholy to walk among them.  What good were they?  Down
they must come, and down they had come; and after the ground had been
stirred up a bit, and left for a summer to let the sunshine and air into
it, all the hill was replanted with young, green, smiling pines,
larches, and spruces, and that was assuredly an improvement.  In a few
years the trees were well advanced; grass and primroses grew where the
moss had crept about, and the wood in spring was alive with the song of
birds.

The mansion-house had been left intact.  Nothing could have added much
to the beauty of that.  It stood high up on a knoll, with rising
park-like fields behind, and at some considerable distance the blue
slate roofs of the farm-steading peeping up through the greenery of the
trees.  A solid yellow-grey house, with sturdy porch before the hall
door, and sturdy mullioned windows, one wing ivy-clad, a broad sweep of
gravel in front, and beyond that, lawns and terraces, and flower and
rose gardens.  And the whole overlooked a river or stream, that went
winding away clear and silvery till it lost itself in wooded glens.

The scenery was really beautiful all round, and in some parts even wild;
while the distant views of the Cheviot Hills lent a charm to everything.

There was something else held sacred by the Squire as well as the
habitable mansion, and that was Burley Old Castle.  Undoubtedly a
fortress of considerable strength it had been in bygone days, when the
wild Scots used to come raiding here, but there was no name for it now
save that of a "ruin."  The great north tower still stood firm and bold,
and three walls of the lordly hall, its floor green with long, rank
grass; the walls themselves partly covered with ivy, with broom growing
on the top, which was broad enough for the half-wild goats to scamper
along.

There was also the _donjon_ keep, and the remains of a _fosse_; but all
the rest of this feudal castle had been unceremoniously carted away, to
erect cowsheds and pig-styes with it.

  "So sinks the pride of former days,
  When glory's thrill is o'er."

No, Squire Broadbent did not interfere with the castle; he left it to
the goats and to Archie, who took to it as a favourite resort from the
time he could crawl.

But these--all these--new-fangled notions the neighbouring squires and
farmers bold could easily have forgiven, had Broadbent not carried his
craze for machinery to the very verge of folly.  So _they_ thought.
Such things might be all very well in America, but they were not called
for here.  Extraordinary mills driven by steam, no less
wonderful-looking harrows, uncanny-like drags and drilling machines,
sowing and reaping machines that were fearfully and wonderfully made,
and ploughs that, like the mills, were worked by steam.

Terrible inventions these; and even the men that were connected with
them had to be brought from the far South, and did not talk a homely,
wholesome _lingua_, nor live in a homely, wholesome way.

His neighbours confessed that his crops were heavier, and the cereals
and roots finer; but they said to each other knowingly, "What about the
expense of down-put?"  And as far as their own fields went, the
plough-boy still whistled to and from his work.

Then the new live stock, why, type was followed; type was everything in
the Squire's eye and opinion.  No matter what they were, horses, cattle,
pigs, sheep, and feather stock, even the dogs and birds were the best
and purest of the sort to be had.

But for all the head-shaking there had been at first, things really
appeared to prosper with the Squire; his big, yellow-painted wagons,
with their fine Clydesdale horses, were as well known in the district
and town of B--as the brewer's dray itself.  The "nags" were capitally
harnessed.  What with jet-black, shining leather, brass-work that shone
like burnished gold, and crimson-flashing fringes, it was no wonder that
the men who drove them were proud, and that they were favourites at
every house of call.  Even the bailiff himself, on his spirited hunter,
looked imposing with his whip in his hand, and in his spotless cords.

Breakfast at Burley was a favourite meal, and a pretty early one, and
the capital habit of inviting friends thereto was kept up.  Mrs
Broadbent's tea was something to taste and remember; while the cold
beef, or that early spring lamb on the sideboard, would have converted
the veriest vegetarian as soon as he clapped eyes on it.

On his spring lamb the Squire rather prided himself, and he liked his
due meed of praise for having reared it.  To be sure he got it; though
some of the straightforward Northumbrians would occasionally quizzingly
enquire what it cost him to put on the table.

Squire Broadbent would not get out of temper whatever was said, and
really, to do the man justice, it must be allowed that there was a
glorious halo of self-reliance around his head; and altogether such
spirit, dash, and independence with all he said and did, that those who
breakfasted with him seemed to catch the infection.  Their farms and
they themselves appeared quite behind the times, when viewed in
comparison with Broadbent's and with Broadbent himself.

If ever a father was loved and admired by a son, the Squire was that
man, and Archie was that particular son.  His father was Archie's _beau
ideal_ indeed of all that was worth being, or saying, or knowing, in
this world; and Rupert's as well.

He really was his boys' hero, but behaved more to them as if he had been
just a big brother.  It was a great grief to both of them that Rupert
could not join in their games out on the lawn in summer--the little
cricket matches, the tennis tournaments, the jumping, and romping, and
racing.  The tutor was younger than the Squire by many years, but he
could not beat him in any manly game you could mention.

Yes, it was sad about Rupert; but with all the little lad's suffering
and weariness, he was _such_ a sunny-faced chap.  He never complained,
and when sturdy, great, brown-faced Archie carried him out as if he had
been a baby, and laid him on the couch where he could witness the games,
he was delighted beyond description.

I'm quite sure that the Squire often and often kept on playing longer
than he would otherwise have done just to please the child, as he was
generally called.  As for Elsie, she did all her brother did, and a good
deal more besides, and yet no one could have called her a tom girl.

As the Squire was Archie's hero, I suppose the boy could not help taking
after his hero to some extent; but it was not only surprising but even
amusing to notice how like to his "dad" in all his ways Archie had at
the age of ten become.  The same in walk, the same in talk, the same in
giving his opinion, and the same in bright, determined looks.  Archie
really was what his father's friends called him, "a chip of the old
block."

He was a kind of a lad, too, that grown-up men folks could not help
having a good, romping lark with.  Not a young farmer that ever came to
the place could have beaten Archie at a race; but when some of them did
get hold of him out on the lawn of an evening, then there would be a bit
of fun, and Archie was in it.

These burly Northumbrians would positively play a kind of pitch and toss
with him, standing in a square or triangle and throwing him back and
fore as if he had been a cricket ball.  And there was one very tall,
wiry young fellow who treated Archie as if he had been a sort of
dumb-bell, and took any amount of exercise out of him; holding him high
aloft with one hand, swaying him round and round and up and down,
changing hands, and, in a word, going through as many motions with the
laughing boy as if he had been inanimate.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not think that Archie ever dressed more quickly in his life, than
he did on the morning of that auspicious day which saw him ten years
old.  To tell the truth, he had never been very much struck over the
benefits of early rising, especially on mornings in winter.  The parting
between the boy and his warm bed was often of a most affecting
character.  The servant would knock, and the gong would go, and
sometimes he would even hear his father's voice in the hall before he
made up his mind to tear himself away.

But on this particular morning, no sooner had he rubbed his eyes and
began to remember things, than he sprang nimbly to the floor.  The bath
was never a terrible ordeal to Archie, as it is to some lads.  He liked
it because it made him feel light and buoyant, and made him sing like
the happy birds in spring time; but to-day he did think it would be a
saving of time to omit it.  Yes, but it would be cowardly, and on this
morning of all mornings; so in he plunged, and plied the sponge
manfully.  He did not draw up the blinds till well-nigh dressed.  For
all he could see when he did do so, he might as well have left them
down.  The windows--the month was January--were hard frozen; had it been
any other day, he would have paused to admire the beautiful frost
foliage and frost ferns that nature had etched on the panes.  He blew
his breath on the glass instead, and made a clean round hole thereon.

Glorious!  It had been snowing pretty heavily, but now the sky was
clear.  The footprints of the wily fox could be tracked.  Archie would
follow him to his den in the wild woods, and his Skye terriers would
unearth him.  Then the boy knelt to pray, just reviewing the past for a
short time before he did so, and thinking what a deal he had to be
thankful for; how kind the good Father was to have given him such
parents, such a beautiful home, and such health, and thinking too what a
deal he had to be sorry for in the year that was gone; then he gave
thanks, and prayer for strength to resist temptation in the time to
come; and, it is needless to say, he prayed for poor invalid Rupert.

When he got up from his knees he heard the great gong sounded, and
smiled to himself to think how early he was.  Then he blew on the pane
and looked out again.  The sky was blue and clear, and there was not a
breath of wind; the trees on the lawn, laden with their weight of
powdery snow, their branches bending earthwards, especially the larches
and spruces, were a sight to see.  And the snow-covered lawn itself, oh,
how beautiful!  Archie wondered if the streets of heaven even could be
more pure, more dazzlingly white.

Whick, whick, whick, whir-r-r-r-r!

It was a big yellow-billed blackbird, that flew out with startled cry
from a small Austrian pine tree.  As it did so, a cloud of powdery snow
rose in the air, showing how hard the frost was.

Early though it was--only a little past eight--Archie found his father
and mother in the breakfast-room, and greetings and blessings fell on
his head; brief but tender.

By-and-bye the tutor came in, looking tired; and Archie exulted over
him, as cocks crow over a fallen foe, because he was down first.

Mr Walton was a young man of five or six and twenty, and had been in
the family for over three years, so he was quite an old friend.
Moreover, he was a man after the Squire's own heart; he was manly, and
taught Archie manliness, and had a quiet way of helping him out of every
difficulty of thought or action.  Besides, Archie and Rupert liked him.

After breakfast Archie went up to see his brother, then downstairs, and
straight away out through the servants' hall to the barn-yards.  He had
showers of blessings, and not a few gifts from the servants; but old
Scotch Kate was most sincere, for this somewhat aged spinster really
loved the lad.

At the farm-steading he had many friends to see, both hairy and
feathered.  He found some oats, which he scattered among the last, and
laughed to see them scramble, and to hear them talk.  Well, Archie at
all events believed firmly that fowls can converse.  One very lovely red
game bird, came boldly up and pecked his oats from Archie's palm.  This
was the new Cock Jock, a son of the old bird, which the fox had taken.
The Ann hen was there too.  She was bold, and bonnie, and saucy, and
seemed quite to have given up mourning for her lost lord.  Ann came at
Archie's call, flew on to his wrist, and after steadying herself and
grumbling a little because Archie moved his arm too much, she shoved her
head and neck into the boy's pocket, and found oats in abundance.  That
was Ann's way of doing business, and she preferred it.

The ducks were insolent and noisy; the geese, instead of taking higher
views of life, as they are wont to do, bent down their stately necks,
and went in for the scramble with the rest.  The hen turkeys grumbled a
great deal, but got their share nevertheless; while the great gobbler
strutted around doing attitudes, and rustling himself, his neck and head
blood-red and blue, and every feather as stiff as an oyster-shell.  He
looked like some Indian chief arrayed for the war-path.

Having hurriedly fed his feathered favourites, Archie went bounding off
to let out a few dogs.  He opened the door and went right into their
house, and the consequence was that one of the Newfoundlands threw him
over in the straw, and licked his face; and the Skye terriers came
trooping round, and they also paid their addresses to him, some of the
young ones jumping over his head, while Archie could do nothing for
laughing.  When he got up he sang out "Attention!" and lo! and behold
the dogs, every one looking wiser than another, some with their
considering-caps on apparently, and their heads held knowingly to one
side.

"Attention!" cried the boy.  "I am going to-day to shoot the fox that
ran off with the hen Ann's husband.  I shall want some of you.  You
Bounder, and you little Fuss, and you Tackier, come."

And come those three dogs did, while the rest, with lowered tails and
pitiful looks, slunk away to their straw.  Bounder was an enormous
Newfoundland, and Fuss and Tackier were terriers, the former a Skye, the
latter a very tiny but exceedingly game Yorkie.

Yonder, gun on shoulder, came tall, stately Branson, the keeper, clad in
velveteen, with gaiters on.  Branson was a Northumbrian, and a grand
specimen too.  He might have been somewhat slow of speech, but he was
not slow to act whenever it came to a scuffle with poachers, and this
last was not an unfrequent occurrence.

"My gun, Branson?"

"It's in the kitchen, Master Archie, clean and ready; and old Kate has
put a couple of corks in it, for fear it should go off."

"Oh, it is loaded then--really loaded!"

"Ay, lad; and I've got to teach you how to carry it.  This is your first
day on the hill, mind, and a rough one it is."

Archie soon got his leggings on, and his shot-belt and shooting-cap and
everything else, in true sportsman fashion.

"What!" he said at the hall door, when he met Mr Walton, "am I to have
my tutor with me _to-day_?"

He put strong emphasis on the last word.

"You know, Mr Walton, that I am ten to-day.  I suppose I am conceited,
but I almost feel a man."

His tutor laughed, but by no means offensively.

"My dear Archie, I _am_ going to the hill; but don't imagine I'm going
as your tutor, or to look after you.  Oh, no!  I want to go as your
friend."

This certainly put a different complexion on the matter.

Archie considered for a moment, then replied, with charming
condescension:

"Oh, yes, of course, Mr Walton!  You are welcome, I'm sure, to come _as
a friend_."

CHAPTER THREE.

A DAY OF ADVENTURE.

If we have any tears all ready to flow, it is satisfactory to know that
they will not be required at present.  If we have poetic fire and
genius, even these gifts may for the time being be held in reservation.
No "Ode to a Dying Fox" or "Elegy on the Death and Burial of Reynard"
will be necessary.  For Reynard did not die; nor was he shot; at least,
not sufficiently shot.

In one sense this was a pity.  It resulted in mingled humiliation and
bitterness for Archie and for the dogs.  He had pictured to himself a
brief moment of triumph when he should return from the chase, bearing in
his hand the head of his enemy--the murderer of the Ann hen's husband--
and having the brush sticking out of his jacket pocket; return to be
crowned, figuratively speaking, with festive laurel by Elsie, his
sister, and looked upon by all the servants with a feeling of awe as a
future Nimrod.

In another sense it was not a pity; that is, for the fox.  This sable
gentleman had enjoyed a good run, which made him hungry, and as happy as
only a fox can be who knows the road through the woods and wilds to a
distant burrow, where a bed of withered weeds awaits him, and where a
nice fat hen is hidden.  When Reynard had eaten his dinner and licked
his chops, he laid down to sleep, no doubt laughing in his paw at the
boy's futile efforts to capture or kill him, and promising himself the
pleasure of a future moonlight visit to Burley Old Farm, from which he
should return with the Ann hen herself on his shoulder.

Yes, Archie's hunt had been unsuccessful, though the day had not ended
without adventure, and he had enjoyed the pleasures of the chase.

Bounder, the big Newfoundland, first took up the scent, and away he went
with Fuss and Tackier at his heels, the others following as well as they
could, restraining the dogs by voice and gesture.  Through the spruce
woods, through a patch of pine forest, through a wild tangle of tall,
snow-laden furze, out into the open, over a stream, and across a wide
stretch of heathery moorland, round quarries and rocks, and once more
into a wood.  This time it was stunted larch, and in the very centre of
it, close by a cairn of stones, Bounder said--and both Fuss and Tackier
acquiesced--that Reynard had his den.  But how to get him out?

"You two little chaps get inside," Bounder seemed to say.  "I'll stand
here; and as soon as he bolts, I shall make the sawdust fly out of him,
you see!"

Escape for the fox seemed an impossibility.  He had more than one
entrance to his den, but all were carefully blocked up by the keeper
except his back and front door.  Bounder guarded the latter, Archie went
to watch by the former.

"Keep quiet and cool now, and aim right behind the shoulder."

Quiet and cool indeed! how could he?  Under such exciting circumstances,
his heart was thumping like a frightened pigeon's, and his cheeks
burning with the rush of blood to them.

He knelt down with his gun ready, and kept his eyes on the hole.  He
prayed that Reynard might not bolt by the front door, for that would
spoil his sport.

The terrier made it very warm for the fox in his den.  Small though the
little Yorkie was, his valour was wonderful.  Out in the open Reynard
could have killed them one by one, but here the battle was unfair, so
after a few minutes of a terrible scrimmage the fox concluded to bolt.

Archie saw his head at the hole, half protruded then drawn back, and his
heart thumped now almost audibly.

Would he come?  Would he dare it?

Yes, the fox dared it, and came.  He dashed out with a wild rush, like a
little hairy hurricane.  "Aim behind the shoulder!"  Where was the
shoulder?  Where was anything but a long sable stream of something
feathering through the snow?

Bang! bang! both barrels.  And down rolled the fox.  Yes, no.  Oh dear,
it was poor Fuss!  The fox was half a mile away in a minute.

Fuss lost blood that stained the snow brown as it fell on it.  And
Archie shed bitter tears of sorrow and humiliation.

"Oh, Fuss, my dear, dear doggie!" he cried, "_I_ didn't mean to hurt
you."

The Skye terrier was lying on the keeper's knees and having a snow
styptic.

Soon the blood ceased to flow, and Fuss licked his young master's hands,
and presently got down and ran around and wanted to go to earth again;
and though Archie felt he could never forgive himself for his
awkwardness, he was so happy to see that Fuss was not much the worse
after all.

But there would be no triumphant home-returning; he even began to doubt
if ever he would be a sportsman.  Then Branson consoled him, and told
him he himself didn't do any better when he first took to the hill.

"It is well," said Mr Walton, laughing, "that you didn't shoot me
instead."

"Ye-es," said Archie slowly, looking at Fuss.  It was evident he was not
quite convinced that Mr Walton was right.

"Fuss is none the worse," cried Branson.  "Oh, I can tell you it does
these Scotch dogs good to have a drop or two of lead in them!  It makes
them all the steadier, you know."

About an hour after, to his exceeding delight, Archie shot a hare.  Oh
joy!  Oh day of days!  His first hare!  He felt a man now, from the top
of his Astrachan cap to the toe caps of his shooting-boots.

Bounder picked it up, and brought it and laid it at Archie's feet.

"Good dog! you shall carry it."

Bounder did so most delightedly.

They stopped at an outlying cottage on their way home.  It was a long,
low, thatched building, close by a wood, a very humble dwelling indeed.

A gentle-faced widow woman opened to their knock.  She looked scared
when she saw them, and drew back.

"Oh!" she said, "I hope Robert hasn't got into trouble again?"

"No, no, Mrs Cooper, keep your mind easy, Bob's a' right at present.
We just want to eat our bit o' bread and cheese in your sheiling."

"And right welcome ye are, sirs.  Come in to the fire.  Here's a broom
to brush the snow fra your leggins."

Bounder marched in with the rest, with as much swagger and independence
as if the cottage belonged to him.  Mrs Cooper's cat determined to
defend her hearth and home against such intrusion, and when Bounder
approached the former, she stood on her dignity, back arched, tail
erect, hair on end from stem to stern, with her ears back, and green
fire lurking in her eyes.  Bounder stood patiently looking at her.  He
would not put down the hare, and he could not defend himself with it in
his mouth; so he was puzzled.  Pussy, however, brought matters to a
crisis.  She slapped his face, then bolted right up the chimney.
Bounder put down the hare now, and gave a big sigh as he lay down beside
it.

"No, Mrs Cooper, Bob hasn't been at his wicked work for some time.
He's been gi'en someone else a turn I s'pose, eh?"

"Oh, sirs," said the widow, "it's no wi' my will he goes poachin'!  If
his father's heid were above the sod he daren't do it.  But, poor Bob,
he's all I have in the world, and he works hard--sometimes."

Branson laughed.  It was a somewhat sarcastic laugh; and young Archie
felt sorry for Bob's mother, she looked so unhappy.

"Ay, Mrs Cooper, Bob works hard sometimes, especially when settin'
girns for game.  Ha! ha!  Hullo!" he added, "speak of angels and they
appear.  Here comes Bob himself!"

Bob entered, looked defiantly at the keeper, but doffed his cap and
bowed to Mr Walton and Archie.  "Mother," he said, "I'm going out."

"Not far, Bob, lad; dinner's nearly ready."

Bob had turned to leave, but he wheeled round again almost fiercely.  He
was a splendid young specimen of a Borderer, six feet if an inch, and
well-made to boot.  No extra flesh, but hard and tough as copper bolts.
"Denner!" he growled.  "Ay, denner to be sure--taties and salt!  Ha! and
gentry live on the fat o' the land!  If I snare a rabbit, if I dare to
catch one o' God's own cattle on God's own hills, I'm a felon; I'm to be
taken and put in gaol--shot even if I dare resist!  Yas, mother, I'll be
in to denner," and away he strode.

"Potatoes and salt!"  Archie could not help thinking about that.  And he
was going away to his own bright home and to happiness.  He glanced
round him at the bare, clay walls, with their few bits of daubs of
pictures, and up at the blackened rafters, where a cheese stood--one
poor, hard cheese--and on which hung some bacon and onions.  He could
not repress a sigh, almost as heart-felt as that which Bounder gave when
he lay down beside the hare.

When the keeper and tutor rose to go, Archie stopped behind with Bounder
just a moment.  When they came out, Bounder had no hare.

Yet that hare was the first Archie had shot, and--well, he _had_ meant
to astonish Elsie with this proof of his prowess; but the hare was
better to be left where it was--he had earned a blessing.

The party were in the wood when Bob Cooper, the poacher, sprang up as if
from the earth and confronted them.

"I came here a purpose," he said to Branson.  "This is not your wood;
even if it was I wouldn't mind.  What did you want at my mother's
hoose?"

"Nothing; and I've nothing to say to ye."

"Haven't ye?  But ye were in our cottage.  It's no for nought the glaud
whistles."

"I don't want to quarrel," said Branson, "especially after speakin' to
your mother; she's a kindly soul, and I'm sorry for her and for you
yoursel', Bob."

Bob was taken aback.  He had expected defiance, exasperation, and he was
prepared to fight.

Archie stood trembling as these two athletes looked each other in the
eyes.

But gradually Bob's face softened; he bit his lip and moved impatiently.
The allusion to his mother had touched his heart.

"I didn't want sich words, Branson.  I--may be I don't deserve 'em.  I--
hang it all, give me a grip o' your hand!"

Then away went Bob as quickly as he had come.

Branson glanced at his retreating figure one moment.

"Well," he said, "I never thought I'd shake hands wi' Bob Cooper!  No
matter; better please a fool than fecht 'im."

"Branson!"

"Yes, Master Archie."

"I don't think Bob's a fool; and I'm sure that, bad as he is, he loves
his mother."

"Quite right, Archie," said Mr Walton.

Archie met his father at the gate, and ran towards him to tell him all
his adventures about the fox and the hare.  But Bob Cooper and everybody
else was forgotten when he noticed what and whom he had behind him.  The
"whom" was Branson's little boy, Peter; the "what" was one of the
wildest-looking--and, for that matter, one of the wickedest-looking--
Shetland ponies it is possible to imagine.  Long-haired, shaggy, droll,
and daft; but these adjectives do not half describe him.

"Why, father, wherever--"

"He's your birthday present, Archie."

The boy actually flushed red with joy.  His eyes sparkled as he glanced
from his father to the pony and back at his father again.

"Dad," he said at last, "I know now what old Kate means about 'her cup
being full.'  Father, my cup overflows!"

Well, Archie's eyes were pretty nearly overflowing anyhow.

CHAPTER FOUR.

IN THE OLD CASTLE TOWER.

They were all together that evening in the green parlour as usual, and
everybody was happy and merry.  Even Rupert was sitting up and laughing
as much as Elsie.  The clatter of tongues prevented them hearing Mary's
tapping at the door; and the carpet being so thick and soft, she was not
seen until right in the centre of the room.

"Why, Mary," cried Elsie, "I got such a start, I thought you were a
ghost!"

Mary looks uneasily around her.

"There be one ghost, Miss Elsie, comes out o' nights, and walks about
the old castle."

"Was that what you came in to tell us, Mary?"

"Oh, no, sir!  If ye please, Bob Cooper is in the yard, and he wants to
speak to Master Archie.  I wouldn't let him go if I were you, ma'am."

Archie's mother smiled.  Mary was a privileged little parlour maiden,
and ventured at times to make suggestions.

"Go and see what he wants, dear," said his mother to Archie.

It was a beautiful clear moonlight night, with just a few white
snow-laden clouds lying over the woods, no wind and never a hush save
the distant and occasional yelp of a dog.

"Bob Cooper!"

"That's me, Master Archie.  I couldn't rest till I'd seen ye the night.
The hare--"

"Oh! that's really nothing, Bob Cooper!"

"But allow me to differ.  It's no' the hare altogether.  I know where to
find fifty.  It was the way it was given.  Look here, lad, and this is
what I come to say, Branson and you have been too much for Bob Cooper.
The day I went to that wood to thrash him, and I'd hae killed him, an I
could.  Ha! ha!  I shook hands with him!  Archie Broadbent, your
father's a gentleman, and they say you're a chip o' t'old block.  I
believe 'em, and look, see, lad, I'll never be seen in your preserves
again.  Tell Branson so.  There's my hand on't.  Nay, never be afear'd
to touch it.  Good-night.  I feel better now."

And away strode the poacher, and Archie could hear the sound of his
heavy tread crunching through the snow long after he was out of sight.

"You seem to have made a friend, Archie," said his father, when the boy
reported the interview.

"A friend," added Mr Walton with a quiet smile, "that I wouldn't be too
proud of."

"Well," said the Squire, "certainly Bob Cooper is a rough nut, but who
knows what his heart may be like?"

Archie's room in the tower was opened in state next day.  Old Kate
herself had lit fires in it every night for a week before, though she
never would go up the long dark stair without Peter.  Peter was only a
mite of a boy, but wherever he went, Fuss, the Skye terrier, accompanied
him, and it was universally admitted that no ghost in its right senses
would dare to face Fuss.

Elsie was there of course, and Rupert too, though he had to be almost
carried up by stalwart Branson.  But what a glorious little room it was
when you were in it!  A more complete boy's own room could scarcely be
imagined.  It was a _beau ideal_; at least Rupert and Archie and Elsie
thought so, and even Mr Walton and Branson said the same.

Let me see now, I may as well try to describe it, but much must be left
to imagination.  It was not a very big room, only about twelve feet
square; for although the tower appeared very large from outside, the
abnormal thickness of its walls detracted from available space inside
it.  There was one long window on each side, and a chair and small table
could be placed on the sill of either.  But this was curtained off at
night, when light came from a huge lamp that depended from the ceiling,
and the rays from which fought for preference with those from the
roaring fire on the stone hearth.  The room was square.  A door, also
curtained, gave entrance from the stairway at one corner, and at each of
two other corners were two other doors leading into turret chambers, and
these tiny, wee rooms were very delightful, because you were out beyond
the great tower when you sat in them, and their slits of windows granted
you a grand view of the charming scenery everywhere about.

The furniture was rustic in the extreme--studiously so.  There was a
tall rocking-chair, a great dais or sofa, and a recline for
Rupert--"poor Rupert" as he was always called--the big chair was the
guest's seat.

The ornaments on the walls had been principally supplied by Branson.
Stuffed heads of foxes, badgers, and wild cats, with any number of
birds' and beasts' skins, artistically mounted.  There were also heads
of horned deer, bows and arrows--these last were Archie's own--and
shields and spears that Uncle Ramsay had brought home from savage wars
in Africa and Australia.  The dais was covered with bear skins, and
there was quite a quantity of skins on the floor instead of a carpet.
So the whole place looked primeval and romantic.

The bookshelf was well supplied with readable tales, and a harp stood in
a corner, and on this, young though she was, Elsie could already play.

The guest to-night was old Kate.  She sat in the tall chair in a corner
opposite the door, Branson occupied a seat near her, Rupert was on his
recline, and Archie and Elsie on a skin, with little Peter nursing
wounded Fuss in a corner.

That was the party.  But Archie had made tea, and handed it round; and
sitting there with her cup in her lap, old Kate really looked a strange,
weird figure.  Her face was lean and haggard, her eyes almost wild, and
some half-grey hair peeped from under an uncanny-looking cap of black
crape, with long depending strings of the same material.

Old Kate was housekeeper and general female factotum.  She was really a
distant relation of the Squire, and so had it very much her own way at
Burley Old Farm.

She came originally from "just ayant the Border," and had a wealth of
old-world stories to tell, and could sing queer old bits of ballads too,
when in the humour.

Old Kate, however, said she could not sing to-night, for she felt as yet
unused to the place; and whether they (the boys) believed in ghosts or
not she (Kate) did, and so, she said, had her father before her.  But
she told stories--stories of the bloody raids of long, long ago, when
Northumbria and the Scottish Borders were constantly at war--stories
that kept her hearers enthralled while they listened, and to which the
weird looks and strange voice of the narrator lent a peculiar charm.

Old Kate was just in the very midst of one of these when, twang! one of
the strings of Elsie's harp broke.  It was a very startling sound
indeed; for as it went off it seemed to emit a groan that rang through
the chamber, and died away in the vaulted roof.  Elsie crept closer to
Archie, and Peter with Fuss drew nearer the fire.

The ancient dame, after being convinced that the sound was nothing
uncanny, proceeded with her narrative.  It was a long one, with an old
house in it by the banks of a winding river in the midst of woods and
wilds--a house that, if its walls had been able to speak, could have
told many a marrow-freezing story of bygone times.

There was a room in this house that was haunted.  Old Kate was just
coming to this, and to the part of her tale on which the ghosts on a
certain night of the year always appeared in this room, and stood over a
dark stain in the centre of the floor.

"And ne'er a ane," she was saying, "could wash that stain awa'.  Weel,
bairns, one moonlicht nicht, and at the deadest hoor o' the nicht,
nothing would please the auld laird but he maun leave his chaimber and
go straight along the damp, dreary, long corridor to the door o' the
hauntid room.  It was half open, and the moon's licht danced in on the
fleer.  He was listening--he was looking--"

But at this very moment, when old Kate had lowered her voice to a
whisper, and the tension at her listeners' heart-strings was the
greatest, a soft, heavy footstep was heard coming slowly, painfully as
it might be, up the turret stairs.

To say that every one was alarmed would but poorly describe their
feelings.  Old Kate's eyes seemed as big as watch-glasses.  Elsie
screamed, and clung to Archie.

"Who--oo--'s--Who's there?" cried Branson, and his voice sounded fearful
and far away.

No answer; but the steps drew nearer and nearer.  Then the curtain was
pushed aside, and in dashed--what? a ghost?--no, only honest great
Bounder.

Bounder had found out there was something going on, and that Fuss was up
there, and he didn't see why he should be left out in the cold.  That
was all; but the feeling of relief when he did appear was unprecedented.

Old Kate required another cup of tea after that.  Then Branson got out
his fiddle from a green baize bag; and if he had not played those merry
airs, I do not believe that old Kate would have had the courage to go
downstairs that night at all.

Archie's pony was great fun at first.  The best of it was that he had
never been broken in.  The Squire, or rather his bailiff, had bought him
out of a drove; so he was, literally speaking, as wild as the hills, and
as mad as a March hare.  But he soon knew Archie and Elsie, and, under
Branson's supervision, Scallowa was put into training on the lawn.  He
was led, he was walked, he was galloped.  But he reared, and kicked, and
rolled whenever he thought of it, and yet there was not a bit of vice
about him.

Spring had come, and early summer itself, before Scallowa permitted
Archie to ride him, and a week or two after this the difficulty would
have been to have told which of the two was the wilder and dafter,
Archie or Scallowa.  They certainly had managed to establish the most
amicable relations.  Whatever Scallowa thought, Archie agreed to, and
_vice versa_, and the pair were never out of mischief.  Of course Archie
was pitched off now and then, but he told Elsie he did not mind it, and
in fact preferred it to constant uprightness: it was a change.  But the
pony never ran away, because Archie always had a bit of carrot in his
pocket to give him when he got up off the ground.

Mr Walton assured Archie that these carrots accounted for his many
tumbles.  And there really did seem to be a foundation of truth about
this statement.  For of course the pony had soon come to know that it
was to his interest to throw his rider, and acted accordingly.  So after
a time Archie gave the carrot-payment up, and matters were mended.

It was only when school was over that Archie went for a canter, unless
he happened to get up very early in the morning for the purpose of
riding.  And this he frequently did, so that, before the summer was
done, Scallowa and Archie were as well known over all the countryside as
the postman himself.

Archie's pony was certainly not very long in the legs, but nevertheless
the leaps he could take were quite surprising.

On the second summer after Archie got this pony, both horse and rider
were about perfect in their training, and in the following winter he
appeared in the hunting-field with the greatest _sang-froid_, although
many of the farmers, on their weight-carrying hunters, could have jumped
over Archie, Scallowa, and all.  The boy had a long way to ride to the
hounds, and he used to start off the night before.  He really did not
care where he slept.  Old Kate used to make up a packet of sandwiches
for him, and this would be his dinner and breakfast.  Scallowa he used
to tie up in some byre, and as often as not Archie would turn in beside
him among the straw.  In the morning he would finish the remainder of
Kate's sandwiches, make his toilet in some running stream or lake, and
be as fresh as a daisy when the meet took place.

Both he and Scallowa were somewhat uncouth-looking.  Elsie, his sister,
had proposed that he should ride in scarlet, it would look so romantic
and pretty; but Archie only laughed, and said he would not feel at home
in such finery, and his "Eider Duck"--as he sometimes called the pony--
would not know him.  "Besides, Elsie," he said, "lying down among straw
with scarlets on wouldn't improve them."

But old Kate had given him a birthday present of a little Scotch
Glengarry cap with a real eagle's feather, and he always wore this in
the hunting-field.  He did so for two reasons; first, it pleased old
Kate; and, secondly, the cap stuck to his head; no breeze could blow it
off.

It was not long before Archie was known in the field as the "Little
Demon Huntsman."  And, really, had you seen Scallowa and he feathering
across a moor, his bonnet on the back of his head, and the pony's
immense mane blowing straight back in the wind, you would have thought
the title well earned.  In a straight run the pony could not keep up
with the long-legged horses; but Archie and he could dash through a
wood, and even swim streams, and take all manner of short cuts, so that
he was always in at the death.

The most remarkable trait in Archie's riding was that he could take
flying leaps from heights: only a Shetland pony could have done this.
Archie knew every yard of country, and he rather liked heading his
Lilliputian nag right away for a knoll or precipice, and bounding off it
like a roebuck or Scottish deerhound.  The first time he was observed
going straight for a bank of this kind he created quite a sensation.
"The boy will be killed!" was the cry, and every lady then drew rein and
held her breath.

Away went Scallowa, and they were on the bank, in the air, and landed
safely, and away again in less time that it takes me to tell of the
exploit.

The secret of the lad's splendid management of the pony was this: he
loved Scallowa, and Scallowa knew it.  He not only loved the little
horse, but studied his ways, so he was able to train him to do quite a
number of tricks, such as lying down "dead" to command, kneeling to
ladies--for Archie was a gallant lad--trotting round and round
circus-fashion, and ending every performance by coming and kissing his
master.  Between you and me, reader, a bit of carrot had a good deal to
do with the last trick, if not with the others also.

It occurred to this bold boy once that he might be able to take Scallowa
up the dark tower stairs to the boy's own room.  The staircase was
unusually wide, and the broken stones in it had been repaired with logs
of wood.  He determined to try; but he practised riding him blindfolded
first.  Then one day he put him at the stairs; he himself went first
with the bridle in his hand.

What should he do if he failed?  That is a question he did not stop to
answer.  One thing was quite certain, Scallowa could not turn and go
down again.  On they went, the two of them, all in the dark, except that
now and then a slit in the wall gave them a little light and, far
beneath, a pretty view of the country.  On and on, and up and up, till
within ten feet of the top.

Here Scallowa came to a dead stop, and the conversation between Archie
and his steed, although the latter did not speak English, might have
been as follows: "Come on, 'Eider Duck'!"

"Not a step farther, thank you."

"Come on, old horsie!  You can't turn, you know."

"No; not another step if I stay here till doomsday in the afternoon.
Going upstairs becomes monotonous after a time.  No; I'll be shot if I
budge!"

"You'll be shot if you don't.  Gee up, I say; gee up!"

"Gee up yourself; I'm going to sleep."

"I say, Scallowa, look here."

"What's that, eh? a bit of carrot?  Oh, here goes?"  And in a few
seconds more Scallowa was in the room, and had all he could eat of cakes
and carrots.  Archie was so delighted with his success that he must go
to the castle turret, and halloo for Branson and old Kate to come and
see what he had got in the tower.

Old Kate's astonishment knew no bounds, and Branson laughed till his
sides were sore.  Bounder, the Newfoundland, appeared also to appreciate
the joke, and smiled from lug to lug.

"How will you get him down?"

"Carrots," said Archie; "carrots, Branson.  The 'Duck' will do anything
for carrots."

The "Duck," however, was somewhat nervous at first, and half-way
downstairs even the carrots appeared to have lost their charm.

While Archie was wondering what he should do now, a loud explosion
seemed to shake the old tower to its very foundation.  It was only
Bounder barking in the rear of the pony.  But the sound had the desired
effect, and down came the "Duck," and away went Archie, so that in a few
minutes both were out on the grass.

And here Scallowa must needs relieve his feelings by lying down and
rolling; while great Bounder, as if he had quite appreciated all the fun
of the affair, and must do something to allay his excitement, went
tearing round in a circle, as big dogs do, so fast that it was almost
impossible to see anything of him distinctly.  He was a dark shape _et
preterea nihil_.

But after a time Scallowa got near to the stair, which only proves that
there is nothing in reason you cannot teach a Shetland pony, if you love
him and understand him.

The secret lies in the motto, "Fondly and firmly."  But, as already
hinted, a morsel of carrot comes in handy at times.

CHAPTER FIVE.

"BOYS WILL BE BOYS."

Bob Cooper was as good as his word, which he had pledged to Archie on
that night at Burley Old Farm, and Branson never saw him again in the
Squire's preserves.

Nor had he ever been obliged to appear before the Squire himself--who
was now a magistrate--to account for any acts of trespass in pursuit of
game on the lands of other lairds.  But this does not prove that Bob had
given up poaching.  He was discreetly silent about this matter whenever
he met Archie.

He had grown exceedingly fond of the lad, and used to be delighted when
he called at his mother's cottage on his "Eider Duck."  There was always
a welcome waiting Archie here, and whey to drink, which, it must be
admitted, is very refreshing on a warm summer's day.

Well, Bob on these occasions used to show Archie how to make flies, or
busk hooks, and gave him a vast deal of information about outdoor life
and sport generally.

The subject of poaching was hardly ever broached; only once, when he and
Archie were talking together in the little cottage, Bob himself
volunteered the following information:

"The gentry folks, Master Archie, think me a terrible man; and they
wonder I don't go and plough, or something.  La! they little know I've
been brought up in the hills.  Sport I must hae.  I couldna live away
from nature.  But I'm never cruel.  Heigho!  I suppose I must leave the
country, and seek for sport in wilder lands, where the man o' money
doesn't trample on the poor.  Only one thing keeps me here."

He glanced out of the window as he spoke to where his old mother was
cooking dinner _al fresco_--boiling a pot as the gipsy does, hung from a
tripod.

"I know, I know," said Archie.

"How old are you now, Master Archie?"

"Going on for fourteen."

"Is _that_ all?  Why ye're big eno' for a lad o' seventeen!"

This was true.  Archie was wondrous tall, and wondrous brown and
handsome.  His hardy upbringing and constant outdoor exercise, in
summer's shine or winter's snow, fully accounted for his stature and
looks.

"I'm almost getting too big for my pony."

"Ah! no, lad; Shetlands'll carry most anything."

"Well, I must be going, Bob Cooper.  Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Master Archie.  Ah! lad, if there were more o' your kind and
your father's in the country, there would be fewer bad men like--like
me."

"I don't like to hear you saying that, Bob.  Couldn't you be a good man
if you liked?  You're big enough."

The poacher laughed.

"Yes," he replied, "I'm big enough; but, somehow, goodness don't strike
right home to me like.  It don't come natural--that's it."

"My brother Rupert says it is so easy to be good, if you read and pray
God to teach and help you."

"Ah, Master Archie, your brother is good himself, but he doesn't know
all."

"My brother Rupert bade me tell you that; but, oh, Bob, how nice he can
speak.  I can't.  I can fish and shoot, and ride 'Eider Duck;' but I
can't say things so pretty as he can.  Well, good-bye again."

"Good-bye again, and tell your brother that I can't be good all at one
jump like, but I'll begin to try mebbe.  So long."

Archie Broadbent might have been said to have two kinds of home
education; one was thoroughly scholastic, the other very practical
indeed.  The Squire was one in a hundred perhaps.  He was devoted to his
farm, and busied himself in the field, manually as well as orally.  I
mean to say that he was of such an active disposition that, while
superintending and giving advice and orders, he put his hand to the
wheel himself.  So did Mr Walton, and whether it was harvest-time or
haymaking, you would have found Squire Broadbent, the tutor, and Archie
hard at it, and even little Elsie doing a little.

I would not like to say that the Squire was a radical, but he certainly
was no believer in the benefits of too much class distinction.  He
thought Burns was right when he said--

"A man's a man for a' that."

Was he any the less liked or less respected by his servants, because he
and his boy tossed hay in the same field with them?  I do not think so,
and I know that the work always went more merrily on when they were
there; and that laughing and even singing could be heard all day long.
Moreover, there was less beer drank, and more tea.  The Squire supplied
both liberally, and any man might have which he chose.  Consequently
there was less, far less, tired-headedness and languor in the evening.
Why, it was nothing uncommon for the lads and lasses of Burley Old Farm
to meet together on the lawn, after a hard day's toil, and dance for
hours to the merry notes of Branson's fiddle.

We have heard of model farms; this Squire's was one; but the servants,
wonderful to say, were contented.  There was never such a thing as
grumbling heard from one year's end to the other.

Christmas too was always kept in the good, grand old style.  Even a yule
log, drawn from the wood, was considered a property of the performances;
and as for good cheer, why there was "lashins" of it, as an Irishman
would say, and fun "galore," to borrow a word from beyond the Border.

Mr Walton was a scholarly person, though you might not have thought so,
had you seen him mowing turnips with his coat off.  He, however, taught
nothing to Archie or Rupert that might not have some practical bearing
on his after life.  Such studies as mathematics and algebra were dull,
in a manner of speaking; Latin was taught because no one can understand
English without it; French and German conversationally; geography not by
rote, but thoroughly; and everything else was either very practical and
useful, or very pleasant.

Music Archie loved, but did not care to play; his father did not force
him; but poor Rupert played the zither.  He loved it, and took to it
naturally.

Rupert got stronger as he grew older, and when Archie was fourteen and
he thirteen, the physician gave good hopes; and he was even able to walk
by himself a little.  But to some extent he would be "Poor Rupert" as
long as he lived.

He read and thought far more than Archie, and--let me whisper it--he
prayed more fervently.

"Oh, Roup," Archie would say, "I should like to be as good as you!
Somehow, I don't feel to need to pray so much, and to have the Lord
Jesus so close to me."

It was a strange conceit this, but Rupert's answer was a good one.

"Yes, Archie, I need comfort more; but mind you, brother, the day may
come when you'll want comfort of this kind too."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Old Kate really was a queer old witch of a creature, superstitious to a
degree.  Here is an example: One day she came rushing--without taking
time to knock even--into the breakfast parlour.

"Oh, Mistress Broadbent, what a ghast I've gotten!"

"Dear me!" said the Squire's wife; "sit down and tell us.  What is it,
poor Kate?"

"Oh!  Oh!" she sighed.  "Nae wonder my puir legs ached.  Oh! sirs! sirs!

"Ye ken my little pantry?  Well, there's been a board doon on the fleer
for ages o' man, and to-day it was taken out to be scrubbit, and what
think ye was reveeled?"

"I couldn't guess."

"Words, 'oman; words, printed and painted on the timmer--'_Sacred to the
Memory of Dinah Brown, Aged 99_.'  A tombstone, 'oman--a wooden
gravestone, and me standin' on't a' these years."

Here the Squire was forced to burst out into a hearty laugh, for which
his wife reprimanded him by a look.

There was no mistake about the "wooden tombstone," but that this was the
cause of old Kate's rheumatism one might take the liberty to doubt.

Kate was a staunch believer in ghosts, goblins, fairies, kelpies,
brownies, spunkies, and all the rest of the supernatural family; and I
have something to relate in connection with this, though it is not
altogether to the credit of my hero, Archie.

Old Kate and young Peter were frequent visitors to the room in the
tower, for the tea Archie made, and the fires he kept on, were both most
excellent in their way.

"Boys will be boys," and Archie was a little inclined to practical
joking.  It made him laugh, so he said, and laughing made one fat.

It happened that, one dark winter's evening, old Kate was invited up
into the tower, and Branson with Peter came also.  Archie volunteered a
song, and Branson played many a fine old air on his fiddle, so that the
first part of the evening passed away pleasantly and even merrily
enough.  Old Kate drank cup after cup of tea as she sat in that weird
old chair, and, by-and-by, Archie, the naughty boy that he was, led the
conversation round to ghosts.  The ancient dame was in her element now;
she launched forth into story after story, and each was more
hair-stirring than its predecessor.

Elsie and Archie occupied their favourite place on a bear's skin in
front of the low fire; and while Kate still droned on, and Branson
listened with eyes and mouth wide open, the boy might have been noticed
to stoop down, and whisper something in his sister's ear.

Almost immediately after a rattling of chains could be heard in one of
the turrets.  Both Kate and Branson started, and the former could not be
prevailed upon to resume her story till Archie lit a candle and walked
all round the room, drawing back the turret curtains to show no one was
there.

Once again old Kate began, and once again chains were heard to rattle,
and a still more awesome sound followed--a long, low, deep-bass groan,
while at the same time, strange to say, the candle in Archie's hand
burnt blue.  To add to the fearsomeness of the situation, while the
chain continued to rattle, and the groaning now and then, there was a
very appreciable odour of sulphur in the apartment.  This was the
climax.  Old Kate screamed, and the big keeper, Branson, fell on his
knees in terror.  Even Elsie, though she had an inkling of what was to
happen, began to feel afraid.

"There now, granny," cried Archie, having carried the joke far enough,
"here is the groaning ghost."  As he spoke he produced a pair of kitchen
bellows, with a musical reed in the pipe, which he proceeded to sound in
old Kate's very face, looking a very mischievous imp while he did so.

"Oh," said old Kate, "what a scare the laddie has given me.  But the
chain?"

Archie pulled a string, and the chain rattled again.  "And the candle?
That was na canny."

"A dust of sulphur in the wick, granny."  Big Branson looked ashamed of
himself, and old Kate herself began to smile once more.

"But how could ye hae the heart to scare an old wife sae, Master
Archie?"

"Oh, granny, we got up the fun just to show you there were no such
things as ghosts.  Rupert says--and he should know, because he's always
reading--that ghosts are always rats or something."

"Ye maunna frichten me again, laddie.  Will ye promise?"

"Yes, granny, there's my hand on it.  Now sit down and have another cup
of tea, and Elsie will play and sing."

Elsie could sing now, and sweet young voice she had, that seemed to
carry you to happier lands.  Branson always said it made him feel a boy
again, wandering through the woods in summer, or chasing the butterflies
over flowery beds.

And so, albeit Archie had carried his practical joke out to his own
satisfaction, if not to that of every one else, this evening, like many
others that had come before it, and came after it, passed away
pleasantly enough.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was in the spring of the same year, and during the Easter holidays,
that a little London boy came down to reside with his aunt, who lived in
one of Archie's father's cottages.

Young Harry Brown had been sent to the country for the express purpose
of enjoying himself, and set about this business forthwith.  He made up
to Archie; in fact, he took so many liberties, and talked to him so
glibly, and with so little respect, that, although Archie had imbued
much of his father's principles as regards liberalism, he did not half
like it.

Perhaps, after all, it was only the boy's manner, for he had never been
to the country at all before, and looked upon every one--Archie
included--who did not know London, as jolly green.  But Archie did not
appreciate it, and, like the traditional worm, he turned, and once again
his love for practical joking got the better of his common-sense.

"Teach us somefink," said Harry one day, turning his white face up.  He
was older, perhaps, than Archie, but decidedly smaller.  "Teach us
somefink, and when you comes to Vitechapel to wisit me, I'll teach you
summut.  My eye, won't yer stare!"

The idea of this white-chafted, unwholesome-looking cad, expecting that
_he_, Squire Broadbent's son, would visit _him_ in Whitechapel!  But
Archie managed to swallow his wrath and pocket his pride for the time
being.

"What shall I teach you, eh?  I suppose you know that potatoes don't
grow on trees, nor geese upon gooseberry-bushes?"

"Yes; I know that taters is dug out of the hearth.  I'm pretty fly for a
young un."

"Can you ride?"

"No."

"Well, meet me here to-morrow at the same time, and I'll bring my
'Duck.'"

"Look 'ere, Johnnie Raw, ye said '_ride_,' not '_swim_.'  A duck teaches
swimmin', not ridin'.  None o' yer larks now!"

Next day Archie swept down upon the Cockney in fine form, meaning to
impress him.

The Cockney was not much impressed; I fear he was not very
impressionable.

"My heye, Johnnie Raw," he roared, "vere did yer steal the moke?"

"Look you here, young Whitechapel, you'll have to guard that tongue of
yours a little, else communications will be cut.  Do you see?"

"It _is_ a donkey, ain't it, Johnnie?"

"Come on to the field and have a ride."

Five minutes afterwards the young Cockney on the "Eider Duck's" back was
tearing along the field at railway speed.  John Gilpin's ride was
nothing to it, nor Tam O'Shanter's on his grey mare, Meg!  Both these
worthies had stuck to the saddle, but this horseman rode upon the neck
of the steed.  Scallowa stopped short at the gate, but the boy flew
over.

Archie found his friend rubbing himself, and looking very serious, and
he felt happier now.

"Call that 'ere donkey a heider duck?  H'm?  I allers thought heider
ducks was soft!

"One to you, Johnnie.  I don't want to ride hany more."

"What else shall I teach you?"

"Hey?"

"Come, I'll show you over the farm."

"Honour bright?  No larks!"

"Yes; no larks!"

"Say honour."

"Honour."

Young Whitechapel had not very much faith in his guide, however; but he
saw more country wonders that day than ever he could have dreamt of;
while his strange remarks kept Archie continually laughing.

Next day the two boys went bird-nesting, and really Archie was very
mischievous.  He showed him a hoody-crow's nest, which he represented as
a green plover's or lapwing's; and a blackbird's nest in a furze-bush,
which he told Harry was a magpie's; and so on, and so forth, till at
last he got tired of the cheeky Cockney, and sent him off on a mile walk
to a cairn of stones, on which he told him crows sometimes sat and
"might have a nest."

Then Archie threw himself on the moss, took out a book, and began to
read.  He was just beginning to repent of his conduct to Harry Brown,
and meant to go up to him like a man when he returned, and crave his
forgiveness.

But somehow, when Harry came back he had so long a face, that wicked
Archie burst out laughing, and forgot all about his good resolve.

"What shall I teach you next?" said Archie.

"Draw it mild, Johnnie; it's 'Arry's turn.  It's the boy's turn to teach
you summut.  Shall we 'ave it hout now wi' the raw uns?  Bunches o'
fives I means.  Hey?"

"I really don't understand you."

"Ha! ha! ha!  I knowed yer was a green 'un, Johnnie.  Can yer fight?
Hey?  'Cause I'm spoilin' for a row."

And Harry Brown threw off his jacket, and began to dance about in
terribly knowing attitudes.

"You had better put on your clothes again," said Archie.  "Fight _you_?
Why I could fling you over the fishpond."

"Ah!  I dessay; but flingin' ain't fightin', Johnnie.  Come, there's no
getting hout of it.  It ain't the first young haristocrat I've
frightened; an' now you're afraid."

That was enough for Archie.  And the next moment the lads were at it.

But Archie had met his match; he went down a dozen times.  He remained
down the last time.

"It is wonderful," he said.  "I quite admire you.  But I've had enough;
I'm beaten."

"Spoken like a plucked 'un.  Haven't swallowed yer teeth, hey?"

"No; but I'll have a horrid black-eye."

"Raw beef, my boy; raw beef."

"Well; I confess I've caught a tartar."

"An' I caught a crab yesterday.  Wot about your eider duck?  My heye!
Johnnie, I ain't been able to sit down conweniently since.  I say,
Johnnie?"

"Well."

"Friends, hey?"

"All right."

Then the two shook hands, and young Whitechapel said if Archie would buy
two pairs of gloves he would show him how it was done.  So Archie did,
and became an apt pupil in the noble art of self-defence; which may be
used at times, but never abused.

However, Archie Broadbent never forgot that lesson in the wood.

CHAPTER SIX.

"JOHNNIE'S GOT THE GRIT IN HIM."

On the day of his fight with young Harry in the wood, Archie returned
home to find both his father and Mr Walton in the drawing-room alone.
His father caught the lad by the arm.  "Been tumbling again off that
pony of yours?"

"No, father, worse.  I'm sure I've done wrong."  He then told them all
about the practical joking, and the _finale_.

"Well," said the Squire, "there is only one verdict.  What do you say,
Walton?"

"Serve him right!"

"Oh, I know that," said Archie; "but isn't it lowering our name to keep
such company?"

"It isn't raising our name, nor growing fresh laurels either, for you to
play practical jokes on this poor London lad.  But as to being in his
company, Archie, you may have to be in worse yet.  But listen!  I want
my son to behave as a gentleman, even in low company.  Remember that
boy, and despise no one, whatever be his rank in life.  Now, go and beg
your mother's and sister's forgiveness for having to appear before them
with a black-eye."

"Archie!" his father called after him, as he was leaving the room.

"Yes, dad?"

"How long do you think it will be before you get into another scrape?"

"I couldn't say for certain, father.  I'm sure I don't want to get into
any.  They just seem to come."

"There's no doubt about one thing, Mr Broadbent," said the tutor
smiling, when Archie had left.

"And that is?"

"He's what everybody says he is, a chip of the old block.  Headstrong,
and all that; doesn't look before he leaps."

"Don't _I_, Walton?"

"Squire, I'm not going to flatter you.  You know you don't."

"Well, my worthy secretary," said the Squire, "I'm glad you speak so
plainly.  I can always come to you for advice when--"

"When you want to," said Walton, laughing.  "All right, mind you do.
I'm proud to be your factor, as well as tutor to your boys.  Now what
about that Chillingham bull?  You won't turn him into the west field?"

"Why not?  The field is well fenced.  All our picturesque beasts are
there.  He is only a show animal, and he is really only a baby."

"True, the bull is not much more than a baby, but--"

The baby in question was the gift of a noble friend to Squire Broadbent;
and so beautiful and picturesque did he consider him, that he would have
permitted him to roam about the lawns, if there did not exist the
considerable probability that he would play battledore and shuttlecock
with the visitors, and perhaps toss old Kate herself over the garden
wall.

So he was relegated to the west field.  This really was a park to all
appearance.  A few pet cattle grazed in it, a flock of sheep, and a
little herd of deer.  They all lived amicably together, and sought
shelter under the same spreading trees from the summer's sun.  The
cattle were often changed, so were the sheep, but the deer were as much
fixtures as the trees themselves.

The changing of sheep or cattle meant fine fun for Archie.  He would be
there in all his glory, doing the work that was properly that of
herdsmen and collie dogs.  There really was not a great deal of need for
collies when Archie was there, mounted on his wild Shetland pony, his
darling "Eider Duck" Scallowa; and it was admittedly a fine sight to see
the pair of them--they seemed made for each other--feathering away
across the field, heading and turning the drove.  At such times he would
be armed with a long whip, and occasionally a beast more rampageous than
the rest would separate itself from the herd, and, with tail erect and
head down, dash madly over the grass.  This would be just the test for
Archie's skill that he longed for.  Away he would go at a glorious
gallop; sometimes riding neck and neck with the runaway and plying the
whip, at other times getting round and well ahead across the beast's
bows with shout and yell, but taking care to manoeuvre so as to steer
clear of an ugly rush.

In this field always dwelt one particular sheep.  It had, like the pony,
been a birthday present, and, like the pony, it hailed from the _Ultima
Thule_ of the British North.  If ever there was a demon sheep in
existence, surely this was the identical quadruped.  Tall and lank, and
daft-looking, it possessed almost the speed of a red deer, and was as
full of mischief as ever sheep could be.  The worst of the beast was,
that he led all the other woolly-backs into mischief; and whether it
proposed a stampede round the park, ending with a charge through the
ranks of the deer, or a well-planned attempt at escape from the field
altogether, the other sheep were always willing to join, and sometimes
the deer themselves.

Archie loved that sheep next to the pony, and there were times when he
held a meet of his own.  Mousa, as he called him, would be carted, after
the fashion of the Queen's deer, to a part of the estate, miles from
home; but it was always for home that Mousa headed, though not in a true
line.  No, this wonderful sheep would take to the woods as often as not,
and scamper over the hills and far away, so that Archie had many a fine
run; and the only wonder is that Scallowa and he did not break their
necks.

The young Chillingham bull was as beautiful as a dream--a nightmare for
instance.  He was not very large, but sturdy, active, and strong.
Milk-white, or nearly so, with black muzzle and crimson ears inside,
and, you might say, eyes as well.  Pure white black-tipped horns, erect
almost, and a bit of a mane which added to his picturesqueness and wild
beauty.  His name was Lord Glendale, and his pedigree longer than the
Laird o' Cockpen's.

Now, had his lordship behaved himself, he certainly would have been an
ornament to the society of Westfield.  But he wouldn't or couldn't.
Baby though he was, he attempted several times to vivisect his
companions; and one day, thinking perhaps that Mousa did not pay him
sufficient respect, his lordship made a bold attempt to throw him over
the moon.  So it was determined that Lord Glendale should be removed
from Westfield.  At one end of the park was a large, strong fence, and
Branson and others came to the conclusion that Glendale would be best
penned, and have a ring put in his nose.

Yes, true; but penning a Chillingham wild baby-bull is not so simple as
penning a letter.  There is more _present_ risk about the former
operation, if not _future_.

"Well, it's got to be done," said Branson.

"Yes," said Archie, who was not far off, "it's got to be done."

"Oh, Master Archie, you _can't_ be in this business!"

"Can't I, Branson?  You'll see."

And Branson did see.  He saw Archie ride into the west field on
Scallowa, both of them looking in splendid form.  Men with poles and
ropes and dogs followed, some of the former appearing not to relish the
business by any means.

However, it would probably be an easier job than they thought.  The plan
would be to get the baby-bull in the centre of the other cattle,
manoeuvre so as to keep him there, and so pen all together.--This might
have been done had Archie kept away, but it so happened that his
lordship was on particularly good terms with himself this morning.
Moreover, he had never seen a Shetland pony before.  What more natural,
therefore, than a longing on the part of Lord Glendale to examine the
little horse _inside_ as well as out?

"Go gently now, lads," cried Branson.  "Keep the dogs back, Peter, we
must na' alarm them."

Lord Glendale did not condescend to look at Branson.  He detached
himself quietly from the herd, and began to eat up towards the spot
where Archie and his "Duck" were standing like some pretty statue.
Eating up towards him is the correct expression, as everyone who knows
bulls will admit; for his lordship did not want to alarm Archie till he
was near enough for the grand rush.  Then the fun would commence, and
Lord Glendale would see what the pony was made of.  While he kept
eating, or rather pretending to eat, his sly red eyes were fastened on
Archie.

Now, had it been Harry Brown, the Whitechapel boy, this ruse on the part
of the baby-bull might have been successful.  But Archie Broadbent was
too old for his lordship.  He pretended, however, to take no notice; but
just as the bull was preparing for the rush he laughed derisively,
flicked Lord Glendale with the whip, and started.

Lord Glendale roared with anger and disappointment.

"Oh, Master Archie," cried Branson, "you shouldn't have done that!"

Now the play began in earnest.  Away went Archie on Scallowa, and after
him tore the bull.  Archie's notion was to tire the brute out, and there
was some very pretty riding and manoeuvring between the two
belligerents.  Perhaps the bull was all too young to be easily tired,
for the charges he made seemed to increase in fierceness each time, but
Archie easily eluded him.

Branson drove the cattle towards the pen, and got them inside, then he
and his men concentrated all their attention on the combatants.

"The boy'll be killed as sure as a gun!" cried the keeper.  Archie did
not think so, evidently; and it is certain he had his wits about him,
for presently he rode near enough to shout:

"Ease up a hurdle from the back of the pen, and stand by to open it as I
ride through."

The plan was a bold one, and Branson saw through it at once.

Down he ran with his men, and a back hurdle was loosened.

"All right!" he shouted.

And now down thundered Scallowa and Archie, the bull making a beautiful
second.

In a minute or less he had entered the pen, but this very moment the
style of the fight changed somewhat; for had not the attention of
everyone been riveted on the race, they might have seen the great
Newfoundland dashing over the field, and just as Lord Glendale was
entering the pen, Bounder pinned him short by the tail.

The brute roared with pain and wheeled round.  Meanwhile Archie had
escaped on the pony, and the back hurdle was put up again.  But how
about the new phase the fight had taken?

Once more the boy's quick-wittedness came to the front.  He leapt off
the pony and back into the pen, calling aloud, "Bounder!  Bounder!
Bounder!"

In rushed the obedient dog, and after him came the bull; up went the
hurdle, and off went Archie!  But, alas! for the unlucky Bounder.  He
was tossed right over into the field a moment afterwards, bleeding
frightfully from a wound in his side.

To all appearance Bounder was dead.  In an agony of mind the boy tried
to staunch the blood with his handkerchief; and when at last the poor
dog lifted his head, and licked his young master's face, the relief to
his feelings was so great that he burst into tears.  Archie was only a
boy after all, though a bold and somewhat mischievous one.

Bounder now drank water brought from a stream in a hat.  He tried to get
up, but was too weak to walk, so he was lifted on to Scallowa's broad
back and held there, and thus they all returned to Burley Old Farm.

So ended the adventure with the baby-bull of Chillingham.  The ring was
put in his nose next day, and I hope it did not hurt much.  But old Kate
had Bounder as a patient in the kitchen corner for three whole weeks.

A day or two after the above adventure, and just as the Squire was
putting on his coat in the hall, who should march up to the door and
knock but Harry Brown himself.

Most boys would have gone to the backdoor, but shyness was not one of
Harry's failings.

"'Ullo!" he said; for the door opened almost on the instant he knocked,
"Yer don't take long to hopen to a chap then."

"No," said Squire Broadbent, smiling down on the lad; "fact is, boy, I
was just going out."

"Going for a little houting, hey?  Is 'pose now you're Johnnie's
guv'nor?"

"I think I know whom you refer to.  Master Archie, isn't it? and you're
the little London lad?"

"I don't know nuffink about no Harchies.  P'r'aps it _is_ Harchibald.
But I allers calls my friends wot they looks like.  He looks like
Johnnie.  Kinsevently, guv'nor, he _is_ Johnnie to me.  D'ye twig?"

"I think I do," said Squire Broadbent, laughing; "and you want to see my
boy?"

"Vot I vants is this 'ere.  Johnnie is a rare game un.  'Scuse me,
guv'nor, but Johnnie's got the grit in him, and I vant to say good-bye;
nuffink else, guv'nor."

Here Harry actually condescended to point a finger at his lip by way of
salute, and just at the same moment Archie himself came round the
corner.  He looked a little put out, but his father only laughed, and he
saw it was all right.

These were Harry's last words: "Good-bye, then.  You've got the grit in
ye, Johnnie.  And if hever ye vants a friend, telegraph to 'Arry Brown,
Esq., of Vitechapel, 'cos ye know, Johnnie, the king may come in the
cadger's vay.  Adoo.  So long.  Blue-lights, and hoff we goes."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

"THEY'RE UP TO SOME BLACK WORK TO-NIGHT."

Another summer flew all too fast away at Burley Old Farm and Castle
Tower.  The song of birds was hushed in the wild woods, even the
corn-crake had ceased its ventriloquistic notes, and the plaintive wee
lilt of the yellow-hammer was heard no more.  The corn grew ripe on
braeland and field, was cut down, gathered, stooked, and finally carted
away.  The swallows flew southwards, but the peewits remained in droves,
and the starlings took up their abode with the sheep.  Squires and
sturdy farmers might now have been met tramping, gun in hand, over the
stubble, through the dark green turnip-fields, and over the distant
moorlands, where the crimson heather still bloomed so bonnie.

Anon, the crisp leaves, through which the wind now swept with harsher
moan, began to change to yellows, crimsons, and all the hues of sunset,
and by-and-by it was hunting-time again.

Archie was unusually thoughtful one night while the family sat, as of
yore, round the low fire in the green parlour, Elsie and Rupert being
busy in their corner over a game of chess.

"In a brown study, Archie?" said his mother.

"_No_, mummie; that is, Yes, I was thinking--"

"Wonders will never cease," said Rupert, without looking up.  Archie
looked towards him, but his brother only smiled at the chessmen.  The
boy was well enough now to joke and laugh.  Best of signs and most
hopeful.

"I was thinking that my legs are almost too long now to go to the meet
on poor Scallowa.  Not that Scallowa would mind.  But don't you think,
mummie dear, that a long boy on a short pony looks odd?"

"A little, Archie."

"Well, why couldn't father let me have Tell to-morrow?  He is not going
out himself."

His father was reading the newspaper, but he looked at Archie over it.
Though only his eyes were visible, the boy knew he was smiling.

"If you think you won't break your neck," he said, "you may take Tell."

"Oh," Archie replied, "I'm quite sure I won't break _my_ neck!"

The Squire laughed now outright.

"You mean you _might_ break Tell's, eh?"

"Well, dad, I didn't _say_ that."

"_No_, Archie, but you _thought_ it."

"I'm afraid, dad, the emphasis fell on the wrong word."

"Never mind, Archie, where the emphasis falls; but if you let Tell fall
the emphasis will fall where you won't like it."

"All right, dad, I'll chance the emphasis.  Hurrah!"

The Squire and Mr Walton went off early next day to a distant town, and
Branson had orders to bring Tell round to the hall door at nine sharp;
which he did.  The keeper was not groom, but he was the tallest man
about, and Archie thought he would want a leg up.

Archie's mother was there, and Elsie, and Rupert, and old Kate, and
little Peter, to say nothing of Bounder and Fuss, all to see "t' young
Squire mount."  But no one expected the sight they did see when Archie
appeared; for the lad's sense of fun and the ridiculous was quite
irrepressible.  And the young rascal had dressed himself from top to toe
in his father's hunting-rig--boots, cords, red coat, hat, and all
complete.  Well, as the boots were a mile and a half too big for him--
more or less, and the breeches and coat would have held at least three
Archie Broadbents, while the hat nearly buried his head, you may guess
what sort of a guy he looked.  Bounder drew back and barked at him.  Old
Kate turned her old eyes cloudwards, and held up her palms.  Branson for
politeness' sake _tried_ not to laugh; but it was too much, he went off
at last like a soda-water cork, and the merriment rippled round the ring
like wildfire.  Even poor Rupert laughed till the tears came.  Then back
into the house ran Archie, and presently re-appeared dressed in his own
velvet suit.

But Archie had not altogether cooled down yet.  He had come to the
conclusion that having an actual leg up, was not an impressive way of
getting on to his hunter; so after kissing his mother, and asking Rupert
to kiss Elsie for him, he bounded at one spring to Branson's shoulder,
and from this elevation bowed and said "good morning," then let himself
neatly down to the saddle.

"Tally ho!  Yoicks!" he shouted.  Then clattered down the avenue,
cleared the low, white gate, and speedily disappeared across the fields.

Archie had promised himself a rare day's run, and he was not
disappointed.  The fox was an old one and a wily one--and, I might add,
a very gentlemanly old fox--and he led the field one of the prettiest
dances that Dawson, the greyest-headed huntsman in the North, ever
remembered; but there was no kill.  No; Master Reynard knew precisely
where he was going, and got home all right, and went quietly to sleep as
soon as the pack drew off.

The consequence was that Archie found himself still ten miles from home
as gloaming was deepening into night.  Another hour he thought would
find him at Burley Old Farm.  But people never know what is before them,
especially hunting people.

It had been observed by old Kate, that after Archie left in the morning,
Bounder seemed unusually sad.  He refused his breakfast, and behaved so
strangely that the superstitious dame was quite alarmed.

"I'll say naething to the ladies," she told one of the servants, "but,
woe is me!  I fear that something awfu' is gain tae happen.  I houp the
young laddie winna brak his neck.  He rode awa' sae daft-like.  He is
just his faither a' ower again."

Bounder really had something on his mind; for dogs do think far more
than we give them credit for.  Well, the Squire was off, and also Mr
Walton, and now his young master had flown.  What did it mean?  Why he
would find out before he was many hours older.  So ran Bounder's
cogitations.

To think was to act with Bounder; so up he jumped, and off he trotted.
He followed the scent for miles; then he met an errant collie, and
forgetting for a time all about his master, he went off with him.  There
were many things to be done, and Bounder was not in a hurry.  They
chased cows and sheep together merely for mischief's sake; they gave
chase to some rabbits, and when the bunnies took to their holes, they
spent hours in a vain attempt to dig them out.  The rabbits knew they
could never succeed, so they quietly washed their faces and laughed at
them.

They tired at last, and with their heads and paws covered with mould,
commenced to look for mice among the moss.  They came upon a wild bees'
home in a bank, and tore this up, killing the inmates bee by bee as they
scrambled out wondering what the racket meant.  They snapped at the bees
who were returning home, and when both had their lips well stung they
concluded to leave the hive alone.  Honey wasn't _very_ nice after all,
they said.  At sunset they bathed in a mill-dam and swam about till
nearly dusk, because the miller's boy was obliging enough to throw in
sticks for them.  Then the miller's boy fell in himself, and Bounder
took him out and laid him on the bank to drip, neither knowing nor
caring that he had saved a precious life.  But the miller's boy's mother
appeared on the scene and took the weeping lad away, inviting the dogs
to follow.  She showered blessings on their heads, especially on "the
big black one's," as the urchin called Bounder, and she put bread and
milk before them and bade them eat.  The dogs required no second
bidding, and just as Bounder was finishing his meal the sound of hoofs
was heard on the road, and out bounced Bounder, the horse swerved, the
rider was thrown, and the dog began to wildly lick his face.

"So it's you, is it, Bounder?" said Archie.  "A nice trick.  And now
I'll have to walk home a good five miles."

Bounder backed off and barked.  Why did his master go off and leave him
then?  That is what the dog was saying.

"Come on, boy," said Archie.  "There's no help for it; but I do feel
stiff."

They could go straight over the hill, and through the fields and the
wood, that was one consolation.

So off they set, and Archie soon forgot his stiffness and warmed to his
work.

Bounder followed close to his heels, as if he were a very old and a very
wise dog indeed; and harrying bees' hives, or playing with millers'
boys, could find no place in his thoughts.

Archie lost his way once or twice, and it grew quite dark.  He was
wondering what he should do when he noticed a light spring up not far
away, and commenced walking towards it.  It came from the little window
of a rustic cottage, and the boy knew at once now in which way to steer.

Curiosity, however, impelled him to draw near to the window.  He gave
just one glance in, but very quickly drew back.  Sitting round a table
was a gang of half a dozen poachers.  He knew them as the worst and most
notorious evil-doers in all the country round.  They were eating and
drinking, and guns stood in the corners, while the men themselves seemed
ready to be off somewhere.

Away went Archie.  He wanted no nearer acquaintance with a gang like
that.

In his way home he had to pass Bob Cooper's cottage, and thought he
might just look in, because Bob had a whole book of new flies getting
ready for him, and perhaps they were done.

Bob was out, and his mother was sitting reading the good Book by the
light of a little black oil lamp.  She looked very anxious, and said she
felt so.  Her laddie had "never said where he was going.  Only just went
away out, and hadn't come back."

It was Archie's turn now to be anxious, when he thought of the gang, and
the dark work they might be after.  Bob was not among them, but who
could tell that he would not join afterwards?

He bade the widow "Good-night," and went slowly homewards thinking.

He found everyone in a state of extreme anxiety.  Hours ago Tell had
galloped to his stable door, and if there be anything more calculated to
raise alarm than another, it is the arrival at his master's place of a
riderless horse.

But Archie's appearance, alive and intact, dispelled the cloud, and
dinner was soon announced.

"Oh, by the way," said Archie's tutor, as they were going towards the
dining-room, "your old friend Bob Cooper has been here, and wants to see
you!  I think he is in the kitchen now."

Away rushed Archie, and sure enough there was Bob eating supper in old
Kate's private room.

He got up as Archie's entered, and looked shy, as people of his class do
at times.

Archie was delighted.

"I brought the flies, and some new sorts that I think will do for the
Kelpie burn," he said.

"Well, I'm going to dine, Bob; you do the same.  Don't go till I see
you.  How long have you been here?"

"Two hours, anyhow."

When Archie returned he invited Bob to the room in the Castle Tower.
Kate must come too, and Branson with his fiddle.

Away went Archie and his rough friend, and were just finishing a long
debate about flies and fishing when Kate and Peter, and Branson and
Bounder, came up the turret stairs and entered the room.

Archie then told them all of what he had seen that night at the cottage.

"Mark my words for it," said Bob, shaking his head, "they're up to some
black work to-night."

"You mustn't go yet awhile, Bob," Archie said.  "We'll have some fun,
and you're as well where you are."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE WIDOW'S LONELY HUT.

Bob Cooper bade Archie and Branson good-bye that night at the bend of
the road, some half mile from his own home, and trudged sturdily on in
the starlight.  There was sufficient light "to see men as trees
walking."

"My mother'll think I'm out in th' woods," Bob said to himself.  "Well,
she'll be glad when she knows she's wrong this time."

Once or twice he started, and looked cautiously, half-fearfully, round
him; for he felt certain he saw dark shadows in the field close by, and
heard the stealthy tread of footsteps.

He grasped the stout stick he carried all the firmer, for the poacher
had made enemies of late by separating himself from a well-known gang of
his old associates--men who, like the robbers in the ancient ballad--

  "Slept all day and waked all night,
  And kept the country round in fright."

On he went; and the strange, uncomfortable feeling at his heart was
dispelled as, on rounding a corner of the road, he saw the light
glinting cheerfully from his mother's cottage.

"Poor old creature," he murmured half aloud, "many a sore heart I've
given her.  But I'll be a better boy now.  I'll--"

"Now, lads," shouted a voice, "have at him!"

"Back!" cried Bob Cooper, brandishing his cudgel.  "Back, or it'll be
worse for you!"

The dark shadows made a rush.  Bob struck out with all his force, and
one after another fell beneath his arm.  But a blow from behind disabled
him at last, and down he went, just as his distracted mother came
rushing, lantern in hand, from her hut.  There was the sharp click of
the handcuffs, and Bob Cooper was a prisoner.  The lantern-light fell on
the uniforms of policemen.

"What is it?  Oh, what has my laddie been doin'?"

"Murder, missus, or something very like it!  There has been dark doin's
in th' hill to-night!"

Bob grasped the nearest policeman by the arm with his manacled hands.
"When--when did ye say it had happened?"

"You know too well, lad.  Not two hours ago.  Don't sham innocence; it
sits but ill on a face like yours."

"Mother," cried Bob bewilderingly, "I know nothing of it!  I'm
innocent!"

But his mother heard not his words.  She had fainted, and with rough
kindness was carried into the hut and laid upon the bed.  When she
revived some what they left her.

It was a long, dismal ride the unhappy man had that night; and indeed it
was well on in the morning before the party with their prisoner reached
the town of B--.

Bob's appearance before a magistrate was followed almost instantly by
his dismissal to the cells again.  The magistrate knew him.  The police
had caught him "red-handed," so they said, and had only succeeded in
making him prisoner "after a fierce resistance."

"Remanded for a week," without being allowed to say one word in his own
defence.

The policeman's hint to Bob's mother about "dark doin's in th' hill" was
founded on fearful facts.  A keeper had been killed after a terrible
_melee_ with the gang of poachers, and several men had been severely
wounded on both sides.

The snow-storm that came on early on the morning after poor Bob Cooper's
capture was one of the severest ever remembered in Northumbria.  The
frost was hard too all day long.  The snow fell incessantly, and lay in
drifts like cliffs, fully seven feet high, across the roads.

The wind blew high, sweeping the powdery snow hither and thither in
gusts.  It felt for all the world like going into a cold shower-bath to
put one's head even beyond the threshold of the door.  Nor did the storm
abate even at nightfall; but next day the wind died down, and the face
of the sky became clear, only along the southern horizon the white
clouds were still massed like hills and cliffs.

It was not until the afternoon that news reached Burley Old Farm of the
fight in the woods and death of the keeper.  It was a sturdy old postman
who had brought the tidings.  He had fought his way through the snow
with the letters, and his account of the battle had well-nigh caused old
Kate to swoon away.  When Mary, the little parlour maid, carried the
mail in to her master she did not hesitate to relate what she had heard.

Squire Broadbent himself with Archie repaired to the kitchen, and found
the postman surrounded by the startled servants, who were drinking in
every word he said.

"One man killed, you say, Allan?"

"Ay, sir, killed dead enough.  And it's a providence they caught the
murderer.  Took him up, sir, just as he was a-goin' into his mother's
house, as cool as a frosted turnip, sir."

"Well, Allan, that is satisfactory.  And what is his name?"

"Bob Cooper, sir, known all over the--"

"Bob Cooper!" cried Archie aghast.  "Why, father, he was in our room in
the turret at the time."

"So he was," said the Squire.  "Taken on suspicion I suppose.  But this
must be seen to at once.  Bad as we know Bob to have been, there is
evidence enough that he has reformed of late.  At all events, he shall
not remain an hour in gaol on such a charge longer than we can help."

Night came on very soon that evening.  The clouds banked up again, the
snow began to fall, and the wind moaned round the old house and castle
in a way that made one feel cold to the marrow even to listen to.

Morning broke slowly at last, and Archie was early astir.  Tell, with
the Shetland pony and a huge great hunter, were brought to the door, and
shortly after breakfast the party started for B--.

Branson bestrode the big hunter--he took the lead--and after him came
the Squire on Tell, and Archie on Scallowa.  This daft little horse was
in fine form this morning, having been in stall for several days.  He
kept up well with the hunters, though there were times that both he and
his rider were all but buried in the gigantic wreaths that lay across
the road.  Luckily the wind was not high, else no living thing could
long have faced that storm.

The cottage in which widow Cooper had lived ever since the death of her
husband was a very primitive and a very poor one.  It consisted only of
two rooms, what are called in Scotland "a butt and a ben."  Bob had been
only a little barefooted boy when his father died, and probably hardly
missed him.  He had been sent regularly to school before then, but not
since, for his mother had been unable to give him further education.
All their support was the morsel of garden, a pig or two, and the fowls,
coupled with whatever the widow could make by knitting ribbed stockings
for the farmer folks around.  Bob grew up wild, just as the birds and
beasts of the hills and woods do.  While, however, he was still a little
mite of a chap, the keepers even seldom molested him.  It was only
natural, they thought, for a boy to act the part of a squirrel or
polecat, and to be acquainted with every bird's nest and rabbit's burrow
within a radius of miles.  When he grew a little older and a trifle
bigger they began to warn him off, and when one day he was met marching
away with a cap full of pheasant's eggs, he received as severe a
drubbing as ever a lad got at the hands of a gamekeeper.

Bob had grown worse instead of better after this.  The keepers became
his sworn enemies, and there was a spice of danger and adventure in
vexing and outwitting them.

Unfortunately, in spite of all his mother said to the contrary, Bob was
firmly impressed with the notion that game of every kind, whether fur or
feather, belonged as much to him as to the gentry who tried to preserve
them.  The fresh air was free; nobody dared to claim the sunshine.  Then
why the wild birds, and the hares and rabbits?

Evil company corrupts good manners.  That is what his copy-book used to
tell him.  But Bob soon learned to laugh at that, and it is no wonder
that as he reached manhood his doings and daring as a poacher became
noted far and near.

He was beyond the control of his mother.  She could only advise him,
read to him, pray for him; but I fear in vain.  Only be it known that
Bob Cooper really loved this mother of his, anomalous though it may
seem.

Well, the keepers had been very harsh with him, and the gentry were
harsh with him, and eke the law itself.  Law indeed!  Why Bob was all
but an outlaw, so intense was his hatred to, and so great his defiance
of the powers that be.

It was strange that what force could not effect, a few soft words from
Branson, and Archie's gift of the hare he had shot on his birthday,
brought about.  Bob Cooper's heart could not have been wholly
adamantine, therefore he began to believe that after all a gamekeeper
might be a good fellow, and that there might even exist gentlefolks
whose chief delight was not the oppression of the poor.  He began after
that to seek for honest work; but, alas! people looked askance at him,
and he found that the path of virtue was one not easily regained when
once deviated from.

His quondam enemy, however, Branson, spoke many a good word for him, and
Bob was getting on, much to his mother's delight and thankfulness, when
the final and crashing blow fell.

Poor old widow Cooper!  For years and years she had but two comforts in
this world; one was her Bible, and the other--do not smile when I tell
you--was her pipie.

Oh! you know, the poor have not much to make them happy and to cheer
their loneliness, so why begrudge the widow her morsel of tobacco?

In the former she learned to look forward to another and a better world,
far beyond that bit of blue sky she could see at the top of her chimney
on a summer's night--a world where everything would be bright and
joyful, where there would be no vexatious rheumatism, no age, and
neither cold nor care.  From the latter she drew sweet forgetfulness of
present trouble, and happy recollections of bygone years.

Sitting there by the hearth all alone--her son perhaps away on the
hill--her thoughts used oftentimes to run away with her.  Once more she
would be young, once again her hair was a bonnie brown, her form little
and graceful, roses mantling in her cheeks, soft light in her eyes.  And
she is wandering through the tasselled broom with David by her side.
"David!  Heigho!" she would sigh as she shook the ashes from her pipie.
"Poor David! it seems a long, long time since he left me for the better
land," and the sunlight would stream down the big, open chimney and fall
upon her skinny hands--fall upon the elfin-like locks that escaped from
beneath her cap--fall, too, on the glittering pages of the Book on her
lap like a promise of better things to come.

Before that sad night, when, while sitting up waiting for her son, she
was startled by the sudden noise of the struggle that commenced at her
door, she thought she had reason to be glad and thankful for the
softening of her boy's heart.

Then all her joy collapsed, her hopes collapsed--fell around her like a
house of cards.  It was a cruel, a terrible blow.

The policeman had carried her in, laid her on the bed with a rough sort
of kindness, made up the fire, then gone out and thought no more about
her.

How she had spent the night need hardly be said; it is better imagined.
She had dropped asleep at last, and when she awoke from fevered dreams
it was daylight out of doors, but darkness in the hut.  The window and
door were snowed up, and only a faint pale light shimmered in through
the chimney, falling on the fireless hearth--a dismal sight.

Many times that day she had tried to rise, but all in vain.  The cold
grew more intense as night drew on, and it did its work on the poor
widow's weakened frame.  Her dreams grew more bright and happy though,
as her body became numbed and insensible.  It was as though the spirit
were rejoicing in its coming freedom.  But dreams left her at last.
Then all was still in the house, save the ticking of the old clock that
hung against the wall.

The Squire speedily effected Bob Cooper's freedom, and he felt he had
really done a good thing.

"Now, Robert," he told him, "you have had a sad experience.  Let it be a
lesson to you.  I'll give you a chance.  Come to Burley, and Branson
will find you honest work as long as you like to do it."

"Lord love you, sir!" cried Bob.  "There are few gentry like you."

"I don't know so much about that, Robert.  You are not acquainted with
all the good qualities of gentlefolks yet.  But now, Branson, how are we
all to get home?"

"Oh, I know!" said Archie.  "Scallowa can easily bear Branson's weight,
and I will ride the big hunter along with Bob."

So this was arranged.

It was getting gloamed ere they neared the widow's lonesome hut.  The
Squire with Branson had left Archie and Bob, and cut across the frozen
moor by themselves.

"How glad my mother will be!" said Bob.

And now they came in sight of the cottage, and Bob rubbed his eyes and
looked again and again, for no smoke came from the chimney, no signs of
life was about.

The icicles hung long and strong from the eaves; one side of the hut was
entirely overblown with drift, and the door in the other looked more
like the entrance to some cave in Greenland north.  Bad enough this was;
but ah, in the inside of the poor little house the driven snow met them
as they pushed open the door!  It had blown down the wide chimney,
covered the hearth, formed a wreath like a sea-wave on the floor, and
even o'er-canopied the bed itself.  And the widow, the mother, lay
underneath.  No, not dead; she breathed, at least.

When the room had been cleared and swept of snow; when a roaring fire
had been built on the hearth, and a little warm tea poured gently down
her throat, she came gradually back again to life, and in a short time
was able to be lifted into a sitting position, and then she recognised
her son and Archie.

"Oh, mother, mother!" cried Bob, the tears streaming over his
sun-browned face, "the Maker'll never forgive me for all the ill I've
done ye."

"Hush!  Bobbie, hush!  What, lad, the Maker no' forgive ye!  Eh, ye
little know the grip o' His goodness!  But you're here, you're innocent.
Thank Him for that."

"Ye'll soon get better, mother, and I'll be so good.  The Squire is to
give me work too."

"It's o'er late for me," she said.  "I'd like to live to see it, but His
will be done."

Archie rode home the giant hunter, but in two hours he was once more
mounted on Scallowa, and feathering back through the snow towards the
little cottage.  The moon had risen now, and the night was starry and
fine.

He tied Scallowa up in the peat shed, and went in unannounced.

He found Bob Cooper sitting before the dying embers of the fire, with
his face buried in his hands, and rocking himself to and fro.

"She--just blessed me and wore away."

That was all he said or could say.  And what words of comfort could
Archie speak?  None.  He sat silently beside him all that livelong
night, only getting up now and then to replenish the fire.  But the
poacher scarcely ever changed his position, only now and then he
stretched out one of his great hands and patted Archie's knee as one
would pet a dog.

A week passed away, and the widow was laid to rest beneath the frozen
ground in the little churchyard by the banks of the river.  Archie went
slowly back with Bob towards the cottage.  On their way thither, the
poacher--poacher now no more though--entered a plantation, and with his
hunting-knife cut and fashioned a rough ash stick.

"We'll say good-bye here, Master Archie."

"What!  You are not going back with me to Burley Old Farm?"

Bob took a small parcel from his pocket, and opening it exposed the
contents.

"Do you know them, Master Archie?"

"Yes, your poor mother's glasses."

"Ay, lad, and as long as I live I'll keep them.  And till my dying day,
Archie, I'll think on you, and your kindness to poor poacher Bob.  No,
I'm not goin' back to Burley, and I'm not going to the cottage again.
I'm going away.  Where?  I couldn't say.  Here, quick, shake hands,
friend.  Let it be over.  Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

And away went Bob.  He stopped when a little way off, and turned as if
he had forgotten something.

"Archie!" he cried.

"Yes, Bob."

"Take care of my mother's cat."

Next minute he leapt a fence, and disappeared in the pine wood.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE WHOLE YARD WAS ABLAZE AND BURNING FIERCELY.

One year is but a brief span in the history of a family, yet it may
bring many changes.  It did to Burley Old Farm, and some of them were
sad enough, though some were glad.  A glad change took place for
instance in the early spring, after Bob's departure; for Rupert appeared
to wax stronger and stronger with the lengthening days; and when Uncle
Ramsay, in a letter received one morning, announced his intention of
coming from London, and making quite a long stay at Burley, Rupert
declared his intention of mounting Scallowa, and riding over to the
station to meet him.  And the boy was as good as his word.  In order
that they might be both cavaliers together, Uncle Ramsay hired a horse
at D--, and the two rode joyfully home side by side.

His mother did not like to see that carmine flush on Rupert's cheeks,
however, nor the extra dark sparkle in his eyes when he entered the
parlour to announce his uncle's arrival, but she said nothing.

Uncle Ramsay Broadbent was a brother of the Squire, and, though
considerably older, a good deal like him in all his ways.  There was the
same dash and go in him, and the same smiling front, unlikely to be
dismayed by any amount of misfortune.

"There are a deal of ups and downs in the ocean of life," Archie heard
him say one day; "we're on the top of a big wave one hour, and in the
trough of the sea next, so we must take things as they come."

Yes, this uncle was a seafarer; the skipper of a sturdy merchantman that
he had sailed in for ten long years.  He did not care to be called
captain by anyone.  He was a master mariner, and had an opinion, which
he often expressed, that plain "Mr" was a gentleman's prefix.

"I shan't go back to sea again," he said next morning at breakfast.

"Fact is, brother, my owners think I'm getting too old.  And maybe
they're right.  I've had a fair innings, and it is only fair to give the
young ones a chance."

Uncle Ramsay seemed to give new life and soul to the old place.  He
settled completely down to the Burley style of life long before the
summer was half over.  He joined the servants in the fields, and worked
with them as did the Squire, Walton, and Archie.  And though more
merriment went on in consequence, there was nevertheless more work done.
He took an interest in all the boys' "fads," spent hours with them in
their workshop, and made one in every game that was played on the grass.
He was dreadfully awkward at cricket and tennis however; for such games
as these are but little practised by sailors.  Only he was right willing
to learn.

There was a youthfulness and breeziness about Uncle Ramsay's every
action, that few save seafarers possess when hair is turning white.  Of
course, the skipper spent many a jolly hour up in the room of the Castle
Tower, and he did not object either to the presence of old Kate in the
chair.  He listened like a boy when she told her weird stories; and he
listened more like a baby than anything else when Branson played his
fiddle.

Then he himself would spin them a yarn, and hold them all enthralled,
especially big-eyed Elsie, with the sterling reality and graphicness of
the narrative.

When Uncle Ramsay spoke you could see the waves in motion, hear the
scream of the birds around the stern, or the wind roaring through the
rigging.  He spoke as he thought; he painted from life.

Well, the arrival of Uncle Ramsay and Rupert's getting strong were two
of the pleasant changes that took place at Burley in this eventful year.
Alas!  I have to chronicle the sad ones also.  Yet why sigh?  To use
Uncle Ramsay's own words, "You never know what a ship is made of until
stormy seas are around you."

First then came a bad harvest--a terribly bad harvest.  It was not that
the crops themselves were so very light, but the weather was cold and
wet; the grain took long to ripen.  The task of cutting it down was
unfortunately an easy one, but the getting it stored was almost an
impossibility.  At the very time when it was ripe, and after a single
fiercely hot day, a thunder-storm came on, and with it such hail as the
oldest inhabitant in the parish could not remember having seen equalled.
This resulted in the total loss of far more of the precious seed, than
would have sown all the land of Burley twice over.

The wet continued.  It rained and rained every day, and when it rained
it poured.

The Squire had heard of a Yankee invention for drying wheat under cover,
and rashly set about a rude but most expensive imitation thereof.  He
first mentioned the matter to Uncle Ramsay at the breakfast-table.  The
Squire seemed in excellent spirits that morning.  He was walking briskly
up and down the room rubbing his hands, as if in deep but pleasant
thought, when his brother came quietly in.

"Hullo! you lazy old sea-dog.  Why you'd lie in your bed till the sun
burned a hole in the blanket.  Now just look at me."

"I'm just looking at you."

"Well, I've been up for hours.  I'm as hungry as a Caithness Highlander.
And I've got an idea."

"I thought there was something in the wind."

"Guess."

"Guess, indeed!  Goodness forbid I should try.  But I say, brother,"
continued Uncle Ramsay, laughing, "couldn't you manage to fall asleep
somewhere out of doors, like the man in the story, and wake up and find
yourself a king?  My stars, wouldn't we have reforms as long as your
reign lasted!  The breakfast, Mary?  Ah, that's the style!"

"You won't be serious and listen, I suppose, Ramsay."

"Oh, yes; I will."

"Well, the Americans--"

"The Americans again; but go on."

"The Americans, in some parts where I've been, wouldn't lose a straw in
a bad season.  It is all done by means of great fanners and heated air,
you know.  Now, I'm going to show these honest Northumbrian farmers a
thing or two.  I--"

"I say, brother, hadn't you better trust to Providence, and wait for a
fair wind?"

"Now, Ramsay, that's where you and I differ.  You're a slow Moses.  I
want to move ahead a trifle in front of the times.  I've been looking
all over the dictionary of my daily life, and I can't find such a word
as 'wait' in it."

"Let me give you some of this steak, brother."

"My plan of operations, Ramsay, is--"

"Why," said Mrs Broadbent, "you haven't eaten anything yet!"

"I thought," said Uncle Ramsay, "you were as hungry as a Tipperary
Highlander, or some such animal."

"My plan, Ramsay, is--" etc, etc.

The two "etc, etc's" in the last line stand for all the rest of the
honest Squire's speech, which, as his sailor brother said, was as long
as the logline.  But for all his hunger he made but a poor breakfast,
and immediately after he jumped up and hurried away to the barn-yards.

It was a busy time for the next two weeks at Burley Old Farm, but, to
the Squire's credit be it said, he was pretty successful with his
strange operation of drying wheat independent of the sun.  His ricks
were built, and he was happy--happy as long as he thought nothing about
the expense.  But he did take an hour or two one evening to run through
accounts, as he called it.  Uncle Ramsay was with him.

"Why, brother," said Ramsay, looking very serious now indeed, "you are
terribly down to leeward--awfully out of pocket!"

"Ah! never mind, Ramsay.  One can't keep ahead of the times now-a-days,
you know, without spending a little."

"Spending a little!  Where are your other books?  Mr Walton and I will
have a look through them to-night, if you don't mind."

"Not a bit, brother, not a bit.  We're going to give a dance to-morrow
night to the servants, so if you like to bother with the book-work I'll
attend to the terpsichorean kick up."

Mr Walton and Uncle Ramsay had a snack in the office that evening
instead of coming up to supper, and when Mrs Broadbent looked in to say
good-night she found them both quiet and hard at work.

"I say, Walton," said Uncle Ramsay some time after, "this is serious.
Draw near the fire and let us have a talk."

"It is sad as well as serious," said Walton.

"Had you any idea of it?"

"Not the slightest.  In fact I'm to blame, I think, for not seeing to
the books before.  But the Squire--"

Walton hesitated.

"I know my brother well," said Ramsay.  "As good a fellow as ever lived,
but as headstrong as a nor'-easter.  And now he has been spending money
on machinery to the tune of some ten thousand pounds.  He has been
growing crop after crop of wheat as if he lived on the prairies and the
land was new; and he has really been putting as much down in seed,
labour, and fashionable manures as he has taken off."

"Yet," said Walton, "he is no fool."

"No, not he; he is clever, too much so.  But heaven send his pride,
honest though it be, does not result in a fall."

The two sat till long past twelve talking and planning, then they opened
the casement and walked out on to the lawn.  It was a lovely autumn
night.  The broad, round moon was high in the heavens, fighting its way
through a sky of curdling clouds which greatly detracted from its
radiance.

"Look, Walton," said the sailor, "to windward; yonder it is all blue
sky, by-and-by it will be a bright and lovely night."

"By-and-by.  Yes," sighed Walton.

"But see!  What is that down yonder rising white over the trees?  Smoke!
Why, Walton, the barn-yards are all on fire!"

Almost at the same moment Branson rushed upon the scene.

"Glad you're up, gentlemen," he gasped.  "Wake the Squire.  The servants
are all astir.  We must save the beasts, come of everything else what
will."

The farm-steading of Burley was built in the usual square formation
round a centre straw-yard, which even in winter was always kept so well
filled that beasts might lie out all night.  To the north were the
stacks, and it was here the fire originated, and unluckily the wind blew
from that direction.  It was by no means high; but fire makes its own
wind, and in less than half an hour the whole yard was ablaze and
burning fiercely, while the byres, stables, and barns had all caught.
From the very first these latter had been enveloped in dense rolling
clouds of smoke, and sparks as thick as falling snowflakes, so that to
save any of the live stock seemed almost an impossibility.

With all his mania for machinery, and for improvements of every kind
possible to apply to agriculture, it is indeed a wonder that the Squire
had not established a fire brigade on his farm.  But fire was an
eventuality which he had entirely left out of his reckoning, and now
there was really no means of checking the terrible conflagration.

As soon as the alarm was given every one did what he could to save the
live stock; but the smoke was blinding, maddening, and little could be
done save taking the doors off their hinges.

Who knows what prodigies of valour were performed that night by the
humble cowmen even, in their attempts to drive the oxen and cows out,
and away to a place of safety?  In some instances, when they had nearly
succeeded, the cattle blocked the doorways, or, having got out to the
straw-yard, charged madly back again, and prevented the exit of their
fellows.  Thus several servants ran terrible risks to their lives.

They were more successful in saving the horses, and this was greatly
owing to Archie's presence of mind.  He had dashed madly into the stable
for his pet Scallowa.  The Shetland pony had never looked more wild
before.  He sniffed the danger, he snorted and reared.  All at once it
occurred to Archie to mount and ride him out.  No sooner had he got on
his back than he came forth like a lamb.  He took him to a field and let
him free, and as he was hurrying back he met little Peter.

"Come, Peter, come," he cried; "we can save the horses."

The two of them rushed to the stable, and horse after horse was bridled
and mounted by little Peter and ridden out.

But a fearful hitch occurred.  Tell, the Squire's hunter, backed against
the stable door and closed it, thus imprisoning Archie, who found it
impossible to open the door.

The roof had already caught.  The horses were screaming in terror, and
rearing wildly against the walls.

Peter rushed away to seek assistance.  He met Branson, and in a word or
two told him what had happened.

Luckily axes were at hand, and sturdy volunteers speedily smashed the
door in, and poor Archie, more dead than alive, with torn clothes and
bleeding face, was dragged through.

The scene after this must be left to imagination.  But the Squire
reverently and fervently thanked God when the shrieks of those
fire-imprisoned cattle were hushed in death, and nothing was to be heard
save the crackle and roar of the flames.

The fire had lit up the countryside for miles around.  The moonlight
itself was bright, but within a certain radius the blazing farm cast
shadows against it.

Next morning stackyards, barn-yards, farm-steading, machinery-house, and
everything pertaining to Burley Old Farm, presented but a smouldering,
blackened heap of ruins.

Squire Broadbent entertained his poor, frightened people to an early
breakfast in the servants' hall, and the most cheerful face there was
that of the Squire.  Here is his little speech:

"My good folks, sit down and eat; and let us be thankful we're all here,
and that no human lives are lost.  My good kinswoman Kate here will tell
you that there never yet was an ill but there might be a worse.  Let us
pray the worse may never come."

CHAPTER TEN.

"AFTER ALL, IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH TO MAKE A MAN HAPPY."

For weeks to come neither Uncle Ramsay nor Walton had the heart to add
another sorrow to the Squire's cup of misery.  They knew that the fire
had but brought on a little sooner a catastrophe which was already
fulling; they knew that Squire Broadbent was virtually a ruined man.

All the machinery had been rendered useless; the most of the cattle were
dead; the stacks were gone; and yet, strange to say, the Squire hoped
on.  Those horses and cattle which had been saved were housed now in
rudely-built sheds, among the fire-blackened ruins of their former
wholesome stables and byres.

One day Branson, who had always been a confidential servant, sent Mary
in to say he wished to speak to the Squire.  His master came out at
once.

"Nothing else, Branson," he said.  "You carry a long face, man."

"The wet weather and the cold have done their work, sir.  Will you walk
down with me to the cattle-sheds?"

Arrived there, he pointed to a splendid fat ox, who stood in his stall
before his untouched turnips with hanging head and dry, parched nose.
His hot breath was visible when he threw his head now and then uneasily
round towards his loin, as if in pain.  There was a visible swelling on
the rump.  Branson placed a hand on it, and the Squire could hear it
"bog" and crackle.

"What is that, Branson?  Has he been hurt?"

"No, sir, worse.  I'll show you."

He took out his sharp hunting-knife.

"It won't hurt the poor beast," he said.

Then he cut deep into the swelling.  The animal never moved.  No blood
followed the incision, but the gaping wound was black, and filled with
air-bubbles.

"The quarter-ill," said the cowman, who stood mournfully by.

That ox was dead in a few hours.  Another died next day, two the next,
and so on, though not in an increasing ratio; but in a month there was
hardly an animal alive about the place except the horses.

It was time now the Squire should know all, and he did.  He looked a
chastened man when he came out from that interview with his brother and
Walton.  But he put a right cheery face on matters when he told his
wife.

"We'll have to retrench," he said.  "It'll be a struggle for a time, but
we'll get over it right enough."

Present money, however, was wanted, and raised it must be.

And now came the hardest blow the Squire had yet received.  It was a
staggering one, though he met it boldly.  There was then at Burley Old
Mansion a long picture gallery.  It was a room in an upper story, and
extended the whole length of the house--a hall in fact, and one that
more than one Squire Broadbent had entertained his friends right royally
in.  From the walls not only did portraits of ancestors bold and gay,
smile or frown down, but there hung there also many a splendid landscape
and seascape by old masters.

Most of the latter had to be sold, and the gallery was closed, for the
simple reason that Squire Broadbent, courageous though he was, could not
look upon its bare and desecrated walls without a feeling of sorrow.

Pictures even from the drawing-room had to go also, and that room too
was closed.  But the breakfast-room, which opened to the lawn and rose
gardens, where the wild birds sang so sweetly in summer, was left
intact; so was the dining-room, and that cosy, wee green parlour in
which the family delighted to assemble around the fire in the winter's
evenings.

Squire Broadbent had been always a favourite in the county--somewhat of
an upstart and iconoclast though he was--so the sympathy he received was
universal.

Iconoclast?  Yes, he had delighted in shivering the humble idols of
others, and now his own were cast down.  Nobody, however, deserted him.
Farmers and Squires might have said among themselves that they always
knew Broadbent was "going the pace," and that his new-fangled American
notions were poorly suited to England, but in his presence they did all
they could to cheer him.

When the ploughing time came round they gave him what is called in the
far North "a love-darg."  Men with teams of horses came from every farm
for miles around and tilled his ground.  They had luncheon in a marquee,
but they would not hear of stopping to dinner.  They were indeed
thoughtful and kind.

The parson of the parish and the doctor were particular friends of the
Squire.  They often dropped in of an evening to talk of old times with
the family by the fireside.

"I'm right glad," the doctor said one evening, "to see that you don't
lose heart, Squire."

"Bless me, sir, why should I?  To be sure we're poor now, but God has
left us a deal of comfort, doctor, and, after all, _it doesn't take much
to make a man happy_."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boys will be boys.  Yes, we all know that.  But there comes a time in
the life of every right-thinking lad when another truth strikes home to
him, that boys will be men.

I rather think that the sooner a boy becomes cognisant of this fact the
better.  Life is not all a dream; it must sooner or later become a stern
reality.  Life is not all pleasant parade and show, like a field-day at
Aldershot; no, for sooner or later pomp and panoply have to be exchanged
for camp-life and action, and bright uniforms are either rolled in blood
and dust, or come triumphant, though tarnished, from the field of glory.
Life is not all plain sailing over sunlit seas, for by-and-by the
clouds bank up, storms come on, and the good ship has to do battle with
wind and wave.

But who would have it otherwise?  No one would who possesses the
slightest ray of honest ambition, or a single spark of that pride of
self which we need not blush to own.

One day, about the beginning of autumn, Rupert and Archie, and their
sister Elsie, were in the room in the tower.  They sat together in a
turret chamber, Elsie gazing dreamily from the window at the beautiful
scenery spread out beneath.  The woods and wilds, the rolling hills, the
silvery stream, the half-ripe grain moving in the wind, as waves at sea
move, and the silvery sunshine over all.  She was in a kind of a
daydream, her fingers listlessly touching a chord on the harp now and
then.  A pretty picture she looked, too, with her bonnie brown hair, and
her bonnie blue eyes, and thorough English face, thorough English
beauty.  Perhaps Archie had been thinking something of this sort as he
sat there looking at her, while Rupert half-lay in the rocking-chair,
which his brother had made for him, engrossed as usual in a book.

Whether Archie did think thus or not, certain it is that presently he
drew his chair close to his sister's, and laying one arm fondly on her
shoulder.

"What is sissie looking at?" he asked.

"Oh, Archie," she replied, "I don't think I've been looking at anything;
but I've been seeing everything and wishing!"

"Wishing, Elsie?  Well, you don't look merry.  What were you wishing?"

"I was wishing the old days were back again, when--when father was rich;
before the awful fire came, and the plague, and everything.  It has made
us all old, I think.  Wouldn't you like father was rich again?"

"I am not certain; but wishes are not horses, you know."

"_No_," said Elsie; "only if it could even be always like this, and if
you and Rupert and I could be always as we are now.  I think that, poor
though we are, everything just now is so pretty and so pleasant.  But
you are going away to the university, and the place won't be the same.
I shall get older faster than ever then."

"Well, Elsie," said Archie, laughing, "I am so old that I am going to
make my will."

Rupert put down his book with a quiet smile.

"What are you going to leave me, old man?  Scallowa?"

"No, Rupert, you're too long in the legs for Scallowa, you have no idea
what a bodkin of a boy you are growing.  Scallowa I will and bequeath to
my pretty sister here, and I'll buy her a side-saddle, and two
pennyworth of carrot seed.  Elsie will also have Bounder, and you,
Rupert, shall have Fuss."

"Anything else for me?"

"Don't be greedy.  But I'll tell you.  You shall have my tool-house, and
all my tools, and my gun besides.  Well, this room is to be sister's
own, and she shall also have my fishing-rod, and the book of flies that
poor Bob Cooper made for me.  Oh, don't despise them, they are all
wonders!"

"Well really, Archie," said Elsie, "you talk as earnestly as if you
actually were going to die."

"Who said I was going to die?  No, I don't mean to die till I've done
much more mischief."

"Hush!  Archie."

"Well, I'm hushed."

"Why do you want to make your will?"

"Oh, it isn't wanting to make my will!  I am--I've done it.  And the
'why' is this, I'm going away."

"To Oxford?"

"No, Elsie, not to Oxford.  I've got quite enough Latin and Greek out of
Walton to last me all my life.  I couldn't be a doctor; besides father
is hardly rich enough to make me one at present.  I couldn't be a
doctor, and I'm not good enough to be a parson."

"Archie, how you talk."

There were tears in Elsie's eyes now.

"I can't help it.  I'm going away to enter life in a new land.  Uncle
Ramsay has told me all about Australia.  He says the old country is used
up, and fortunes can be made in a few years on the other side of the
globe."

There was silence in the turret for long minutes; the whispering of the
wind in the elm trees beneath could be heard, the murmuring of the
river, and far away in the woods the cawing of rooks.

"Don't you cry, Elsie," said Archie.  "I've been thinking about all this
for some time, and my mind is made up.  I'm going, Elsie, and I know it
is for the best.  You don't imagine for a single moment, do you, that
I'll forget the dear old times, and you all?  No, no, no.  I'll think
about you every night, and all day long, and I'll come back rich.  You
don't think that I _won't_ make my fortune, do you?  Because I mean to,
and will.  So there.  Don't cry, Elsie."

"_I'm_ not going to cry, Archie," said Rupert.

"Right, Rupert, you're a brick, as Branson says."

"I'm not old enough," continued Rupert, "to give you my blessing, though
I suppose Kate would give you hers; but we'll all pray for you."

"Well," said Archie thoughtfully, "that will help some."

"Why, you silly boy, it will help a lot."

"I wish I were as good as you, Rupert.  But I'm just going to try hard
to do my best, and I feel certain I'll be all right."

"You know, Roup, how well I can play cricket, and how I often easily
bowl father out.  Well, that is because I've just tried my very hardest
to become a good player; and I'm going to try my very hardest again in
another way.  Oh, I shall win!  I'm cocksure I shall.  Come, Elsie, dry
your eyes.  Here's my handkie.  Don't be a little old wife."

"You won't get killed, or anything, Archie?"

"No; I won't get killed, or eaten either."

"They do tell me," said Elsie--"that is, old Kate told me--that the
streets in Australia are all paved with gold, and that the roofs of the
houses are all solid silver."

"Well, I don't think she is quite right," said Archie, laughing.
"Anyhow, uncle says there is a fortune to be made, and I'm going to make
it.  That's all."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Archie went straight away down from that boy's room feeling every inch a
man, and had an interview with his father and uncle.

It is needless to relate what took place there, or to report the
conversation which the older folks had that evening in the little green
parlour.  Both father and uncle looked upon Archie's request as
something only natural.  For both these men, singular to say, had been
boys once themselves; and, in the Squire's own words, Archie was a son
to be proud of.

"We can't keep the lad always with us, mother," said Squire Broadbent;
"and the wide world is the best of schools.  I feel certain that, go
where he will, he won't lose heart.  If he does, I should be ashamed to
own him as a son.  So there!  My only regret is, Ramsay, that I cannot
send the lad away with a better lined pocket."

"My dear silly old brother, he will be better as he is.  And I'm really
not sure that he would not be better still if he went away, as many have
gone before him, with only a stick and a bundle over his shoulder.  You
have a deal too much of the Broadbent pride; and Archie had better leave
that all behind at home, or be careful to conceal it when he gets to the
land of his adoption."

The following is a brief list of Archie's stock-in-trade when he sailed
away in the good ship _Dugong_ to begin the world alone: 1. A good stock
of clothes. 2. A good stock of assurance. 3. Plenty of hope. 4. Good
health and abundance of strength. 5. A little nest egg at an Australian
bank to keep him partly independent till he should be able to establish
a footing. 6. Letters of introduction, blessings, and a little pocket
Bible.

His uncle chose his ship, and sent him away round the Cape in a good
old-fashioned sailing vessel.  And his uncle went to Glasgow to see him
off, his last words being, "Keep up your heart, boy, whatever happens;
and keep calm in every difficulty.  Good-bye."

Away sailed the ship, and away went Archie to see the cities that are
paved with gold, and whose houses have roofs of solid silver.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

BOOK II--AT THE GOLDEN GATES.

"SPOKEN LIKE HIS FATHER'S SON."

  "Cheer, boys, cheer, no more of idle sorrow,
  Courage, true hearts shall bear us on our way;
  Hope flies before, and points the bright to-morrow,
  Let us forget the dangers of to-day."

That dear old song!  How many a time and oft it has helped to raise the
drooping spirits of emigrants sailing away from these loved islands,
never again to return!

The melody itself too is such a manly one.  Inez dear, bring my fiddle.
Not a bit of bravado in that ringing air, bold and all though it is.
Yet every line tells of British ardour and determination--ardour that no
thoughts of home or love can cool, determination that no danger can
daunt.

"Cheer, boys, cheer."  The last rays of the setting sun were lighting up
the Cornish cliffs, on which so few in that good ship would ever again
set eyes, when those around the forecastle-head took up the song.

"Cheer, boys, cheer."  Listen!  Those on the quarterdeck join in the
chorus, sinking in song all difference of class and rank.  And they
join, too, in that rattling "Three times three" that bids farewell to
England.

Then the crimson clouds high up in the west change to purple and brown,
the sea grows grey, and the distant shore becomes slaty blue.  Soon the
stars peep out, and the passengers cease to tramp about, and find their
way below to the cosily-lighted saloon.

Archie is sitting on a sofa quite apart from all the others.  The song
is still ringing in his head, and, if the whole truth must be told, he
feels just a trifle down-hearted.  He cannot quite account for this,
though he tries to, and his thoughts are upon the whole somewhat
rambling.  They would no doubt be quite connected if it were not for the
distracting novelty of all his present surroundings, which are as
utterly different from anything he has hitherto become acquainted with
as if he had suddenly been transported to another planet.

No, he cannot account for being dull.  Perhaps the motion of the ship
has something to do with it, though this is not a very romantic way of
putting it.  Archie has plenty of moral courage; and as the ship
encountered head winds, and made a long and most difficult passage down
through the Irish Sea, he braced himself to get over his morsel of _mal
de mer_, and has succeeded.

He is quite cross with himself for permitting his mind to be tinged with
melancholy.  That song ought to have set him up.

"Why should we weep to sail in search of fortune?"

Oh, Archie is not weeping; catch him doing anything so girlish and
peevish!  He would not cry in his cabin where he could do so without
being seen, and it is not likely he would permit moisture to appear in
his eyes in the saloon here.  Yet his home never did seem to him so
delightful, so cosy, so happy, as the thoughts of it do now.  Why had he
not loved it even more than he did when it was yet all around him?  The
dear little green parlour, his gentle lady mother that used to knit so
quietly by the fire in the winter's evenings, listening with pleasure to
his father's daring schemes and hopeful plans.  His bonnie sister,
Elsie, so proud of him--Archie; Rupert, with his pale, classical face
and gentle smile; matter-of-fact Walton; jolly old Uncle Ramsay.  They
all rose up before his mind's eye as they had been; nay but as they
might be even at that very moment.  And the room in the tower, the
evenings spent there in summer when daylight was fading over the hills
and woods, and the rooks flying wearily home to their nests in the
swaying elm trees; or in winter when the fire burned brightly on the
hearth, and weird old Kate sat in her high-backed chair, telling her
strange old-world stories, with Branson, wide-eyed, fiddle in hand, on a
seat near her, and Bounder--poor Bounder--on the bear's skin.  Then the
big kitchen, or servants' hall--the servants that all loved "master
Archie" so dearly, and laughed and enjoyed every prank he used to play.

Dear old Burley! should he ever see it again?  A week has not passed
since he left it, and yet it seems and feels a lifetime.

He was young a week ago; now he is old, very old--nearly a man.  Nearly?
Well, nearly, in years; in thoughts, and feelings, and circumstances
even--_quite_ a man.  But then he should not feel down-hearted for this
simple reason; he had left home under such bright auspices.  Many boys
run away to sea.  The difference between their lot and his is indeed a
wide one.  Yes, that must be very sad.  No home life to look back upon,
no friends to think of or love, no pleasant present, no hopeful future.

Then Archie, instead of letting his thoughts dwell any longer on the
past, began at once to bridge over for himself the long period of time
that must elapse ere he should return to Burley Old Farm.  Of course
there would be changes.  He dared say Walton would be away; but Elsie
and Rupert would still be there, and his father and mother, looking
perhaps a little older, but still as happy.  And the burned
farm-steading would be restored, or if it were not, it soon should be
after he came back; for he would be rich, rolling in wealth in fact, if
half the stories he had heard of Australia were true, even allowing that
_all_ the streets were not paved with gold, and _all_ the houses not
roofed with sparkling silver.

So engrossed was he with these pleasant thoughts, that he had not
observed the advent of a passenger who had entered the saloon, and sat
quietly down on a camp-stool near him.  A man of about forty, dressed in
a rough pilot suit of clothes, with a rosy weather-beaten but pleasant
face, and a few grey hairs in his short black beard.

He was looking at Archie intently when their eyes met, and the boy felt
somewhat abashed.  The passenger, however, did not remove his glance
instantly; he spoke instead.

"You've never been to sea before, have you?"

"No, sir; never been off the land till a week ago."

"Going to seek your fortune?"

"Yes; I'm going to _make_ my fortune."

"Bravo!  I hope you will."

"What's to hinder me?"

"Nothing; oh, nothing much!  Everybody doesn't though.  But you seem to
have a bit of go in you."

"Are you going to make yours?" said Archie.

The stranger laughed.

"No," he replied.  "Unluckily, perhaps, mine was made for me.  I've been
out before too, and I'm going again to see things."

"You're going in quest of adventure?"

"I suppose that is really it.  That is how the story-books put it,
anyhow.  But I don't expect to meet with adventures like Sinbad the
Sailor, you know; and I don't think I would like to have a little old
man of the sea with his little old legs round my neck."

"Australia is a very wonderful place, isn't it?"

"Yes; wonderfully wonderful.  Everything is upside-down there, you know.
To begin with, the people walk with their heads downwards.  Some of the
trees are as tall as the moon, and at certain seasons of the year the
bark comes tumbling off them like rolls of shoeleather.  Others are
shaped like bottles, others again have heads of waving grass, and others
have ferns for tops.  There are trees, too, that drop all their leaves
to give the flowers a chance; and these are so brilliantly red, and so
numerous, that the forest where they grow looks all on fire.  Well, many
of the animals walk or jump on two legs, instead of running on four.
Does that interest you?"

"Yes.  Tell me something more about birds."

"Well, ducks are everywhere in Australia, and many kinds are as big as
geese.  They seem to thrive.  And ages ago, it is said by the natives,
the moles in Australia got tired of living in the dark, and held a
meeting above-ground, and determined to live a different mode of life.
So they grew longer claws, and short, broad, flat tails, and bills like
ducks, and took to the water, and have been happy ever since.

"Well, there are black swans in abundance; and though it is two or three
years since I was out last, I cannot forget a beautiful bird, something
betwixt a pheasant and peacock, and the cock's tail is his especial
delight.  It is something really to be proud of, and at a distance looks
like a beautiful lyre, strings and all.  The cockatoos swarm around the
trees, and scream and laugh at the lyre-bird giving himself airs, but I
daresay this is all envy.  The hen bird is not a beauty, but her chief
delight is to watch the antics and attitudes of her lord and master as
he struts about making love and fun to her time about, at one moment
singing a kind of low, sweet song, at another mocking every sound that
is heard in the forest, every noise made by man or bird or beast.  No
wonder the female lyre-bird thinks her lord the cleverest and most
beautiful creature in the world!

"Then there is a daft-looking kingfisher, all head and bill, and
wondering eyes, who laughs like a jackass, and makes you laugh to hear
him laugh.  So loud does he laugh at times that his voice drowns every
other sound in the forest.

"There is a bird eight feet high, partly cassowary, partly ostrich, that
when attacked kicks like a horse, or more like a cow, because it kicks
sideways.  But if I were to sit here till our good ship reached the
Cape, I could not tell you about half the curious, beautiful, and
ridiculous creatures and things you will find in Australia if you move
much about.  I do think that that country beats all creation for the
gorgeousness of its wild birds and wild flowers; and if things do seem a
bit higgledy-piggledy at first, you soon settle down to it, and soon
tire wondering at anything.

"But," continued the stranger, "with all their peculiarities, the birds
and beasts are satisfied with their get-up, and pleased with their
surroundings, although all day long in the forests the cockatoos, and
parrots, and piping crows, and lyre-birds do little else but joke and
chaff one another because they all look so comical.

"Yes, lad, Australia you will find is a country of contrarieties, and
the only wonder to me is that the rivers don't all run up-hill instead
of running down; and mind, they are sometimes broader at their sources
than they are at their ends."

"There is plenty of gold there?" asked Archie.

"Oh, yes, any amount; but--"

"But what, sir?"

"The real difficulty--in fact, the only difficulty--is the finding of
it."

"But that, I suppose, can be got over."

"Come along with me up on deck, and we'll talk matters over.  It is hot
and stuffy down here; besides, they are going to lay the cloth."

Arrived at the quarterdeck, the stranger took hold of Archie's arm, as
if he had known him all his life.

"Now," he said, "my name is Vesey, generally called Captain Vesey,
because I never did anything that I know of to merit the title.  I've
been in an army or two in different parts of the globe as a free lance,
you know."

"How nice!"

"Oh, delightful!" said Captain Vesey, though from the tone of his voice
Archie was doubtful as to his meaning.  "Well," he added, "I own a
yacht, now waiting for me, I believe, at the Cape of Good Hope, if she
isn't sunk, or burned, or something.  And your tally?"

"My what, sir?"

"Your tally, your name, and the rest of it?"

"Archie Broadbent, son of Squire Broadbent, of Burley Old Farm,
Northumberland."

"What! you a son of Charlie Broadbent?  Yankee Charlie, as we used to
call him at the club.  Well, well, well, wonders will never cease; and
it only shows how small the world is, after all."

"And you used to know my father, sir?"

"My dear boy, I promised myself the pleasure of calling on him at
Burley.  I've only been home for two months, however; and I heard--well,
boy, I needn't mince matters--I heard your father had been unfortunate,
and had left his place, and gone nobody could tell me whither."

"No," said Archie, laughing, "it isn't quite so bad as all that; and it
is bound to come right in the end."

"You are talking very hopefully, lad.  I could trace a resemblance in
your face to someone I knew the very moment I sat down.  And there is
something like the same cheerful ring in your voice there used to be in
his.  You really are a chip of the old block."

"So they say."  And Archie laughed again, pleased by this time.

"But, you know, lad, you are very young to be going away to seek your
fortune."

"I'll get over that, sir."

"I hope so.  Of course, you won't go pottering after gold!"

"I don't know.  If I thought I would find lots, I would go like a shot."

"Well, take my advice, and don't.  There, I do not want to discourage
you; but you better turn your mind to farming--to squatting."

"That wouldn't be very genteel, would it?"

"Genteel!  Why, lad, if you're going to go in for genteelity, you'd best
have stayed at home."

"Well, but I have an excellent education.  I can write like
copper-plate.  I am a fair hand at figures, and well up in Latin and
Greek; and--"

"Ha! ha! ha!"  Captain Vesey laughed aloud.  "Latin and Greek, eh?  You
must keep that to yourself, boy."

"And," continued Archie boldly, "I have a whole lot of capital
introductions.  I'm sure to get into a good office in Sydney; and in a
few years--"

Archie stopped short, because by the light that streamed from the
skylight he could see that Captain Vesey was looking at him
half-wonderingly, but evidently amused.

"Go on," said the captain.

"Not a word more," said Archie doggedly.

"Finish your sentence, lad."

"I shan't.  There!"

"Well, I'll do it for you.  You'll get into a delightful office, with
mahogany writing-desks and stained glass windows, Turkey carpet and an
easy-chair.  Your employer will take you out in his buggy every Sunday
to dine with him; and after a few years, as you say, he'll make you a
co-partner; and you'll end by marrying his daughter, and live happy ever
after."

"You're laughing at me, sir.  I'll go down below."

"Yes, I'm laughing at you, because you're only a greenhorn; and it is as
well that I should squeeze a little of the lime-juice out of you as
anyone else.  No, don't go below.  Mind, I was your father's friend."

"Yes," pouted poor Archie; "but you don't appear to be mine.  You are
throwing cold water over my hopes; you are smashing my idols."

"A very pretty speech, Archie Broadbent.  But mind you this--a hut on
solid ground is better far than a castle in the air.  And it is better
that I should storm and capsize your cloud-castle, than that an absolute
stranger did so."

"Well, I suppose you are right.  Forgive me for being cross."

"Spoken like his father's son," said Captain Vesey, grasping and shaking
the hand that Archie extended to him.  "Now we know each other.  Ding!
ding! ding! there goes the dinner-bell.  Sit next to me."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

"KEEP ON YOUR CAP.  I WAS ONCE A POOR MAN MYSELF."

The voyage out was a long, even tedious one; but as it has but little
bearing on the story I forbear to describe it at length.

The ship had a passenger for Madeira, parcels for Ascension and Saint
Helena, and she lay in at the Cape for a whole week.

Here Captain Vesey left the vessel, bidding Archie a kind farewell,
after dining with him at the Fountain, and roaming with him all over the
charming Botanical Gardens.

"I've an idea we'll meet again," he said as he bade him adieu.  "If God
spares me, I'll be sure to visit Sydney in a year or two, and I hope to
find you doing well.  You'll know if my little yacht, the _Barracouta_,
comes in, and I know you'll come off and see me.  I hope to find you
with as good a coat on your back as you have now."

Then the _Dugong_ sailed away again; but the time now seemed longer to
Archie than ever, for in Captain Vesey he really had lost a good
friend--a friend who was all the more valuable because he spoke the
plain, unvarnished truth; and if in doing so one or two of the young
man's cherished idols were brought tumbling down to the ground, it was
all the better for the young man.  It showed those idols had feet of
clay, else a little cold water thrown over them would hardly have had
such an effect.  I am sorry to say, however, that no sooner had the
captain left the ship, than Archie set about carefully collecting the
pieces of those said idols and patching them up again.

"After all," he thought to himself, "this Captain Vesey, jolly fellow as
he is, never had to struggle with fortune as I shall do; and I don't
think he has the same pluck in him that my father has, and that people
say I have.  We'll see, anyhow.  Other fellows have been fortunate in a
few years, why shouldn't I?  'In a few years?'  Yes, these are the very
words Captain Vesey laughed at me for.  'In a few years?'  To be sure.
And why not?  What _is_ the good of a fortune to a fellow after he gets
old, and all worn down with gout and rheumatism?  'Cheer, boys, cheer;'
I'm going in to win."

How slow the ship sailed now, apparently; and when it did blow it
usually blew the wrong way, and she would have to stand off and on, or
go tack and half-tack against it, like a man with one long leg and one
short.  But she was becalmed more than once, and this did seem dreadful.
It put Archie in mind of a man going to sleep in the middle of his
work, which is not at all the correct thing to do.

Well, there is nothing like a sailing ship after all for teaching one
the virtue of patience; and at last Archie settled down to his sea life.
He was becoming quite a sailor--as hard as the wheel-spokes, as brown
as the binnacle.  He was quite a favourite with the captain and
officers, and with all hands fore and aft.  Indeed he was very often in
the forecastle or galley of an evening listening to the men's yarns or
songs, and sometimes singing a verse or two himself.

He was just beginning to think the _Dugong_ was Vanderdecken's ship, and
that she never would make port at all, when one day at dinner he noticed
that the captain was unusually cheerful.

"In four or five days more, please God," said he, "we'll be safe in
Sydney."

Archie almost wished he had not known this, for these four or five days
were the longest of any he had yet passed.  He had commenced to worship
his patched-up idols again, and felt happier now, and more full of hope
and certainty of fortune than he had done during the whole voyage.

Sometimes they sighted land.  Once or twice birds flew on board--such
bright, pretty birds too they looked.  And birds also went wheeling and
whirring about the ship--gulls, the like of which he had never seen
before.  They were more elegant in shape and purer in colour than ours,
and their voices were clear and ringing.

Dick Whittington construed words out of the sound of the chiming bells.
Therefore it is not at all wonderful that Archie was pleased to believe
that some of these beautiful birds were screaming him a welcome to the
land of gold.

Just at or near the end of the voyage half a gale of wind blew the ship
considerably out of her course.  Then the breeze went round to fair
again, the sea went down, and the birds came back; and one afternoon a
shout was heard from the foretop that made Archie's heart jump for very
joy.

"Land ho!"

That same evening, as the sun was setting behind the Blue Mountains,
leaving a gorgeous splendour of cloud-scenery that may be equalled, but
is never surpassed in any country, the _Dugong_ sailed slowly into
Sydney harbour, and cast anchor.

At last!  Yes, at last.  Here were the golden gates of the El Dorado
that were to lead the ambitious boy to fortune, and all the pleasures
fortune is capable of bestowing.

Archie had fancied that Sydney would prove to be a very beautiful place;
but not in his wildest imaginings had he conjured up a scene of such
surpassing loveliness as that which now lay before him, and around him
as well.

On the town itself his eye naturally first rested.  There it lay, miles
upon miles of houses, towers, and steeples, spread out along the coast,
and rising inland.  The mountains and hills beyond, their rugged
grandeur softened and subdued in the purple haze of the day's dying
glory; the sky above, with its shades of orange, saffron, crimson, opal,
and grey; and the rocks, to right and left in the nearer distance, with
their dreamy clouds of foliage, from which peeped many a lordly mansion,
many a fairy-like palace.  He hardly noticed the forests of masts; he
was done with ships, done with masts, for a time at least; but his
inmost heart responded to the distant hum of city life, that came gently
stealing over the waters, mingling with the chime of evening bells, and
the music of the happy sea-gulls.

Would he, could he, get on shore to-night?  "No," the first officer
replied, "not before another day."

So he stood on deck, or walked about, never thinking of food--what is
food or drink to a youth who lives on hope?--till the gloaming shades
gave place to night, till the southern stars shone over the hills and
harbour, and strings upon strings of lamps and lights were hung
everywhere across the city above and below.

Now the fairy scene is changed.  Archie is on shore.  It is the forenoon
of another day, and the sun is warm though not uncomfortably hot.  There
is so much that is bracing and invigorating in the very air, that he
longs to be doing something at once.  Longs to commence laying the
foundation-stone of that temple of fortune which--let Captain Vesey say
what he likes--he, Archie Broadbent, is bent upon building.

He has dressed himself in his very English best.  His clothes are new
and creaseless, his gloves are spotless, his black silk hat immaculate,
the cambric handkerchief that peeps coyly from his breast pocket is
whiter than the snow, his boots fit like gloves, and shine as softly
black as his hat itself, and his cane even must be the envy of every
young man he meets.

Strange to say, however, no one appears to take a very great deal of
notice of him, though, as he glances towards the shop windows, he can
see as if in a mirror that one or two passengers have looked back and
smiled.  But it couldn't surely have been at him?  Impossible!

The people, however, are apparently all very active and very busy,
though cool, with a self-possession that he cannot help envying, and
which he tries to imitate without any marked degree of success.

There is an air of luxury and refinement about many of the buildings
that quite impresses the young man; but he cannot help noticing that
there is also a sort of business air about the streets which he hardly
expected to find, and which reminds him forcibly of Glasgow and
Manchester.  He almost wishes it had been otherwise.

He marches on boldly enough.

Archie feels as if on a prospecting tour--prospecting for gold.  Of
course he is going to make his fortune, but how is he going to begin?
That is the awkward part of the business.  If he could once get in the
thin end of the wedge he would quickly drive it home.

"There is nothing like ambition.  If we steer a steady course."

Of course there isn't.  But staring into a china-shop window will do him
little good.  I do not believe he saw anything in that window however.
Only, on turning away from it, his foot goes splash into a pool of dirty
water on the pavement, or rather on what ought to be a pavement.  That
boot is ruined for the day, and this reminds him that Sydney streets are
_not_ paved with gold, but with very unromantic matter-of-fact mud.
Happy thought! he will dine.

The waiters are very polite, but not obsequious, and he makes a hearty
meal, and feels more at home.

Shall he tip this waiter fellow?  Is it the correct thing to tip
waiters?  Will the waiter think him green if he does, or green if he
doesn't?

These questions, trifling though they may appear, really annoyed Archie;
but he erred on the right side, and did tip the waiter--well too.  And
the waiter brightened up, and asked him if he would like to see a
playbill.

Then this reminded Archie that he might as well call on some of the
people to whom he had introductions.  So he pulled out a small bundle of
letters, and he asked the waiter where this, that, and t'other street
was; and the waiter brought a map, and gave him so many hints, that when
he found himself on the street again he did not feel half so foreign.
He had something to do now, something in view.  Besides he had dined.

"Yes, he'd better drive," he said to himself, "it would look better."
He lifted a finger, and a hansom rattled along, and drew up by the kerb.
He had not expected to find cabs in Sydney.  His card-case was handy,
and his first letter also.

He might have taken a 'bus or tram.  There were plenty passing, and very
like Glasgow 'buses they were too; from the John with the ribbons to the
cad at the rear.  But a hansom certainly looked more aristocratic.

Aristocratic?  Yes.  But were there any aristocrats in Sydney?  Was
there any real blue blood in the place?  He had not answered those
questions to his satisfaction, when the hansom stopped so suddenly that
he fell forward.

"Wait," he said to the driver haughtily.

"Certainly, sir."

Archie did not observe, however, the grimace the Jehu made to another
cabman, as he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, else he would
hardly have been pleased.

There was quite a business air about the office into which the young man
ushered himself, but no one took much notice of him.  If he had had an
older face under that brand-new hat, they might have been more struck
with his appearance.

"Ahem!  Aw--!"  Archie began.

"One minute, sir," said the clerk nearest him.  "Fives in forty
thousand?  Fives in forty are eight--eight thousand."

The clerk advanced pen in mouth.

"Do you come from Jenkins's about those bills?"

"No, I come from England; and I've a letter of introduction to your
_master_."  Archie brought the last word out with a bang.

"Mr Berry isn't in.  Will you leave a message?"

"No, thank you."

"As you please."

Archie was going off, when the clerk called after him, "Here is Mr
Berry himself, sir."

A tall, brown-faced, elderly gentleman, with very white hair and
pleasant smile.  He took Archie into the office, bade him be seated, and
slowly read the letter; then he approached the young man and shook
hands.  The hand felt like a dead fish's tail in Archie's, and somehow
the smile had vanished.

"I'm really glad to see your father's son," he said.  "Sorry though to
hear that he has had a run of bad luck.  Very bad luck it must be, too,"
he added, "to let you come out here."

"Indeed, sir; but I mean to make my for--that is, I want to make my
living."

"Ay, young man, living's more like it; and I wish I could help you.
There's a wave of depression over this side of our little island at
present, and I don't know that any office in town has a genteel
situation to offer you."

Archie's soul-heat sank a degree or two.

"You think, sir, that--"

"I think that you would have done better at home.  It would be cruel of
me not to tell you the truth.  Now I'll give you an example.  We
advertised for a clerk just a week since--"

"I wish I'd been here."

"My young friend, you wouldn't have had the ghost of a chance.  We had
five-and-thirty to pick and choose from, and we took the likeliest.  I'm
really sorry.  If anything should turn up, where shall I communicate?"

Where should he communicate?  And this was his father's best friend,
from whom the too sanguine father expected Archie would have an
invitation to dinner at once, and a general introduction to Sydney
society.

"Oh, it is no great matter about communicating, Mr Berry; aw!--no
matter at all!  I can afford to wait a bit and look round me.  I--aw!--
good morning, sir."

Away stalked the young Northumbrian, like a prince of the blood.

"A chip of the old block," muttered Mr Berry, as he resumed his desk
work.  "Poor lad, he'll have to come down a peg though."

The cabby sprang towards the young nob.

"Where next, sir?"

"Grindlay's."

Archie was not more successful here, nor anywhere else.

But at the end of a week, during which time he had tried as hard as any
young man had ever tried before in Sydney or any other city to find some
genteel employment, he made a wise resolve; viz, to go into lodgings.

He found that living in a hotel, though very cheerful, made a terrible
hole in his purse; so he brought himself "down a peg" by the simple
process of "going up" nearer the sky.

Here is the explanation of this paradox.  It was Archie's custom to
spend his forenoons looking for something to do, and his evenings
walking in the suburbs.

Poor, lonely lad, that never a soul in the city cared for, any more than
if he had been a stray cat, he found it wearisome, heart-breaking work
wandering about the narrow, twisting streets and getting civilly
snubbed.  He felt more of a gentleman when dining.  Afterwards his
tiredness quite left him, and hope swelled his heart once more.  So out
he would go and away--somewhere, anywhere; it did not matter so long as
he could see woods, and water, and houses.  Oh, such lovely suburban
villas, with cool verandahs, round which flowering creepers twined, and
lawns shaded by dark green waving banana trees, beneath which he could
ofttimes hear the voices of merry children, or the tinkle of the light
guitar.  He would give reins to his fancy then, and imagine things--such
sweet things!

Yes, he would own one of the biggest and most delightful of these
mansions; he should keep fleet horses, a beautiful carriage, a boat--he
must have a boat, or should it be a gondola?  Yes, that would be nicer
and newer.  In this boat, when the moonlight silvered the water, he
would glide over the bay, returning early to his happy home.  His bonnie
sister should be there, his brother Rupert--the student--his mother, and
his hero, that honest, bluff, old father of his.  What a dear,
delightful dream!  No wonder he did not care to return to the realities
of his city life till long after the sun had set over the hills, and the
stars were twinkling down brighter and lovelier far than those lights he
had so admired the night his ship arrived.

He was returning slowly one evening and was close to the city, but in a
rather lonely place, when he noticed something dark under the shade of a
tree, and heard a girl's voice say:

"Dearie me! as missus says; but ain't I jolly tired just!"

"Who is that?" said Archie.

"On'y me, sir; on'y Sarah.  Don't be afear'd.  I ain't a larrikin.  Help
this 'ere box on my back like a good chummie."

"It's too heavy for your slight shoulders," quoth gallant Archie.  "I
don't mind carrying it a bit."

"What, a gent like you!  Why, sir, you're greener than they make 'em
round here!"

"I'm from England."

"Ho, ho!  Well, that accounts for the milk.  So'm I from Hengland.  This
way, chummie."

They hadn't far to go.

"My missus lives two story up, top of a ware'us, and I've been to the
station for that 'ere box.  She do take it out o' me for all the wage.
She do."

Archie carried the box up the steep stairs, and Sarah's mistress herself
opened the door and held a candle.  A thin, weary-looking body, with
whom Sarah seemed to be on the best and most friendly terms.

"Brought my young man," said Sarah.  "Ain't he a smartie?  But, heigho!
_so_ green!  _You_ never!"

"Come in a minute, sir, and rest you.  Never mind this silly girl."

Archie did go in a minute; five, ten, ay fifteen, and by that time he
had not only heard all this ex-policeman's wife's story, but taken a
semi-attic belonging to her.

And he felt downright independent and happy when next day he took
possession.

For now he would have time to really look round, and it was a relief to
his mind that he would not be spending much money.

Archie could write home cheerfully now.  He was sure that something
would soon turn up, something he could accept, and which would not be
derogatory to the son of a Northumbrian squire.  More than one
influential member of commercial society had promised "to communicate
with him at the very earliest moment."

But, alas! weeks flew by, and weeks went into months, and no more signs
of the something were apparent than he had seen on the second day of his
arrival.

Archie was undoubtedly "a game un," as Sarah called him; but his heart
began to feel very heavy indeed.

Living as cheaply as he could, his money would go done at last.  What
then?  Write home for more?  He shuddered to think of such a thing.  If
his first friend, Captain Vesey, had only turned up now, he would have
gone and asked to be taken as a hand before the mast.  But Captain Vesey
did not.

A young man cannot be long in Sydney without getting into a set.  Archie
did, and who could blame him.  They were not a rich set, nor a very fast
set; but they had a morsel of a club-room of their own.  They formed
friendships, took strolls together, went occasionally to the play, and
often had little "adventures" about town, the narratives of which, when
retailed in the club, found ready listeners, and of course were
stretched to the fullest extent of importance.

They really were not bad fellows, and would have done Archie a good turn
if they could.  But they could not.  They laughed a deal at first at his
English notions and ideas; but gradually Archie got over his greenness,
and began to settle down to colonial life, and would have liked Sydney
very much indeed if he had only had something to do.

The ex-policeman's wife was very kind to her lodger.  So was Sarah;
though she took too many freedoms of speech with him, which tended to
lower his English squirearchical dignity very much.  But, to do her
justice, Sarah did not mean any harm.

Only once did Archie venture to ask about the ex-policeman.  "What did
he do?"

"Oh, he drinks!" said Sarah, as quietly as if drinking were a trade of
some kind.  Archie asked no more.

Rummaging in a box one day, Archie found his last letter of
introduction.  It had been given him by Uncle Ramsay.

"You'll find him a rough and right sort of a stick," his uncle had said.
"He _was_ my steward, now he is a wealthy man, and can knock down his
cheque for many thousands."

Archie dressed in his best and walked right away that afternoon to find
the address.

It was one of the very villas he had often passed, in a beautiful place
close by the water-side.

What would be his reception here?

This question was soon put at rest.

He rang the bell, and was ushered into a luxuriously-furnished room; a
room that displayed more richness than taste.

A very beautiful girl--some thirteen years of age perhaps--got up from a
grand piano, and stood before him.

Archie was somewhat taken aback, but bowed as composedly as he could.

"Surely," he thought, "_she_ cannot be the daughter of the rough and
right sort of a stick who had been steward to his uncle.  He had never
seen so sweet a face, such dreamy blue eyes, or such wealth of hair
before.

"Did you want to see papa?  Sit down.  I'll go and find him."

"Will you take this letter to him?" said Archie.

And the girl left, letter in hand.

Ten minutes after the "rough stick" entered, whistling "Sally come up."

"Hullo! hullo!" he cried, "so here we are."

There he was without doubt--a big, red, jolly face, like a full moon
orient, a loose merino jacket, no waistcoat or necktie, but a
cricketer's cap on the very back of his bushy head.  He struck Archie a
friendly slap on the back.

"Keep on yer cap," he shouted, "I was once a poor man myself."

Archie was too surprised and indignant to speak.

"Well, well, well," said Mr Winslow, "they do tell me wonders won't
never cease.  What a whirligig of a world it is.  One day I'm cleanin' a
gent's boots.  Gent is a capting of a ship.  Next day gent's nephew
comes to me to beg for a job.  Say, young man, what'll ye drink?"

"I didn't come to _drink_, Mr Winslow, neither did I come to _beg_."

"Whew-ew-ew," whistled the quondam steward, "here's pride; here's a
touch o' the old country.  Why, young un, I might have made you my
under-gardener."

The girl at this moment entered the room.  She had heard the last
sentence.

"Papa!" she remonstrated.  Then she glided out by the casement window.

Burning blushes suffused Archie's cheeks as he hurried over the lawn
soon after; angry tears were in his eyes.  His hand was on the
gate-latch when he felt a light touch on his arm.  It was the girl.

"Don't be angry with poor papa," she said, almost beseechingly.

"No, no," Archie cried, hardly knowing what he did say.  "What is your
name?"

"Etheldene."

"What a beautiful name!  I--I will never forget it.  Good-bye."

He ran home with the image of the child in his mind--on his brain.

Sarah--plain Sarah--met him at the top of the stairs.  He brushed past
her.

"La! but ye does look glum," said Sarah.

Archie locked his door.  He did not want to see even Sarah--homely
Sarah--that night.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

"SOMETHING IN SOAP."

It was a still, sultry night in November.  Archie's balcony window was
wide open, and if there had been a breath of air anywhere he would have
had the benefit of it.  That was one advantage of having a room high up
above the town, and there were several others.  For instance, it was
quieter, more retired, and his companions did not often take him by
storm, because they objected to climb so many stairs.  Dingy, small, and
dismal some might have called it, but Archie always felt at home up in
his semi-attic.  It even reminded him of his room in the dear old tower
at Burley.  Then his morsel of balcony, why that was worth all the money
he paid for the room itself; and as for the view from this charming,
though non-aristocratic elevation, it was simply unsurpassed,
unsurpassable--looking far away over a rich and fertile country to the
grand old hills beyond--a landscape that, like the sea, was still the
same, but ever changing; sometimes smiling and green, sometimes bathed
in tints of purple and blue, sometimes grey as a sky o'ercast with rain
clouds.  Yes, he loved it, and he would take a chair out here on a
moonlight evening and sit and think and dream.

But on this particular night sleep, usually so kind to the young man,
absolutely refused to visit his pillow.  He tried to woo the goddess on
his right side, on his left, on his back; it was all in vain.  Finally,
he sat bolt upright in his little truckle bed in silent defiance.

"I don't care," he said aloud, "whether I sleep or not.  What does it
matter?  I've nothing to do to-morrow.  Heigho!"

Nothing to do to-morrow!  How sad!  And he so young too.  Were all his
dreams of future fortune to fade and pass away like this--nothing to do?
Why he envied the very boys who drove the mill wagons that went lazily
rolling past his place every day.  They seemed happy, and so contented;
while he--why his very life--had come to be all one continued fever.

"Nothing to do yet, sir?"  It was the ordinary salutation of his
hard-working mite of a landlady when he came home to his meal in the
afternoon.  "I knows by the weary way ye walks upstairs, sir, you aren't
successful yet, sir."

"Nothink to do yet, sir?"  They were the usual words that the slavey
used when she dragged upstairs of an evening with his tea-things.

"Nothink to do," she would say, as she deposited the tray on the table,
and sank _sans ceremonie_ into the easy-chair.  "Nothink to do.  What a
'appy life to lead!  Now 'ere's me a draggin' up and down stairs, and a
carryin' of coals and a sweepin', and a dustin' and a hanswering of the
door, till, what wi' the 'eat and the dust and the fleas, my poor little
life's well-nigh worrited out o' me.  Heigho! hif I was honly back again
in merrie England, catch me ever goin' to any Australia any more.  But
you looks a horned gent, sir.  Nothink to do!  My eye and Betty Martin,
ye oughter to be 'appy, if you ain't."

Archie got up to-night, enrobed himself in his dressing-gown, and went
and sat on his balcony.  This soothed him.  The stars were very bright,
and seemed very near.  He did not care for other companionship than
these and his own all-too-busy thoughts.  There was hardly a sound to be
heard, except now and then the hum of a distant railway train increasing
to a harsh roar as it crossed the bridge, then becoming subdued again
and muffled as it entered woods, or went rolling over a soft and open
country.

Nothing to do!  But he must and would do something.  Why should he
starve in a city of plenty?  He had arms and hands, if he hadn't a head.
Indeed, he had begun of late to believe that his head, which he used to
think so much of, was the least important part of his body.  He caught
himself feeling his forearm and his biceps.  Why this latter had got
smaller and beautifully less of late.  He had to shut his fist hard to
make it perceptible to touch.  This was worse and worse, he thought.  He
would not be able to lift a fifty-six if he wanted to before long, or
have strength enough left to wield a stable broom if he should be
obliged to go as gardener to Winslow.

"What next, I wonder?" he said to himself.  "First I lose my brains, if
ever I had any, and now I have lost my biceps; the worst loss last."

He lit his candle, and took up the newspaper.

"I'll pocket my pride, and take a porter's situation," he murmured.
"Let us see now.  Hullo! what is this?  'Apprentice Wanted--the drug
trade--splendid opening to a pushing youngster.'  Well, I am a pushing
youngster.  'Premium required.'  I don't care, I have a bit of money
left, and I'll pay it like a man if there is enough.  Why the drug trade
is grand.  Sydney drug-stores beat Glasgow's all to pieces.  Druggists
and drysalters have their carriages and mansions, their town and country
houses.  Hurrah!  I'll be something yet!"

He blew out the candle, and jumped into bed.  The gentle goddess
required no further wooing.  She took him in her lap, and he went off at
once like a baby.

Rap--rap--rap--rap!

"Hullo!  Yes; coming, Sarah; coming."

It was broad daylight; and when he admitted Sarah at last, with the
breakfast-tray, she told him she had been up and down fifty times,
trying to make him hear.  Sarah was given to a little exaggeration at
times.

"It was all very well for a gent like he," she said, "but there was her
a-slavin' and a-toilin', and all the rest of it."

"Well, well, my dear," he cut in, "I'm awfully sorry, I assure you."

Sarah stopped right in the centre of the room, still holding the tray,
and looked at him.

"What!" she cried.  "Ye ain't a-going to marry me then, young man!  What
are ye my-dearing me for?"

"No, Sarah," replied Archie, laughing; "I'm not going to marry you; but
I've hopes of a good situation, and--"

"Is that all?"  Sarah dumped down the tray, and tripped away singing.

Archie's interview with the advertiser was of a most satisfactory
character.  He did not like the street, it was too new and out of the
way; but then it would be a beginning.

He did not like his would-be employer, but he dared say he would improve
on acquaintance.  There was plenty in the shop, though the place was
dingy and dirty, and the windows small.  The spiders evidently had fine
times of it here, and did not object to the smell of drugs.  He was
received by Mr Glorie himself in a little back sanctum off the little
back shop.

The premium for apprenticing Archie was rather more than the young man
could give; but this being explained to the proprietor of these
beautiful premises, and owner of all the spiders, he graciously
condescended to take half.  Archie's salary--a wretched pittance--was to
commence at once after articles were signed; and Mr Glorie promised to
give him a perfect insight into the drug business, and make a man of
him, and "something else besides," he added, nodding to Archie in a
mysterious manner.

The possessor of the strange name was a queer-looking man; there did not
appear much glory about him.  He was very tall, very lanky, and thin,
his shoulders sloping downwards like a well-pointed pencil, while his
face was solemn and elongated, like your own, reader, if you look at it
in a spoon held lengthways.

The articles were signed, and Archie walked home on feathers apparently.
He went upstairs singing.  His landlady ran to the door.

"Work at last?"

Archie nodded and smiled.

When Sarah came in with the dinner things she danced across the room,
bobbing her queer, old-fashioned face and crying--

"Lawk-a-daisy, diddle-um-doo, Missus says you've got work to do!"

"Yes, Sarah, at long last, and I'm so happy."

"'Appy, indeed!" sang Sarah.  "Why, ye won't be the gent no longer!"

Archie certainly had got work to do.  For a time his employer kept him
in the shop.  There was only one other lad, and he went home with the
physic, and what with studying hard to make himself _au fait_ in
prescribing and selling seidlitz powders and gum drops, Archie was
pretty busy.

So months flew by.  Then his long-faced employer took him into the back
premises, and proceeded to initiate him into the mysteries of the
something else that was to make a man of him.

"There's a fortune in it," said Mr Glorie, pointing to a bubbling
grease-pot.  "Yes, young sir, a vast fortune."

"What is the speciality?"  Archie ventured to enquire.

"The speciality, young sir?" replied Mr Glorie, his face relaxing into
something as near a smile as it would permit of.  "The speciality, sir,
is soap.  A transparent soap.  A soap, young sir, that is destined to
revolutionise the world of commerce, and bring _my_ star to the
ascendant after struggling for two long decades with the dark clouds of
adversity."

So this was the mystery.  Archie was henceforward, so it appeared, to
live in an atmosphere of scented soap; his hope must centre in bubbles.
He was to assist this Mr Glorie's star to rise to the zenith, while his
own fortune might sink to nadir.  And he had paid his premium.  It was
swallowed up and simmering in that ugly old grease-pot, and except for
the miserable salary he received from Mr Glorie he might starve.

Poor Archie!  He certainly did not share his employer's enthusiasm, and
on this particular evening he did not walk home on feathers, and when he
sat down to supper his face must have appeared to Sarah quite as long
and lugubrious as Mr Glorie's; for she raised her hands and said:

"Lawk-a-doodle, sir!  What's the matter?  Have ye killed anybody?"

"Not yet," answered Archie; "but I almost feel I could."

He stuck to his work, however, like a man; but that work became more and
more allied to soap, and the front shop hardly knew him any more.

He had informed the fellows at the club-room that he was employed at
last; that he was apprenticed to the drug trade.  But the soap somehow
leaked out, and more than once, when he was introduced to some
new-comer, he was styled--

"Mr Broadbent," and "something in soap."

This used to make him bite his lips in anger.

He would not have cared half so much had he not joined this very club,
with a little flourish of trumpets, as young Broadbent, son of Squire
Broadbent, of Burley Old Castle, England.

And now he was "something in soap."

He wrote home to his sister in the bitterness of his soul, telling her
that all his visions of greatness had ended in bubbles of rainbow hue,
and that he was "something in soap."  He felt sorry for having done so
as soon as the letter was posted.

He met old Winslow one day in the street, and this gentleman grasped
Archie's small aristocratic hand in his great brown bear's paw, and
congratulated him on having got on his feet at last.

"Yes," said Archie with a sneer and a laugh, "I'm 'something in soap.'"

"And soap's a good thing I can tell you.  Soap's not to be despised.
There's a fortune in soap.  I had an uncle in soap.  Stick to it, my
lad, and it'll stick to you."

But when a new apprentice came to the shop one day, and was installed in
the front door drug department, while he himself was relegated to the
slums at the back, his cup of misery seemed full, and he proceeded
forthwith to tell this Mr Glorie what he thought of him.  Mr Glorie's
face got longer and longer and longer, and he finally brought his
clenched fist down with such a bang on the counter, that every bottle
and glass in the place rang like bells.

"I'll have the law on you," he shouted.

"I don't care; I've done with you.  I'm sick of you and your soap."

He really did not mean to do it; but just at that moment his foot kicked
against a huge earthenware jar full of oil, and shivered it in pieces.

"You've broke your indenture!  You--you--"

"I've broken your jar, anyhow," cried Archie.

He picked up his hat, and rushing out, ran recklessly off to his club.

He was "something in soap" no more.

He was beggared, but he was free, unless indeed Mr Glorie should put
him in gaol.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE KING MAY COME IN THE CADGER'S WAY.

Mr Glorie did not put his runaway apprentice in gaol.  He simply
advertised for another--with a premium.

Poor Archie!  His condition in life was certainly not to be envied now.
He had but very few pounds between him and actual want.

He was rich in one thing alone--pride.  He would sooner starve than
write home for a penny.  No, he _could_ die in a gutter, but he could
not bear to think they should know of it at Burley Old Farm.

Long ago, in the bonnie woods around Burley, he used to wonder to find
dead birds in dark crannies of the rocks.  He could understand it now.
They had crawled into the crannies to die, out of sight and alone.

His club friends tried to rally him.  They tried to cheer him up in more
ways than one.  Be it whispered, they tried to make him seek solace in
gambling and in the wine-cup.

I do not think that I have held up my hero as a paragon.  On the
contrary, I have but represented him as he was--a bold, determined lad,
with many and many a fault; but now I am glad to say this one thing in
his favour: he was not such a fool as to try to drown his wits in wine,
nor to seek to make money questionably by betting and by cards.

After Archie's letter home, in which he told Elsie that he was
"something in soap," he had written another, and a more cheerful one.
It was one which cost him a good deal of trouble to write; for he really
could not get over the notion that he was telling white lies when he
spoke of "his prospects in life, and his hopes being on the ascendant;"
and as he dropped it into the receiver, he felt mean, demoralised; and
he came slowly along George Street, trying to make himself believe that
any letter was better than no letter, and that he would hardly have been
justified in telling the whole truth.

Well, at Burley Old Farm things had rather improved, simply for this
reason: Squire Broadbent had gone in heavily for retrenchment.

He had proved the truth of his own statement: "It does not take much in
this world to make a man happy."  The Squire was happy when he saw his
wife and children happy.  The former was always quietly cheerful, and
the latter did all they could to keep up each other's hearts.  They
spent much of their spare time in the beautiful and romantic tower-room,
and in walking about the woods, the grounds, and farm; for Rupert was
well now, and was his father's right hand, not in the rough-and-tumble
dashing way that Archie would have been, but in a thoughtful,
considering way.

Mr Walton had gone away, but Branson and old Kate were still to the
fore.  The Squire could not have spared these.

I think that Rupert's religion was a very pretty thing.  He had lost
none of his simple faith, his abiding trust in God's goodness, though he
had regained his health.  His devotions were quite as sincere, his
thankfulness for mercies received greater even than before, and he had
the most unbounded faith in the efficacy of prayer.

So his sister and he lived in hope, and the Squire used to build castles
in the green parlour of an evening, and of course the absent Archie was
one of the kings of these castles.

After a certain number of years of retrenchment, Burley was going to
rise from its ashes like the fabled phoenix--machinery and all.  The
Squire was even yet determined to show these old-fashioned farmer folks
of Northumbria "a thing or two."

That was his ambition; and we must not blame him; for a man without
ambition of some kind is a very humble sort of a clod--a clod of very
poor clay.

But to return to Sydney.

Archie had received several rough invitations to go and visit Mr
Winslow.  He had accepted two of these, and, singular to say,
Etheldene's father was absent each time.  Now, I refuse to be
misunderstood.  Archie did not "manage" to call when the ex-miner was
out; but Archie was not displeased.  He had taken a very great fancy for
the child, and did not hesitate to tell her that from the first day he
had met her he had loved her like his sister Elsie.

Of course Etheldene wanted to know all about Elsie, and hours were spent
in telling her about this one darling sister of his, and about Rupert
and all the grand old life at Burley.

"I should laugh," cried Archie, "if some day when you grew up, you
should find yourself in England, and fall in love with Rupert, and marry
him."

The child smiled, but looked wonderfully sad and beautiful the next
moment.  She had a way like this with her.  For if Etheldene had been
taken to represent any month of our English year, it would have been
April--sunshine, flowers, and showers.

But one evening Archie happened to be later out in the suburbs than he
ought to have been.  The day had been hot, and the night was
delightfully cool and pleasant.  He was returning home when a tall,
rough-looking, bearded man stopped him, and asked "for a light, old
chum."  Archie had a match, which he handed him, and as the light fell
on the man's face, it revealed a very handsome one indeed, and one that
somehow seemed not unfamiliar to him.

Archie went on.  There was the noise of singing farther down the street,
a merry band of youths who had been to a race meeting that clay, and
were up to mischief.

The tall man hid under the shadow of a wall.

"They're larrikins," he said to himself, and "he's a greenhorn."  He
spat in his fist, and kept his eye on the advancing figures.

Archie met them.  They were arm-in-arm, five in all, and instead of
making way for him, rushed him, and down he went, his head catching the
kerb with frightful force.  They at once proceeded to rifle him.  But
perhaps "larrikins" had never gone to ground so quickly and so
unexpectedly before.  It was the bearded man who was "having his fling"
among them, and he ended by grabbing one in each hand till a policeman
came up.

Archie remembered nothing more then.

When he became sensible he was in bed with a bandaged head, and feeling
as weak all over as a kitten.  Sarah was in the room with the landlady.

"Hush, my dear," said the latter; "you've been very ill for more than a
week.  You're not to get up, nor even to speak."

Archie certainly did not feel inclined to do either.  He just closed his
eyes and dozed off again, and his soul flew right away back to Burley.

"Oh, yes; he's out of danger!"  It was the doctor's voice.  "He'll do
first-rate with careful nursing."

"He won't want for that, sir.  Sarah here has been like a little mother
to him."

Archie dozed for days.  Only, whenever he was sensible, he could notice
that Sarah was far better dressed, and far older-looking and
nicer-looking than ever she had been.  And now and then the big-bearded
man came and sat by his bed, looking sometimes at him, some times at
Sarah.

One day Archie was able to sit up; he felt quite well almost, though of
course he was not really so.

"I have you to thank for helping me that night," he said.

"Ay, ay, Master Archie; but don't you know me?"

"No--no.  I don't think so."

The big-bearded man took out a little case from his pocket, and pulled
therefrom a pair o

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