Kitabı oku: «Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea», sayfa 6
Chapter Eleven
For Auld Lang Syne
“We twa have paddled in the burn
Frae mornin’ sun till dine.
But seas between us broad hae rolled
Since the days o’ auld lang syne.”
Burns.
Scene: Landscape, seascape, and cloudscape.
A more lovely view than that which met the eye of a stranger, who had seated himself on Cotago Cliff this evening, it was never surely the lot of mortal man to behold. It was on the northern shores of South America, and many miles to the eastward of Venezuela Gulf.
Far down beneath him lay the white villas and flat-roofed houses of a town embosomed in foliage, which looked unnaturally green against their snowy walls. To the right, and more immediately below the spot where the stranger sat under the shade of trees, that towered far up into the sky, was a long, low, solitary-looking beach, with the waves breaking on it with a soft musical sighing sound; it was as if the great ocean were sinking to slumber, and this was the sound of his breathing.
The sun was low down in the west, in a purple haze, which his beams could hardly pierce, but all above was a glory which is indescribable, the larger clouds silver-edged, the smaller clouds encircled with radiant golden light, with higher up flakes and streaks of crimson. And all this beauty of colouring was reflected from the sea itself, and gave a tinge even to the wavelets that rippled on the silver sands.
It was very quiet and still up here where the stranger sat. The birds had already sought shelter for the night; well they knew that the sunset would be followed by speedy darkness. Sometimes there would be a rustle among the foliage, which the stranger heeded not. He knew it was but some gigantic and harmless lizard, looking for its prey.
“I must be going back to my hotel,” he said to himself at last. He talked half aloud; there was no human ear to listen.
“I must be going home, but what a pity to leave so charming a place! I do not know which to admire the most, the grand towering tree-clad hills, the sea, or the forest around me.
“Hullo!” he added, “yonder round the point comes a little skiff. How quickly and well he rows! He must be a Britisher. No arms of lazy South American ever impelled a boat as he does his. Going to the hotel, I suppose. No, he seems coming straight to the beach beneath me. Hark! a song.”
The rower had drawn in his oars, leaving the little boat to continue its course with the “way” already on her, while he gazed about him. Then, as if impelled to sing by the beauty around him, he trilled forth a verse of a grand old sea song.
“The morn was fair, the sky was clear,
No breath came o’er the sea,
When Mary left her Highland cot
And wandered forth with me.
Though flowers bedecked the mountain side,
And fragrance filled the vale,
By far the sweetest flower there
Was the Rose of Allendale.”
Then there was silence once again. The rower rowed more slowly now, but soon he beached his boat, and drew it up, and hid it by drawing it in among the rocks.
The stranger soon afterwards rose to go.
He had not proceeded many yards along the hillside, when, on rounding a gigantic cactus bush, and close beside it, he stood face to face with the oarsman.
The former lifted his hat to bow, but instead of replacing it on his head he dashed it on the ground, and springing forward, seized the other by the hand.
“Archie! Archie McCrane!” he cried; “is it possible you do not know me, that you have forgotten Kenneth McAlpine?”
Poor Archie! for a moment or two he could not speak.
“Man!” he said at last, in deep, musical Doric; “is it possible it is you, Kennie?”
The tears were blinding him, both hearts were full, and they said no more for many seconds, merely standing there under the cactus tree holding each other’s hands.
“God has heard my prayer,” said Kenneth at last.
“And mine.
“But how you have altered, Kenneth! How you must have suffered to make you look so old!”
“You forget I am old, twenty-one next birthday; and you are only a year less. But what wind blew you here? I thought, Archie, you had settled down as an engineer on shore.”
“Your letters roused a roving spirit in me, Kenneth. I determined to see the world. I took the first appointment I could get. On a Frenchman. I haven’t had much luck. We have been wrecked at Domingo, and I came here last night in a boat. But come, tell us your own adventures. I have all your letters by heart, but I must hear more; I must hear everything from your own mouth, my dear brown old man.”
Kenneth was brown; there was no mistake about that, very brown, and very tall and manly-looking, and the moustache he wore set off his beauty very much. No, he had not cultivated his moustache. It had cultivated itself.
“Come down to the hotel,” said Archie. “I am not poor. We saved everything. It was a most unromantic shipwreck.”
“No,” replied Kenneth, “not to the hotel to-night. Come up the mountain with me to my cottage.”
“Up the mountain?”
“Yes, my lad,” said Kenneth, smiling. “Up the mountain. Haven’t forgotten how to climb a hill, have you, I say, Archie, boy? for, as brown as I look, I am an invalid.”
“What!” cried Archie, in some alarm. “Nothing serious, I sincerely hope.”
“Nothing, old man, nothing. But when they left me here six weeks ago, I thought that no power could have saved me. I had yellow-Jack. That’s all. I could not have lived in the hotel. Good as it is, it is too low. But come; old Señor Gasco waits supper for me.”
Up and up they struggled, arm in arm. Kenneth knew every foot of the pathway through the forest; it was well he did, for night had quite fallen over sea and land, and the stars were glinting above them ere they reached a kind of tableland, and presently stood in front of the rose-covered verandah of a beautiful cottage.
The French windows were open, and they entered sans cérémonie. It was a lofty, large room, furnished with almost Oriental splendour, with brackets, ottomans, and suspended lamps, that shed a soft light over everything around.
And here were books, and even musical instruments galore, among the latter a flute. It was not the flute Kenneth used to play in Glen Alva, and up among the mountains, while herding his sheep; it was a far better one, but the sight of it brought back old times to Archie’s memory.
Kenneth had left him for a few minutes.
Archie sank down upon an ottoman with the flute in his hand, and when Kenneth returned he found his friend in dreamland apparently.
But with a sigh Archie arose and followed Kenneth to an inner room.
“Señor Gasco,” said the latter, “this is Archie McCrane, the friend of my boyhood, of whom you have so often heard me speak.
“Archie, this gentleman has saved my life. He is a kind of a hermit. Aren’t you, mon ami?”
“No, no, no,” cried Señor Gasco, laughing. “Only I love pure, fresh, cool air and quiet; I cannot get these in the town beneath, so I live here among my books.”
He was a tall, gentlemanly-looking Spaniard, of some forty years or over, and spoke beautiful English, though with a slightly foreign intonation.
A supper was spread here that a king might have sat down and enjoyed.
Two tall black servants, dressed in snow-white linen, waited at the table. They were exceedingly polite, but they had rather larger mouths and considerably thicker lips than suited Archie’s notions of beauty.
Out into the verandah again after supper, seated in rocking-chairs; the cool mountain air, so delicious and refreshing, was laden with the perfume wafted from a thousand flowers. There were the stars up in heaven’s blue, and myriad stars, the fire-flies, that danced everywhere among the trees and bushes. Archie said they put him in mind of dead candles.
“And now for your story, Kenneth.”
“It is a long one, but I must make it very brief. You know most of it, dear Archie, so why should I repeat it?”
“Because,” said Archie, “I do so love to hear you speak. Your voice is not changed if your face is, and when I sit here in this semi-darkness, and listen to you, man, I think we are both bits of boys again, wandering through the bonnie blooming heather that clothes the hills above Glen Alva.”
“Now you have done it,” cried Kenneth, laughing.
“Done what?” said Archie.
“Why, you have to tell the first story. If you hadn’t mentioned home, if you hadn’t spoken about the hills and the heather, I would have told my tale first.”
“But – ” said Archie.
“Not a single excuse, my boy. I am home-sick now. Answer a few questions, and I’ll let you off.”
“Well, go on,” said Archie; “ask away.”
“My dear, dear mother! Have you seen her grave lately?”
“It was the last spot I visited when I went to the clachan,” replied Archie sadly.
“Heigho!” sighed Kenneth. “And I was all ready to go home. We were lying at the Cape, if you remember, when your letter arrived. Yes, and I left my ship, I threw up a good appointment on receipt of the sad intelligence; and Archie, dear lad, I shall go back to Scotland when I make my fortune – not before, and that may be never.”
“Do not speak like that.”
“But I must and will. How changed everything must be from the time I kept the sheep among the hills. And how do the clachan, the glen, and the hills look now?”
“The clachan is but little changed. Mr Steve did not tear down the village and church, as he first threatened. No, the clachan is the same, but poor Mr Grant has gone.”
“Dead! You did not tell me this in your letter.”
“No, no, not dead. He has got a better living in the city.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, and I went to see them. The Misses Grant keep every letter ever you wrote them, and they do long, I can tell you, for the return of the wanderer.”
“Bless their dear hearts!”
“I went over to the wee village by the sea and saw Duncan Reed.”
“Is he changed?”
“Not in the very least. Looks hardier than ever.”
“And your father and mother you have already said are well?”
“Yes, but father doesn’t like town life. How he would love the old days to come back again; how he would love to rove once again over the hills gun on shoulder and dog at his heel!”
“He is not very old; he may yet have his wish.”
“I fear not.”
“Well?”
“Well, the glens and hills all around are planted with trees. This was done as soon as Mr Steve took possession of the estate, and before poor old Chief McGregor died.”
“He is dead, then?”
“Yes. I would have told you, but I wanted to make my letters to you as bright as possible.”
“So the dear old man is dead. Heigho! And the estate planted. You did not even tell me that.”
“No, and for the same reason. But the trees are getting quite tall already. Most of the higher parts of the glens are covered with Scotch firs and spruces and larches, the lower lands with elm and plane and scrubby oaks. At the risk of being taken as a trespasser, I went all over the estate. I penetrated up to the fairy knoll and saw poor Kooran’s grave. There are young trees all round there now.”
“Archie,” said Kenneth, leaning forward and peering into his companion’s face, “I hope they didn’t interfere with poor Kooran’s grave.”
“No, nor with anything around it.”
“Go on, lad; I’m so pleased.”
“Well, I’ve little more to say. I was not taken prisoner, though I startled the wild deer in all directions.”
“But the grand old hills themselves?”
“Nay, they are not planted. Green in summer and purple and crimson in autumn, there they are the same, and ever will remain.”
There was a pause. Then Kenneth spoke once again.
“Did you ever see Miss Gale since?”
“Only once,” replied Archie, “and Miss Redmond – Jessie – she has grown tall, and oh! Kenneth, so beautiful, but still so child-like and graceful.”
“I can easily believe that, boy. And did she – ”
“Yes, dear lad,” said Archie. “She did ask all about you, so kindly. And I gave her your last letter to read. And – ”
“And she read it, Archie? Tell me, did she read it?”
“Yes, she read it over and over again.”
“Now, I’ll tell you my own adventures.”
“Begin at the beginning, won’t you? The very beginning, from the day you and I parted.”
“I will.”
But what Kenneth said deserves a chapter to its own account.
Chapter Twelve
Kenneth and Archie
“Adieu, adieu; my native land
Fades o’er the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native land, good-night.”
Byron.
Scene: Kenneth and Archie still seated in the verandah of the Spaniard’s cottage. The light from the casement window is streaming outwards through the creepers and climbing plants all around them; the beautiful bell-like flowers, down-drooping, touch their very faces. But all the colour up there in the verandah’s roof does not belong to these flowers. No, for birds are sheltering their bright wings from the night dews; that rich orange spot in the corner is a bird, so is that patch of crimson and steel, and yonder one of snow-white and blue. If you looked steadily for a moment at them, you could see round heads turned downwards and wondering beads of eyes. The birds are considering whether or not all is safe, or whether they had better fly away out into the night and the darkness.
Kenneth is waiting for the Señor to come. There is hardly a sound except a gentle sighing of wind among the trees, now and then the shriek of a night bird, the constant chirp of cicada, or rap, rap, rap, of green lizard as he beats to death some unhappy moth he has captured.
“Now, Señor, come and sit you down. Light your great pipe. That is right. Thanks, yes, both Archie and I will have a little palm-leaf cigarette. Coffee? Oh! delightful! Archie: old man, there isn’t any one in all the wide world ever made coffee half so well as the Señor Gasco. Flattery, Señor? No, not a bit of it. The truth cannot be flattery.”
“The coffee,” said Archie, “is delicious.”
“Heigho!” sighed Kenneth. “I am so happy to-night, dear Archie. I believe it will really do me good to tell you of some of the troubles I have come through; it will dilute my joy.
“I don’t know, Archie, old man, how ever I became a sailor. I’m not quite sure, mind you, that I am altogether a sailor yet at heart, though I dearly love the sea, and a roving life is the life for a man of my temperament. Señor is smiling; he will never admit I am a man. But I have come through so much, and the years I have spent since I left the dear old glen have been indeed eventful, and seem a long, long time.
“But, Archie, lad, when I began my wanderings through the world, I can tell you my ambition was very great indeed. I determined, you know, to make my fortune, and I determined to make it in a very short time. The details of the process of fortune-manufacture, however, didn’t present themselves to me, all at once anyhow. I turned my back on Glen Alva, and so full was my heart that I put at least ten miles behind me before I sat down to rest. I got inside a wood at last, and seated myself beneath a tree, and counted my money, three shillings and fivepence-halfpenny! Well, many a man has begun the world on less.
“But this money couldn’t last long. What then should I do? I’ll tell you what I did do. I fell sound asleep, and the sun was setting when I awoke, and flooding all the wood with mellow light.
“There was a blackbird came and perched half-way up a neighbouring spruce tree and began fluting.
“‘Oh!’ I said half aloud, ‘two of us can flute.’
“So the blackbird and I piped away there till it got nearly dark. But I felt hungry now, and music is not very filling, Archie. So I put up my flute and started to my feet; I felt stiff now, but it soon wore off.
“I went on and on and on, getting hungrier every minute, but there was no sign of village or house. I drank some water from a rill that came tumbling down through a bank of ferns, and felt better.
“I was beginning to wonder where I should sleep, when the sound of merry laughing voices fell upon my ear. The party, whoever it was, came rapidly on towards me from among the trees.
“‘Hullo, lad!’ said one; ‘are ye comin’ to the dance?’
“‘Dance!’ I cried; ‘why, my feet are all one bag of blisters, and I’m faint with hunger. Dance, indeed!’
“‘It’s a puir beggar laddie,’ said a girl, whose face I could hardly see in the uncertain light.
“‘Beggar!’ I exclaimed. ‘Who d’ye call a beggar? I’ve a whole pocketful of money, only I’ve lost the road.’
“‘Come along, then,’ they all cried. ‘Come along with us.’
“And off we all went singing. We struck off the road down across the fields, and soon I heard the music of a fiddle and saw bright lights. A young man came out of a farmhouse to welcome us. He told us dolefully that only one fiddler had come, and plaintively asked what could be done.
“‘I’ve a flute,’ I cried.
“‘Hurrah!’ they answered. ‘Come in, my boy.’
“‘The laddie maun eat first,’ said the girl who had called me a beggar.
“I blessed her with all my heart, though not in words.
“What a supper they gave me! And didn’t I eat just! I could play now, and we spent such a joyful night, and dawn was breaking and the blackbirds up and fluting again long before the merry party broke up.
“I got a bed and slept far into the day; then, after a good dinner from these kind-hearted farm folks, I began my journey in search of fortune once more.
“By evening I saw great grey clouds lying in the hollows before me. It was smoke. I was nearing Glasgow, and in two hours more I was walking along the Broomielaw.
“I had never seen so many people before in my life, but hardly anybody looked at the shepherd lad in Highland garb. I determined they should, though. I put my flute together, and standing near the bridge, commenced to play ‘The Flowers of the Forest.’
“Was it the singular plaintiveness of this beautiful air, I wonder, or was it that my thoughts were away back again in the glen I had left, and with those I loved so dearly? I do not know, but I seemed to become oblivious to everything. My very soul was breathed into the music; I was speaking and appealing to the crowd through the instrument.
“The crowd! Yes, there was a crowd. I became aware of that as soon as I had finished, and money, piece after piece, was forced into my hand. I took the money. I felt ashamed of it next moment, but to have gone off then would have seemed ungrateful. I played still another air. Again I paused.
“‘No more money,’ I cried aloud as I fled away.
“They must have thought the Highland boy was mad.
“Some time afterwards I found myself standing at a book-seller’s window looking at a picture, a ship, a gallant ship in a gale of wind.
“How I longed to be at sea then! How I hated the bustle and stir and talking and noise all round me! That splendid ship – the sea was wild and rough all around her, the spray dashing over her bows; there would be the roar of the wind through rigging and shroud, and the wild scream of sea bird rising high over the dash of the waves. She bore it well; the sheets were taut; the sails were rounded out and full. How I longed to be at sea!
“A hand was laid on my shoulder. I started and looked up. No need to start.
“A kindly face looked down into mine.
“‘You are in grief of some kind, my boy,’ he said, this white-haired old gentleman. ‘Nay, don’t be too proud to admit it. Pride has been the downfall of the Highland race.’
“‘If you please, sir,’ I replied, boldly enough now, ‘the Highlanders are not a downfallen race.’
“‘I did not mean it in that way,’ he said, smiling at my vehemence. ‘But come with me, boy; I know we will be friendly.’
“Where he took me, or what he said to me, I need not tell you.
“Suffice it to say that next day we left Scotland and journeyed south by rail, and I wept – yes, I do not now think it shame to say so, though I struggled then to hide my tears – I wept to cross the border.
“‘It will be such a pleasant change for you, my dear boy,’ said good old Major Walton – for that was the gentleman’s name, and he had quite taken to me after hearing all my story – ‘a delightful change indeed after your own bleak, cold, wild hills. We have a very pretty home in Hampshire. You’ll soon forget you were ever anywhere else.’
“The Major’s home was indeed a very nice one; close to the borders of the New Forest it was, and not a great way from the sea.
“But ah! Archie, lad, everything was very foreign to me; the very trees looked strange and uncouth, especially the docked pollards, that stood by the banks of the sluggish streams. The style of the houses was strange to me, and the lingo and talk of the people, who, in my opinion, were terribly ignorant.
“The Major was kindness itself, and so were his wife, her sister, and two children. The major had but one hobby – music. He played the violin himself, and he told me honestly that his chief reason for ‘taking me’ – these are his very words – was because I played with such feeling.
“My evenings were happy enough in this English home of mine; my days I spent in the garden, where I was allowed to work, or in the great forest. You must not imagine, Archie, the New Forest is anything like a deer forest in our own land. There are in it no wild mountains, no deep dark dells, no beetling crags and cliffs, no cataracts, no foaming torrents; the red deer does not toss his wide antlers here and fly proudly away at your approach, nor far above you in the sky do you see the bird of Jove circling upwards round the sun.
“Wilson would never have said about the New Forest, —
“‘What lovely magnificence stretches around!
Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound;
All hushed and serene, like a region of dreams,
The mountains repose ’mid the roar of the streams.’
“But many a long day I spent roaming about in this forest, nevertheless.
“I was charmed with the solitary grandeur of the place. I had no idea it was so extensive either, or so varied in its beauties. Why, here one might wander about for weeks and never weary, for he would always be coming to something new. Is this the reason, I wonder, that it is called the New Forest? New in point of time it certainly cannot be termed, for everything in it and about it is old, extremely old. The oaks are gnarled and wrinkled, and grey with age; its elms and its ash trees, its limes and its alders, are bent and distorted by the touch of time, and the lichens that cling to their stems only add to their general appearance a look of hoariness that is far from unpleasing to the eye.
“Then the heather which covers the large sweeps of moorland that you see here and there is very sturdy and strong, while from the furze or whins boats’ masts could be made.
“The creatures, too, that one sees while walking through this forest, seem birds and beasts of some bygone time, and look as if they hardly, if ever, saw a human being from one year’s end to the other.
“The hares or rabbits, instead of scurrying away at your approach, sit leisurely on one end while they wash their faces and study you. The blackbirds and the mavises hardly trouble themselves to cease their song even when you walk close by the trees on which they are perched. The great beetles and other members of the coleoptera tribe are far too busy to take the slightest notice of your presence, and the great velvety bees go on working and humming just as if there were no such creature as you within a thousand miles of them.
“Then the voles or water rats that live in the depths of this truly English forest are not the least curious specimens of animal life to be found therein. If you happen to be reclining anywhere near a pool that by long-established custom belongs to them alone, before many minutes one, if not two of them, will come out to stare and wonder at you; they, like the hares, sit up on one end to conduct their scrutiny; and they gaze and gaze and gaze again, digging their finger joints or knuckles into their eyes, in a half-human kind of a way, to squeeze out the water, and clear their sight for one more wondering look.”
(My country readers, who love nature, must have noticed the voles at this queer performance.)
“What is he at all? Where did he come from? What is he going to do? These are the questions those voles seem trying in vain to solve.
“Here in this New Forest is a silence seldom broken save by the song of bird or cry of some wild creature in pain, while all around you is a wealth of floral beauty and verdure that is charming in the extreme.
“Yes, Archie, I came ere autumn was over to love that forest well. I was not selfish enough, though, to keep all the pleasures of it quite to myself, and the Major’s children often accompanied me in my rambles. I used to read Burns and Ossian to them. They liked that, but they liked the flute far better. It appealed straight to their senses.
“But when autumn passed away, when the leaves fell, and the fields were bleak and bare, at night, when the wind moaned around the house which I now called home, then, Archie, I used to dream I heard the surf beating in on the rugged shores of my native land. I would start and listen, and long to be once more in Scotland.
“I went, one day, to the forest all alone; I went to think.
“‘What are you staying here for?’ perhaps said one little thought. ‘Major Walton may leave you money when he dies.’
“I smothered that thought at its birth, and crushed many more like it.
“Kind good old Major Walton! I must tear myself away; I must be independent; I must push my own way in the world.
“‘Heaven help me to do so,’ I prayed. Then I took out the little old Bible Nancy had given me, Archie, and I found some comfort there.
“I was putting it back again in my bosom when a little card dropped out; I picked it up. On it were pressed these, Archie.”
Kenneth took the Book from his breast as he spoke, and opening it, handed the card to Archie.
“I know,” said the latter: “the primrose and the bit of heather.”
“Yes, dear boy, foolish of me, I know; but I have never parted with them, and if I go to Davy Jones’s locker – as we sailors say – if I am drowned, Archie, these flowers will sink with me.
“But on that winter’s day in the forest, Archie, these flowers seemed to speak to me, or rather the golden-haired child spoke to me through these flowers. I was back again on the hills above Glen Alva walking by her side; the sky above us was blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among the pinky heath.
“I started up, and the vision fled, and around me were only the bare bleak forest trees and the fading heather. The vision fled, but it left in my breast the desire stronger now than ever to make my own way in the world, by the blessing of Providence; and Providence has never deserted me yet, Archie, lad.
“I went straight home. I saw Major Walton, and talked to him, and told him all.
“He seemed sorry. The last words he said to me when I went away – and there was moisture in the old man’s eyes as he spoke – were these: —
“‘Mind, I’m not tired of you, and I hope to live to meet you once again.’
“I went to Southampton next day. I thought I had nothing to do but march on board some outward-bound ship, that they would be glad to have me.
“Alas! I was disappointed.”
(The author hopes some boy who meditates running away to sea may read these lines.)
“I was rudely jostled and laughed at, I was called a Scot, a Sawnie, a Johnny-raw, but work was never once offered me.
“I wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do. The few coins I had in my possession did not last many days.
“I felt sad and unhappy. I felt almost sorry I had left the good people who had done so much for me. The ‘bairnies’ had been in tears when I went away; even the black-and-tan terrier had followed me a long way down the road, and looked very ‘wae and wistfu’’ at me with his brown beseeching eyes when I said he must go back.
“For two whole days I had hardly anything to eat. My flute, that I was fain to fall back upon, failed to support me, for the English, Archie, have not so much music and romance in their souls as the Scotch have. But one thing the English have is this, Archie, sound common-sense and a love of derring-do.
“I was standing one day on the pier at Plymouth. I had played my way with my flute all this distance in the hopes of getting a ship. I was no more successful than before.
“On this particular day, Archie, the drum was up (the storm signal), the wind blew cold and high, and the seas tossed their white manes as they rushed each other up the bay. I was feeling very sad and disconsolate, when all at once I heard a voice say to a man beside me, —
“‘I’ll give a guinea to be taken out to yonder ship.’
“‘I don’t care to win no guinea,’ said the fellow addressed, a hulking boatman in a rough blue jersey. ‘I don’t care to win no guinea on a day like this. ’Sides, sir, I hain’t got no mate.’
“‘I’ll go,’ I cried.
“‘You!’ said the gentleman; ‘why, you’re but a child.’
“‘I’m a Scotch boy,’ I replied, ‘and I know boating well.’
“‘All right, my lad; jump in.’
“It took us nearly an hour, but we did it.
“I was very wet, and the gentleman kindly took me below, and gave me warm coffee.
“‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to give you half a guinea, and the man half, for if he has to change the gold, he will cheat you.’
“‘Are you captain of this ship, sir?’ I asked.
“‘I am, lad; I’m all that is for the captain.’
“‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘give the man all the guinea, and take me with you as a boy.’
“I then told him all my story.
“‘We don’t sail for a week,’ he said, ‘and if in that time you get your mother’s consent, I’ll be glad to have so plucky a youngster on board my craft.’
“My dear mother gave her consent, as you know, Archie; and so I became a sailor and a wanderer.”
I have but epitomised Kenneth’s story. He took much longer time to tell it than I, the author of this little book, am doing, and besides, there was much conversation interspersed with it betwixt him and his old friend Archie.
The moon was high up above the forest trees before he finished, shedding a flood of golden light over mountain and sea, so, promising to resume his narrative next evening, Kenneth arose, and soon after all was silent and dark inside this peaceful cottage.
