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The Story that the Swallow Told
That garden and that bungalow was a continual source of delight to young Harry. All the improvements which he was constantly carrying out inside the room itself, he planned and executed without assistance, but Andrew the joiner used to come up of an evening pretty frequently, and give him advice about the garden. So it flourished, and was very beautiful.
Andrew was often out and about the country doing odd jobs at the residences of the gentry, and whenever he could beg a root of some rare plant or flower he did so, and brought it straight home to the young laird, as he called Harry.
And Harry would give him snuff.
Not, mind you, that it was for sake of the snuff that Andrew did these little kindnesses to Harry. Truth is he dearly loved the boy.
A harum-scarum sort of a young man was Andrew, and there were people in the parish who said he was only half-witted, but this was all nonsense. Andrew came out with droll sayings at times – he was an original, and that is next door to a genius; but the truth is he had more wit and a deal more brains than many, or most of his detractors.
Andrew was tall and lank, and not an over-graceful walker, but he had a kind face of his own and black beads of eyes, round which smiles were nearly always dancing, and it did not take much to make Andrew laugh right out. A right merry guffaw it was too. Sometimes it made the dogs bark, and the cocks all crow, and the peacock scream like a thousand cats all knocked into one. That is the kind of young man Andrew was. He came from the low country, and spoke a trifle broad. But that did not matter, his heart was as good as any Highlander’s.
Harry and his friend frequently went to the forest together, but never again near Towsie’s gate, because the boy had promised not to tease the bull any more. A promise is a sacred thing, and Harry knew this. The boy had a hundred friends in the forest. Yes, and far more.
For he loved nature.
And there was not a bush or tree he did not know all about: when they budded, when they broke into leaf, and even when those leaves would fade and fall and die.
There was not a flower he did not know, nor a bird he could not recognise by name, by note or song, by its nest or by its eggs.
He was no wanton nest-robber, though; a boy who is so has no manliness or fairness or gentlemanly feeling about him. Harry never robbed a nest, but more than once he pitched into other boys for doing so, and fought sturdy battles in the forest in defence of his friends the birds.
Did you ever notice, dear reader, what a sweet sweet song that of the house-martin is? With its coat of dusky black, the little crimson blush on its breast, and its graceful form, the martin is a charming bird altogether. But its song is to my ears ineffably sweet.
It is not a loud song, and the bird always sits down to sing. It is not loud for this reason: away in the wilds of Africa, where this birdie frequently goes, there are so many enemies about that to sing very loudly would lead to the discovery of its whereabouts, and it would probably be killed and devoured.
For this very reason many of the birds in Africa sing not at all. Gay and lovely are they even as the flowers, the glorious flowers that adorn the hillside and forest and plain, but silently they flit from bough to bough.
One evening Harry was seated on his sofa, or rather he was half reclining thereon, reading a volume of his favourite poet – Campbell, I think. It was very still and quiet. His little window, round which the roses and the clematis clung, was open, and the sweet breath of flowers floated in with the gentle breeze.
It was so still and silent that Harry could hear the soft foot-fall of Eily the collie, as she came along the gravelled path towards the bungalow door.
“Come, in Eily,” he said, “and lie down, I’m reading.”
“Oh?” he added, as he looked up, “what have you in your mouth? A bone?”
Eily advanced, and put her chin ever so gently on, her young master’s knee.
No, it was not a bone, but a bird, a lovely martin.
Not a tooth had Eily put in it, not a feather had she ruffled, and hardly had she wetted its plumage.
Harry took it tenderly in his hand.
“Where did you get it, Eily? In the loft?”
Eily wagged her tail.
Swift as lightning though they may fly out of doors, no bird is more easily captured inside than the house-martin. If found in a loft they appear to lose presence of mind at once, and after flying about for a short time usually alight against the glass. When one is taken its little heart may be felt beating against the hand, as if it verily would break.
And no wonder.
Fancy, reader, how you should feel were you captured by some great ogre, taller than a steeple, and carried away, expecting death every minute.
“Give it to me, Eily. Give it quick. I hope you haven’t draggled its plumage very much. Now shut the door.”
Eily went and did as she was told. (It is very seldom a dog is taught this trick, but it is a very handy one. – G.S.)
Harry admired it for a little while. Then he gently kissed its brow. Its wee beak was half upturned, and its black beads of eyes appeared to look appealingly at him.
“What are you going to do with me?” it seemed to ask. “Are you going to kill me, or swallow me alive as we martins do the flies?”
“I’m not going to harm you a bit,” said Harry.
“I’m only going to hold you in my hand for a short time to admire you. How soft and warm you feel, and what a pretty dusky red patch you have on your breast! I’ve often listened to your song as you sat on the apple tree. But why do you sing so soft and low?”
“Because,” replied the bird, talking with its eyes – at least Harry thought he could read the answer there – “because in our country if we sang too loudly our enemies would hear us and come and kill us.”
“And who are your enemies?”
“Big birds with terrible claws and beaks, that want to fly at us and devour us. And terrible snakes that glide silently up the branches on which we are perched, and sometimes strike us dead, as quick as a lightning’s flash.”
“And I suppose you must sing?”
“Oh yes, we must sing, because we are so very happy, and we love each other so.”
“And why are your wings and back so dusky and dark?”
“That our enemies may not see us.”
“But I’ve read,” said Harry, “that many tropical birds were all bright and gay with colours of every hue.”
“Oh yes, so they are, but then these live all their lives among flowers as gorgeous in colour as they themselves are, and so their enemies mistake them for the flowers among which they dwell.”
“Do you come from a very far-off land?”
“Yes, a very very far-off land.”
“And is it very beautiful there?”
“Very very beautiful.”
“I would like to go to that far-off beautiful land. How do you get there?”
“We fly.”
“Yes, I know, but I can’t, though I once tried I made a pair of wings out of an old umbrella; they were so awkward, though, and would not work.
“But I meant,” continued Harry, “which way do you go?”
“Southward and southward and southward, and westward and westward and southward again.”
“What a funny road! I should get dead tired before I was halfway.”
“So do we: then we look about for a ship or a rock, if at sea, and alight to rest.”
“And aren’t you afraid the sailors may shoot you?”
“Oh no; for sailors do so love to see us on the yards. (How true! G.S.) They dearly love us. We remind them of England and their cottage homes and their wives and little ones, and of apple orchards and flowery meadows and crimson poppies in the fields of green waving corn, and all kinds of beautiful things.”
“No wonder they love you!”
“Yes; they do so love us; I’ve seen the tears start to the eyes of little sailor lads as they gazed at us. And I know the men tread more lightly on the deck for fear of scaring us away.”
“And when rested you just go on again?”
“Yes, on and on and on.”
“I should lose my head.”
“We don’t – something seems to guide us onward.”
“I suppose you see some terrible sights? Have you seen a shipwreck? I should like to.”
“Oh no, no, you would not. If you once saw a shipwreck, or a ship foundering at sea, you would never never forget it.”
“Tell me.”
“I cannot. No one could. But somehow it is usually at night we witness these awful scenes. I have seen a ship sailing silently over the moonlit water, the yellow light streaming from her ports, and I have heard the sounds of music and laughter, and the voices of glad children at play. And I have seen the same vessel, but a short hour after, drifting on in the darkness to the pitiless rocks before a white squall. Ah! white was the squall, white were the waves, but not more white than the scared, dazed faces of those poor shrinking, moaning beings who rushed on deck when she struck.”
“What did you do?”
“Flew away. Just flew away.”
“Tell me more.”
“What shall I tell you of?”
“About your own bright home in the far-off land.”
“Shall I speak to you of the coralline sea that laves the tree-fringed shores of Africa?”
“Yes, yes, tell me of that.”
“Rippling up through the snakey roots of the mangrove trees, bathing the green branches that stoop down to kiss them – oh! ’tis a lovely sea, when the great sun shines, and the cyclone and squall are far away, calm and soft and blue. Yet not all blue, for on the coral flats it is a tender green, and grey where the cloud shadows fall on it. But all placid, all warm and dreamy as if fairies dwelt in caves beneath. Then the little green islands seem to float above the sea as if only just let down from heaven.
“Sometimes great sharks float upwards from the dark depths beneath, and bask on the surface with their fins above the water, and white sea-gulls come and perch upon them just as starlings do on sheep at home.”
“How strange! Don’t the sharks try to kill the birds?”
“No, they like it, and I think the birds sing to them and lull them to sleep, or that they tell them tales of far-off lands as I am speaking now to you.
“But on the coral reefs, where the sea, at a distance, looks so sweetly green, if you were there in a boat and looked away down to the bottom, oh! what a sight would be spread out before you! A garden of shrubs and waving flowers more lovely than anything ever seen on land.”
“How I should like to go there! But the interior of Africa is very gorgeous too, is it not?”
“Yes, to us who can fly quickly from place to place, through flowery groves, where birds and blossoms vie with each other in the beauty of their colours, where the butterflies are like fans, of crimson and green where the very lizards and every creeping thing, are adorned with rainbow tints and ever-changing bright metallic sheen.”
“There are dark corners, though, in this strange land of yours, are there not?”
“Yes, dark, dark corners; but I must not tell you of these, of the deep gloomy forest, where the gorilla howls, and wretched dwarfs have their abode, or of the great swamp lands in which the dreadful crocodile and a thousand other slimy creatures dwell, and where, in patches of forest, the mighty anacondas sleep. Nor of the wondrous deserts of sand, nor of the storms that rise sometimes and bury caravans of camels and men alive. No, we swallows think only of the beauty of our African home, of its roaring cataracts, its wooded hills, its peaceful lakes and broad shining rivers, and of the glorious sunshine that gladdens all.
“But now I must go. Pray let me free. I have much to do before the summer is over, and that kind something beckons me back again – back to the land of the sun.”
“Go, birdie, go, and some day I too will take my flight to the Land of the Sun.”
Book One – Chapter Six.
Harry’s School-Days – Lost in a Snowstorm
Harry Milvaine had aunts and uncles in abundance, and about as many cousins as there are gooseberries on an ordinary-sized bush; for he had first cousins and second and third cousins, and on and on to, I verily believe, forty-second cousins. They count kinship a long way off in the Scottish Highlands.
And they used all to visit occasionally at Beaufort Hall. They did not all come at once, to be sure, else, if they had, there would have been no beds to hold them. They would have had to sleep in barns and byres, under the hayricks and out on the heather.
Oh, it was no uncommon thing now for Harry to sleep on the heather. On summer nights he would often steal out through the casement window of his bedroom, which opened on to the lawn, and go quietly away to a healthy hill not far off. Here he would pull a bundle of heather for a pillow, and lie down rolled in his plaid with Eily in his arms and a book in his hand. As long as there was light he would read. When it grew semi-dark he would sleep, and awake in the morning as fresh as a blackbird.
Once only he had what some boys would consider an ugly adventure. On awaking one morning he felt something damp and cold touch his knee – he wore the kilt. He quickly threw off the plaid, and there, close by him, was an immense green-yellow snake. The creature was coiled up somewhat in the form of the letter W. It was fully as thick as the neck part of an ordinary violin, and it glittered all over as if varnished. A wholesome, healthy snake, I assure you. He raised his head and hissed at Harry. That snake would have fain got away. Very likely he had said to himself the night before:
“I’ll creep in here for warmth and get away again in the morning, before the human being is awake.”
But the snake had overslept himself and was caught napping.
Now there are two animals that do not like to turn tail when fairly faced – a cat and a snake. Both feel they are at a disadvantage when running away.
I have often proved this with snakes. Give them a fair offing, and they will glide quickly off; but catch them unawares, and get close up to them, and they will face you and fight.
Harry knew this and lay perfectly still. Granting that these great green-yellow Highland snakes are not poisonous, they bite, and it is not nice to be bitten by a snake of any kind.
Just at that moment, however, Eily returned from the woods where she had been hunting on her own account. She took in the situation at a glance. Next moment she had whirled the snake round her head and dashed it yards away, where it lay writhing with a broken back. Many dogs are clever at killing snakes. Then she came and licked her master’s hand.
Every time any of Harry’s aunts came they made this remark:
“How the boy does grow, to be sure!” Every time one of Harry’s uncles came he made some such remark as this:
“He’ll be as big a man as his father. He is a true Highlander and a true Milvaine.”
Harry liked his uncles and aunts very well after a fashion, but he cared little or nothing for his cousins. Some of them called him the hermit. Harry did not mind. But he would coolly lock his garden gate and sit down to read or to write, or begin working at his lathe, while his cousins would be playing cricket in the paddock; then perhaps he would come out, look for a moment, with an air of indifference, at the game, then whistle on Eily and go off to the woods or the river. This was exceedingly inhospitable of Harry, I must confess, only I must paint my hero in his true colours.
