Harry Milvaine; Or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy

by Gordon Stables

and terrible death. He would have been torn limb from limb. Butno sooner did the bar rattle down, than both Harry and Eily sprang tothe stone fence and jumped over into the field, just as the bull jumpedout of it.

  Jock was considerably nonplussed at not finding his tormentor where hehad expected to.

  "Towsie! Towsie!" cried Harry, and the bull leapt back into the field,and Harry and Eily scrambled out of it. This game was kept up for sometime, a sort of wild hide-and-seek, much to Harry's delight; but eachtime he leapt the wall he edged farther and farther from the gate.

  The bull got quieter now and kept inside the field, and pretended tobrowse, though I do not think he swallowed much. He followed along thestone fence all the same, but Harry knew he could not leap it. In theadjoining field, which belonged to Harry's father, great turnips grew,and Harry went and pulled two of the very biggest, and threw over thewall to the bull.

  "Poor Jock!" said the boy, "I didn't mean to vex you."

  Jock eyed him a moment as if he did not know what to make of it all,then began quietly to munch the turnips.

  And Harry stole back and put up the top bar of the gate.

  Meanwhile the rain continued unremittingly, but being wet to the skin,Harry could not well be wetter, and that is how he consoled himself.The afternoon was already far spent, by and by it would be dark, so heprepared to hurry home now.

  He knew his way through the forest, but there were many attractions--awild bee-hive for instance in a bank. He must stop and beat the groundabove it, then bend his ear down to hear the bees buzz, till at last onewas sent out to see what the matter was and whether or not the end ofthe world had come.

  A hole where he knew a weasel lived; he would have liked to have seenit, only it would not come out. Rabbit's holes, that he crept towardson hands and knees, and laughed to see the bunnies scurry away. A deepwater-pit where queer old-fashioned water-rats (voles) lived, some ofwhom came out to look at him and squeezed their eyes to clear theirsight. And so on and so forth. It was quite gloaming before he gotnear the lawn gate; and then, when he did find his way inside among theshrubbery, he found the sparrows were just going to bed, and bickeringand squabbling at a terrible rate, about who should have the dry boughsof the pines, and who should not.

  Meanwhile he was missed. He was often missed for the matter of that,but he had seldom been so long away on such a night.

  His father was an easy-minded farmer, who tilled his own acres; he wasreading the newspaper in an easy chair, and his mother, a delicate,somewhat nervous, lady, was sewing near the window.

  When the evening shadows began to fall, the nurse tapped at the roomdoor and entered. "Has Harry been here, mum?"

  "No, Lizzie; don't you know where he is?"

  "Haven't seen him for hours, mum. I made sure he was here."

  "Oh! you silly child, to let him out of your sight like that. Go andlook for him at once."

  "Where _is_ the child, I wonder," she continued, addressing her husband."Where _can_ Harold be?"

  "Mm? what?" said Harry's father, looking lazily over his newspaper."Child Harold? Gone on a pilgrimage perhaps."

  "Oh! don't be foolish," said his wife, petulantly. "Well, my dear, howshould I know. Very likely he is up in the dusty attic squatting amongthe cobwebs, or rummaging for curiosities in some old drawer oranother."

  But Harry was not upstairs among the cobwebs, nor rummaging in anydrawer whatever, nor talking to John in the stable, nor playing with histoys in the loft, nor anywhere else that any one could think of.

  So there was a pretty to do.

  But in the midst of it all, lo! Eily and Harry both presentedthemselves at the hall door, and you could not have said which of thetwo was in the most miserable plight. Both were _so_ wet and _so_bedraggled.

  "Oh! please, dear mamma," said Harry, "I'm _so_ hungry and so is poorEily."

  His mother was too happy to scold him, and his father laughed heartilyat the whole affair. For Harry had neither sisters nor brothers.

  While the boy was being stripped and re-dressed in dry clothes, the dogthrew herself in front of the kitchen fife.

  Presently they both had supper. If Harry was pale while playing atbubble-ships in the water-vat, he was rosy enough now, and verily hischeeks shone in the lamplight.

  Before he knelt down that night by his mother's knee to say his prayers,she asked him if he had done much wrong to-day.

  "Oh! yes, dear mamma," was the reply, "I _did_ tease Towsie so."

  Book 1--CHAPTER TWO.

  ADVENTURES IN THE FOREST.

  At breakfast next morning young Harry was much surprised and concernedto be told that he was going to have a governess.

  "A guv'niss," he said, pausing in the act of raising a spoonful ofoatmeal porridge to his mouth, "a guv'niss, papa? What's a guv'niss?Something to eat?"

  "No, child; a governess is a lady, who will do the duties of a teacherto you, learn you your lessons and--"

  "Mamma can do that."

  "And give you sums to do."

  "Ma does all that, papa."

  "And go with you wherever you go."

  Harry leant his chin upon his hand thoughtfully for a moment or two;then he said:

  "Mm, will the guv'niss go high up the trees with me, papa, and will shemake faces at Towsie?"

  "I don't think so, Harold."

  "I don't want the old lady," said Harry.

  "Your leave will not be asked, my dear boy."

  "Then," said Harry, in as determined a voice as he could command, "Ishall _hate_ her, and _beat_ her, and _bite_ her."

  "I'm afraid," said Mr Milvaine, turning to his wife, "that you spoilthat child."

  "I'm afraid," returned Mrs Milvaine mildly, "I have received assistancefrom you."

  Harry's governess came in a week. It was surely a sad look-out for her,if she was to be hated and beaten and bitten.

  She was not a prim, angular, starchy, "tawsey"-looking old maid by anymeans. At most she had seen but nineteen summers; fresh in face,blue-eyed, dimpled, and with beautiful hair.

  Harry soon took to her.

  "I sha'n't beat you," he said, "as long as you're good."

  The attic was cleared of cobwebs and rubbish, and turned into aschoolroom, and studies at regular hours of the day commenced forthwith.

  Harry determined to make his own terms with his "guv'niss." He would begood, and learn his lessons, and do his sums, and write his copy and allthat, if she would read out of a book to him every day, and describe tohim a scene in some far-off land.

  She promised.

  Before commencing lessons of a forenoon, Miss Campbell read a portion ofone of the Gospels to him, and then she prayed. Miss Campbell was oneof those girls who are not ashamed to pray, not ashamed to ask mercy,help and guidance from Him from whom all blessings flow. Before leavingschool Miss Campbell took the Book again, but now no other portion wouldhe allow her to read except the Revelations. There was a charm aboutthese that never, never palled upon the child.

  But always in the evenings "Guvie" had to devote herself to a differentkind of literature, and the books now were usually tales of adventure byland and at sea.

  Miss Campbell did try her wee pupil with "Sandford and Merton." I amsorry to say he would have none of it. The "Arabian Nights" pleasedbetter, but he could not quite understand them.

  For Sunday reading nothing delighted Harry better than Bunyan's"Pilgrim's Progress." I am happy in being able to put this on record,and boys who have not read the work, have a real treat in store forthem.

  So Miss Campbell and her pupil got on very well together indeed; andmany a delightful walk, ay, and run too, they had in the forest. Theywere a trio-now, because Eily always made one of the number. She wentto school as well as Harry, and if she did not learn anything, at allevents she lay still and listened, and that is more than every dog wouldhave done.

  Harry introduced his "Guvie," as he called her, to his pet toad, whichshe pretended to admire, but was secretly so
mewhat afraid of.

  "John told me, Guvie," he said one day, "that toadie would go to sleepall winter, so I'm going to put a biscuit in his box for his breakfastwhen he wakes, then we won't go near him till spring-time comes."

  They say the child is the father of the man. I believe there is muchtruth in the statement, so that, in describing Harry's character as a_young_ boy, I am saving myself the trouble of doing so when he is verymuch older, and mingling in wilder life.

  He was impulsive then and brave, fond to some extent of mischief of amild, kind nature, but he was tender-hearted. One day in the forest hecame to the foot of a great Scotch fir-tree.

  "There is an old nest up there,