Book 1--CHAPTER FIVE.

STRANGE ADVENTURES IN WOOD AND WILD.

"How sweet it is when mother fancy rocks The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood; An old place full of many a lovely brook, Tall trees, green arbours, and ground flowers in flocks."

Wordsworth.

Scene: Still in the forest around the log fire, but the dying gipsy has raised herself to nearly a sitting position, her dim and hollow eyes are fixed on Leonard, and she beckons him to her side. As if under a strange spell, the boy obeys, leaving Effie kneeling by Ossian, and clasping his great neck in her terror.

"Fear not," the gipsy gasps, "I knew--your--father. And his father.

Kind, kind to me and mine were both."

She took Leonard's little white hand in her dark claws, and opened its palm towards the firelight. "Never--never--will old Nell Bayne read another fortune. But look; that line will lead you far ayont the seas.

You are _born to wander_, born to roam over the ocean, by mountain, stream, and plain. Yet list! the water is not made to drown you, nor hemp nor lead to take your life, yet list! again,--

"When dead yon lordly pike shall float, While loud and hoa.r.s.e the ravens call, Then grief and woe shall be thy lot, Glen Lyle's house must fall."

The aged crone dropped the hand she held, and sunk back into the arms of her nurse, while the other gipsies, with scared faces, gathered closer round and knelt beside her.

Neither Leonard nor Effie saw nor heard anything more. They fled away from the firelight out into the darkness of the woods, which they much preferred to the solemn scene they had just witnessed.

They walked in the direction, as they thought, of their caravan, but after a while Ossian, whom Effie held by the collar, stopped short, and then began pulling them in quite another direction. The n.o.ble dog knew the road though they did not.

They were soon back now at their house-on-wheels. It was a gloomy night's experience, but they slept none the less soundly, and when they awoke in the morning Leonard felt as happy as if he were king of Elfinland, and Effie his little queen. The sun was shining in a sky of unusual brightness, and the woods all around were musical with the songs of a thousand joyous birds.

Leonard made a fire of sticks, and boiled his kettle in true gipsy fashion, and after everybody, including Don and Ossian, had enjoyed breakfast, away they went again.

The country soon grew more open, and they were not at all sorry to leave the darksome pine woods. They had nothing whereby to tell the time, except the sun, and this was, in some measure, their guide also as to the direction they were taking, but of course they left a deal to Don.

Sometimes, on coming to cross-roads, Don, as if he was quite aware of the responsibility that lay on his pretty striped shoulders, would stop short and eye all the three roads that lay before him. Ossian would then caper round him and bark, upon which Don would shake his long ears as much as to say,--

"Don't you be quite so fast, master; I know well enough what I'm about.

Catch me going wrong if I can help it."

Then having made up his mind Don would tramp on again.

Now Don was a wily old donkey, and I'm not sure that in choosing a road he did not consult his own interest much more than that of his little owners. For Effie soon noticed that if one road was hilly and the other level, Don chose the latter. Again, he kept going northwards and east, for he was very partial to a nice fresh green juicy thistle, just sufficiently th.o.r.n.y to tickle his tongue, and the farther north and the nearer the sea he got the fatter and finer the thistles grew.

"But it doesn't matter, Eff, you know," Leonard would say, "one road is as good as another."

Next evening found them bivouacked near a pretty wee country cottage.

The good-wife of this humble home made them come in and sit by the fire, and she regaled them on barley scones and b.u.t.ter with delicious milk to wash it down, and made them tell their story over and over again.

Then the children all came round Effie, and she told their fortunes, something good for each of them, and sent them all to bed happy.

The wanderers slept as before, but the good-wife of the cottage was up before them, and had boiled fresh eggs for their breakfast, and made them coffee. And so good was she, that she even packed a little hamper and put it in their caravan, and blessed them and wished them G.o.d-speed.

And the children gathered round the door, and all of them cheered with might and main as the caravan rolled away from the door.

A DISMAL NIGHT.

But though the morning was bright and blue and lovely, clouds banked up over the sky soon after noon, and just as they found themselves once more in a pine forest, where also grew great oaks and elms, behold, big drops of rain began to patter down on the dry road, sending up cloudlets of dust, and before they could draw into the shelter of the trees, the storm was on them with all its force.

It was not a still summer storm, for while the thunder pealed and crashed, and the lightning hissed among the falling rain, the wind blew with terrible force, bending the trees like fishing rods, and strewing the road with broken branches.

Nor did the rain cease when the squall blew over, but continued to pour down.

Night came on this evening a full hour before its time, and still the rain rained on.

The bivouac was once more in a wood, and oh! what a fearful night it was--the thunder deafening, the rain looking like streams of fire in the glare of the lightning. But our tired little wanderers fell soundly to sleep amidst it all, and though some drops came through the canvas, and even fell upon their faces, it did not wake them. Only when the birds had been singing for fully two hours they opened their eyes, and wondered where they were now.

The day was very hot and close, and the sun so bright that the roads, much to Don's joy, soon dried up.

The country through which they were now pa.s.sing was very grand and wildly picturesque. Hills on hills successively rose on every side around them; they crossed romantic single-arched bridges, over deep ravines, far down at the bottom of which streams went foaming on through a chaos of great dark boulders, which had fallen from the beetling cliffs below, and to which wild flowers clung in patches, with here and there a dwarf pine or silver-stemmed birch.

Slowly, but surely, the roots of these tiny trees were loosening the rocks.

What a lesson this reads one of the virtues of perseverance! For listen to this: the thickness of the rootlets that do the work is no greater than that of a stocking wire, the rate of their growth in length is not a hundredth part of that of the motion of a watch's hour-hand, the strength they expend in a given second would not be enough to lift or move the tiniest midge or fly that alights upon the page you are reading. But these rootlets have faith, and faith moves mountains.

They keep on growing and creeping into every crevice, and in time, lo and behold! tons of solid rock are detached, a thunder shower perhaps being the last straw to break the camel's back, and down it thunders to the bottom of the ravine, smashing trees and crunching other rocks, till it all reaches the bottom with the force and speed of a little avalanche.

Sometimes they pa.s.sed over broad open moors, the heather on which was still green, and would be for months to come, but patched all throughout with low flat bushes of golden furze, the scent from which perfumed the air all round, and must have penetrated even to the clouds. The lark, high in air, thrilling out his wild melody, and the rose-breasted wee linnet were the only songsters on these lonely moorlands.

They went very slowly to-day, often stopping to let Don rest, and to cull the wild flowers that grew everywhere in glorious luxuriance.

Little toddling children ran from cottage doors and waved their caps and cheered them, and called them show gipsies, and all sorts of funny names. Sometimes they stopped at these houses to get water for Don and Ossian; then the bairnies came all in a crowd, holding out tiny palms to have their fortunes told.

Effie, in her saucy little straw hat, and her long cloak of crimson, did not look at all unlike a real Romany. She always told good fortunes.

The boys were to grow up into bold, brave, good men, and go and fight for their king and country, and come back with hats and plumes on their heads, stars on their manly b.r.e.a.s.t.s, spurs on their heels, and great swords jangling at their sides. The girls were to grow up good and kind and truthful, and some were to marry princes, who would come riding for them on white palfreys with scarlet trappings and manes and tails that touched the ground. Some were to marry great warriors, and others would have to be content to wed with honest John Ploughman, or perhaps to marry the miller.

Effie was the house-provider, and often wanted to buy eggs and b.u.t.ter and bread and milk, and she was very much, astonished at the kindness of all these cottagers, for none of them could be prevailed upon to accept any money.

"Bless the dear wee innocent," a woman would say, "so far away from its mammie. I won't have this money."

"Isn't she wise-looking?" another would add.

"Just like a wee witchie."

Thus on and on and on went these amateur gipsies for a whole week, and I do not know really which enjoyed this strange wandering tour the most, Leonard, Effie, Ossian, or Don.

But it was not all humble folks they came across, though nearly all; for the fact is they avoided big houses. Leonard said he wanted to mingle with the people. And so they did; but once, and once only, two ladies came up to them in a wood just as they were harnessing up, and about to start on the afternoon journey.

Effie had made all the outside front of the caravan quite gay with wild flowers, and a great garland of primroses, ivy, and wild hyacinths, and was tying it round Don's neck, when the ladies alighted from their horses, and came to speak to her.

"You are not an ordinary gipsy child, I know," said one. Effie only opened her blue eyes wider, and looked at the lady, who was young and most pleasant to behold.

But Leonard lifted his hat, and replied boldly,--

"_We_ are wanderers, lady."