Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures. Stables Gordon

lips, “why so cruel as to call me away from my flowers to see you jump?”

      “You couldn’t do it, Effet,” said Leonard, nodding his head.

      “Oh, I could! You see now.”

      Next moment both were at it, running up and running down, leaping from winter into spring, bounding up from sunshine into shade, and keeping up the merry game till the cheeks of each were as red as roses, and their eyes as bright as drops of dew.

      As handsome a boy was Leonard at the age of ten as one could wish to see. Twins the two were, though he was the taller, as became his sex, and I do not think they had been one hour parted since the bells of the village church were set ringing to announce the double birth.

      Leonard threw himself down to rest on the frosty grass, and Effie stood laughingly looking down at him.

      The boy was a young Scot, and wore that most picturesque of all costumes, the garb of old Gaul, but he was not afraid of getting his bare knees frozen as he lay there. In fact, I do not think that Leonard was afraid of anything.

      As I have said the lad was a Scot, there is little need to add that Grayling House and the beautiful river that went wimpling by it were on the northern side of the Tweed.

      It was very still and quiet all round Grayling House to-day, and the sky was very bright and almost cloudless. There was not wind enough to bend the course of the spiral wreaths of smoke that rose straight up into the frosty air, higher than the dark-roofed pines, before it melted away into a white haze across the woods.

      High up yonder among the sturdy arms of the elms were many huge nests, but the rooks were far away foraging in some farmer’s field. In the other trees many an old nest was visible that could not have been seen in summer – nests of the chattering magpies, in the moss and lichen-covered larches; nests of the tree-sparrows everywhere high or low, great untidy wisps of weeds, with feathers sticking here and strings hanging there, nests that any other bird except a sparrow would feel ashamed to enter or go near. Then there were nests of the bold, bright-voiced cheery chaffinch close to the trunk of beech or elm, little gems of nests tricked out with lichens white and red, and looking all over like shapely bits of coral; and nests of the missel-thrush, so sturdily fixed between the tree forks that storm or tempest could not blow them down.

      “I say, Effet,” said Leonard, looking up, “the birds are almost too clever for me. I can count dozens of nests now up there that I couldn’t find in summer. Wait till spring comes – I’ll be wiser then.

      “Listen,” he continued, “was that a mole?”

      “No,” said his sister, “it was only a sycamore leaf; I saw it falling.”

      “Hullo! here comes another, and another, and another.” And off he flew, cap in hand, to catch the leaves as they fell.

      He soon tired, however.

      “I say, Effet, I don’t call this keeping a holiday. Let’s have some real fun.”

      “Shall we go to Castle Beautiful, and read a story to the menagerie?”

      “No, not yet. Let us try to hook old Joe.”

      Old Joe was a monster pike, who lived in a monster pond or pool, big enough almost to be called a lake, for it covered three acres of ground, and one part of it, right in the centre, was said to be deep enough to bury the village church and steeple. It was down at the bottom of this deep dark hole that Joe lived.

      Now it was somewhat funny, but nobody about Grayling House – with one solitary exception, namely, Peter the butler, who had been at the mansion, man and boy, for fifty years – could tell where this monster pike had come from, or when or why he had come.

      The facts are these: the loch was fed by springs, and the only outlet for the water was a lead that had to pass over a big mill-wheel, that ground oats and barley for every one in the parish. The pike could not have come over the mill-wheel. Again, he had not been there ten years, and as he weighed, to all appearance, full thirty pounds, he must have been a monster when he got there.

      Captain Lyle, Leonard’s and Effie’s father, believed he had scrambled over the grass some dark, dewy night, and taken up his quarters in the loch. This was strange if true, and it might have been, because, at the time the pike first appeared, a tenant of the same kind was missed from a deep tree-shaded pool in the river.

      The country people, however, would not share the captain’s belief. There was something uncanny about the beast, they averred, and the less any one had to do with him the better.

      He was a very matter-of-fact pike, at all events; for no sooner had he taken possession of his new quarters than he proceeded at once to turn out all the old tenants. Or rather – to speak more to the point – he turned them in, for he ate them. Captain Lyle had, years before the reign of this king-pike, stocked the water with trout, and they had done well, but now none were ever seen.

      Sometimes the pike condescended to show himself, or even to take a bait, when some person more daring and less superstitious than his fellows tried to catch him. More than once he had been pulled above the water, but disappeared again, hook and all, with a splash.

      When he had swallowed a hook it was Joe’s custom to sulk for a fortnight at the bottom of his pool, and having duly digested the morsel of blue steel, he appeared again livelier and more audacious than ever.

      His size was reported to be something enormous by those who had raised him. They said his head was as big as that of Farmer Kemp’s great mastiff-dog.

      It was also said that Joe had once upon a time swallowed a sow and a litter of young. This tale was always retailed to strangers who happened to come to the district to fish. It was, in fact, a catch, for Joe really had done this deed; but then the sow was a guinea pig, and the young ones mere hop-o’-my-thumbs.

      “Yes, Leonardie,” said Effie, “let us go and try to hook old Joe.”

      So while Effie ran to the hall for the fishing tackle, her brother went and dug some great garden worms, and half an hour afterwards they were both in the middle of the lake, with the line sunk, and sitting patiently in the little boat to see whether or not Joe would condescend to bite.

      Book One – Chapter Two.

      Glen Lyle

      “I foraged all over this joy-dotted earth,

      To pick its best nosegay of innocent mirth,

      Tied up with the bands of its wisdom and worth, —

      And lo! its chief treasure,

      Its innermost pleasure,

      Was always at Home.”

Tupper.

      Scene: An old-fashioned parlour in Grayling House. The walls are hung with faded tapestry, the furniture is ancient, and a great fire of logs and peat is burning on the low hearth. In front lies a noble deerhound. At one side, in a high-backed chair, sits a lady still young and beautiful. Some lacework rests on her lap, and she listens to one who sits near her reading – her husband.

      Captain Lyle reading —

      “Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,

      Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;

      Dream of battle-fields no more,

      Days of danger, nights of waking.

      “In our isle’s enchanted hall,

      Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,

      Fairy strains of music fall,

      Every sense in slumber dewing.

      “Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,

      Dream of fighting fields no more;

      Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,

      Morn of toil nor night of waking.”

      Lyle looked up. There were tears in his wife’s blue eyes.

      “Is it not beautiful, Ethel?” he said. “There