Book One – Chapter One.
In the Land of Brown Heath.
Child Harold

Young Harry Milvaine stood beside the water-tank, and the water-tank itself stood just outside the back kitchen door. He was hardly high enough, however, to look right over it and down into it, though it was full to the brim – overflowing in fact, and the water still pouring in from the spout that led from the house-top. But Harry was of an inventive turn of mind, young though he was, so he went and fetched a stable bucket, and very heavy he thought it; but when he turned this upside down and mounted on the bottom, he was possessed of a coign of vantage which was all that could be desired.

Harry had mastered the situation.

He now watched with intense interest the bright clear bubbles that were floating about on the surface. Bright clear bubbles they were and large as well, and in them was a miniature reflection of all the surroundings, the Portuguese laurel trees, the Austrian pines, the vases on the stone pillars of the gate, with their trailing drapery of blood-red nasturtiums, the rose-clad gable of the stable, and last but not least his own wondering face itself. And a queer little face it was, no saying what it might turn like in after life. Neither fat nor lean was it, certainly not chubby, regular in features, and somewhat pale. But it was Harry’s eyes that people admired; that is, whenever Harry stood long enough still to permit of admiration, but he was a restless child. His eyes then were very dark and almost round, and there was a depth of expression in them which sometimes made him look positively old.

Yes, those beautiful bubbles were mirrors, and looking into them was just like peeping through a looking-glass into fairyland. Harry clapped his tiny hands and crowed with delight. They went sailing about, here and there all over the surface; then a happy thought struck Harry and he called them his ships. The vat was the deep blue sea, and the bubbles were ships. Ships of war, mind you, and Harry was a king, and there were enemy’s ships there also. Every now and then two or even three of these bubble-ships would meet and join; then of course there would be a desperate fight going on, and presently one would disappear, and that meant victory for the other. Sometimes one of the bubble-ships sailing all by itself would suddenly burst, and that meant a vessel gone down, perhaps with all hands; for Harry had heard his father speak of such things.

On the whole it was altogether as good as a play or a pantomime.

It was raining – yes, it was pouring, and Harry was wet to the skin, and had been so for an hour or more. But he did not mind that a bit. In fact, I am not sure that he was even conscious of it; or if conscious of it, that he didn’t prefer it. At any time, when a heavy shower came on, Harry loved to get out in it, and run about in it, and hold up his palms to catch the drops, and his face to feel them patter on it, only they fell on his eyes sometimes and made him wink.

Well, but one might get tired even of a pantomime after a while, so by and by Harry left the vat, and left his ships to shift for themselves.

“I won’t be a king any more,” he said to himself. “I’ll go and be a forester. Good-bye, ships,” he cried, “I’m off for a run. By and by I’ll come back again and see you – if you’re good.”

Eily, his long-haired Collie dog, who had been sitting wistfully watching her young master all the time that the naval warfare was going on, was quite as wet as he; and looked the picture of misery and forlornness; but when Harry proposed a romp and a run, she forgot her misery. First she shook pints of water out of her massive coat, then she jumped and capered for joy in the most ridiculous manner ever seen, making leaps right round and round like a teetotum and pretending to catch her tail.

The rain rained on, but away went the pair of them, running at full speed as if their very lives depended on it.

Down the lawn and through the shrubbery, and out at the gate, which they did not stop to shut, and across a road, and through a long field, and past the Old Monk oak, past the great mill-dam, past the mill itself, and they never checked their headlong speed till they were right into the forest.

Not a forest of oak but of pine-trees, with ne’er a bit of undergrowth, for Harry’s home was in Scottish wilds. No, never a bit of undergrowth was there, and hardly a green thing under the tall, bare tree-stems, that looked for all the world like pillars in some vasty cave. And all the ground was bedded deep with the withered pine-needles that had fallen the year before. Among these grew great unsightly toad-stools, though some were pretty enough – bright crimson with white spots.

Now Harry had a pet toad that he kept in a little box deep hidden among the pine-needles at the foot of a tree. He went straight for him now, and pulled him out and placed him on one of the very biggest and flattest of the toad-stools. And there the toad squatted, and Eily barked at him and Harry laughed at him, but the great toad never moved a muscle, but simply sat and stared. He did not seem half awake. So Harry soon grew tired of him; he was not fast enough for Harry, who therefore put him back again in his box, covered him up with the withered needles, and told him to go to sleep; then away went he and Eily shouting and barking till the woods rang again. Soon they came to a brawling stream. It was fuller than usual, and Harry got a great piece of pine bark, and launched it for a ship, and ran alongside of it, on and on and on till the streamlet joined the river itself, and Harry’s ship was floated away far beyond his reach.

The river was greatly swollen and turbulent with the rains, and its waters were quite yellow. Trees were floating down and even corn-sheaves – for the season was autumn – and now and then stooks of golden grain. Harry paused and looked upon the great river with awe, not unmingled with admiration.

“Wouldn’t I like to be a sailor, just,” he said, “that is,” he added, turning round and addressing Eily, “a real sailor you know, Eily; and go and see all the pretty countries that nursie reads to me about when I’m naughty and won’t sleep.”

Eily wagged her tail, as much as to say, “It would be the finest thing in the world.” For Eily always coincided with everything her little master proposed or said.

“And you could go with me, Eily, of course.”

“Yes,” said Eily, talking with her tail.

“And there would be no more nasty copies to write, nor sums to do.”

“No,” said Eily.

“And, oh! such a lot of fruit and nuts, Eily; but, come on, I want to make faces at the bull.”

“Come on, then,” said Eily, speaking with her eyes this time. “Come on, I’m ready. We’ll make faces at the bull.”

So off they ran once more.

The bull was a splendid Highland specimen, with a rough buff jacket, hair all over his face and eyes, and horns as long as both your arms outstretched. Just such an animal as Rosa Bonheur, that queen of artists, delights to paint.

He dwelt in a field all by himself because he was so fierce that no other creature or human being dare go near him except a certain sturdy cowherd, who had known Jock, as the bull was called, since he was a calf.

Jock was quite away at the other end of the field – which was well walled – when Harry and his canine companion arrived at the five-barred gate.

“I know how to fetch him down, Eily,” said Harry. Then he called out as loud as he could: “Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie! Towsie!”

The great bull lifted his head and sniffed the air.

“Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie! Towsie!”

With a roar that would have frightened many a child, he shook his great head, then came on towards the gate, growling all the while in a most alarming way.

“Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie?” cried the boy.

Jock was at the gate now.

His breath blew hot and thick from his nostrils, his red eyes seemed to flash fire.

“Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie!”

The bull was mad. He tore up the earth with his fore-feet, and the grass with his teeth.

“Towsie! Tow – ”

Before Harry could finish the word, greatly to his horror, the bull threw off the top bar with one of his horns, and in three seconds more had leapt clean over.

But Harry was too quick for him, and what followed spoke well for the presence of mind of our young hero.

To have attempted to run straight away from the bull would have meant a speedy and terrible death. He would have been torn limb from limb. But no sooner did the bar rattle down, than both Harry and Eily sprang to the stone fence and jumped over into the field, just as the bull jumped out of it.

Jock was considerably nonplussed at not finding his tormentor where he had 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 some time, a sort of wild hide-and-seek, much to Harry’s delight; but each time he leapt the wall he edged farther and farther from the gate.

The bull got quieter now and kept inside the field, and pretended to browse, though I do not think he swallowed much. He followed along the stone fence all the same, but Harry knew he could not leap it. In the adjoining field, which belonged to Harry’s father, great turnips grew, and Harry went and pulled two of the very biggest, and threw over the wall 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 he prepared to hurry home now.

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

A hole where he knew a weasel lived; he would have liked to have seen it, only it would not come out. Rabbit’s holes, that he crept towards on hands and knees, and laughed to see the bunnies scurry away. A deep water-pit where queer old-fashioned water-rats (voles) lived, some of whom came out to look at him and squeezed their eyes to clear their sight. And so on and so forth. It was quite gloaming before he got near the lawn gate; and then, when he did find his way inside among the shrubbery, he found the sparrows were just going to bed, and bickering and squabbling at a terrible rate, about who should have the dry boughs of 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 was reading 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 room door 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 and look 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, how should I know. Very likely he is up in the dusty attic squatting among the cobwebs, or rummaging for curiosities in some old drawer or another.”

But Harry was not upstairs among the cobwebs, nor rummaging in any drawer whatever, nor talking to John in the stable, nor playing with his toys 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 presented themselves at the hall door, and you could not have said which of the two 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 poor Eily.”

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

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

Presently they both had supper. If Harry was pale while playing at bubble-ships in the water-vat, he was rosy enough now, and verily his cheeks 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.”