seized the tawse.
“What shall I do with it?” he asked a schoolboy.
“Pitch it out of the window.”
“No,” cried another, “he would get it again. Put it in the fire.”
Harry did so, and covered it up with burning coals.
By and by back stumped the dominie. He held his nose in the air and sniffed. There was a shocking smell of burning leather.
The dominie went straight to the fire, and with the poker discovered the almost shapeless cinders of his pet tawse!
He grew red and white, time about, with rage.
“Who has done this thing?” he thundered.
No reply, and the dominie thumped on the floor with his wooden leg, and repeated the question.
Still no answer.
“I shall punish the entire school,” cried Dominie Roberts.
He stumped out again, and many of the boys grew pale with fear, and the smaller ones began to cry.
Presently the dominie returned. In his hand he bore a long piece of a bridle rein, and this he fashioned into a tawse in sight of the whole school. Then he called the biggest class, and once more demanded the name of the culprit.
No reply, but every lad in the class began to wet his hands and pull down his sleeves.
“All hands up,” was the terrible command.
The punishment was about to commence when forth stepped Harry the Hermit into the middle of the circle.
“Stay a moment, if you please, sir,” said Harry.
“You know, then, who committed the crime?” asked the dominie, sternly.
“I do; it was myself.”
“And why?”
“Because the other boys wanted to, but were afraid.”
“Which other boys? Name them.”
“I will not.”
“Pande, sir, Pande.”
Five minutes afterwards Harry staggered back to his seat, pale-faced and sick.
He sat down beside his class-mate, and was soon so far recovered as to be able to whisper —
“How many did I have?”
“Two-and-twenty,” was the reply. “I counted.”
“And that new tawse is a tickler, I can tell you,” said Harry.
He did not climb any trees that day going home. He could not have held on. Nor was he able to eat much supper, but he did not tell the reason why.
But, apart from his fondness for corporal or palmar punishment, Dominie Roberts was a clever teacher, and Harry made excellent progress.
Autumn came round, and stormy wet days, and many a cold drenching our hero got, both coming to and going from school. But he did not mind them. They only seemed to render him hardier and sturdier, and make his cheeks the ruddier.
Then winter arrived “on his snow-white car,” as poets say, and often such storms blew that even grown-up people feared to face them. But Harry would not give in. On evenings like these John would be dispatched to meet Harry, and many an anxious glance from the dining-room window would his mother cast, until she saw them coming up the long avenue, Eily always first, feathering through the snow, and barking for very joy as she neared the house.
Sometimes the roads would be so blocked with snow, that Harry found it far more convenient to walk along on the top of the stone fences, often missing his feet, and getting plunged nearly over his head in a snow-bank.
In the early part of January, 186-, I forget the exact day and date, one of the most fierce and terrible snowstorms that old men ever remembered, swept over the northern shires of Scotland.
When Harry left for school that morning there seemed little cause for alarm. There was no sunshine however, and the whole sky was covered by an unbroken wall of blue-grey cloud. Towards the forenoon snow began to fall – a kind of soft hail like millet seeds. The ground was hard and dry to receive it, so it did not melt.
The schoolboys tried to mould it into snowballs, but it would not “make,” it would not stick together – evidence in itself that the frost was intense.
Gradually this soft, fine hail changed to big, dry flakes. Then the wind began to rise, and moan around the chimneys, and go shrieking through the leafless boughs of the ash trees and elms. The snowfall increased in density every minute. Looking up through the falling flakes, you could not have seen three yards.
Dominie Roberts at two o’clock began to get uneasy, and gave many an anxious glance towards the windows, now getting quickly snowed up. So great, too, was the frost that, though a roaring fire of wood and peats burned on the hearth, the panes were flowered and frozen.
At half-past two it began to get rapidly dark, so the dominie dismissed his class with earnest injunctions to those boys who had far to go, not to delay on the road, but to hurry home at once.
It might have been thought that on an evening like this, Harry would have been glad of companionship on the road. Not he. He went off like a young colt, with Eily galloping round him, as soon as ever he got outside the gate.
The wind blew right in his face, however, and the drift was whirling like smoke right over every fence. The roads were also barricaded every few yards with high wreaths of snow, blown off the fields and hills.
The wind blew wilder, and every minute the cold seemed to grow more and more intense.
Harry’s face and hands were blue and benumbed before he had gone a mile and a half, Eily’s coat was white and frozen hard; but on went the pair of them, battling with the storm, Harry holding his head well down, and keeping his plaid up over his nostrils.
Often he had to turn round and walk backwards by way of resting himself.
The snow-wreaths were most difficult to get through, the smoking drift cutting his breath and nearly suffocating him.
So ere long his strength began to fail. Hardy though he was, Highlander though he was, bred and born among the wild, bleak mountains, and reared in the forests, his powers of endurance gave out.
He crouched down and took the half-frozen dog in his arms. He talked to her as if she had been a human being, and the probability is that she did know what he said.
“Oh, Eily,” he said, “I do feel tired.”
The kindly collie licked his face.
“But come on,” he cried, starting up again; “we must not give in. We have only about a mile and a half to go if we cross through the wood. We’ll soon get home. Come on, Eily, come on.”
In a short time he had reached the wood. It was mostly spruce and fir, and the branches were borne half to the ground with the weight of snow at one side, while the other was bare, and the wind tearing
