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THE PUNISHMENT.
The house he was approaching, had a little the look of a prison. Of
the more ancient portion the windows were very small, and every
corner had a turret with a conical cap-roof. That part was all
rough-cast, therefore grey, as if with age. The more modern part
was built of all kinds of hard stone, roughly cloven or blasted from
the mountain and its boulders. Granite red and grey, blue
whinstone, yellow ironstone, were all mingled anyhow, fitness of
size and shape alone regarded in their conjunctions; but the result
as to colour was rather pleasing than otherwise, and Gibbie regarded
it with some admiration. Nor, although he had received from Fergus
such convincing proof that he was regarded as a culprit, had he any
dread of evil awaiting him. The highest embodiment of the law with
which he had acquaintance was the police, and from not one of them
in all the city had he ever had a harsh word; his conscience was as
void of offence as ever it had been, and the law consequently,
notwithstanding the threats of Fergus, had for him no terrors.
The laird was an early riser, and therefore regarded the mere
getting up early as a virtue, altogether irrespective of how the
time, thus redeemed, as he called it, was spent. This morning, as
it turned out, it would have been better spent in sleep. He was
talking to his gamekeeper, a heavy-browed man, by the coach-house
door, when Fergus appeared holding the dwindled brownie by the huge
collar of his tatters. A more innocent-looking malefactor sure
never appeared before awful Justice! Only he was in rags, and there
are others besides dogs whose judgments go by appearance. Mr.
Galbraith was one of them, and smiled a grim, an ugly smile.
"So this is your vaunted brownie, Mr. Duff!" he said, and stood
looking down upon Gibbie, as if in his small person he saw
superstition at the point of death, mocked thither by the arrows of
his contemptuous wit.
"It's all the brownie I could lay hands on, sir," answered Fergus.
"I took him in the act."
"Boy," said the laird, rolling his eyes, more unsteady than usual
with indignation, in the direction of Gibbie, "what have you to say
for yourself?"
Gibbie had no say -- and nothing to say that his questioner could
either have understood or believed; the truth from his lips would
but have presented him a lying hypocrite to the wisdom of his judge.
As it was, he smiled, looking up fearless in the face of the
magistrate, so awful in his own esteem.
"What is your name?" asked the laird, speaking yet more sternly.
Gibbie still smiled and was silent, looking straight in his
questioner's eyes. He dreaded nothing from the laird. Fergus had
beaten him, but Fergus he classed with the bigger boys who had
occasionally treated him roughly; this was a man, and men, except
they were foreign sailors, or drunk, were never unkind. He had no
idea of his silence causing annoyance. Everybody in the city had
known he could not answer; and now when Fergus and the laird
persisted in questioning him, he thought they were making kindly
game of him, and smiled the more. Nor was there much about Mr.
Galbraith to rouse a suspicion of the contrary; for he made a great
virtue of keeping his temper when most he caused other people to
lose theirs.
"I see the young vagabond is as impertinent as he is vicious," he
said at last, finding that to no interrogation could he draw forth
any other response than a smile. "Here Angus," -- and he turned to the
gamekeeper -- "take him into the coach-house, and teach him a little
behaviour. A touch or two of the whip will find his tongue for
him."
Angus seized the little gentleman by the neck, as if he had been a
polecat, and at arm's length walked him unresistingly into the
coach-house. There, with one vigorous tug, he tore the jacket from
his back, and his only other garment, dependent thereupon by some
device known only to Gibbie, fell from him, and he stood in helpless
nakedness, smiling still: he had never done anything shameful,
therefore had no acquaintance with shame. But when the scowling
keeper, to whom poverty was first cousin to poaching, and who hated
tramps as he hated vermin, approached him with a heavy cart whip in
his hand, he cast his eyes down at his white sides, very white
between his brown arms and brown legs, and then lifted them in a
mute appeal, which somehow looked as if it were for somebody else,
against what he could no longer fail to perceive the man's intent.
But he had no notion of what the thing threatened amounted to. He
had had few hard blows in his time, and had never felt a whip.
"Ye deil's glaur!" cried the fellow, clenching the cruel teeth of
one who loved not his brother, "I s' lat ye ken what comes o'
brakin' into honest hooses, an' takin' what's no yer ain!"
A vision of the gnawed cheese, which he had never touched since the
idea of its being property awoke in him, rose before Gibbie's mental
eyes, and inwardly he bowed to the punishment. But the look he had
fixed on Angus was not without effect, for the man was a father,
though a severe one, and was not all a brute: he turned and changed
the cart whip for a gig one with a broken shaft, which lay near. It
was well for himself that he did so, for the other would probably
have killed Gibbie. When the blow fell the child shivered all over,
his face turned white, and without uttering even a moan, he doubled
up and dropped senseless. A swollen cincture, like a red snake, had
risen all round his waist, and from one spot in it the blood was
oozing. It looked as if the lash had cut him in two.
The blow had stung his heart and it had ceased to beat. But the
gamekeeper understood vagrants! the young blackguard was only
shamming!
"Up wi' ye, ye deevil! or I s' gar ye," he said from between his
teeth, lifting the whip for a second blow.
Just as the stroke fell, marking him from the nape all down the
spine, so that he now bore upon his back in red the sign the ass
carries in black, a piercing shriek assailed Angus's ears, and his
arm, which had mechanically raised itself for a third blow, hung
arrested.
The same moment, in at the coach-house door shot Ginevra, as white
as Gibbie. She darted to where he lay, and there stood over him,
arms rigid and hands clenched hard, shivering as he had shivered,
and sending from her body shriek after shriek, as if her very soul
were the breath of which her cries were fashioned. It was as if the
woman's heart in her felt its roots torn from their home in the
bosom of God, and quivering in agony, and confronted by the stare of
an eternal impossibility, shrieked against Satan.
"Gang awa, missie," cried Angus, who had respect to this child,
though he had not yet learned to respect childhood; "he's a coorse
cratur, an' maun hae's whups."
But Ginevra was deaf to his evil charming. She stopped her cries,
however, to help Gibbie up, and took one of his hands to raise him.
But his arm hung limp and motionless; she let it go; it dropped
like a stick, and again she began to shriek. Angus laid his hand on
her shoulder. She turned on him, and opening her mouth wide,
screamed at him like a wild animal, with all the hatred of mingled
love and fear; then threw herself on the boy, and covered his body
with her own. Angus, stooping to remove her, saw Gibbie's face, and
became uncomfortable.
"He's deid! he's deid! Ye've killt him, Angus! Ye're an ill man!"
she cried fiercely. "I hate ye. I'll tell on ye. I'll tell my
papa."
"Hoot! whisht, missie!" said Angus. "It was by yer papa's ain orders
I gae him the whup, an' he weel deserved it forby. An' gien ye
dinna gang awa, an' be a guid yoong leddy, I'll gie 'im mair yet."
"I'll tell God," shrieked Ginevra with fresh energy of defensive
love and wrath.
Again he sought to remove her, but she clung so, with both legs and
arms, to the insensible Gibbie, that he could but lift both
together, and had to leave her alone.
"Gien ye daur to touch 'im again, Angus, I'll bite ye -- bite ye -- BITE
YE," she screamed, in a passage wildly crescendo.
The laird and Fergus had walked away together, perhaps neither of
them quite comfortable at the orders given, but the one too
self-sufficient to recall them, and the other too submissive to
interfere. They heard the cries, nevertheless, and had they known
them for Ginevra's, would have rushed to the spot; but fierce
emotion had so utterly changed her voice -- and indeed she had never
in her life cried out before -- that they took them for Gibbie's and
supposed the whip had had the desired effect and loosed his tongue.
As to the rest of the household, which would by this time have been
all gathered in the coach-house, the laird had taken his stand where
he could intercept them: he would not have the execution of the
decrees of justice interfered with.
But Ginevra's shrieks brought Gibbie to himself. Faintly he opened
his eyes, and stared, stupid with growing pain, at the tear-blurred
face beside him. In the confusion of his thoughts he fancied the
pain he felt was Ginevra's, not his, and sought to comfort her,
stroking her cheek with feeble hand, and putting up his mouth to
kiss her. But Angus, utterly scandalized at the proceeding, and
restored to energy by seeing that the boy was alive, caught her up
suddenly and carried her off -- struggling, writhing, and scratching
like a cat. Indeed she bit his arm, and that severely, but the man
never even told his wife. Little Missie was a queen, and little
Gibbie was a vermin, but he was ashamed to let the mother of his
children know that the former had bitten him for the sake of the
latter.
The moment she thus disappeared, Gibbie began to apprehend that she
was suffering for him, not he for her. His whole body bore
testimony to frightful abuse. This was some horrible place
inhabited by men such as those that killed Sambo! He must fly. But
would they hurt the little girl? He thought not -- she was at home.
He started to spring to his feet, but fell back almost powerless;
then tried more cautiously and got up wearily, for the pain and the
terrible shock seemed to have taken the strength out of every limb.
Once on his feet, he could scarcely stoop to pick up his remnant of
trowsers without again falling, and the effort made him groan with
distress. He was in the act of trying in vain to stand on one foot,
so as to get the other into the garment, when he fancied he heard
the step of his executioner, returning doubtless to resume his
torture. He dropped the rag, and darted out of the door, forgetting
aches and stiffness and agony. All naked as he was, he fled like
the wind, unseen, or at least unrecognized, of any eye. Fergus did
catch a glimpse of something white that flashed across a vista
through the neighbouring wood, but he took it for a white peacock,
of which there were two or three about the place. The three men
were disgusted with the little wretch when they found that he had
actually fled into the open day without his clothes. Poor Gibbie!
it was such a small difference! It needed as little change to make
a savage as an angel of him. All depended on the eyes that saw him.
He ran he knew not whither, feeling nothing but the desire first to
get into some covert, and then to run farther. His first rush was
for the shubbery, his next across the little park to the wood
beyond. He did not feel the wind of his running on his bare skin.
He did not feel the hunger that had made him so unable to bear the
lash. On and on he ran, fancying ever he heard the cruel Angus
behind him. If a dry twig snapped, he thought it was the crack of
the whip; and a small wind that rose suddenly in the top of a pine,
seemed the hiss with which it was about to descend upon him. He ran
and ran, but still there seemed nothing between him and his
persecutors. He felt no safety. At length he came where a high
wall joining some water, formed a boundary. The water was a brook
from the mountain, here widened and deepened into a still pool. He
had been once out of his depth before: he threw himself in, and swam
straight across: ever after that, swimming seemed to him as natural
as walking.
Then first awoke a faint sense of safety; for on the other side he
was knee deep in heather. He was on the wild hill, with miles on
miles of cover! Here the unman could not catch him. It must be the
same that Donal pointed out to him one day at a distance; he had a
gun, and Donal said he had once shot a poacher and killed him. He
did not know what a poacher was: perhaps he was one himself, and the
man would shoot him. They could see him quite well from the other
side! he must cross the knoll first, and then he might lie down and
rest. He would get right into the heather, and lie with it all
around and over him till the night came. Where he would go then, he
did not know. But it was all one; he could go anywhere. Donal must
mind his cows, and the men must mind the horses, and Mistress Jean
must mind her kitchen, but Sir Gibbie could go where he pleased. He
would go up Daurside; but he would not go just at once; that man
might be on the outlook for him, and he wouldn't like to be shot.
People who were shot lay still, and were put into holes in the
earth, and covered up, and he would not like that.
Thus he communed with himself as he went over the knoll. On the
other side he chose a tall patch of heather, and crept under. How
nice and warm and kind the heather felt, though it did hurt the
weals dreadfully sometimes. If he only had something to cover just
them! There seemed to be one down his back as well as round his
waist!
And now Sir Gibbie, though not much poorer than he had been, really
possessed nothing separable, except his hair and his nails -- nothing
therefore that he could call his, as distinguished from him. His
sole other possession was a negative quantity -- his hunger, namely,
for he had not even a meal in his body: he had eaten nothing since
the preceding noon. I am wrong -- he had one possession besides,
though hardly a separable one -- a ballad about a fair lady and her
page, which Donal had taught him. That he now began to repeat to
himself, but was disappointed to find it a good deal withered. He
was not nearly reduced to extremity yet though -- this little heir of
the world: in his body he had splendid health, in his heart a great
courage, and in his soul an ever-throbbing love. It was his love to
the very image of man, that made the horror of the treatment he had
received. Angus was and was not a man! After all, Gibbie was still
one to be regarded with holy envy.
Poor Ginny was sent to bed for interfering with her father's orders;
and what with rage and horror and pity, an inexplicable feeling of
hopelessness took possession of her, while her affection for her
father was greatly, perhaps for this world irretrievably, injured by
that morning's experience; a something remained that never passed
from her, and that something, as often as it stirred, rose between
him and her.
Fergus told his aunt what had taken place, and made much game of her
brownie. But the more Jean thought about the affair, the less she
liked it. It was she upon whom it all came! What did it matter who
or what her brownie was? And what had they whipped the creature
for? What harm had he done? If indeed he was a little ragged
urchin, the thing was only the more inexplicable! He had taken
nothing! She had never missed so much as a barley scon! The cream
had always brought her the right quantity of butter! Not even a
bannock, so far as she knew, was ever gone from the press, or an egg
from the bossie where they lay heaped! There was more in it than
she could understand! Her nephew's mighty feat, so far from
explaining anything, had only sealed up the mystery. She could not
help cherishing a shadowy hope that, when things had grown quiet, he
would again reveal his presence by his work, if not by his visible
person. It was mortifying to think that he had gone as he came, and
she had never set eyes upon him. But Fergus's account of his
disappearance had also, in her judgment, a decided element of the
marvellous in it. She was strongly inclined to believe that the
brownie had cast a glamour over him and the laird and Angus, all
three, and had been making game of them for his own amusement.
Indeed Daurside generally refused the explanation of the brownie
presented for its acceptance, and the laird scored nothing against
the arch-enemy Superstition.
Donal Grant, missing his "cratur" that day for the first time, heard
enough when he came home to satisfy him that he had been acting the
brownie in the house and the stable as well as in the field,
incredible as it might well appear that such a child should have had
even mere strength for what he did. Then first also, after he had
thus lost him, he began to understand his worth, and to see how much
he owed him. While he had imagined himself kind to the urchin, the
urchin had been laying him under endless obligation. For he left
him with ever so much more in his brains than when he came. This
book and that, through his aid, he had read thoroughly; and a score
or so of propositions had been added to his stock in Euclid. His
first feeling about the child revived as he pondered -- namely, that
he was not of this world. But even then Donal did not know the best
Gibbie had done for him. He did not know of what far deeper and
better things he had, through his gentleness, his trust, his loving
service, his absolute unselfishness, sown the seeds in his mind. On
the other hand, Donal had in return done more for Gibbie than he
knew, though what he had done for him, namely, shared his dinners
with him, had been less of a gift than he thought, and Donal had
rather been sharing in Gibbie's dinner, than Gibbie in Donal's.
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