more should I want?"
The name of Hermit followed him to the parish school. Our tale datesback to the days before School Boards were thought of.
Harry was eleven now, and therefore somewhat too old for a governess.So Miss Campbell had gone. I'm afraid that Harry had already forgottenhis promise to marry her when he "grew a great big man." At all eventshe did not repeat it even when he kissed her good-bye.
What a long, long walk Harry had to that parish school! How would theaverage English boy like to trudge o'er hill and dale, through moor andmoss and forest, four long miles every morning? But that is preciselywhat Harry had to do, carrying with him, too, a pile of books one foothigh, including a large Latin dictionary.
Harry thought it delightful in summer; he used to start very early so asto be able to study nature by the way, study birds and their nests,study trees and shrubs and ferns and flowers.
Scottish schoolboy fashion, he took his dinner with him. A meagre mealenough, only some bread-and-butter in a little bag, and a tin of sweetmilk which he carried in his hand.
Eily always went along with him, but she waited at a neighbouring farmuntil school came out in the forenoon, when she had part of Harry'sdinner; then she was invariably at the gate at four o'clock, and wildwith joy when the homeward journey commenced.
Several other boys went Harry's road for more than two miles, but it wasthe custom of the "Hermit" to start off at a race with his dog as soonas he got out, and never halt until he put a good half-mile betwixthimself and the lads, who would gladly have borne him company.
No wonder he was called "Harry the Hermit!"
Dominie Roberts, the parish schoolmaster, was a pedagogue of the oldschool. And there exist many such in Scotland still.
He would no more think of teaching a class without the tawse in hishand, than a huntsman would of entering the kennels without his whip.As my English readers may not know what a "tawse" is, I herewith givethem a recipe for making one.
Take, then, a piece of leather two feet long, and one inch and a halfwide. The leather ought to be the thickest a shoemaker can give you, ofthe same sort as he makes the uppers of a navvy's boots with. Now atone end make a slit or buttonhole to pass two fingers through, and cutup the other into three tags of equal breadth and about three incheslong.
Then your tawse is complete, or will be so as soon as you have heatedthe ends for a short time in the fire to harden them.
It is a fearful instrument of torture, as my experience can testify. Itis not quite so much used in schools now, however, as it was thirtyyears ago, when the writer was a boy. But it _is_ still used. Such athing as hoisting and flogging, I do not believe, was ever known in aScottish school. It would result in mutiny.
You have to hold out your hand. The teacher says "_Pande_" (in Latin).Then he lets you have it again and again, sometimes till he is out ofbreath, and your hands and wrists are all blistered.
I remember receiving six-and-thirty "pandeys," because I had smashed atyrant boy who had bullied me for months. It was a cruel injustice; forthe bully got no punishment except that which I had given him.
Dominie Roberts was a pedagogue, then, of this class.
All the boys were afraid of him. Harry was not. Though only elevenyears of age, Harry was nearly as tall as the dominie.
There was a consultation one day as to who should steal the tawse.
No boy would venture, but at length--
"I will," said Harry.
"Hurrah! for the Hermit!" was the shout.
The dominie went out of the schoolroom every forenoon for half an hourto smoke. A pretty hubbub and din there was then, you may be sure.
The day after the theft of the tawse was determined on, as soon as thepedagogue had stumped out of the school--he wore a wooden leg from theknee--Harry went boldly up to the desk and 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 andsniffed. There was a shocking smell of burning leather.
The dominie went straight to the fire, and with the poker discovered thealmost 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, andrepeated 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 thesmaller ones began to cry.
Presently the dominie returned. In his hand he bore a long piece of abridle rein, and this he fashioned into a tawse in sight of the wholeschool. Then he called the biggest class, and once more demanded thename of the culprit.
No reply, but every lad in the class began to wet his hands and pulldown his sleeves.
"All hands up," was the terrible command.
The punishment was about to commence when forth stepped Harry the Hermitinto 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 andsick.
He sat down beside his class-mate, and was soon so far recovered as tobe 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 heldon. Nor was he able to eat much supper, but he did not tell the reasonwhy.
But, apart from his fondness for corporal or palmar punishment, DominieRoberts was a clever teacher, and Harry made excellent progress.
Autumn came round, and stormy wet days, and many a cold drenching ourhero got, both coming to and going from school. But he did not mindthem. They only seemed to render him hardier and sturdier, and make hischeeks the ruddier.
Then winter arrived "on his snow-white car," as poets say, and oftensuch storms blew that even grown-up people feared to face them. ButHarry would not give in. On evenings like these John would bedispatched to meet Harry, and many an anxious glance from thedining-room window would his mother cast, until she saw them coming upthe long avenue, Eily always first, feathering through the snow, andbarking for very joy as she neared the house.
Sometimes the roads would be so blocked with snow, that Harry found itfar more convenient to walk along on the top of the stone fences, oftenmissing his feet, and getting plunged nearly over his head in asnow-bank.
In the early part of January, 186-, I forget the exact day and date, oneof 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 foralarm. There was no sunshine however, and the whole sky was covered byan unbroken wall of blue-grey cloud. Towards the forenoon snow began tofall--a kind of soft hail like millet seeds. The ground was hard anddry 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 frostwas intense.
Gradually this soft, fine hail changed to big, dry flakes. Then thewind began to rise, and moan around the chimneys, and go shriekingthrough the leafless boughs of the ash trees and elms. The snowfallincreased in density every minute. Looking up through the fallingflakes, yo
u could not have seen three yards.
Dominie Roberts at two o'clock began to get uneasy, and gave many ananxious glance towards the windows, now getting quickly snowed up. Sogreat, too, was the frost that, though a roaring fire of wood and peatsburned on the hearth, the panes were flowered and frozen.
At half-past two it began to get rapidly dark, so the dominie dismissedhis class with earnest injunctions to those boys who had far to go, notto delay on the road, but to hurry home at once.
It might have been thought that on an evening like this, Harry wouldhave been glad of companionship on the road. Not he. He went off likea young colt, with Eily galloping round him, as soon as ever he gotoutside the gate.
The wind blew right in his face, however, and the drift was whirlinglike smoke right over every fence. The roads were also barricaded everyfew yards with high wreaths of snow, blown off the fields and hills.
The wind blew wilder, and every minute the