He not only loved but understood all the creatures, divining by an operation in which neither the sympathy nor the watchfulness was the less perfect that both were but half-conscious, the emotions and desires informing their inarticulate language. Many of them seemed to know him in return—either recognizing his person, and from experience deducing safety, or reading his countenance sufficiently to perceive that his interest prognosticated no injury. The maternal bird would keep her seat in her nursery, and give back his gaze; the rabbit peeping from his burrow would not even draw in his head at his approach; the rooks about Scaurnose never took to their wings until he was within a yard or two of them: the laird, in his half-acted utterance, indicated that they took him for a scarecrow and therefore were not afraid of him. Even Mrs Catanach’s cur had never offered him a bite in return for a caress. He could make a bird’s nest, of any sort common in the neighbourhood, so as deceive the most cunning of the nest-harrying youths of the parish.[7]
[7] See article Martin Féreol, in St. Paul’s Magazine vol. iv. generally.
Hardly was he an hour in his new abode ere the sparrows and robins began to visit him. Even strange birds of passage flying in at his hospitable window, would espy him unscared, and sometimes partake of the food he had always at hand to offer them. He relied, indeed, for the pleasures of social intercourse with the animal world, on stray visits alone; he had no pets—dog nor cat nor bird; for his wandering and danger-haunted life did not allow such companionship.
He insisted on occupying his new quarters at once. In vain Phemy and her uncle showed reason against it. He did not want a bed; he much preferred a heap of spales, that is, wood shavings. Indeed, he would not have a bed; and whatever he did want he would get for himself. Having by word and gesture made this much plain, he suddenly darted up the ladder, threw down the trap-door, and, lo! like a hermit-crab, he had taken possession. Wisely they left him alone.
For a full fortnight he allowed neither to enter the little chamber. As often as they called him, he answered cheerfully, but never showed himself except when Phemy brought him food, which, at his urgent request, was only once in the twenty-four hours— after night-fall, the last thing before she went to bed; then he would slide down the ladder, take what she had brought him, and hurry up again. Phemy was perplexed, and at last a good deal distressed, for he had always been glad of her company before.
At length, one day, hearing her voice in the shop, and having peeped through a hole in the floor to see that no stranger was present, he invited her to go up, and lifted the trap-door.
“Come, come,” he said hurriedly, when her head appeared and came no farther.
He stood holding the trap-door, eager to close it again as soon as she should step clear of it, and surprise was retarding her ascent.
Before hearing his mind, the carpenter had already made for him, by way of bedstead, a simple frame of wood, crossed with laths in the form of lattice-work: this the laird had taken and set up on its side, opposite the window, about two feet from it, so that, with abundant passage for air, it served as a screen. Fixing it firmly to the floor, he had placed on the top of it a large pot of the favourite cottage-plant there called Humility, and trained its long pendent runners over it. On the floor between it and the window, he had ranged a row of flower pots—one of them with an ivy-plant, which also he had begun to train against the trellis; and already the humility and the ivy had begun to intermingle.
At one side of the room, where the sloping roof met the floor, was his bed of fresh pine-shavings, amongst which, their resinous half-aromatic odour apparently not sweet enough to content him, he had scattered a quantity of dried rose-leaves. A thick tartan plaid, for sole covering, lay upon the heap.