Elsie looked frightened, but Turkey laughed, saying: “Never mind, Elsie. John is better than he looks. He won’t do him the least harm. He must mind his business, you know.”
The Ba’ Hill was covered with a young plantation of firs, which, hardy as they were, had yet in a measure to be coaxed into growing in that inclement region. It was amongst their small stems that the coveted bilberries grew, in company with cranberries and crowberries, and dwarf junipers. The children of the village thus attracted to the place were no doubt careless of the young trees, and might sometimes even amuse themselves with doing them damage. Hence the keeper, John Adam, whose business it was to look after them, found it his duty to wage war upon the annual hordes of these invaders; and in their eyes Adam was a terrible man. He was very long and very lean, with a flattish yet Roman nose, and rather ill-tempered mouth, while his face was dead-white and much pitted with the small-pox. He wore corduroy breeches, a blue coat, and a nightcap striped horizontally with black and red. The youngsters pretended to determine, by the direction in which the tassel of it hung, what mood its owner was in; nor is it for me to deny that their inductions may have led them to conclusions quite as correct as those of some other scientific observers. At all events the tassel was a warning, a terror, and a hope. He could not run very fast, fortunately, for the lean legs within those ribbed grey stockings were subject to rheumatism, and could take only long not rapid strides; and if the children had a tolerable start, and had not the misfortune to choose in their terror an impassable direction, they were pretty sure to get off. Jamie Duff, the most harmless and conscientious creature, who would not have injured a young fir upon any temptation, did take a wrong direction, caught his foot in a hole, fell into a furze bush, and, nearly paralysed with terror, was seized by the long fingers of Adam, and ignominiously lifted by a portion of his garments into the vast aërial space between the ground and the white, pock-pitted face of the keeper. Too frightened to scream, too conscious of trespass to make any resistance, he was borne off as a warning to the rest of the very improbable fate which awaited them.
But the character of Adam was not by any means so frightful in the eyes of Turkey; and he soon succeeded in partially composing the trepidation of Elsie, assuring her that as soon as he had put up the cattle, he would walk over to Adam’s house and try to get Jamie off, whereupon Elsie set off home with her cow, disconsolate but hopeful. I think I see her yet—for I recall every picture of that lovely day clear as the light of that red sunset—walking slowly with her head bent half in trouble, half in attention to her knitting, after her solemn cow, which seemed to take twice as long to get over the ground because she had two pairs of legs instead of one to shuffle across it, dragging her long iron chain with the short stake at the end after her with a gentle clatter over the hard dry road. I accompanied Turkey, helped him to fasten up and bed the cows, went in with him and shared his hasty supper of potatoes and oatcake and milk, and then set out refreshed, and nowise apprehensive in his company, to seek the abode of the redoubtable ogre, John Adam.
CHAPTER XXII
Vain Intercession
He had a small farm of his own at the foot of the hill of which he had the charge. It was a poor little place, with a very low thatched cottage for the dwelling. A sister kept house for him. When we approached it there was no one to be seen. We advanced to the door along a rough pavement of round stones, which parted the house from the dunghill. I peeped in at the little window as we passed. There, to my astonishment, I saw Jamie Duff, as I thought, looking very happy, and in the act of lifting a spoon to his mouth. A moment after, however, I concluded that I must have been mistaken, for, when Turkey lifted the latch and we walked in, there were the awful John and his long sister seated at the table, while poor Jamie was in a corner, with no basin in his hand, and a face that looked dismal and dreary enough. I fancied I caught a glimpse of Turkey laughing in his sleeve, and felt mildly indignant with him—for Elsie’s sake more, I confess, than for Jamie’s.
“Come in,” said Adam, rising; but, seeing who it was, he seated himself again, adding, “Oh, it’s you, Turkey!”—Everybody called him Turkey. “Come in and take a spoon.”
“No, thank you,” said Turkey; “I have had my supper. I only came to inquire after that young rascal there.”
“Ah! you see him! There he is!” said Adam, looking towards me with an awful expression in his dead brown eyes. “Starving. No home and no supper for him! He’ll have to sleep in the hay-loft with the rats and mice, and a stray cat or two.”