CHAPTER IX.
LOST AND FOUND.
The summer days passed very quickly and happily for Bert at Maplebank, especially after the surprising revelation of the love and tenderness that underlay his grandfather's stern exterior. No one did more for his comfort or happiness than his grandmother, and he loved her accordingly with the whole strength of his young heart. She was so slight and frail, and walked with such slow, gentle steps, that the thought of being her protector and helper often came into his mind and caused him to put on a more erect, important bearing as he walked beside her in the garden, or through the orchard where the apples were already beginning to give promise of the coming ripeness.
Mrs. Stewart manifested her love for her grandson in one way that made a great impression upon Bert. She would take him over to the dairy, in its cool place beneath the trees, and, selecting the cooler with the thickest cream upon it, would skim off a teaspoonful into a large spoon that was already half filled with new oatmeal, and then pour the luscious mixture into the open mouth waiting expectantly beside her.
"Is not that fine, Bertie boy?" she would say, patting him affectionately upon the head; and Bert, his mouth literally too full for utterance, would try to look the thanks he could not speak.
Maplebank had many strange visitors. It stood a little way back from the junction of three roads, and the Squire's hospitality to wayfarers being unbounded, the consequence was that rarely did a night pass without one or more finding a bed in some corner of the kitchen. Sometimes it would be a shipwrecked sailor, slowly finding his way on foot to the nearest shipping port. Sometimes a young lad with pack on back, setting out to seek his fortune at the capital, or in the States beyond. Again it would be a travelling tinker, or tailor, or cobbler, plying his trade from house to house, and thereby making an honest living.
But the most frequent visitors of all—real nuisances, though, they often made themselves—were the poor, simple folk, of whom a number of both sexes roamed ceaselessly about. Not far from Maplebank was what the better class called a "straglash district"—that is, a settlement composed of a number of people who had by constant intermarriage, and poor living, caused insanity of a mild type to be woefully common. Almost every family had its idiot boy or girl, and these poor creatures, being, as a rule, perfectly harmless, were suffered to go at large, and were generally well treated by the neighbours, upon whose kindness they were continually trespassing.
The best known of them at the time of Bert's visit, was one called "Crazy Colin," a strange being, half wild, half civilised, with the frame of an athlete, and the mind of a child. Although more than thirty years of age, he had never shown much more sense than a two-year-old baby. He even talked in a queer gibberish, such as was suitable to that stage of childhood. Everybody was kind to him. His clothes and his food were given him. As for a roof, he needed none in summer save when it stormed, and in winter he found refuge among his own people. His chief delight was roaming the woods and fields, talking vigorously to himself in his own language, and waving a long ash staff that was rarely out of his hands. He would thus spend whole days in apparent content, returning only when the pangs of hunger could be borne no longer.