The story of Wandering Willie

by Lady Augusta Noel

At first I could not make out rightly, how much or how little it was my duty to be with Hildred, remembering that now she was only a charge left to me by Cuthbert. It would have been easier to keep away altogether, but the poor child was unhappy. In the newness and strangeness of her first sorrow, she needed a great deal of comforting. No one had much time or thought to give to the remembrance of Cuthbert, so she came to me, reminding me that I had promised to be good to her.

It has always seemed to me that any trouble is the most easily borne in silence. Many words only make the pain worse, and take away from the patience and strength with which one has to bear it. But it was different for little Hildred. Child-like, or woman-like, it was a comfort to her to say how very sad she was. She came to tell how she missed Cuthbert; how long and dull the days seemed without the hope of seeing him; of how she often thought she heard his voice calling to her, and forgot that it was gone far beyond her hearing.

Anyone that has loved and lost a friend knows well all that she felt. But to her it was just as strange and dreadful as if the world, since it began, had not been full of partings. It was so new to her to wake up in the morning, wondering what the weight upon her heart could be—so sorrowful, when everything was quiet, to cry herself to sleep.

We were not the only people in that part of the country who had cause to rue the visits of recruiting parties. There were the Moores, cousins of her own, whom Martha Clifford was never tired of holding up as an example. How often have I heard her exhort Hildred to patience, by telling her how much less to be pitied she was than the poor old Moores! Hildred did not think so, inasmuch as a new sorrow always seems worse than an old one, and the trouble that had come upon the Moores was of old standing now.

Three or four years ago their only son did, what Cuthbert had just done—enlisted, leaving his father and mother to get on as best they could without him.

It was hard on them certainly, for they were growing old, and had looked to David as the bread-winner for the future. 'If you knew what it was to want bread, Hildred,' said Martha, 'you would not have so much time for fretting about Cuthbert.'

I don't think it had come to the Moores wanting bread, but I remember well the talk of the country side, and how it was said the ferry-house over the Wynn would soon have other tenants, for an old man like Moore could never manage the ferry-boat by himself.

Certainly the river at the ferry ran very swift and strong, and the old boat was a heavy one. Moore's house, a tumble-down stone building, comfortable enough inside, but a bleak sort of place to look at, stood hanging over the river, at the corner where the road comes out of a winding pass through the hills and ends at the ferry. It was the only way the farmers and people living up in the hills had of getting to Morechester. The boat carried across many a load of cattle for Morechester Market, many a man and horse bound for the Market Cross. Still the place was so wild and unfrequented that passengers were rare things, and the ferryman often worked in his strip of garden, and tended his goats, for days together, without the boat being once called for. There it lay, chained just beneath the house, with its ponderous oars, as big, clumsy, and flat-bottomed a thing as you would wish to see.

Cuthbert and I knew it well in the days of our rambles over the country. We knew old Moore and Moore's wife, and Elfrida their servant-maid, and David the son, who got so tired of the ferry-boat, and the lonely house, and the noise of the river sweeping by, that he went for a soldier, and left the place more silent and deserted than before.

In time old Moore fell sick. It was then that they began really to miss David; for what was to become of them, now his father could row the ferry-boat no longer? Then Elfrida, their faithful maid, went down and unloosed the boat, and rowed it across herself, with her strong arms. And she told her old master and mistress not to fret, for she would do her best—they should not leave the old ferry as long as she had hands to serve them.