The story of Wandering Willie

by Lady Augusta Noel

The Castle ruins were the best play-ground that children ever had. On half-holidays the whole school used to troop up there directly they were let out, and the old walls rang with shouts and laughter. Cuthbert and Hildred were always glad to see them, but I liked it best when we had it all to ourselves.

There was a hole in the wall, through which we used to creep, a steep bit of cliff to climb down, and then the stream. Across it such woods, green, tangled, thick with brambles and underwood, full of wild strawberries, blackberry bushes, rabbits, and birds'-nests built up in the huge trees that stood knee-deep in king-fern.

Wherever Cuthbert and I went, and we went everywhere, little Hildred tried to follow us. It was clearly understood that she was never to be in the way. 'Girls always were,' Cuthbert said loftily; 'but still'——It would have been hard to leave her at home because she was a girl, for she would so fain have been a boy. She might come, if she would scramble through the brambles, without caring how much she scratched her arms and legs, and tore her frock. She must be ready to cross the stream, even if the rains had swollen it, and it was sparkling away ankle-deep over the stepping-stones.

She must not scream, however high a branch one of us fell off when we were birds'-nesting. She must share in all our scrapes, and never tell. She must stifle her terror of robbers in the wood, or adders in the long grass, and her pinafore must be always ready to hold birds' nests, eggs, young squirrels, or any prizes that we could not stuff into our own pockets.

Hildred was well content to come on any terms, and ready for the roughest expedition—readier often than I was, for in hot weather, when the ruins were sunny and silent, I liked better to lie on the grass reading, than even to go ratting with Cuthbert and our dog Trusty.

I was half ashamed of being fond of reading. No other boy was, and Cuthbert could not understand it at all.

'He's wonderful fond of his book is Willie,' Granny used to say. 'He'll get to reading to himself by the hour together.'

Cuthbert shook his head with a kind of wondering sorrow. He never cared much to go anywhere by himself. So there was nothing for it but to throw the book into the window of the keep, and go off wherever Cuthbert had made up his mind to take me. And there was Trusty too, with tail upright and eager eyes, waiting for a start. It would have been hard to disappoint Trusty.

He was a dog indeed, was our Trusty, commonly called Rusty, because the wear and tear of life had made his black coat very shabby and brown in these latter days. He was not a model dog, not brave, and calm, and wise, like the dogs one reads about in books. Rusty had his foibles. He was vain, touchy, and changeable. His temper, too, was apt to be short at times, yet how true-hearted and faithful he was to those he really loved! Oh, dear old Rusty, laid to rest now, for nearly fifty years, under the green grass, I have never seen anything like you since!

Who so quick to guess your mood as Rusty? Who so ready as he for a bit of fun? Who so willing to deceive himself and you, and to growl savagely or bark shrilly at the mere mention of a rat, that he knew quite well did not exist? Who so sober and wiselike as Trusty, if you were in trouble; but who so quick to mark the first lifting of the cloud, and to know the minute when it would do to break in with a wag of the tail and a short sharp bark inclining to cheerfulness?