A Dog of Flanders, The Nürnberg Stove, and Other Stories

by Ouida

The wood, which was a well-known spinney famous for pheasants, was reached before very long, though with painful effort. It was chiefly composed of old hawthorn-trees and blackthorn, with here and there a larch or holly. The undergrowth was thick, and the sunbeams were playing at bo-peep with the shadows. Far away over the fields and thorns was a glimmer of blue water, and close around were all manner of ferns, of foxgloves, of grasses, of boughs. The tired little Earl sank downward under one of the old thorns with feet that bled. A wasp had stung him, too, through his stocking, and the stung place was smarting furiously. “But how much more Christ and the saints suffered!” thought Bertie, seriously and piously, without the smallest touch of vanity.

Lying on the moss under all that greenery, he felt refreshed and soothed, although the foot the wasp had stung throbbed a good deal.

There were all sorts of pretty things to see: the pheasants, who were lords of the manor till October came round, did not mind him in the least, and swept smoothly by with their long tails like court mantles sweeping the grass. Blackbirds, those cheeriest of all birds, pecked at worms and grubs quite near him. Chaffinches were looking for hairs under the brambles to make their second summer nest with. Any hairs serve their purpose,—cows’, horses’, or dogs’; and if they get a tuft of hare-skin or rabbit-fur they are furnished for the year. A pair of little white-throats were busy in a low bush, gathering the catch-weed that grew thickly there, and a goldfinch was flying away with a lock of sheep’s wool in his beak. There were other charming creatures, too: a mole was hurrying to his underground castle, a nuthatch was at work on a rotten tree-trunk, and a gray, odd-looking bird was impaling a dead field-mouse on one of the thorn-branches. Bertie did not know that this gentleman was but the gray shrike, once used in hawking; indeed, he did not know the names or habits of any of the birds; and he lay still hidden in the ferns, and watched them with delight and mute amazement. There were thousands of such pretty creatures in his own woods and brakes at home, but then he was never alone: he was always either walking with Father Philip or riding with William, and in neither case was he allowed to stop and loiter and lie in the grass, and the sonorous voice of the priest scattered these timid dwellers in the greenwood as surely as did the tread of the pony’s hoofs and the barking of Ralph.

“When I am a man I will pass all my life out of doors, and I will get friends with all these pretty things, and ask them what they are doing,” he thought; and he was so entranced in this new world hidden away under the low hawthorn boughs of this spinney that he quite forgot he had lost his shoes and did not know where he would sleep when night came. He had quite forgotten his own existence, indeed; and this is just the happiness that comes to us always, when we learn to love the winged and four-footed brethren that Nature has placed so near us, and whom, alas! we so shamefully neglect when we do not do even worse and persecute them. Bertie was quite oblivious that he was a runaway, who had started with a very fine idea or finding out who it was that kept him in prison, and giving him battle wherever he might be: he was much more interested in longing to know what the great gray shrike was, and why it hung up the mouse on the thorn and flew away. If you do not know any more than he did, I may tell you that the shrikes are like your father, and like their game when it has been many days in the larder. It is one of the few ignoble tastes in which birds resemble mankind.

The shrike flew away to look for some more mice, or frogs, or little snakes, or cockroaches, or beetles, for he is a very useful fellow indeed in the woods, though the keepers are usually silly and wicked enough to try and kill him. His home and his young ones were above in the thicket, and he had stuck all round their nests insects of all kinds: still, he was a provident bird, and was of opinion that every one should work while it is day.

When the shrike flew away after a bumble-bee, the little Earl fell asleep: what with fatigue, and excitement, and the heat of the sun, a sound, dreamless slumber fell upon him there among the birds and the sweet smell of the May buds; and the goldfinch sang to him, while he slept, such a pretty song that he heard it though he was so fast asleep. The goldfinch, though, did not sing for him one bit in the world; he sang for his wife, who was sitting among her callow brood hidden away from sight under the leaves, and with no greater anxiety on her mind than fear of a possible weasel or rat gnawing at her nest from the bottom.

When the little Earl awoke, the sun was not full and golden all about him as it had been; there were long shadows slanting through the spinney, and there was a great globe descending behind the downs of the western horizon. It was probably about six in the evening. Bertie could not tell, for, unluckily for him, he had always had a watch to rely upon, and had never been taught to tell the hour from the “shepherd’s hour-glass” in the field-flowers, or calculate the time of day from the length of the shadows. Even now, though night was so nigh, the thought of where he should find a bed did not occur to him, for he was absorbed in a little boy who stood before him,—a very miserable little black-haired, brown-cheeked boy, who was staring hard at him.

“Now, he, I am sure, is as poor as Dick and Tam,” thought the little Earl, “and I have nothing left to give him.”

The little boy was endeavoring to hide behind his back a bright bundle of ruffled feathers, and in his other hand he held a complicated arrangement of twine and twigs with a pendent noose.

That Bertie did know the look of, for he had seen his own keepers destroy such things in his own woods, and had heard them swear when they did so. So his land-owner’s instincts awoke in him, though the land was not his.