After leaving Dewar he again wandered about for a few weeks; and it appears that his youth, beauty, and peculiarly destitute situation, together with his friendship for his faithful Oscar, had interested the most part of the country people in his behalf; for he was generally treated with kindness. He knew his father’s name, and the name of his house; but as none of the people he visited had ever before heard of either the one or the other, they gave themselves no trouble about the matter.
He stayed nearly two years in a place called Cowhaur, until a wretch, with whom he slept, struck and abused him one day. Duncan, in a rage, flew to the loft and cut all his Sunday hat, shoes, and coat in pieces; and, not daring to abide the consequences, decamped that night.
He wandered about for some time longer among the farmers of Tweed and Yarrow; but this life was now become exceedingly disagreeable to him. He durst not sleep by himself, and the servants did not always choose to allow a vagrant boy and his great dog to sleep with them.
It was on a rainy night, at the close of harvest, that Duncan came to my father’s house. I remember all the circumstances as well as the transactions of yesterday. The whole of his clothing consisted only of a black coat, which, having been made for a fullgrown man, hung fairly to his heels; the hair of his head was rough, curly, and weather-beaten; but his face was ruddy and beautiful, bespeaking a healthy body and a sensible, feeling heart. Oscar was still nearly as large as himself, and the colour of a fox, having a white stripe down his face, with a ring of the same colour round his neck, and was the most beautiful collie I have ever seen. My heart was knit to Duncan at the first sight, and I wept for joy when I saw my parents so kind to him. My mother, in particular, could scarcely do anything else than converse with Duncan for several days. I was always of the party, and listened with wonder and admiration; but often have these adventures been repeated to me. My parents, who soon seemed to feel the same concern for him as if he had been their own son, clothed him in blue drugget, and bought him a smart little Highland bonnet, in which dress he looked so charming that I would not let them have peace until I got one of the same. Indeed, all that Duncan said or did was to me a pattern; for I loved him as my own life. At my own request, which he persuaded me to urge, I was permitted to be his bedfellow, and many a happy night and day did I spend with Duncan and Oscar.
As far as I remember, we felt no privation of any kind, and would have been completely happy if it had not been for the fear of spirits. When the conversation chanced to turn upon the Piper of Dewar, the Maid of Plora, or the Pedlar of Thirlestane Mill, often have we lain with the bed-clothes drawn over our heads till nearly suffocated. We loved the fairies and the brownies, and even felt a little partiality for the mermaids, on account of their beauty and charming songs; but we were a little jealous of the water-kelpies, and always kept aloof from the frightsome pools. We hated the devil most heartily, although we were not much afraid of him; but a ghost! oh, dreadful! the names, ghost, spirit, or apparition, sounded in our ears like the knell of destruction, and our hearts sank within us, as if pierced by the cold icy shaft of death. Duncan herded my father’s cows all the summer—so did I: we could not live asunder. We grew such expert fishers, that the speckled trout, with all his art, could not elude our machinations; we forced him from his watery cove, admired the beautiful shades and purple drops that were painted on his sleek sides, and forthwith added him to our number without reluctance. We assailed the habitation of the wild bee, and rifled her of all her accumulated sweets, though not without encountering the most determined resistance. My father’s meadows abounded with hives; they were almost in every swath—in every hillock. When the swarm was large, they would beat us off, day after day. In all these desperate engagements Oscar came to our assistance, and, provided that none of the enemy made a lodgment in his lower defiles, he was always the last combatant of our party on the field. I do not remember of ever being so much diverted by any scene I ever witnessed, or laughing as immoderately as I have done at seeing Oscar involved in a moving cloud of wild bees, wheeling, snapping on all sides, and shaking his ears incessantly.
The sagacity which this animal possessed is almost incredible, while his undaunted spirit and generosity would do honour to every servant of our own species to copy. Twice did he save his master’s life; at one time when attacked by a furious bull, and at another time when he fell from behind my father, off a horse in a flooded river. Oscar had just swimmed across, but instantly plunged in a second time to his master’s rescue. He first got hold of his bonnet, but that coming off, he quitted it, and again catching him by the coat, brought him to the side, where my father reached him. He waked Duncan at a certain hour every morning, and would frequently turn the cows of his own will, when he observed them wrong. If Duncan dropped his knife, or any other small article, he would fetch it along in his mouth; and if sent back for a lost thing, would infallibly find it. When sixteen years of age, after being unwell for several days, he died one night below his master’s bed. On the evening before, when Duncan came in from the plough, he came from his hiding-place, wagged his tail, licked Duncan’s hand, and returned to his deathbed. Duncan and I lamented him with unfeigned sorrow, buried him below the old rowan tree at the back of my father’s garden, placing a square stone at his head, which was still standing the last time I was there. With great labour, we composed an epitaph between us, which was once carved on that stone; the metre was good, but the stone was so hard, and the engraving so faint, that the characters, like those of our early joys, are long ago defaced and extinct.
Often have I heard my mother relate with enthusiasm the manner in which she and my father first discovered the dawnings of goodness and facility of conception in Duncan’s mind, though, I confess, dearly as I loved him, these circumstances escaped my observation. It was my father’s invariable custom to pray with the family every night before they retired to rest, to thank the Almighty for his kindness to them during the bygone day, and to beg His protection through the dark and silent watches of the night. I need not inform any of my readers that that amiable (and now too much neglected and despised) duty consisted in singing a few stanzas of a psalm, in which all the family joined their voices with my father’s, so that the double octaves of the various ages and sexes swelled the simple concert. He then read a chapter from the Bible, going straight on from beginning to end of the Scriptures. The prayer concluded the devotions of each evening, in which the downfall of antichrist was always strenuously urged, the ministers of the gospel remembered, nor was any friend or neighbour in distress forgot.
The servants of a family have, in general, liberty either to wait the evening prayers, or retire to bed as they incline, but no consideration whatever could induce Duncan to go one night to rest without the prayers, even though both wet and weary, and entreated by my parents to retire, for fear of catching cold. It seems that I had been of a more complaisant disposition; for I was never very hard to prevail with in this respect; nay, my mother used to say, that I was extremely apt to take a pain about my heart at that time of the night, and was, of course, frequently obliged to betake me to bed before the worship commenced.
It might be owing to this that Duncan’s emotions on these occasions escaped my notice. He sung a treble to the old church tunes most sweetly, for he had a melodious voice; and when my father read the chapter, if it was in any of the historical parts of Scripture, he would lean upon the table, and look him in the face, swallowing every sentence with the utmost avidity. At one time, as my father read the 45th chapter of Genesis, he wept so bitterly, that at the end my father paused, and asked what ailed him? Duncan told him that he did not know. At another time, the year following, my father, in the course of his evening devotions, had reached the 19th chapter of the book of Judges; when he began reading it, Duncan was seated on the other side of the house, but ere it was half done, he had stolen up close to my father’s elbow. “Consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds,” said my father, and closed the book. “Go on, go on, if you please, Sir,” said Duncan—“go on, and let’s hear what they said about it.” My father looked sternly in Duncan’s face, but seeing him abashed on account of his hasty breach of decency, without uttering a word, he again opened the Bible, and read the 20th chapter throughout, notwithstanding of its great length. Next day Duncan was walking about with the Bible below his arm, begging of every one to read it to him again and again. This incident produced a conversation between my parents, on the expenses and utility of education; the consequence of which was, that the week following, Duncan and I were sent to the parish school, and began at the same instant to the study of that most important and fundamental branch of literature, the A, B, C; but my sister Mary, who was older than I, was already an accurate and elegant reader.
This reminds me of another anecdote of Duncan, with regard to family worship, which I have often heard related, and which I myself may well remember. My father happening to be absent over night at a fair, when the usual time of worship arrived, my mother desired a lad, one of the servants, to act as chaplain for that night; the lad declined it, and slunk away to his bed. My mother testified her regret that we should all be obliged to go prayerless to our beds for that night, observing, that she did not remember the time when it had so happened before. Duncan said he thought we might contrive to manage it amongst us, and instantly proposed to sing the psalm and pray, if Mary would read the chapter. To this my mother, with some hesitation, agreed, remarking, that if he prayed as he could, with a pure heart, his prayer had as good a chance of being accepted as some others that were “better worded.” Duncan could not then read, but having learned several psalms from Mary by rote, he caused her to seek out the place, and sung the 23d Psalm from end to end with great sweetness and decency. Mary read a chapter in the New Testament, and then (my mother having a child on her knee) we three kneeled in a row, while Duncan prayed thus:—“O Lord, be Thou our God, our guide, and our guard unto death, and through death,”—that was a sentence my father often used in prayer; Duncan had laid hold of it, and my mother began to think that he had often prayed previous to that time. “O Lord, Thou”—continued Duncan; but his matter was exhausted; a long pause ensued, which I at length broke by bursting into a loud fit of laughter. Duncan rose hastily, and without once lifting up his head, went crying to his bed; and as I continued to indulge in laughter, my mother, for my irreverent behaviour, struck me across the shoulders with the tongs. Our evening devotions terminated exceedingly ill; I went crying to my bed after Duncan, even louder than he, and abusing him for his “useless prayer,” for which I had been nearly felled.