CHAPTER IX.

LEAVING HOME--A HUMBLE TRADE--"I'LL NOT SERVE UNDER A FRASER OF LOVAT: I AM A ROBERTSON AND A LOYALIST."

It was with a heart filled to overflowing that Ian Robertson, my fifteen-years-old grandfather, left his old home on the Braes and started on his journey to the distant town of Inverness.

I purposely pass over the parting with his mother, father, brothers, and sister, because I do not wish to have my pages blistered with tears.

Sturdily did the boy march off, however, with all his chattels tied up in a bundle swung over his shoulder on the end of a stick, and a five-shilling-piece in his pocket.

Ah! well, many a brave boy has begun the world on less than five shillings, and Ian was not the lad to be daunted.

He paused at the turn of the road to wave his bonnet back at the old farm, and half a mile farther on he mounted a rock that placed him within view of the old schoolhouse and school. And--why yonder was Rachel her own little self standing right on top of the peat-stack and waving him adieu!

His heart went right away back to her with every wave that he gave his blue bonnet, and it was only with a considerable effort that he plucked up courage at last to jump down and continue his journey.

Ah! those partings of youthful days, how sad they are, and brave is the sensitive boy who can bear them.

Now, the reader, I hope, will think none the less of my hero when I say that, having arrived at a little pine wood, he looked up and down the road to make sure nobody saw him, then entered the plantation, and knelt down to pray.

He prayed just then as he had never prayed before, and felt that in that prayer he was giving himself all away to God.

I am not going to repeat a sentence of the prayer. Indeed, though I know the soul and substance of it, I could not if I tried. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh," you know. It was that way with the boy now.

We are told that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Well, I have not painted my grandfather as a saint; but I do most firmly believe that the prayers of sinners are listened to as well as those of better men.

Anyhow, I do know this--my grandfather, even in his boyhood, had faith, and as he rose from his knees, he felt brighter and happier and more hopeful than ever he remembered feeling before.

Whether or not his prayers for guidance for his every footstep in life were heard, my story has yet to reveal.

* * * * *

Towards the evening of this eventful day, this tired and weary boy-grandfather of mine, with his red bundle on his shoulder, drew near to his destination.

He was about to learn a trade. There is no money to be made nowadays out of business--at all events, few professional men make large fortunes--and it was just the same in the good old times of which I am writing.

And what was my respected grand-dad going to be? Why a staymaker, of all trades in the world. A corset is the new name of stays, as I need not tell you.

There was nothing romantic about the trade, and certainly not a vestige of romance about the little old snuffy man he had come to act as boy for. He lived above his shop and workshop, in a dingy house in High Street, all alone with his wife and the cat.

Nevertheless they gave him a kindly welcome, and a hearty supper also.

After this he was lighted down to his bedroom, and as soon as he had got into bed, Mr. Craig, the staymaker, came and blew out his farthing dip.

His bed was a hard one, a mere shake-down on the floor under the counter. As soon as the light was out the rats began to scamper about and quarrel and fight and squeak. This wasn't pleasant at all, but the boy soon fell fast asleep, and did not waken till it was broad daylight.

Well, next day his work began, and very hard it was; and very few were his holidays, for not even on the Sabbath day was he allowed to go for a walk.

At the end of six months, so proficient was he that he could almost make a pair of stays himself.

Perhaps it was a pity that this tow-haired little grandfather of nine didn't stick to staymaking. Why, there were wonderful possibilities connected with the business. He might have become a millionaire and been thrice Lord Provost of Glasgow city.

But fate willed it otherwise.

One day he was sent with a parcel of finished work to the house of a lady of some pretensions, who lived on the bonnie banks of Ness, in quite a charming house, surrounded by beautiful grounds.

My grandfather was dressed very neatly, and looked extremely well. So much taken with the lad was the lady, that she began to question him as to his birth and parentage.

"Why," she said, "you are a third cousin of our own. For poor brave Lord Lovat, who was martyred on Tower Hill, was a cousin of my husband's father. How strange!"

"Can you write and read well, boy?"

She made him do both.

"Why," she cried in amazement, "it is shameful that a boy of your abilities should be learning the trade of a staymaker. It is as bad as being a tailor. Come back to-morrow; Mr. Fraser himself will be at home, and I will speak to him about you."

My grandfather thanked her and retired.

That night, in his little bed among the rat-holes he dreamt that--well, I almost forget what he did dream, but I think that there were powdered footmen in it, and a coach-and-four, or something equally stupid.

"So, boy, you'll be going to leave us," said Mr. Craig, next night, when he came back from Falkirk Lodge, and told the staymaker and his wife how kind his newly-found cousins had been to him.

"You'll be going to leave us. Well, it's no me that will stand in your way. But come to see us sometimes. We like you, lad, and as long as you live in Inverness you shan't want a friend."

He did need a friend very much ere long, as we shall see.

Mrs. Fraser was a very amiable lady indeed, and my grandfather liked her from the very first. But Fraser himself was haughty and affected, and soon gave the boy to understand that he was little better than a menial, and taken, not really out of charity, but because he and his lady would permit no cousin of theirs, in whose veins flowed the Fraser-of-Lovat blood, to work in a shop like a common "snob."

Ah! well, he might have been like one, but he was independent while with Mr. Craig, even though as poor as one of his bed-fellows, the rats.

I have ever failed to see that there was anything to be ashamed of in poverty.

"Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward-slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that; The rank is but the guinea-stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that!"

My grandfather then began life at Falkirk Lodge, by being clerk to his Cousin Fraser, and amanuensis to his wife.

It was a pleasant enough sort of existence, and the work was not hard. He had plenty of liberty also, and was even permitted to keep a dog, called Dash, that poor old honest Craig had given him. And Dash was a lovely collie.

I think Dash was about the best friend that the boy had even now. For Mrs. Fraser went much into society, and Ian had to go with her as a sort of poor relation.

His manliness resented this, but he never complained, for the lady was most kind.

But something very strange happened about six months after my boy-grandfather came to reside at the Lodge. For one evening Fraser came home unusually elated.

"It is done," he cried, "done, my dear. All finished and done."

Here he embraced Mrs. Fraser.

Then he turned round to Ian.

"Leave the room," he said haughtily.

My grandfather bit his lip, and turned a trifle red in the face. But he turned to go.

Just as the lad was leaving, this proud Fraser called him back.

"Here," he cried, "I don't want to be rough with you. Take this shilling and spend it as you please."

"Donald," he added, addressing a servant, "you see I am not a bad-hearted fellow, and I've had good news to-day, so I give my little kinsman a shilling, and here is one for you."

Donald put the shilling in his pocket.

Ian, my plucky grand-dad, felt inclined at first to throw the shilling in the grate, and run right away back to his old friend Craig. But Mrs. Fraser looked so gentle and kind that he had not the heart to vex her. So he followed Donald's example, and put the coin in his pocket.

Then he walked out.

That same evening he happened to enter the great kitchen, that was honoured by the title of servants' hall.

"Ha!" cried the butler, "here comes another young soldier..

"And he's going to fight the French, For King George upon the throne."

Ian looked so puzzled that everybody laughed.

"I'm no soldier," said my grandfather, "and don't want to be."

"Och!" cried Donald, "that won't do at all. For sure you took the King's shilling as well as myself did."

"Yes, you are enlisted," said the butler, "right enough. Haven't you heard that master has been made Captain in the Black Watch, and wants to take all the young Highlanders with him he can get?"

Then my grandfather's wrath was aroused. He brought his sturdy little fist to the table with a bang.

"I will not serve under a Fraser of Lovat," he cried. "Cousins of ours though the Frasers are, they were rebels. I am a Robertson and a loyalist."

Then he dashed out, regardless of the platoon fire of laughing that followed him.

Captain Fraser was away for a whole week, and when he returned he was in uniform.

My grandfather met him respectfully in the hall.

"Salute your officer!" said Fraser haughtily.

"You are not my officer, sir."

"You are a soldier legally enlisted, young man, and to-morrow you join your company at Fort Augustus. I am not going to make you a private soldier, for my own sake. You will still be my clerk, and if you behave well, your promotion will come."

My grandfather made no reply.

Had he tried to, the words would have been those of anger.

He simply bowed, and walked out.

It was a beautiful morning in spring. The sky was soft and blue, the air was balmy, and the rippling of the river, not far off, soothed his mind.

Far, indeed, was he from being happy, however, and as he stood on the cool green walk of the old garden, gazing upwards at the sky, he felt that he would have given a good deal for the luxury of a hearty cry. But then we can't always cry when we wish to. Presently, a soft warm muzzle was thrust into his hand, and looking down, lo! there were the brown eyes of his favourite collie, Dash, turned upwards to his--anxiously--enquiringly.

They said as plainly as dog's eyes could talk, "What mood are you in this morning, master? for I am ready for anything. I shall remain quiet and sympathise with you and love you, or we can go for a grand old game of romps together."

Dash's appeal was irresistible, and next minute Sidney and he had left the garden together, and side by side were scampering over the fields and by the hedgerows, with the glad sun shining down on them, shining into their very hearts, while the wild flowers, that grew everywhere around them, seemed part and parcel of their young lives.

Yes, Dash, like Ian himself, was young. O, give youth a young dog, I say; the natures of the two are in unison, their minds are _en rapport_, and let your old dogs go pottering around with elderly people. But little more than a year had yet passed over Dash's smooth head and bonnie brow. Life to him as yet was all a bright and beautiful show, in which every creature that moved was just as happy and full of fun as he himself was. "What were the cocks crowing for?" he would have asked you. "Why did the birds sing so sweetly and so merrily?" Why? because they were all so brimful of happiness and joy, that they would have died if unable to give vent to their feelings. Even the trees sang softly to the passing winds, and the dimpled ponds and purling brooklets laughed gladsomely upwards at the blue sky and the fleecy, floating clouds. Everything was joyful like the dog himself. He went scampering on in front of the boy, and picked up a round stone that he found on the grass. "Why, Mr. Stone," he seemed to say, "don't you join in the general jollity all around you? Why should you lie there so still and quiet when Nature all is gay? I'll teach you a lesson."

And he tosses the stone high in the air, catching it ere it fell, though it makes his teeth bleed just a little. Then he rolls it in front of him, ever so funnily; then he covers it with grass, and rolls and tumbles over it; then pretends it is lost entirely, and that there isn't a ghost of a chance of ever finding it again at all. Then--"Wow!" he has found it again, and once more the fun grows fast and furious, till my grandfather forgets his grief, and is fain to laugh aloud and take a hand in the sport, and round and round they "whish" and run, a madcap collie and a madcap boy.

Soldiers and all are forgotten for the time being; grief and sorrow are no more real now than half-forgotten dreams, and that dreadful old Cousin Fraser, who had arisen on the horizon of the lad's life, vanishes like a darkling cloud when it meets the moon.

On and on they scampered, the madcap collie and the madcap boy. On and on. They neither knew nor cared whither.

But they brought up at last in the midst of a wild, hobgoblin kind of a heathy moor, where the sun shone very brightly; and here Dash threw himself down to rest and pant, his pink ribbon of a tongue hanging out at one side of his mouth across teeth whiter far than alabaster.