CHAPTER VII.

HARD TIMES FOR A TEACHER--THE TAWSE--LITTLE RACHEL--A DROLL ADVENTURE--MY GRANDFATHER STUCK FAST IN THE CHIMNEY.

There wasn't much bosom about the dominie's family, for the matter of that. Only his wife, a great kind-hearted woman, his little daughter Rachel, and the collie dog.

Dominie Freeschal himself was not much of a man, "judged by points," as doggy people say. He lacked size and bone, and he was thin----and quite out of show-form, so to speak.

He was supposed to be "powerfully learned," however, and powerful with the tawse. In those good old times some of Solomon's _dicta_ were construed very literally indeed.

"Spare the rod and spoil the child" didn't mean that you were to lock up the tawse in the desk, and make a pet of the boy.

Quite the reverse.

A "scholar" might consider himself very lucky indeed if he did not have a sound whacking once in three days. And even the parents expected that the dominie would do his duty towards his pupils in the way of flagellation, and do it handsomely too.

"Now, Mister Freeschal," said a father one day, "I'm going to be after sending my little son to your school, and it's a little _nickem_ he is whatsoever, so you'll not be letting him over you at all, for he is entirely over his mother."

"I'll see to it, Sandy," was the dominie's reply; and he did.

Another day, another father came to see the schoolmaster on business.

"I've a complaint to make, Mister Freeschal."

"Well," said Mister Freeschal, "it's myself that is sorry for that same. What is it, Mister Young?"

"It's that you don't thrash Tonal enough. Now for more 'n two weeks he hasn't been crying, for his face is as clean at night as in the morning evermore. I'm indignant, sure, and if you'll not be doing your duty by the boy, I'll not be after paying you."

And off he went.

That same afternoon, young Tonal was called up and told to spell the words "believe," "deceive," and "relieve."

In each case poor little Tonal had the misfortune to misplace the "i."

A hush fell over the school as the dominie marched off to the desk for the tawse, for every one could tell by the swing of his coat-tails that he meant business.

Young Tonal licked his palms and prepared for the inevitable.

"You're wrong in your orthography" (the dominie put the emphasis on the "graphy"). "Now I'm not going to _deceive_ your father, nor take his money for nothing; but I _believe_ I'll _relieve_ my feelings by whacking you well. Hold out your hand."

And Tonal went home with a dirty wet face that night anyhow. But as will presently be seen, the dominie had succeeded in stirring the boy's blood and making a conspirator of him.

There are exceptions to every rule, however, and one day a boy's mother believed that the dominie had tawsed her lad too much, so she went to the school to relieve her feelings.

She was no great beauty, certainly, but a plain-faced, fair-haired woman, with sinews as tough as gun-tackle.

I think the dominie quailed as she entered the school-room.

"And it's you that'll be after beating my boy black and blue, is it, you miserable oshach?"

She waited for no reply, but just went straight for Mister Freeschal with a broom-handle, which she carried under her arm; and I'm really afraid that the boys and girls grinned as the dominie fled round and round the school, and finally took refuge in the pulpit, or desk.

Mrs. Nairn, for that was the good lady's name, had a visit from the minister next day, and it is said she received a most severe heckling, but, nevertheless, the teacher never dared touch that boy again. Johnnie Nairn became quite a hero, and the other pupils used to say:

"O, Johnnie, it's me that would like to have such a mother as you've got."

Sometimes a boy would be "one licking to the good." This happened when the dominie made a mistake and whacked the wrong youngster.

"Never mind, my lad," the schoolmaster would say; "you're one to the good. Don't forget to remind me of it next time I'm going to tawse you."

And the boy never did forget.

The teacher was no great favourite, you may be sure.

I suppose he ruled his wife by psychal force; it certainly could not have been by physical, for she weighed at least two of him.

There was a long peat-stack that the boys had to pass on their way from school, and near this Mrs. Freeschal would often be found, and she had always a kind word and a smile, and sometimes a pea-meal bannock for the urchins whose faces were all begrimed with tears.

In his daughter, Rachel, the dominie was quite bound up. She was a little thing of eight, with long fair hair, blue eyes, and brown bare legs and feet.

She ruled the boys as if she'd been a little queen, and even the girls had to be sweet to her. Some boys were so much in love with Rachel that if she gave one a smile and tossed her head defiantly and imperiously at another, there was sure to be a fight between the rivals on the way home that evening, resulting in torn kilts and bleeding noses, and sometimes a black eye.

This black-eye business was serious, because, whenever the dominie saw a boy so disfigured, he went for the tawse at once, and no questions were asked or answered. So before two boys began to fight it was no unusual thing to bargain that there should be "no hitting in the face."

* * * * *

Now it came to pass that before my little sturdy mite of a grandfather had been at this seminary quite six months, he had fought himself half-way up the school, that is, he could thrash about fifteen boys, and fifteen could thrash him. But he was conquering one every week at least.

So as he was so brave, and because he used to take his tawsings manfully and never cry, he began to be looked upon as a kind of hero in Rachel's eyes.

Rachel's father, when he paid a visit to Beauly, always came back with a pocketful of brandy-snaps and sugar-bools* for his wee daughter. Of course she ate most herself, but had always a few to expend on her boy favourites.

* Sugar-marbles.

The dominie didn't like boys not to cry when tawsed, and used to devise other modes of punishing them.

One of these was "keeping them in." That is, locking them up for an hour or two in the schoolroom after hours. There was an awful legend, too firmly believed in by the boys, that once upon a time a lad was locked up and forgotten, and how he fell asleep, and the rats ate two of his toes clean off.

So this mode of punishment was no favourite with the pupils, you may be sure.

One day Rachel slighted my grandfather--who thought he was madly in love with her. She put the point of her little tongue out at him and immediately after smiled most sweetly on a bigger boy, Kenneth McRae.

Of course my grandfather determined to fight Kenneth, but not content with that, he was so incensed at his heroine that he called her "little wretch," and she began to cry.

There was a drum-head court-martial at once. It was in vain that my grandfather pleaded that he meant "little Rache"; he was convicted, had six pandés on each hand, and was condemned to be kept in that beautiful spring evening for a whole hour after it was dark.

Rachel cried all that afternoon, and nobody could tell why.

The punishment was more than the boy could bear with anything akin to equanimity. It was bad enough while the sun still shone, but when that luminary began to sink, encrimsoning the clouds, and making the bull's eye in each pane of glass look like a little setting sun itself, then he began to grow impatient, to say the very least of it. If the dominie were to release him at once, then there might still be time to go home by the hill and the forest, because there were many birds' nests to visit.

I am not holding the prisoner up as a paragon of virtue in the way of bird-nesting. He did not rob them, simply because it had never occurred to him that there was any fun in making a collection of eggs. He had seen one such collection, and also a lot of stuffed birds at a barber's shop in Beauly, and being at heart a naturalist, he was much disgusted; the eggs had lost colour, and seemed dreadfully out of place, and the birds were dusty, their necks and legs all awry, and a perfectly idiotic stare in their glass eyes.

But I must give my daft morsel of a grandfather his due, and say he never robbed a nest. He would watch these nests from the very foundation; watch the strange architecture day after day till they were lined, and his pleasure at seeing the first bonnie egg was very real indeed. The birds, he told me, seemed all to know him, and look upon him as their champion. And so he was. If ever he met a much bigger boy in the forest, he lured him away in a diplomatic kind of way which was nearly always successful; if the boy was about his own size, he ordered him off, or stripped and fought him. So even at this early age I think my hero was an embryo soldier.

Well, on this particular evening he was sitting on a stool bemoaning his sad fate, when something like the tapping of a woodpecker fell on his ear.

He looked quickly up.

There was a face at the window, looking in at him through a hole which a snow-ball had made last winter.

"Ian!"

"She has come to laugh at me, I suppose," he said to himself.

"Ian!"

It was a still small and pitying voice. Sorrow in it, but no anger.

He went quickly towards the broken pane.

"Ian, I'se sorry for you."

"O, don't say that! I don't mind a tawsing, but kind words would make me cry. I wouldn't like to cry before you."

"No; you's a brave boy, and never cries. Ian! am I a little wretch?"

"No----o----; you're little Rachel!"

"Ian, put your mouf (mouth) up to the broken hole. Don't be sy (shy); I'm not going to tiss you. Boys is always sy."

Ian put his mouth up to the hole anyhow, and Rachel popped a sugar-bool in it, and watched him eat it with quite a womanly interest. Then she fed him with brandy-snaps, and finished off with two more bools.

"Now I'se off!" she cried. "I'se going to Beauly to fetch mammy and daddy home, then you'll be free."

Away she went, and the schoolroom looked darker now and more lonesome than ever. The sun had set too, leaving only a few red bars of cloud athwart the forest horizon.

He began pacing up and down like a caged wild beast, But he wasn't that quite. He felt a hero after the brandy-snaps and sugar-bools, and Rachel's kindly words.

"I won't stop here," he cried aloud. "There might be ghosts, or anything."

He gave the door a kick, and, as he did so, discovered that the key was in it, though on the outside.

Even had he known this before Rachel came to feed him, he was too manly to have asked her to rescue him. It would have brought trouble on her.

He began to think.

Ha! what a happy thought! He would climb up the chimney, slide down over the roof, and then turn the key and let himself out. It was a funny idea, but the very humour of it commended itself to him.

There was still light enough to read a portion of the good Book by; so this droll little grand-dad of mine sat down by the window, and read aloud for some time. Then, jumping up, he prepared for action. He stripped off his jacket, and vest, and kilt. He seldom wore a cap, only a towzie head of yellow hair.

He had nothing on now but his shirt; that would get black enough, but he could wash it in the burn.

He peeped fearfully up the chimney now, and could see the sky. He shuddered a little, but went boldly up, head first.

Alas! and alack! I don't quite know what "alack" means, but it doesn't matter. Anyhow, my grandfather stuck fast in the chimney.

Here was a plight, and he was half-choked, too, with the falling soot.

O! the agony of the next two hours! He gave himself up for lost; if he didn't die in the chimney, of soot-suffocation, he would be roasted alive next morning, when the fire was lit.

He said his prayers over and over again; then singular to say, he fell asleep, sound and fast.

How long he slept he could not tell himself, but, when he awoke, he made one more struggle for life and liberty, and succeeded. The rest would be easy.

But now let me tell you what befell the dominie. His wife, and he, and Rachel when she arrived, first stayed at a friend's house for supper, and at eight o'clock he set out alone to walk home, the whole of his family--that is, the whole lot of the two of them--remaining in Beauly for the night.

He had not forgotten his prisoner. He would get home by nine, he told himself, and, if the young rascal did get a scare, it would serve him right. Ah! little did he know just then where the scare was to come in. Now, those were the stupid old drinking days, when people believed that spirits warmed them and did them good, and all such silly nonsense. So when the dominie met a friend who invited him into an inn, poor prisoner Ian was soon forgotten.

It was long past twelve, but almost as bright as day, owing to the big, round moon that was shining, when the dominie rather unsteadily approached the school.

At this very time my grandfather was about to slide down, and so he saw the dominie advancing. Something must be done speedily. Like most people in this wild land, the schoolmaster was superstitious, and Ian seemed to know this.

First, then, he emitted the low, mournful cry of a barn owl. Next moment, with an eldritch yell, he dropped from aloft, right in front of the dominie. Such a sudden apparition, black from head to foot, was enough to frighten anyone.

The dominie was more than frightened--he was appalled; his hat fell off, his eyes bulged out, his arms were half-raised, and he looked like a chicken trying to fly.

"Wha--wha--where d'ye co--co--come from?" stammered the dominie.

My tricky little grand-da shrieked again, and pointed aloft; then down dropped the dominie, in a dwaum.*

* A dwaum: fainting brought on by fear.

Boy-like, Ian couldn't help giving the dominie's hat just one good kick; then he turned the key, gathered up his clothes, and made off towards the stream that ran through the ravine.

A bath at such a time of night was rather risky, but the occasion demanded it.

Next day Ian went to school as usual. The dominie eyed him narrowly, but said nothing. No doubt he thought that the adventure with the black sprite, or imp of darkness, was all a dream.