II.

The Ferret was of ancient and noble lineage. There, that secret is out. Frank like himself, his historian scorns the subterfuge of keeping it till the end for the purpose of giving _éclat_ to his exit, as they do in romances and on the stage. He was descended from Adam and Eve. This I am prepared to maintain in the face of the world, learned or unlearned. If any one wishes to be considered as descended from an oyster or an atom, we who are not so ambitious shall not cavil at their genealogy, but hope they find their protoplasms subjects of pleasant reflection. As for my hero, he was of a different breed. Whether the bars in his escutcheon were dexter or sinister did not concern him and need not concern us. Heraldry, in fact, disowned him; therein, however, heraldry was no worse than his own father. In his tenth year he was taken from the Asylum for Foundlings and indentured to Mme. Gemmel, who kept a manufactory of toys at Arnhem. On the day of his departure he went out into the large paved yard surrounded by an unbroken line of low stone buildings—his well-known and familiar playground, the only _Arcadia_ he had ever known. Now that he was to bid it and his childish companions a long good-by, he felt irresolute and the farewell stuck in his throat. He tried hard to be brave, while little Hans, his inseparable playmate and bedfellow, stood regarding him with a sullen scowl, as if he considered it a personal insult to be thus suddenly left alone. The poor Ferret was entirely at his wits’ end and quite dumbfounded. Another look at Hans broke the unutterable spell; for he saw stealing down the chubby cheek of that smirched cherub a big tear, marking its course by a light streak on his smutty little face. Gulping down his sobs and forcing back the tears that now suffused his own eyes, he laid his hand lovingly on the shoulder of little Hans, and, bending down until their faces were on a level, he looked at him, and said in a voice broken by varying emotions and the poignant sorrow of childhood:

“Don’t—don’t cry, Hans; and when—and when I earn a hundred guilders I will come back for you, and we will have lots of puddin’ and new clothes, and I will buy you a pair of new skates.”

Then taking from his trousers’ pocket all his treasures—a large piece of gingerbread and a small old knife with a broken blade—he pressed his little friend to take them, forcing them into his unresisting hand, looked around once by way of final adieu, and ran through the passage that led to the front hall, where Mme. Gemmel’s man was waiting for him, and left poor little Hans bellowing as if his heart would break.

The moral supervision exercised by Mme. Gemmel over her new charge was radical. Its cardinal principles were, first, the duty of obedience and gratitude, and, secondly, the healthfulness of abstinence. These principles she inculcated by precept and enforced in practice by prescribing due penalties for their infraction. The good lady taught her apprentice, by every means within her power, that his life-long devotion to her service would ill repay her for the inestimable blessing she conferred in removing him from the Foundling Asylum and taking him under her own fostering roof. She was mindful of his health, too, for among her sanitary tenets was one to the effect that butter is injurious to immature years; and this she was in the habit of persistently enforcing for the special benefit of her charge. Inasmuch as temptation is dangerous, especially to the weak, she prudently adopted preventive measures by removing at once the temptation and the butter whenever he appeared at meals. So well did he profit by her discipline that after six months’ involuntary practice of it he determined to run away.

In spite of these drawbacks, in spite of the discipline and the dry bread, he made famous progress at his trade, and felt an artist’s glow of enthusiasm whenever he finished to his satisfaction the staring blue eyes and carmine cheeks of his waxen beauties. He felt, Pygmalion like, able to fall in love with them, could he but find the Promethean secret—not, indeed, that his thoughts ever took the classic shape, for he had never heard of the old Grecian fable; these were only the vague and undefined feelings of his heart. True it is he had little else to love, so that his affections, being narrowed down to the dolls, increased for them in the ratio that it diminished for their owner.

Yet there was one golden hour in his leaden existence—the hour of nine _post meridian_, when he was dismissed to bed. Although behind her back he sometimes made faces at madame, and even went so far as to set up an image of her for the perverse pleasure of sticking pins in it, he forgave all at bedtime. After saying his prayers he would, with all the ecstasy of which his phlegmatic nature was capable, jump into his straw pallet, bound to solve an abstruse but agreeable problem which had engaged his thoughts nightly since his advent in his new home—viz., What to do with his first hundred guilders when he had earned them? But he never got much beyond the disposal of a twentieth part of the sum. That much he generously devoted to little Hans; but before he could decide whether the latter should have the skates, a miniature ship, a new jacket, or unlimited gingerbread, or all of these good things together, his fancies and finances became entangled. Hans’ face shone with guilders; gingerbread sailors, in blue jackets, floated serenely away in a big ship till quite out of sight; anon they trooped rapidly past his entranced eyes, now scurrying all together, now slowly one by one; then there was a blank; again starting into view, the last fleeting image swept softly down the dim vista, fading—fading—gone! and he was a king in happy oblivion.

Thus time passed tardily enough with The Ferret, the all-absorbing thought of his waking hours now being how to escape.

Among the customers of Mme. Gemmel was one who had had several business transactions with her. This was a peripatetic showman, the delight of gaping children at country fairs. His entertainment consisted of music (mangled fragments of opera airs on a weazened key-bugle) and his wonderful and versatile puppets. These latter, when they had become too well known as hunters and huzzars, he would transform into knights and ladies, or Chinese mandarins, as circumstances might require or fancy suggest. The transforming process was very simple; it consisted merely of supplying them with new costumes and coats—of paint—at Mme. Gemmel’s.

This worthy was none other than our friend Floog. Even such as he have their place in art. They are pioneers who lead to the base of an æsthetic temple whose dome is elevated in circling azure, surrounded by golden stars.

In the practice of his art, The Ferret it was on whom now devolved the duty of transforming Floog’s automatons and kindred jobs. Whether owing to the satisfaction he gave, or to the occult, and often unaccountable, influences governing our sympathies and antipathies, certain it is that Floog had taken a violent fancy to him, and determined to entice him away at the first opportunity. The showman’s moral sensibilities were, as has already been intimated, somewhat flexible, and yielded too readily, I am afraid, to the exigencies of the situation.

Alas! how rigid are the inexorable verities of history. I cannot picture him as I would—not even as a half-formed Bayard, who, if not quite _sans peur_, might be at least _sans reproche_; but as I had no hand in the formation of his character, I am not the apologist of his delinquencies. Did he recognize the violation of a right in his contemplated procedure? Oh! no; he placed his motive on a high moral pedestal, triumphant, unassailable—the interests of humanity, the welfare of the boy. He never told us how far _his own welfare_ entered into his calculations. He felt, therefore, no scrupulous qualms as to the rectitude of his determination. What puzzled him was the _how_. Of that, however, he had no notion. Indeed, his thoughts upon the subject, so far from assuming a practical shape, were rather the pleasant emotions experienced in the contemplation of a cherished project, leaving out of sight the means of its attainment, even the possibility of its realization. A few days previous to his appearance in Steenwijkerwold he left his puppets to undergo the customary metamorphosis at Mme. Gemmel’s, his head full of the pleasing fancy of securing The Ferret as a travelling companion and assistant. More than all this, he came to regard him with a rapture akin to that of an enamored lover for the mistress of his heart.

The short winter day was closing in misty and chill around Arnhem. Away in the northwest the sun was setting through yellowish fog into the gray cold sea; the restless wail of the wind was heard now and again, presaging a storm. It was about half-past four o’clock in the afternoon of this same day that Floog, undaunted by the threatening aspect of the weather, and pensively whistling his musical programme by way of rehearsal, arrived at Mme. Gemmel’s. He found, upon inquiry, that his puppets were not quite finished. Wouldn’t he wait? She expected them ready in a few minutes, and escorted him to the workshop in the third story, where they found The Ferret as busily engaged as his chill nose, his numb fingers, and the light of two tallow candles would allow. His mistress, after an authoritative command to her subordinate to make haste and finish his work, went down-stairs, leaving Floog to direct the work as he might see fit. The Ferret was shy by nature and by reason of his forced seclusion, and though the interruption disconcerted him a good deal, he made pretence of continuing labor without appearing to notice his visitor, whom he had several times seen, but never spoken to. Floog, after eyeing him a moment, asked if he was cold. The answer, though not quite courtly, was sufficiently explicit: “Yes, I am.” “Why don’t you work down-stairs in the back room, where ’tis warmer?” A frown passed over the boy’s face, but he made no reply. “Here,” said Floog in a kindlier tone, and, taking from his pocket a handful of lozenges, offered them to The Ferret, who hesitated a moment, looking at the donor, and then took them with a “Thank you, sir.” In that moment the child’s heart was gained and a deep sympathy established between the two, reciprocal, self-satisfying.

Floog was no more a diplomat than a hero; for his next proposal was illogical, and would have been startling but for the peculiar circumstances that rendered it acceptable. “Run away from Mme. Gemmel and come with me,” he said. The Ferret did not hesitate this time, but answered eagerly: “I will; I hate Mme. Gemmel. Let us go away now.” This ready acquiescence staggered Floog, who, not being prepared for it, was at a loss how to proceed. Gathering all his faculties to meet the requirements of the crisis, he tried to devise some means of escape for The Ferret; but the more he pondered the more undecided he became, till at length, in sheer desperation, he said: “When Mme. Gemmel sends you home with the puppets to-night we will go away together.” With that he hurried down-stairs, paid for the puppets, asked Mme. Gemmel if she would send them to his lodging, stating that he would want them for an exhibition early the next day. This the obliging lady promised to do, whereupon Floog took his departure, his agitated manner escaping the notice of the doll-maker, who, although she had the vision of a lynx for money, to everything into which money did not enter as a factor was as blind as Cupid. Less than two hours after The Ferret, Floog, and the precious puppets were all in the mail-coach, rattling along for freedom and Steenwykerwold.

As not unfrequently happens, mere chance afforded a better opportunity than elaborately-concocted plans would have done; for when, by appointment, The Ferret came, Floog precipitately, and without taking time to think of their destination, hurried with him to the coach-yard, where he learned that the night coach going north was ready to start, and secured passage for Steenwykerwold, whither Mme. Gemmel would be little likely to follow. So they arrived in the manner already related, amid hail and storm.