Various - Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891

V >> Various >> Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891

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But what should he do to fill up the long hours that lay between? He
felt that the dizzy dance of the whirling waters around him, and their
ceaseless roar, were already beginning to unstring his nerves and make
his brain reel; and he knew that if he could not find some way to
counteract their paralyzing influence, he must soon become helpless and
fall headlong into the abyss.

Just then his eye caught the antique letters cut in the rock above him,
which no living soul but himself had ever seen so near, and the sight of
them gave him an idea.

He knew nothing of the offered reward, but he _did_ know that there were
people who thought such things valuable and paid well for copies of
them. If he escaped it might be worth something, and meanwhile it would
divert his attention and keep him from losing his nerve.

So, turning his back resolutely to the mad riot of circling waves, he
set himself to trace the letters with the point of his knife upon a
small metal match-box which he had in his pocket.

It was a long task, but he completed it at last; and then he clambered
to the top of the rock, hoping that the sight of his figure standing out
against the sky might attract the notice of some passing fisherman.

For a long time he watched and waited in vain, and he was just beginning
to think that he would have to try and save himself by swimming, after
all--for the hour of flood-tide was now drawing near and the violence of
the whirlpool was beginning to abate--when, far in the distance, he
suddenly descried a tiny white sail.

No shout could be heard at such a distance; but the ready boy unwound
the red sash from his waist and waved it over his head till his arm
ached, and, after a pause of terrible anxiety, he at length saw the boat
alter her course and stand right for him.

The skill with which the two men who handled her kept clear of the fatal
current by which Mads had been swept away, showed that both were
practical seamen, and, as he boat neared him, the boy's keen eye
recognized one of them as his own father.

When the rescuers came near enough for a shout to be heard, the father
called out to his son to climb down the crag again and stand ready to
make a plunge when he gave the word, as the boat could not come too
near, for fear of being dashed against the rock.

Just around the foot of the rock itself there was always a strong eddy,
which might suck down Mads even now, if he could not succeed in leaping
clear of it.

For ten minutes or more the two sailors kept "standing off and on," till
the fury of the whirlpool should be completely spent, while the daring
boy, perched on the lowest ledge of the rock, waited and watched for the
signal.

At length his father's powerful voice came rolling to him over the
water:

"Now!"

Mingling with the shout came the splash of Mads' plunge into the water.
Exerting all his strength, the active boy leaped far beyond the
treacherous eddy that would have sucked him down among the sunken rocks,
and in another moment he was safe in the boat, which turned and shot
away from the perilous spot as lightly as the sea birds overhead.

A few days later the young hero received the reward that he had so
strangely won; and thus the would-be murderer, instead of destroying his
victim, actually helped him to earn more money than he had ever made in
his life. Nor did the villain go wholly unpunished, for the end of the
cut rope having been found and suspicion directed toward him, he had to
sneak away by night and never dared to show his face on that coast
again.

THE BLACK HOUND.

by FRANCIS S. PALMER.

We first saw him on a snowy November morning. The Adirondack Lake, where
I was staying that autumn, was not yet frozen; but a few days before
there had been a light fall of snow, and on this morning the evergreens
were draped in a feathery shroud. While I was yet asleep my guide, Rufe,
had caught a glimpse of a deer, swimming near the shore. No hounds were
heard; and, after an early breakfast, Rufe and I got into our boat and
paddled along the water's edge to discover, if possible, the track of
dog or wolf, which would explain why the deer had taken to the water.

As we came near the place where Rufe had seen the deer, we noticed a
slender, black animal crouching in the bushes. It proved to be a tall
hound, and, after some urging, he was persuaded to enter the boat.

The reason for the deer's early bath was now apparent; but Rufe was
surprised that he did not hear the hound's barking, for, like all old
hunters, it was his habit, in the deerhounding season to step into the
open air and listen, at short intervals during the morning, for the
barking of hounds.

This morning had been no exception to the rule; but neither before nor
after seeing the deer had Rufe heard the well-known baying of a
deerhound.

We took the gaunt animal into our boat and carried him back to the
shanty. He proved to be half-famished and wholly exhausted, and, after a
hearty meal, lay in a comatose condition before the fire. He must have
had a long chase, probably coming from some neighboring lake, for Rufe,
who knew all the hounds on our lake, had never seen him before.

When two or three days had passed and the black hound had recovered his
strength, Rufe took him into the woods with our own dog and put them
both upon the track of a deer.

The black hound followed the track steadily, but he uttered no bark,
confining himself to a low, excited whimpering. Even when the game was
roused and the hot scent gave ardor to the pursuing dogs, the black
hound did not join in the frantic baying of his companion.

The deer did not enter the lake at the runway where I was watching, but
with my spy-glass I saw it plunge into the water a quarter of a mile
away. A boat happened to be passing at the time and the deer was killed.
A moment later the black hound appeared on the shore. He could not have
been forty rods behind the deer, but no bark betrayed the eagerness of
his pursuit. I heard the baying of my own dog, as he slowly followed the
scent, away back among the wooded hills that rose on all sides of the
lake.

This, then, was the reason why Rufe had heard no baying on the morning
when we had found the black hound. He was silent, and as swift as he was
silent.

As I looked at him that evening, I noticed he did not have the long ears
and heavy jaws of the common American deer or foxhound. His long, sharp
nose and slender proportions indicated the blood of the Scotch
staghound, or that of some large breed of greyhound.

But this cross had not made him more delicate or less fierce. Even Rufe
was afraid to handle him roughly, for, unless treated with every
consideration, the great hound snarled, and showed rows of savage teeth.
He ruled over the other dogs with a cool assumption of more aristocratic
breeding.

The morning after the deer was driven to water and the black hound had
proved his swiftness and persistence, Rufe again went into the woods for
the purpose of starting deer with the two hounds, or "putting out the
dogs," as it is called; but this morning it was the guide's intention to
put the dogs on separate tracks. They differed too much in speed to be
useful when following the same deer.

I took my station at my favorite stand, a runway which reaches the lake
where a deep, narrow bay collected the waters before they were
discharged into the river which flowed into the St. Lawrence.

One side of this bay was nearly separated from the lake by a long, sharp
point of land, and near the bay's farther shore was a little island, a
green, bushy spot amid the blue waters.

The bay was a favorite place for the pursued deer to take to the water
in their endeavor to baffle the hounds following their tracks, and from
my station on the long point I could watch and command the entire bay.

Before daybreak Rufe had led the hounds into the wood, and it was not
much later when I pushed my light boat against the point, and sprang
ashore.

It was a still, crisp, November morning, and the rising sun had not yet
melted the hoar-frost from the alder bushes that grew at the water's
edge.

Gauzy wisps of mist hovered by the shores, and shrouded the evergreens
on the little island. The snow-sprinkled forest looked white and weird
through the veils of mist.

Small flocks of ducks threaded their way across the foggy surface of the
bay, going from their resting-places on the river to feed among the wild
rice marshes of the lake.

I built a small fire to deaden the morning chill, and amused myself by
aiming my shotgun at the passing ducks.

The birds, in their low, drowsy flight, offered beautiful wing-shots,
and as I glanced along the polished gun-barrels, I imagined the sharp
explosion followed by the heavy fall of fat mallards into the water.

But I fired in imagination only, for it would be a grave breach of
deer-hunting etiquette to discharge a gun at anything less important
than the antlered game.

The sun rose higher, the mists disappeared and flying ducks no longer
relieved the monotony of my watch. The forest was seen more distinctly
and grew less weird and interesting.

I was beginning to wish for a book to while away the long hours which
would elapse before the strict rules of custom would permit me to return
to the shanty, when I saw a deer jump from the bushes which bordered the
shores of the bay nearest the island.

I knew the black hound's peculiarities, and was prepared for the
appearance of a deer, unushered by the baying of hounds, but I had not
expected the game to come so quickly, for Rufe had hardly had time to
start the dogs.

Hidden in the bushes of the point, I watched the deer as it stood upon
the shore, and glanced its keen eyes around.

The bay seemed devoid of enemies, and the animal plunged into the water
and swam toward the island.

As yet I did not dare to move, for the deer was not more than forty rods
distant, and a glimpse of me would send it hurrying back to the shore.

[Illustration:
"THE DOG DID NOT RELAX ITS HOLD, AND THE COMBATANTS
SEEMED BOUND TOGETHER."]

The animal swam straight to the island and landed there. At my
hiding-place I waited for it to appear on the opposite side of the
island and swim across the bay. When it got well out into the open water
I could catch it with my boat.

But the deer seemed contented to remain on the island, for it did not
again show itself. It evidently thought it could thus baffle the nose of
the pursuing hound, and escape the danger incurred by swimming across
the bay. I made up my mind that in order to capture the deer, I must in
some way get into the narrow channel between the island and the main
shore; but with the deer watching me from the island, this would be
almost impossible.

Carefully I crept across the point to the spot where the skiff was
moored. My moccasins made no noise as I stepped into the boat.

With silent paddle I propelled the little craft around the extremity of
the point, and again looked into the bay.

Another actor had appeared upon the scene. At the spot where the game
had entered the water stood the black hound, sniffing the air for some
taint of the lost scent.

A breeze from the island and crouching deer must have been wafted to his
keen nose, for I heard him give a whimper of satisfaction, and the next
instant he leaped into the water.

A deerhound dreads going into the water, and the proceedings of the
black dog therefore surprised me.

I let the boat float quietly. It was hidden against the dark background
of the point, and I decided to stay there until the hound should
frighten the deer into swimming across the bay. When I first saw the
deer I thought it to be a large doe, but, as it was swimming to the
island, I saw, with the aid of my glass, that it was a "spike-horn"
buck.

These spike-horns are quite common, and do not seem to be a distinct
species of the deer family. They only differ as to their horns; instead
of the branching antlers of the ordinary buck, they carry sharp spikes
of horns from two to six inches long, varying with the age of the
animal.

I watched the black hound swim directly to the island, and every moment
I expected to see the deer dash into the water on the opposite side. A
deer is a much faster swimmer than a dog, and, when both are in the
water, can easily escape.

When the dog reached the island he shook himself, sniffed the hot scent
and then sprang forward, growling savagely. The deer must have been
taken completely by surprise. I saw it jump from the bushes and turn to
escape, but already the hound's teeth were fastened in its flank.

Wheeling, the deer gored its pursuer, and the hound let go its hold. For
an instant the two faced each other. Then the dog sprang at its
opponent's throat, but was met by the sharp spikes of the buck. The
spikes were much more effective weapons than broad antlers, and again
the hound was tossed back.

Made more wary by experience, the dog again darted in, and this time
caught the deer's neck, but not before the spikes had entered its black
sides. The dog did not relax its hold, and the combatants seemed bound
together.

I saw the hound was in danger, and rowed rapidly toward the island. When
I got within shooting distance the deer had fallen to its knees, and I
dared not fire for fear a scattering buckshot should strike the hound.

My boat grounded against the island, and, gun in hand, I sprang ashore.
But neither creature moved; the fight was over. The hound's sharp teeth
had done their work, and the buck's spike-horns, hardly less sharp, had
done theirs. As I stood watching them both animals expired.

The next day two men drove over the rough wood-road, and stopped at the
shanty. One of them left their buck-board and stepped to the door to
speak to me.

He was evidently an educated man, and I detected traces of a German
accent.

"I hear that you found a tall, black hound," he began. "Such a dog left
my shanty on the Lower Saranac nearly a week ago. He looked a little
like a greyhound, and I never knew him to bark."

I told him such a dog had been with me, and described the animal's
death.

The stranger walked with me to the back of the shanty, where Rufe had
nailed the dog's pelt against the side of a shed.

"Poor Wolfram!" he exclaimed. "Who would have expected that a hound from
the fiercest pack in the Black Forest should be killed by one of these
little Adirondack deer?"

It was far to the nearest tavern, and the young man seemed so dismayed
at the dog's death that I urged him to spend the night in my shanty. In
this way I might satisfy my curiosity about the dog.

The Bavarian--for he told me he was of that nationality--gladly accepted
my invitation; and, after he had dined off the venison which his hound
had pulled down, I asked him to explain the dog's peculiarities.

"Both Wolfram and I," he said, "came from Bavaria. The family estate was
at the edge of the far-famed Black Forest, and my father, with his pack
of black hounds, killed many a wolf that lurked in the dark shadows of
the fir trees. But hunting was not a profitable business, and there was
nothing better for me, a younger son, to do than to become a soldier or
to emigrate.

"While a mere lad I came to America, and, as an importer of German
goods, have been fairly successful. My inherited love of hunting has not
been lost, and I spend a part of each autumn in the Adirondacks.

"A year ago, my brother, the present head of the family, sent me a pup
from his kennel of wolf-dogs. For the purpose of giving the poor animal
a change from city streets, I brought him to my cottage on Saranac Lake.
But I did not expect to hunt with the dog, for I supposed he had a
spirit above the game of this region.

"Several days ago a deer was chased near my door, and Wolfram put after
it. We could not tell which way he had gone, for my father's wolf-dogs
were not taught to bark, as among the great firs of the Black Forest
horsemen can follow the chase, which seldom goes out of sight.

"The day after the hound disappeared I set out to find him, and now you
tell me that one of the dogs which my father considered able to battle
with a wolf has been killed by the thrust of a deer's horn!"

AVERAGE

A very common word, to-be-sure, and well understood as to its
application. But after fair translation of its old French
body--"aver"--into English, and only "horse" is found, and the word
becomes "horsage," the change tends to confusion. None the less,
"horsage" and "average" are identical, since in the old-time French an
"aver" was a horse. It was also a horse in the Scotch dictionaries, and
in one of Burns' poems, "A Dream," he alludes to a horse as a "noble
aiver."

In olden times in Europe a tenant was bound to do certain work for the
lord of the manor--largely in carting grain and turf--horse-work; and in
the yearly settlement of accounts the just proportion of the large and
small work performed was estimated according to the work done by "avers"
(horses); hence our common word "average."

[_This Story began in No. 43._]

LELIA'S HERO:

or,

"We Girls and Boys in Florida."

by ELSIE LEIGH WHITTLESEY,

Author of "My Brother and I,"
"A Home in the Wilds," etc., etc.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Gloomy Forebodings.

"Oh, please, do hush, Bess! You chatter so I can't hear myself think,"
said Lelia to Bess, one afternoon, about two weeks after their early
morning visit to the suffering turtles, as the dear innocent was telling
Phil some childish nonsense about a great snake Ben had once seen in the
swamp, that was as long as a ship's mast and had a mouth big enough to
swallow a giant. "We are going home to-morrow, and I don't see how you
can laugh and tell such horrid stories when _that's_ to happen to us so
soon."

And she sighed dismally and looked out at the sea as if she never
expected to behold it again.

"But I am not going home," replied Phil. "I'm going to stay with Mr.
Herdic, and he has promised to take Thad and me to Key West and the
sponging-grounds before we return home, or before Thad does, for _I_
never expect to return to Oakdale."

"Then only Uncle Aldis and Aunt Marion and Bess and I have got to go
home?" she replied.

"That's all," said Phil, cheerfully.

"Well, I think you might be sorry, or pretend that you are, anyway, if
only for look's sake," tartly rejoined Lelia, with another wandering
glance at the sea.

"Oh, I am sorry!" said Phil, with honest quickness; "but still I'd
rather stay here than go back to Oakdale, where nobody likes me, and I'd
never amount to a hill of beans."

"But _I_ liked you when you were at Oakdale," gravely reminded Lelia.

And the tone in which she said it smote Phil to the heart.

"So did I," calmly avowed Bess. "I did really, Phil."

"No, you didn't!" sharply contradicted Lelia. "You never liked anybody
but yourself and your dear, lovely Rosy!"

"I say I did!" stoutly declared Bess. "I liked Phil before I was born."

And she nodded her little head complacently, as if this last were a
clincher that no one--not even Lelia--could have the hardihood to doubt.

Phil burst out laughing, and Lelia flung down the book she was reading,
or trying lo read, when Bess began her marvelous "snake-story," and
stared at her cousin in speechless disgust.

"I never did see such behaviors as those," said Bess, with awful gravity
and a marked consideration for the English language not common to her.

"Such behaviors as those!" repeated Lelia, with peppery sarcasm. "My
goodness, Bess, how finely you talk, and how truthful you are this
afternoon!"

"You shan't scorn at me," sturdily retorted Bess. "I will cry if you do,
and then Phil will take my part, and won't like you one bit."

"As if I cared for your crying, or your being 'scorned at,' or Phil's
not liking me!"

And Lelia sailed out of the room, crossed the piazza and ran down the
japonica-bordered path to the garden.

Seating herself under a crape-myrtle tree, its pink blossoms glowing
amid the deep, glossy green of its leaves, like the blush of the sunset
on an April cloud, she rested her chin in the palm of her hand, and
looked, half-thoughtfully, half-defiantly, at the ground.

So Phil was not going to return to Oakdale; he did not care for any of
his old friends; and this was gratitude. Yet what had he to be grateful
for? The debt was all on her side, and the affection, too, for that
matter; and the one, she thought, ought to balance the other.

"Lelia!"

Phil had contrived to elude Bess' fox-like vigilance, and when she was
busy with her tea-set, followed Lelia into the garden, to try and find
out what it was that had so mightily offended his old playmate.

"Well?" she said, shortly.

"I've something to give you," Phil began, in a business-like tone--"not
to give you, exactly, but to return to you."

And he put in her hand the identical little white envelope she had given
him at Oakdale the evening before their departure for Florida.

It was worn and soiled, and all its former freshness gone; but it
contained five crisp ten-dollar notes, every penny of Phil's small
earnings since he had been in Mr. Herdic's employ, and "squared accounts
between them," as he said, with a satisfied smile.

Lelia was in one of her grand, womanly moods, and seemed to put her
childhood and childhood's tempers and jealousies away from her as one
might an outgrown garment.

She looked as she did the day she had urged her uncle to befriend
Oakdale's "bad boy," and her hand closed over the envelope in a slow,
proud way, as if she hated, yet strangely valued, the few poor
bank-notes it held, hoarded, she knew, with so much self-denial and
miserly care, that "accounts might be squared between them," and Phil no
longer her debtor.

"It's all there," he said, after an awkward pause, seeing that she did
not seem inclined to take any further notice of it.

"Of course it is. Don't I know that?"

"But you have not counted it."

"No; but haven't you _said_ it was all there, and isn't that enough?"

Phil unconsciously drew himself up, and a glad light shone in his eyes.
He was proud of her confidence in his word, and prouder still to feel
himself not altogether unworthy of her good opinion.

"The time we have been here, and all the queer things that have happened
to us since we left Oakdale, seems like a dream," he said, presently--"a
strange, exciting dream."

"Does it?" She looked up at him in undisguised surprise. "It does not
seem so to me; it is all real--as real as my life, as the sea, as the
earth--but that is because I am a girl, I suppose, and girls are not so
forgetful as boys are, so I've heard people say."

You would never have thought her a child to look at her as she spoke.
Her eyes were so earnest, her voice so grave, her manner so composed and
considering.

Her fun and prattle with Bess, her little quarrels and tart replies, her
generous, happy, winning, self-willed ways, were as if they had never
been, and in their place came resignation, reserve, pride and a
little--only a little--regret and sorrow.

"I have something for you," she said, after another awkward
pause--"something that will help you to remember me when I am gone."

"Then I shall not need it," said Phil, quickly.

"Oh, yes, you will! You confess already that Florida, and all that's
happened to us since we've been here, seems like a dream--so how can I
hope to be remembered unless I leave some reminder of my naughty little
self with you? I asked Uncle Walter to get it made for me when we were
last at Jacksonville, and he did, and here it is, and it's yours to keep
always, if you care for it, Phil."

She took from her pocket, carefully wrapped in pink tissue paper, a
purple velvet box, opened it and took from it a beautiful blue-and-gold
enameled locket, set round with pearls, and as perfect in every respect
as the jeweler's art could make it.

"It has my picture in it. I thought you might like to have it, though
it's not much, and I am nobody in particular."

"Nobody? Why, you are everybody to me, Lelia," he said, taking the
locket with a kind of reverent hesitancy and opening it with as much
care as if he feared it might fall to pieces in his grasp or vanish
entirely, like the enchanted ring in the fairy tale.

The lovely little face it portrayed was Lelia's own, and when he had
looked at it for fully five minutes, with eyes expressive of the most
unbounded delight, he shut the glittering cases, replaced the locket in
its little velvet box, and said, very earnestly:

"The money I borrowed, and it's now paid; but the picture is mine.
_Your_ gift, Lelia, and yours alone?"

"Yes, I thought of it. My gift alone, and I'm glad if it pleases you."

"Well, it does--lots, and I shall keep it as long as I live."

"And this money," turning the envelope over in her hand, and regarding
it curiously "what shall I do with it, Phil?"

"Oh, that's for you to say!"

"So it is; and it's for me to say, also, that it is getting late, and I
want to see the sun 'set in the sea,' as Bess calls it, this last
evening of our stay at Cedar Keys. And there's Bess now, little plague
that she is!" turning to meet the flying figure that came tearing down
the garden path, with hair streaming in the wind, and sash untied and
trailing on the ground in dreadful disarray.

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