Bruno

When Tony had got so far that he thought there was no danger of his being called back, and the interest which he had felt in making his escape began to subside, as the work had been accomplished, he paused, and began to reflect upon what he was doing.

He almost decides to return and help his father.

“I have a great mind to go back, after all,” he said, “and help my father.”

So he turned round, and began to walk slowly back toward the house.

“No, I won’t,” said he again; “I will go a fishing.”

So he turned again, and began to walk on.

“At any rate,” he added, speaking to himself all the time, “I will go a fishing for a while, and then, perhaps, I will go back and help my father.”

So Tony went on in the path until at length he came to a place where there was a gateway leading into a dark and secluded wood. The wood was very dark and secluded indeed, and Tony thought that the path through it must lead to some very retired and solitary place, where nobody could find him.

“I presume there is a brook, too, somewhere in that wood,” he added, “where I can fish.”

The gate was fastened, but there was a short length of fence on the left-hand side of it, formed of only two rails, and these were so far apart that Tony could easily creep through between them. So he crept through, and went into the wood.

He comes to the brook.

He rambled about in the wood for some time, following various paths that he found there, until at length he came to a brook. He was quite rejoiced to find the brook, and he immediately began fishing in it. He followed the bank of this brook for nearly a mile, going, of course, farther and farther into the wood all the time. He caught a few small fishes at some places, while at others he caught none. He was, however, restless and dissatisfied in mind. Again and again he wished that he had not come away from home, and he was continually on the point of resolving to return. He thought, however, that his father would have brought Thomas into the field, and commenced his plowing long before then, and that, consequently, it would do no good to return.

Fishing. The squirrel.

While he was sitting thus, with a disconsolate air, upon a large stone by the side of the brook, fishing in a dark and deep place, where he hoped that there might be some trout, he suddenly saw a large gray squirrel. He immediately dropped his fishing-pole, and ran to see where the squirrel would go. In fact, he had some faint and vague idea that there might, by some possibility, be a way to catch him.

The squirrel ran along a log, then up the stem of a tree to a branch, along the branch to the end of it, whence he sprang a long distance through the air to another branch, and then ran along that branch to the tree which it grew from. From this tree he descended to a rock. He mounted to the highest point of the rock, and there he turned round and looked at Tony, sitting upon his hind legs, and holding his fore paws before him, like a dog begging for supper.

An unsuccessful hunt.

“The rogue!” said Tony. “How I wish I could catch him!”

Very soon the squirrel, feeling somewhat alarmed at the apparition of a boy in the woods, and not knowing what to make of so strange a sight, ran down the side of the rock, and continued his flight. Tony followed him for some time, until at last the squirrel contrived to make his escape altogether, by running up a large tree, keeping cunningly on the farther side of it all the way, so that Tony could not see him. When he had reached the branches of the tree, he crept into a small hollow which he found there, and crouching down, he remained motionless in this hiding-place until Tony became tired of looking for him, and went away.

The lost boy.

Tony, when at last he gave up the search for the squirrel, attempted to find his way back to the place where he had left his fishing-pole. Unfortunately, he had left his cap there too, so that he was doubly desirous of finding the place. There was, however, no path, for squirrels in their rambles in the woods are of course always quite independent of every thing like roadways. Tony went back in the direction from which he thought he came; but he could find no traces of his fishing-pole. He could not even find the brook. He began to feel quite uneasy, and, after going around in very circuitous and devious wanderings for some time, he became quite bewildered. He at length determined to give up the attempt to find his fishing-line and cap, and to get out of the woods, and make his way home in the quickest possible way.

Tony’s difficulties.

The poor boy now began to feel more guilty and more wretched than ever before. He was not really more guilty, though he felt his guilt far more acutely than he had done when every thing was going well with him. This is always so. The feeling of self-condemnation is not generally the strongest at the time when we are doing the wrong. It becomes far more acute and far more painful when we begin to experience the bitter consequences which we bring upon ourselves by the transgression. Tony hurried along wherever he could find a path which promised to lead him to the gateway, breathless with fatigue and excitement, and with his face flushed and full of anxiety. He was in great distress.

He stopped from time to time, to call aloud to his father and to Thomas. He was now as anxious that they should find him as he had been before to escape from them. He listened, in the hope that he might hear the barking of Bruno, or some other sound that might help him to find his way out of the woods.

He is misled by various sounds.

Once he actually heard a sound among the trees, at some distance from him. He thought that it was some one working in the woods. He went eagerly in the direction from which the sound proceeded, scrambling, by the way, over the rocks and brambles, and leaping from hummock to hummock in crossing bogs and mire. When at length he reached the place, he found that the noise was nothing but one tree creaking against another in the wind.

At another time, he followed a sound which appeared different from this; when he came up to it, he found it to be a woodpecker tapping an old hollow tree.

Tony at the brook.

Tony wandered about thus in the wood nearly all the day, and at length, about the middle of the afternoon, he became so exhausted with fatigue, anxiety, and hunger, that he could go no farther. He was very thirsty too, for he could find no water. He began to fear that he should die in the woods of starvation and thirst. At length, however, a short time before the sun went down, he came, to his great joy, to a stream of water. It was wide and deep, so that he could not cross it. He, however, went down to the brink of the water, and got a good drink. This refreshed him very much, and then he went back again up the bank, and lay down upon the grass there to rest.

Cows in the water.

Presently two cows came down to the water, on the side opposite to where Tony was sitting. They came to drink. Tony wished very much that they would come over to his side of the water, so that he could get some milk from them. If he could get a good drink of milk from them, he thought it would restore his strength, so that he could make one more effort to return home. He called the cows, and endeavored, by every means in his power, to make them come through the water to his side. One of them waded into the water a little way, and stood there staring stupidly at Tony, but she would not come any farther.

Then Tony thought of attempting to wade across the water to the cows, but he was afraid that it might be very deep, and that he should get drowned. He thought, too, that if he could contrive in any way to get near the cows, there would still be a difficulty in getting a drink of their milk, for he had no cup or mug to milk into. He wondered whether or not it would be possible for him to get down under one of the cows and milk into his mouth. He soon found, however, that it was of no use to consider this question, for it was not possible for him to get near the cows at all.

Then he reflected how many times his mother, in the evenings at home, when the cows were milked, had brought him drinks of the milk in a cup or mug, very convenient to drink out of, and how many long and weary days his father had worked in the fields, mowing grass to feed the cows, and in the barns in the winter, to take care of them, so as to provide the means of giving his boy this rich and luxurious food; and he felt how ungrateful he had been, in not being willing to aid his father in his work, when opportunities offered to him to be useful.

Good resolutions.

“If I ever get home,” said he to himself, “I’ll be a better boy.”

Here comes Bruno.

Just then Tony heard a noise in the bushes behind him. At first he was startled, as most people are, at hearing suddenly a noise in the woods. Immediately afterward, however, he felt glad, as he hoped that the noise was made by some one coming. He had scarcely time to look around before Bruno came rushing through the bushes, and, with a single bound, came to Tony’s feet. He leaped up upon him, wagging his tail most energetically, and in other ways manifesting the most extraordinary joy.

Bruno leads the way through the woods.

In a minute or two he began to walk away again into the woods, looking behind him toward Tony, intimating that Tony was to follow him. Tony slowly rose from his place, and attempted to go.

“Yes, Bruno,” said he, “I know. You are going to show me the way home. I’ll come along as fast as I can.”

Tony soon found, however, that he could not come very fast. In fact, he was almost exhausted by fatigue and hunger, and he had now little strength remaining. He accordingly staggered rather than walked in attempting to follow Bruno, and he was obliged frequently to stop and rest. On such occasions Bruno would come back and fawn around him, wagging his tail, and expressing his sympathy in such other ways as a dog has at command, and would finally lie down quietly by Tony’s side until the poor boy was ready to proceed again. Then he would go forward, and lead the way as before.

It is very extraordinary that a dog can find his way through the woods under certain circumstances so much better than a boy, or even than a man. But so it is; for, though so greatly inferior to a boy in respect to the faculties of speech and reason, he is greatly superior to him in certain instincts, granted to him by the Creator to fit him for the life which he was originally designed to lead as a wild animal. It was by means of these instincts that Bruno found Tony.

The various expeditions in search of Tony.

Bruno had commenced his search about the middle of the afternoon. It was not until some time after dinner that the family began to be uneasy about Tony’s absence. During all the forenoon they supposed that he had gone away somewhere a fishing or to play, and that he would certainly come home to dinner. When, however, the dinner hour, which was twelve o’clock, arrived, and Tony did not appear, they began to wonder what had become of him. So, after dinner, they sent Thomas down behind the garden, and to the brook, and to all the other places where they knew that Tony was accustomed to go, to see if he could find him. Thomas went to all those places, and not only looked to see whether Tony was there, but he called also very loud, and listened long after every calling for an answer. But he could neither see nor hear any thing of the lost boy.

Bruno’s search.

Then Tony’s mother began to be very seriously alarmed, and his father, too, determined to leave his work, and go and see if he could find him. He accordingly sent Thomas one way, while he himself went another. Bruno watched all these movements with great interest. He understood what they meant. He determined to see what he could do. He accordingly ran out into the garden, where he had seen Tony go after breakfast in the morning. He smelled about there in all the paths until at length he found Tony’s track. He followed this track to the seat in the arbor, where Tony had gone to get his fishing-line. Taking a new departure from this point, he went on, smelling the track along the paths as he advanced, to the bottom of the garden, thence into a wood behind the garden, thence along the road till he came to the gate under the trees where Tony had gone in.

He finds Tony’s cap and fishing-pole.

By smelling about this gate, he ascertained that Tony did not open the gate, but that he crept through between the bars on the left-hand side of it. Bruno did the same. He then followed the track of Tony in the solitary woods until he came to the brook where Tony had been fishing. Here, to his great astonishment, he found Tony’s cap and fishing-pole lying by the margin of the water.

What this could mean he was utterly unable to imagine. The sight of these things, however, only increased his interest in the search for Tony. He soon found the track again, and he followed it along by the side of the bog, and to the great rock, and by the old trees. What could have induced Tony to leave his cap and pole by the brook, and go scrambling through the bushes in this devious way, he could not imagine, not knowing, of course, any thing about the squirrel.

He, however, proceeded very industriously in the search, following the scent which Tony’s footsteps had left on the leaves and grass wherever he had gone, until at length, to his great joy, he came up with the object of his search by the brink of the water, as has already been described.

Tony had gone but a short distance from the place where Bruno had discovered him, before he found his strength failing him so rapidly that he was obliged to make his rests longer and longer. At one of these stops, Bruno, instead of waiting by his side, as he had done before, until Tony had become sufficiently rested to go on, ran off through the bushes and left him.