Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood

“I have got to the corner of the stack, and as well as I can judge you must be just round it,” he said.

“Your voice is close to me,” I answered.

“I’ve got a hold of one of the mare’s ears,” he said next. “I won’t try to get her out until I get you off her.”

I put out my hand, and felt along the mare’s neck. What a joy it was to catch my father’s hand through the darkness and the snow! He grasped mine and drew me towards him, then got me by the arm and began dragging me through the snow. The mare began plunging again, and by her struggles rather assisted my father. In a few moments he had me in his arms.

“Thank God!” he said, as he set me down against the peat-stack. “Stand there. A little farther. Keep well off for fear she hurt you. She must fight her way out now.”

He went back to the mare, and went on clearing away the snow. Then I could hear him patting and encouraging her. Next I heard a great blowing and scrambling, and at last a snort and the thunder of hoofs.

“Woa! woa! Gently! gently!—She’s off!” cried my father.

Her mother gave one snort, and away she went, thundering after her. But their sounds were soon quenched in the snow.

“There’s a business!” said my father. “I’m afraid the poor things will only go farther to fare the worse. We are as well without them, however; and if they should find their way home, so much the better for us. They might have kept us a little warmer though. We must fight the cold as we best can for the rest of the night, for it would only be folly to leave the spot before it is light enough to see where we are going.”

It came into my mind suddenly how I had burrowed in the straw to hide myself after running from Dame Shand’s. But whether that or the thought of burrowing in the peat-stack came first, I cannot tell. I turned and felt whether I could draw out a peat. With a little loosening I succeeded.

“Father,” I said, “couldn’t we make a hole in the peat-stalk, and build ourselves in?”

“A capital idea, my boy!” he answered, with a gladness in his voice which I venture to attribute in part to his satisfaction at finding that I had some practical sense in me. “We’ll try it at once.”

“I’ve got two or three out already,” I said, for I had gone on pulling, and it was easy enough after one had been started.

“We must take care we don’t bring down the whole stack though,” said my father.

“Even then,” I returned, “we could build ourselves up in them, and that would be something.”

“Right, Ranald! It would be only making houses to our own shape, instead of big enough to move about in—turning crustaceous animals, you know.”

“It would be a peat-greatcoat at least,” I remarked, pulling away.

“Here,” he said, “I will put my stick in under the top row. That will be a sort of lintel to support those above.”

He always carried his walking-stick whether he rode or walked.

We worked with a will, piling up the peats a little in front that we might with them build up the door of our cave after we were inside. We got quite merry over it.

“We shall be brought before the magistrates for destruction of property,” said my father.

“You’ll have to send Andrew to build up the stack again—that’s all.”

“But I wonder how it is that nobody hears us. How can they have a peat-stack so far from the house?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said; “except it be to prevent them from burning too many peats. It is more like a trick of the poor laird than anybody else.”

Every now and then a few would come down with a rush, and before long we had made a large hole. We left a good thick floor to sit upon.

Creeping in, we commenced building up the entrance. We had not proceeded far, however, before we found that our cave was too small, and that as we should have to remain in it for hours, we must find it very cramped. Therefore, instead of using any more of the peats already pulled out, we finished building up the wall with others fresh drawn from the inside. When at length we had, to the best of our ability, completed our immuring, we sat down to wait for the morning—my father as calm as if he had been seated in his study-chair, and I in a state of condensed delight; for was not this a grand adventure—with my father to share it, and keep it from going too far? He sat with his back leaning against the side of the hole, and I sat between his knees, and leaned against him. His arms were folded round me; and could ever boy be more blessed than I was then? The sense of outside danger; the knowledge that if the wind rose, we might be walled up in snow before the morning; the assurance of present safety and good hope—all made such an impression upon my mind that ever since when any trouble has threatened me, I have invariably turned first in thought to the memory of that harbour of refuge from the storm. There I sat for long hours secure in my father’s arms, and knew that the soundless snow was falling thick around us, and marked occasionally the threatening wail of the wind like the cry of a wild beast scenting us from afar.

“This is grand, father,” I said.

“You would like better to be at home in bed, wouldn’t you?” he asked, trying me.

“No, indeed, I should not,” I answered, with more than honesty; for I felt exuberantly happy.

“If only we can keep warm,” said my father. “If you should get very cold indeed, you must not lose heart, my man, but think how pleasant it will be when we get home to a good fire and a hot breakfast.”

“I think I can bear it all right. I have often been cold enough at school.”

“This may be worse. But we need not anticipate evil: that is to send out for the suffering. It is well to be prepared for it, but it is ill to brood over a fancied future of evil. In all my life, my boy—and I should like you to remember what I say—I have never found any trial go beyond what I could bear. In the worst cases of suffering, I think there is help given which those who look on cannot understand, but which enables the sufferer to endure. The last help of that kind is death, which I think is always a blessing, though few people can regard it as such.”

I listened with some wonder. Without being able to see that what he said was true, I could yet accept it after a vague fashion.

“This nest which we have made to shelter us,” he resumed, “brings to my mind what the Psalmist says about dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Everyone who will, may there, like the swallow, make himself a nest.”

“This can’t be very like that, though, surely, father,” I ventured to object.

“Why not, my boy?”

“It’s not safe enough, for one thing.”

“You are right there. Still it is like. It is our place of refuge.”

“The cold does get through it, father.”

“But it keeps our minds at peace. Even the refuge in God does not always secure us from external suffering. The heart may be quite happy and strong when the hands are benumbed with cold. Yes, the heart even may grow cold with coming death, while the man himself retreats the farther into the secret place of the Most High, growing more calm and hopeful as the last cold invades the house of his body. I believe that all troubles come to drive us into that refuge—that secret place where alone we can be safe. You will, when you go out into the world, my boy, find that most men not only do not believe this, but do not believe that you believe it. They regard it at best as a fantastic weakness, fit only for sickly people. But watch how the strength of such people, their calmness and common sense, fares when the grasp of suffering lays hold upon them. It was a sad sight—that abject hopeless misery I saw this afternoon. If his mind had been an indication of the reality, one must have said that there was no God—no God at least that would have anything to do with him. The universe as reflected in the tarnished mirror of his soul, was a chill misty void, through which blew the moaning wind of an unknown fate. As near as ever I saw it, that man was without God and without hope in the world. All who have done the mightiest things—I do not mean the showiest things—all that are like William of Orange—the great William, I mean, not our King William—or John Milton, or William Penn, or any other of the cloud of witnesses spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews—all the men I say who have done the mightiest things, have not only believed that there was this refuge in God, but have themselves more or less entered into the secret place of the Most High. There only could they have found strength to do their mighty deeds. They were able to do them because they knew God wanted them to do them, that he was on their side, or rather they were on his side, and therefore safe, surrounded by God on every side. My boy, do the will of God—that is, what you know or believe to be right, and fear nothing.”

I never forgot the lesson. But my readers must not think that my father often talked like this. He was not at all favourable to much talk about religion. He used to say that much talk prevented much thought, and talk without thought was bad. Therefore it was for the most part only upon extraordinary occasions, of which this is an example, that he spoke of the deep simplicities of that faith in God which was the very root of his conscious life.

He was silent after this utterance, which lasted longer than I have represented, although unbroken, I believe, by any remark of mine. Full of inward repose, I fell asleep in his arms.

When I awoke I found myself very cold. Then I became aware that my father was asleep, and for the first time began to be uneasy. It was not because of the cold: that was not at all unendurable; it was that while the night lay awful in white silence about me, while the wind was moaning outside, and blowing long thin currents through the peat walls around me, while our warm home lay far away, and I could not tell how many hours of cold darkness had yet to pass before we could set out to find it,—it was not all these things together, but that, in the midst of all these, I was awake and my father slept. I could easily have waked him, but I was not selfish enough for that: I sat still and shivered and felt very dreary. Then the last words of my father began to return upon me, and, with a throb of relief, the thought awoke in my mind that although my father was asleep, the great Father of us both, he in whose heart lay that secret place of refuge, neither slumbered nor slept. And now I was able to wait in patience, with an idea, if not a sense of the present care of God, such as I had never had before. When, after some years, my father was taken from us, the thought of this night came again and again, and I would say in my heart: “My father sleeps that I may know the better that The Father wakes.”

At length he stirred. The first sign of his awaking was, that he closed again the arms about me which had dropped by his sides as he slept.

“I’m so glad you’re awake, father,” I said, speaking first.

“Have you been long awake then?”

“Not so very long, but I felt lonely without you.”

“Are you very cold? I feel rather chilly.”

So we chatted away for a while.

“I wonder if it is nearly day yet. I do not in the least know how long we have slept. I wonder if my watch is going. I forgot to wind it up last night. If it has stopped I shall know it is near daylight.”