In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

“Heigho! Will he ever, ever come!”

The dog looks in my face with terrible earnestness. He expects me to explain. I cannot – I feel uneasy. We listen for many minutes, but hear no more, till the rising wind moans drearily round the house and the fire gets low on the hearth.

“Ha! ha! ha!” The demon laugh again! It is a kind of half-ironical chuckle, impossible to describe. Then a voice in pitiful tones of entreaty:

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

I am really getting frightened. I look towards the door, which had hitherto been open, and stare to see it slowly shut as if moved by some spirit hand. The wind howls now like wild wolves outside.

“What is it? What is it? Ha! ha! ha! What is it?”

Then a wild unearthly shriek, and a yell of “Murder!” rises high above the wind. My nerves are quite unstrung. I verily believe my hair is moving under my Highland bonnet.

I would not stay another moment here for all the world.

I open the door, and rush out into the night, Bob at my heels, and shrieks and laughter resounding in my ears.

Out and away – anywhere, to be free of that uncanny hut.

A big round moon is shining now, and the weird pine-trees are casting weird shadows on the moorland.

Look, though, is that a pine-tree?

No, it is a tall figure, in Highland garb, with a long crook, which it grasps high up, the plaid depending from the uplifted arm.

“Yap, yap, yap – ”

That is the collie’s bark, and yonder figure is no doubt that of his master. He advances, and the moon shimmers brightly on the pleasant face and snow-white beard of an old man.

“Welcome, stranger. You’ve lost your way. My dog came to tell me. Come back and share my humble supper, then I will conduct you home.”

I thought it strange to be addressed in such good English. But I was not reassured. Was this a wizard, or a spectre – the spirit of this haunted wood?

“Back!” I cried, with a shudder; “back among goblins!”

“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed, and I could not help noticing that his laugh was precisely the same as that I had heard in the hut.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but my cockatoos have been talking to you from behind the scenes. Come back, sir, it is all right. See, our dogs are playing together.”

That was true. Bob and the collie were already the best of friends.

From the very moment he mentioned the word “cockatoos,” I felt somewhat ashamed of myself.

So back I went, and shared the shepherd’s soup, and we were soon enjoying a very interesting conversation.

I told him all about myself and caravan, and he explained who he was. A shepherd by choice, because a lover of Nature. A wizard according to some, a poet according to others, because his verses which, he said, were as rough as the heather and the granite rocks on the hillside, found entrée to the Glasgow papers. After supper, he lit a great oil-lamp: we had hitherto had only the fire-light.

Then he pulled aside a screen, and lo! and behold, a dozen at least of cages, each containing a cockatoo, and one a starling.

“What is it? What is it?” said this latter.

“Nothing much, Dick. But you’ve frightened this stranger.”

“Strange!” said Dick.

The old shepherd opened the cage-door, and out flew the bird, and straight on to the supper-table.

“Professor Dick,” said my host, “won’t say another word till he has finished his meal.”

“Professor Dick, you call him?”

“Yes, and I may as well tell you at once how I live and how I manage to get warm clothing, good food, and plenty of books.”

“I see your library is a most extensive one,” I put in.

“It is, for a poor man. I am a hermit by choice; I live all alone in these wilds; I am rent-free, because I have the charge of sheep, and I dearly love the solitudes around me.

“The house or hut I occupy I call Professor Dick’s Academy. Dick is my all in all. The collie comes next in my affections.

“But Dick maintains us.”

“Dick maintains you?”

“Yes, you see all these cockatoos? Well, Dick trains them all to speak. And he trains them tricks, he and I between us. Without Dick I would be nowhere, and perhaps Dick would go to the bad without me.”

“But what becomes of the cockatoos?”

“I sell them. That is the secret of our wealth and happiness. They are Australian hard-bill crestless cockatoos. I pay thirty shillings for each of them. I sell them for ten and even fifteen pounds. There is one there, forty years of age; the most wonderful bird in all the world. Rothschild is very rich, sir, and so is Vanderbilt, but neither possess money to buy that darling bird. No, nor Dick either. But here comes the Professor.”

The bird came hopping towards me, jumped up, perched on the back of a straw chair, and eyed me curiously for quite a minute, using first one eye, then the other, as if to make quite sure of diagnosing me properly.

I thought him somewhat brusque and peculiar at first. He asked me three questions in rapid succession, but gave me no time to answer: “Who are you? What do ye want? Are you hungry?” The Professor and I, however, soon settle down to steady conversation, and talked on all kinds of topics, as freely as if we had known each other for years. Only, like the dictionary, Dick was apt to change his subject rather frequently.

I must say, however, that this pretty bird was the cleverest and best talker I have ever known or heard. There positively seemed no end to his vocabulary, and the ridiculously amusing remarks he made would, I believe, have caused a horse to smile.

“In the name of goodness,” I was fain to exclaim at last to my host, “is this really a bird, or is it some sprite or fay you have picked up in the depths of this weird forest?”

The old shepherd seemed pleased. He nodded and smiled to Dick, and the bird waxed more boisterous and funny than ever.

“I begin to think,” I said, “that I have got into some house of enchantment, and that nothing around me is real.”

The shepherd put Professor Dick to bed at last, and conducted me safely over the moor. He promised to call for us next day, and take us back to the cottage in the forest to hear the Professor teaching his class.

There had been anxious hearts in the caravan during my absence, but Bob went bounding away in front of me to announce my arrival.

Frank was dressed and ready to go off to seek me, stick in hand and plaid across his manly shoulders. But all is well that ends well.

Chapter Seventeen.