Part 3

Isbel sat by the window in a chair which Tim had made during his convalescence; for he was exceedingly handy with tools, and during those days he had nothing worse to do.

She made the house as tidy as she could compass during the morning hours, steadying herself with one hand on the walls as she went about. Cleg, of course, was playing outside. He had come racing in for his dinner with a wisp of hair sticking out of the hole in his hat. Isbel smoothed it down, and because her hand touched him like a caress Cleg put it from him, saying, "Dinna, mother; somebody micht see ye!"

It was hot, and the boy was a little irritable; but his mother understood.

Then, as he took the plate of broth, he told his mother all that had happened in the brickfield that day. He had carried clay for Jo, and Jo had given him a penny. Then he had been at a rat-hunt with the best terrier in the world. He had also chased Michael Hennessy twice round the yard after a smart bout of fisticuffs. Thereupon, the men had cheered him, and called him a "perfect wull-cat"—which Cleg took to be a term of praise, and cherished as a soldier does the "penn'orth o' bronze" which constitutes the Victoria Cross.

Isbel only sat and rested and listened. Tim was away for the day, she knew not where, and the minutes Cleg remained indoors and talked to her were her sole and sufficient pleasure. She thanked the Lord for each one of them. But she never called the boy in against his will, nor yet held him longer than he cared to stay.

Yet, somehow, on this day Isbel was more eager than usual to detain her son. She clung to him with a strange kind of yearning. But as soon as Cleg had finished his bread and soup he snatched up his white straw hat-brim and raced out, crying, as he ran, "I'm awa', mither—Tam Gillivray has stealed my auld basin withoot the bottom."

This was a serious offence, and Cleg went down in haste to avenge the insult. Soon there was the noise of battle below—chiefly, however, the noise of them that shout for the mastery; and then, in a little, when the bottomless basin had been recovered by its rightful owner, the noise of them that cry for being overcome.

From the window Isbel watched. Her thin hair fell over her wasted temples, and she pressed her hand on her breast, searching as though something were missing there. And so there was. It was about a lung and a half which she missed. Nevertheless there had fallen a peace upon Isbel to which she had been unaccustomed. Faint tremors ran through her body, and though the window was wide open, she often gasped for breath. A blissful, painless weariness stole over her.

Cleg was playing below. He had achieved a victory, complete, yet not quite bloodless, for Tam Gillivray was staunching his nose at the smith's cauldron with a lump of cold iron at the back of his neck. Cleg, prancing in haughty state and followed by a little train of admirers, was now dragging the basin in triumph round the yard. He was pretending that it was a railway train drawn by an engine of extremely refractory disposition, which curvetted and reared in a most unenginely manner.

Isbel watched him from her window.

"He is happy, puir laddie—maybe happier than he'll ever be again. Let him bide a wee. I'll gie him a cry, in time."

Then she looked again. She prayed a little while with her eyes shut. Beneath, Cleg was holding his court. He had crowned himself with the basin, and pulled his hair through it in the shape of a plume. As an appropriate finish for the whole, he had stuck the mop of protruding locks full of feathers, and now he was presiding over a court of justice at which Michael Hennessy was being tried for his life on the charge of murdering a "yellow yoit." In due course the verdict of justifiable homicide was returned, and the culprit sentenced to kill another, or be belted round the brickyard.

Then, wearying for a fresher ploy, the boys decided to build a fortress, and instantly, as soon as they had thought of it, they set to work with a mountain of refuse bricks, Cleg Kelly putting no hand to the manual labour, but being easily first in the direction of affairs. This "gaffership" suited Cleg so well that he turned three excellent wheels in the greatness of his content, and then immediately knocked over several boys for presuming to imitate him, when they ought to have been fulfilling orders and building bricks into a fortress.

From the window his mother still watched him. She smiled to see his light-heart joy, and said again, as if to herself, "In a while I shall cry to him—I dinna need him yet!"

All about there grew up in her ears a sound of sweet music, as of the many singers at the kirk on still, warm Sabbath days, singing the psalms which she remembered long ago in Ormiland, only they sounded very far away. And at times the brickyard reeled and dazzled, the arid trodden ground and steaming bricks fell back, the cracked walls opened out, and she saw the sun shining upon golden hills, the like of which she had never seen before.

"What is this? Oh, what's this?" she asked herself aloud, and the sound of her own voice was in her ears as the roaring of many waters.

It seemed to her to be almost time now. She leaned forward wearily to call her son to help her. But he was sitting on a throne in the midst of his castle, dressed as Robin Hood, with all his merry men about him. He looked so happy, and he laughed so loud, that Isbel said again to herself—

"I can manage yet for half an hour, and then I shall cry to him."

But her son caught sight of her at the window. He was so elated that he did not mind noticing his mother, as a common boy would have done. He waved his hand to her, calling out loud—

"Mither, mither, I'm biggin' a bonny hoose for ye to leeve in!"

Isbel smiled, and it was as if the sun which shone on the hills of her dream had touched her thin face and made it also beautiful for the last time before sundown.

"My guid boy—my nice boy," she said, "the Lord will look till him! He said he was biggin' a hoose for his mither. Let him big his hoose. In an hour I shall cry to him—my ain laddie!"

Yet in an hour she did not cry, and it was the only time she had ever broken her word to her son.

But that was because Isbel Kelly had journeyed where no crying is. Neither shall there be any more pain.

ADVENTURE V.

THE BRIGANDS OF THE CITY.

Cleg Kelly's mother lay still in her resting grave, and had no more need of pity. Cleg abode with his father in the tumble-down shanty by the brickfield at Easter Beach, and asked for no pity either. Cleg had promised his mother, Isbel, that he would not forsake his father.

"Na, I'll no rin awa' frae ye," so he told his father, frankly, "for I promised my mither; but gin ye lick me, I'll pit my wee knife intil ye when ye are sleepin'! Mind ye that!"

And his father minded, which was fortunate for both.

Cleg was now twelve, and much respected by his father, who fully believed that he was speaking the truth. Tim Kelly, snow-shoveller, feared his son Cleg with his sudden wild-cat fierceness, much more than he feared God—more, even, than he feared Father Donnelly, to whom he went twice a year to ease his soul of a portion of his more specially heinous sins.

Yet Tim Kelly was a better man, because of the respect in which he held his son. He even boasted of Cleg's cleverness when he was safe among his old cronies in Mother Flannigan's kitchen, or in the bar-parlour at Hare's public.

"Shure, there's not the like av him in this kingdom av ignorant blockheads. My Clig's the natest and the illigantest gossoon that stips in his own boot-leather. Shure, he can lick anything at all near his own weight. Sorra's in him, he can make his ould man stand about. Faith, 'tis him that's goin' to be the great man intoirely, is our little Clig."

These were the opinions of his proud father.

But Jim Carnochan, better known as the "Devil's Lickpot," demurred. If Cleg was so clever a boy, why was he not set to work? A boy so smart ought long ere this to have been learning the profession. To this Mother Flannigan agreed, for she shared in the profits.

"My Peether, rest his sowl for a good lad—him as was hanged be token of false evidence—and the bobbies findin' the gintleman's goold watch in Peether's pocket, was at wurrk whin he was six years av his age. Take my wurrd for it, Timothy Kelly, there never yet was a thruely great man that didn't begin his education young."

"Maybe," said Tim, "and that's the raison, Misthress Flannigan, that so few av them grew up to be ould men."

"Gin he was my boy," said Sandy Telfer, whose occupation was breaking into houses during the summer holidays (one of the safest "lays" in the profession, but looked down upon as mean-spirited), "I wad be haein' him through the windows and openin' the front doors every dark nicht."

"Ah, you wud, wud ye?" replied Tim Kelly contemptuously; "you're the great boy to talk, you that has no more manhud in ye than a draff-sack wid a hole in it. Yuss, ye can do yer dirthy way wid your own mane-spirited spalpeens, wid no more spunk than a dure-mat. But I'd have ye know that my Clig cud make hares av you an' ivvery Telfer av the lot o' ye—hear to me now!"

And Tim Kelly shook his fist within an inch of the nose of Sandy Telfer, who, not being a man of war, showed by the curl of his nostril and the whitening of his lip, that he did not find the bouquet of Tim Kelly's bunch-of-fives an agreeable perfume. Tim Kelly waited to see if on any pretext he could bring his fist into closer contact with Sandy Telfer's face, but he found no cause.

"My Clig," he said emphatically, "is goin' to be a great characther. He is jist the boy that is to climb the top laddher av the profession. It's his father that must be out at night, an' run the risk av the dirthy bobby wid his lanthern, an' the gintleman av the house in his night-shirt wid a cruel poker. But Clig shall sit safe and aisy in his chair, an' make his thousands a year wid the scrap av his pen. He'll promothe companies, an' be out av the way when they burst. He'll write so illegant that he cud turn ye off another gintleman's signathure as fast as his own, an' worth a deal more on a bit av paper than anny av our names——"

"Come away hame, faither, sittin' bletherin' there. Ye hae been here lang enough."

It was the face of Cleg Kelly, dirty, sharp, and good-natured, which appeared at the door of the boozing ken.

Mistress Flannigan caught up a pound weight and threw it at Cleg with a woman's aim. It flew wide, and would surely have smashed some of the unclean vessels standing ready for the wash on the dresser, had Cleg not stepped briskly within, and, catching the missile deftly, made a low bow as he laid it on the table, and said, with his rare disarming smile—

"Your obedient servant, Cleg Kelly!"

"Hear to him now, the young bliggard!" cried his delighted and well-intoxicated father. "He has come to arm the ould man home, an' the ould man'll have to be stippin' too when Clig gives the wurrd."

Isbel Kelly had indeed been a happy woman if, ten years ago, she had learned Cleg's method.

"Come on, faither," reiterated Cleg, who had again retreated to the door, for he had no liking for the company or the place.

Tim Kelly got himself on his feet unsteadily, and lurched towards the door. His son caught him deftly on the descending swoop.

"Steady, faither, mind the stair. Gie us yer han'."

And so Cleg got Timothy, his father, who deserved no such care, tenderly up the filthy exit of Mistress Flannigan's cellar.

"Tim's not the man he was," Sandy Telfer said, as the pair went out.

"It's fair undecent doin' as the boy bids him, an' never so much as puttin' the laddie to an honest bit o' wark. Ah, he'll suffer for that, or a' be dune! They'll be raisons annexed to that," continued the summer housebreaker, who had been respectably brought up on the Shorter Catechism, but who, owing to a disappointment in love, had first of all joined another denomination, and, the change not answering its purpose, had finally taken to housebreaking and drink.

"Ye may say so, indeed," said Bridget Flannigan.

So Cleg took his father home to the rickety house by the brickyard. Cleg kept the room clean as well as he could. But the sympathetic neighbour, who remembered his mother, occasionally took a turn round the place with a scrubbing-brush when it was absolutely certain that the "red-headed gorilla" was absent, attending to other people's business.

Whenever Cleg saw his father refrain from Hare's public and the evening sessions of Mistress Flannigan's interesting circle, he knew that Tim had a project on hand. Generally he took no particular heed to these. For it was his custom, as soon as he saw his father off on any of his raids, to go and report himself casually at the nearest police-station, where the sergeant's wife knew him. She often gave him a "piece" with sugar on it, having known his mother before ever she left the parish of Ormiland.

The sergeant's wife remembered her own happy escape from being Mrs. Timothy Kelly, and though her heart had been sore against Isbel at the time, she had long forgotten the feeling in thankfulness that her lines had fallen on the right side of the law. But she had never confided to the sergeant that she had once known Tim Kelly somewhat intimately.

Cleg did not mean to be mixed up in any of his father's ill-doings if he could help it, so upon these occasions he frequented the precincts of the police-station as much as the sergeant's wife would let him.

It was his custom to take his "piece"—an excellent thick slice of bread with brown sugar on it—and seat himself on a luxurious paling opposite to eat it. The fact that a great many message boys passed that way may have had something to do with Cleg's choice of locality. Cleg liked to be envied. And, seeing the "piece," more than one boy was sure to give chase. This introduced a healthy variety into Cleg's life. He liked to fool with these young men of the message basket. Exercise sharpens the appetite, and when this morning the butcher's boy chivvied him over the parched-up grass field that lay between the station and the brickyard, Cleg fairly whooped in his joy.

At first he ran slowly, and apparently with great alarm, so that the butcher's boy had not the least doubt that he easily could catch him. Cleg held the sergeant's wife's "piece" in his hand as he ran, so that the butcher's boy could see the thick sugar on the top of the yellow butter. This stirred up the pursuer's desires, and he made a spurt to seize Cleg. Had the assailant been the grocer's boy, to whom sugar and butter were vain things, Cleg would have had to try another plan. Now, when the butcher's boy spurted, Cleg almost let himself be caught. He heard close behind him the labouring of the avenger. With a sudden rush he sped thirty yards in front; then he turned and ran backwards, eating the sergeant's wife's "piece" as he ran. This aggravated the butcher's boy to such an extent that he had to stop with his hand on his panting side, and curse Cleg's parentage—which, sad to relate, pleased Cleg more than anything. He said it was prime. By which he meant, not the sergeant's wife's "piece," but the whole situation, and especially the disgust of the butcher's boy.

Then Cleg, being contented, offered honourable terms, for he and the butcher's boy were in reality very good friends. He gave his late pursuer a fair half of the bread and sugar, but reserved the crust for himself. So, munching amicably, Cleg and the butcher's boy returned together to the paling on which Cleg had been sitting.

But, alas! during his temporary absence from his care, Tam Luke, the baker's boy, had come along. And in pursuit of the eternal feud between butcher's boys and baker's boys, he had overturned the basket and rolled the meat on the road. Luke was now sitting on the rail a little way along, smoking a pipe loaded with brown paper, with a kind of ostentatious calmness.

When half across the field the butcher's boy observed the insult to his basket. Yet he said nothing till he came quite near. Then, in the most friendly manner possible, he seized the defiled leg of mutton, destined for the dinner of an eminent Doctor in Divinity, and hit Tam Luke a swinging blow over the head with it, which not only broke that youth's pipe, but for a season spoiled the shape of his mouth, and tumbled him incontinently over the fence.

The baker's boy rose, shedding freely bits of clay pipe and exceedingly evil words. A battle royal seemed imminent to one who did not know the commonplaces of friendly intercourse among these worthies. But the baker's boy contented himself with stating over and over in varied and ornamental language, highly metaphorical in parts, what he would do to the butcher's boy if he hit him again. However, the butcher's boy had too great an advantage in handling Professor Hinderlands' leg of mutton, and the tempest gradually blew itself out.

Whereupon all parties betook themselves to a street pump to wash the various articles which had been strewed in the mire, and to dry them on the butcher's boy's blue-striped apron, which he wore girt about him like a rope. It was a highly instructive sight. And had the cooks of various respectable families seen the process, they would have had a sufficient answer to their frequent indignant question that morning, "What can be keeping Cleaver's young vaigabond?"

Also, had they happened to pass, a number of the good ladies who sat down so comfortably to enjoy their dinners (which they called "lunch" if anybody happened to call) would certainly have gone without the principal course.

But the butcher's boy and the baker's boy were not in the least distressed. Such things happened every day. It was all in the way of business. And as for our hero, he, as we have indicated before, merely remarked, in his vulgar way, that it was prime.

So far he had had a good, interesting day, and was exceedingly pleased with himself.

Presently all three went and calmly smoked on the side of the road, roosting contentedly on the paling, while Tam Luke, who had got a prize for good reading at the school, drew out of his pocket "The Bully Boys' Budget"—an international journal of immense circulation, which described the adventures of associated bands of desperate ruffians (aged, on an average, nine) in New York, a city which Cleaver's loon looked upon as a boys' Paradise. Boys were discouraged in Edinburgh. They got no chance of distinguishing themselves.

"It's a most michty queer thing," said Cleg, "that the story says, if Tam Luke reads it richt——"

"I'll smash yer tawtie heid!" remarked that gentleman, mightily offended at the insinuation.

"If Tam Luke reads it richt," continued Cleg, "that in New York the bobbies rin frae the boys; but here the boys rin frae the bobbies like fun."

"_Me?_" said Cleaver's boy. "I wadna rin for ony bobby in the hale toon."

"An' _me_," cried Tam Luke, with mighty contempt, "I lickit a big bobby the nicht afore yestreen. I could fecht a bobby wi' yae hand tied ahint my back."

"Bobbies are nane sic bad folks. The sergeant's wife over there gied me a 'piece,'" said Cleg gratefully.

"Ye are a reid-heided Irish traitor!" said the butcher's boy with emphasis.

"It's my faither that's reid-heided," said Cleg promptly; "but tak' that ony way for speaking ill o' the family!"

And with the back of his hand he knocked the libeller of his forbears over into the field.

"I'm gaun to be captain o' a band o' robbers—will ye baith join?" said Tam Luke.

Cleaver's boy was about to wreak his vengeance on Cleg from the other side of the fence, but he paused with his arm suspended to think over the proposal.

"I'm gaun to be captain o' a band mysel'! Will ye join?" said the butcher's boy to Cleg, instead of assaulting him as he had first intended.

"What to do?" asked practical Cleg.

"To fecht the poliss, of course!" cried the butcher's boy and the baker's boy together. Their unanimity was wonderful.

"_There's the sergeant the noo!_" said Cleg quietly, pointing across the road.

And it was indeed the sergeant, who, having been on night duty, had just risen and strolled out to see what kind of weather it was.

The valiant captains of the decimating bands which were to terrorise the police of the city, descended from their several roosts as with one mind, seized their baskets, and sped round opposite corners with amazing speed.

Cleg Kelly was left alone, sitting on the paling. He pulled out what remained of his crust, and as he ate it with relish, he laughed aloud and kicked his heels with glee, so that the sergeant, stretching himself after his day-sleep, called across to the boy——

"What's up wi' ye, Cleg? Ye seem to be enjoyin' yoursel'!"

But all the answer he could get out of Cleg was just, "O man, sergeant, it's prime!"

But as to whether he meant the crust or only things in general, the sergeant was none the wiser.

ADVENTURE VI.

CLEG TURNS BURGLAR.

Cleg had watched his father furtively all day. Little conversation passed between these two. Cleg devoted much of his time to a consideration of the best means of legitimate gain in his new profession of capitalist. He possessed the large sum of one shilling and a penny. It was banked upon sound old principles in the hollow end of a brick, which was buried under a flag in the backyard of a brewery. Cleg had hidden it with mystic incantations, and now carried a red worsted thread twisted round his finger to remind him of its whereabouts.

But there was another reason besides his large capital, why Cleg was unusually watchful of his father that day. First of all, Tim Kelly had come home sober from Hare's public the night before. That was a suspicious circumstance in itself. It showed not only that his ready cash had all been liquefied, but that Mistress Hare had drawn a line under the big chalk score behind her door. This line was the intimation that the single file of figures must be wiped off before another dram was served.

"Ye've had Larry on your back long enough, sure, Tim!" said Mistress Hare, who regulated these matters in person. "Idleness is a most deadly sin, Father Malony sez!" continued the landlady devoutly.

"Shure, an' it's not the divil's sin, thin, Mistress Hare," said Tim acutely, "for he's busy enough!"

Tim was the only burglar with a brogue in the city, and as such was dear to the heart of Mistress Hare. For the Scot, when he takes to the investigation of other people's houses, does so grimly and without romance. But Tim had always a hint of Celtic imagination and even of poetry in his creations.

For instance, all that day on which Cleg kept his eye on his father, Tim was meditating a raid on the house of Mr. Robert Grey Tennant, a comfortable burgess of the burgh, who for the ease of his later life had built himself—not a lordly pleasure house indeed, but a comfortable mansion of Craigleith stone, exactly like three hundred and sixty-five other mansions on the south side of the city.

There was at the back of Aurelia Villa a little bordering of flowers and strawberries. These, however, never came to much, for the cats broke the flowers and extraneous boys stole the strawberries. There was also a little green plot, big enough for parlour croquet, but not big enough for lawn tennis. Yet this did not prevent the serious-minded and inventive young woman of the house, Miss Cecilia Tennant, from frequently playing what she called "pocket-handkerchief tennis" on this scraplet of lawn. And it was indeed a lively game, when two or three of her admirers arrived with racquets and rubber shoes to engage in silk-striped summer strife.