Short Stories Old and New

is Friends and Oth

HN BROWN

nd asked. "No," was the reply, "it's a dog I don't know." Needless to say that "Rab and his Friends" is an Edinburgh story. The time is about 1824-1830. In the Scotch dialect "weel a weel" means "all right"; "till" means "to"; "

he unanswerable last question-"His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the peace, and be civil?"-we follow Rab's pathetic career with the growing conviction that "his like was na atween this and Thornhill," however distant Thornhill may have been. Character sketches are apt to be uninteresting because there is usually too little action and too much description. The adjectives tend to smother the verbs. "They have," said Hawthorne of his "Twice-Told Tales," "the

he had a big splinter in his foreleg. "She gave him water," says Dr. Brown, "and by her woman's wit got his lame paw under a door, so that he couldn't suddenly get at her; then with a quick firm hand she plucked out the splinter, and put in an ample meal. She went in some time after, taking no notice of him, and he came limping

career. But his sympathy and affection for Ailie, shown so tenderly in the hospital scenes, find an added pathos in the t

mary Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, a

re we see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man-courage, endurance, and skill-in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight

rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and

nal grip of poor Yarrow's throat,-and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil,[*] or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it w

egar" (Hamlet

rowd, affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observed the buck, but with more urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been

stalks off with Yarrow in

dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after hi

e middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets: he is old, gray, brindle

d a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage-a sort of terrible grin; his t

ense leather; it ran before it; and then!-one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,-and the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A

d and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John, we'll bury him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He

bout angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with

s thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,"-whereupon t

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n of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with considerable gravity and silence; and be

a dog: Bob Ainslie is off to the wars; I am a m

head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and loo

of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and peace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and in it a woman, carefully wrapped up,-the carrier leading the horse anxiously, and lo

ck filled with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his

h, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes-eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, f

by one word; it was expressive of h

wn, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie his wife. The contras

gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully,-she and James watching me, and Rab eying all three. What could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of

g. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two-being all he had-gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, an

along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as Juli

pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs, said, "Oh, Sir, lif

b without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller.[*] The same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest cou

ian, a divine, a scholar, and a gentleman, live only in the memory of those few who knew and survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that when he was in the pulpit, and saw a buirdly man come along the passage, he would instinctively draw him

"When?" "To-morrow," said the kind surgeon-a man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day, at noon, the students came

ces; in they crowded, full of interest and

nd into their proper work-and in them pity-as an emotion, ending in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath-l

for them; they sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showin

ts to his suffering children-was then unknown. The surgeon did his work. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him; he saw that something strange was going on,-blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and im

g on James and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt, and toe-capt and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on m

He took a walk with me every day, generally to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined doing battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed sub

d doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on the absence

surrounded her bed. She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his own short kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab a

breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could; James did everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it; Rab subsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in her mind, gently;

power, through

on its dim and

ingling the Psalms of David and the diviner words of his So

voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard; many eager questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hover

] was about to flee. The body and the soul-companions for sixty years-were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking alone, through t

andering soul, guest

s to hi

reast,-to the right side. We could see her eyes bright with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her night-gown impatiently, and holding i

that bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and she's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered,

long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently that, when we thought she was gone, James, in his o

e's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was soaked with his tears; Rab l

e noise went to the table, and putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled them out, and

led himself; his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye'll wait for me," said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness, thunderi

e old mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up the stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he must have posted out-who knows how?-to Howgate, full nine miles off; yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at

by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it. He laid her down as tenderly, as safely

up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts, then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted Woodhouselee;" and as daybreak came sweep

e. James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, hi

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r, said, "Deed, sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he did na exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wad na come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae f