The Second Christmas Megapack

by Robert Reginald

  Peter’s face was a study. If he had killed one of us he could not have looked more like a criminal, nor have heard more abuse.

  Uncle Limpy-Jack poured out on him such a volume of vituperation and contempt that he was almost white, he was so ashy.

  Don was not permanently hurt; but one ear was pierced by several shot, which was a serious affair, as his beauty was one of his good points, and his presence on a hare-hunt was wholly against the rules. Uncle Limpy-Jack painted the terrors of the return home for Peter with a vividness so realistic that its painfulness pierced more breasts than Peter’s.

  Don was carried to the nearest ditch, and the entire crowd devoted itself to doctoring his ear. It was decided that he should be taken to the quarters and kept out of sight during the Christmas, in the hope that his ear would heal. We all agreed not to say anything about it if not questioned. Uncle Limpy-Jack had to be bribed into silence by a liberal present of shot and powder from us. But he finally consented. However, when Met, in a wild endeavor to get a shot at a stray partridge which got up before us, missed the bird and let Uncle Limpy-Jack, at fifty yards, have number-six pellets in the neck and shoulder, Peter’s delinquency was forgotten. The old man dropped his gun and yelled, “Oh! Oh!” at the top of his voice. “Oh! I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.” He lay down on the ground and rolled.

  Met was scared to death and we were all seriously frightened. Limpy-Jack himself may have thought he was really killed. He certainly made us think so. He would not let anyone look at the wound.

  Only a few of the shot had gone in, and he was not seriously injured, but he vowed that it was all done on purpose, and that he was “going straight home and tell Marster,” a threat he was only prevented from executing by us all promising him the gold dollars which we should find in the toes of our stockings next morning.

  III.

  So far the day had been rather a failure; the misfortunes had exceeded the sport; but as we reached the long hillside I have spoken of, the fun began. The hares were sunning themselves comfortably in their beds, and we had not gone more than two hundred yards before we had three up, and cutting straight down the hill before us.

  Bang!—bang!—bang!—bang! went the guns. One hare was knocked over, and one boy also by the kick of his gun; the others were a sight chase, and every boy, man, and dog joined in it for dear life.

  “Whoop!—whoop! Dyah she go! Dyah she go! Heah, heah! Heah, heah! Heah, heah, heah! Whoop, Rattler! Whoop, Nimrod! Heah, Snip! heah, heah, Bruno! Heah, heah!” Everyone was striving to get ahead.

  Both hares were picked up before reaching cover, one being caught by Bruno, who was magnificent in a chase. After many falls and failures by all of us, Saul flung himself on the other, and gave a wild yell of triumph.

  The “long hillside” was full of hares; they bounced out of the hen-grass; slipped from brush-heaps and were run down, or by their speed and agility escaped us all. The dogs got the frenzy and chased wildly, sometimes running over them and losing them through a clever double and dash. The old field rang with the chase until we turned our steps toward home to get ready for the fun after dark.

  We were crossing the pasture on our way home. The winter sunset sky was glowing like burnished steel; the tops of the great clump of oaks and hickories in which the house stood were all that we could see over the far hill; a thin line of bluish smoke went straight up in the quiet air. The dogs had gone on ahead, even the two or three old watch-dogs ran after the others, with their noses in air.

  The question of concealing Don and his ragged ears came up. It was necessary to catch him and keep him from the house. We started up the slope after him. As we climbed the hill we heard them.

  “Dee got a ole hyah now; come on,” exclaimed one or two of the younger negroes; but old Limpy-Jack came to a halt, and turning his head to one side listened.

  “Heish! Dat ain’ no ole hyah dey’re arter; dey’re arter Marster’s sheep—dat’s what ’tis!”

  He started off at a rapid gait. We did the same.

  “Yep, yep! Oun, oun, oun! Err, err, err!” came their voices in full cry.

  We reached the top of the hill. Sure enough, there they were, the fat Southdowns, tearing like mad across the field, the sound of their trampling reaching us, with the entire pack at their heels, the pointers well in the lead. Such a chase as we had trying to catch that pack of mischievous dogs! Finally we got them in; but not before the whole occurrence had been seen at the house.

  The shouts that were borne to us, as rescuers began to troop across the fields, drove our hearts down into our boots.

  The return to the house was widely different from the triumph of the out-going in the morning. It was a dejected cortege that wended its toilsome way up the hill. Uncle Limpy-Jack basely deserted us after getting the promise of our gold dollars, declaring that he “told dem boys dat huntin’ ole hyahs warn’ no business for chillern!”

  We knew that we had to “face the condign.” There was no maudlin sentiment in that region. Solomon was truly believed to have been the wisest of men, and at least one of his decrees was still acted on in that pious community.

  The black boys were shipped off to their mammies and I fear received their full share of “the condign.”

  We were ushered solemnly into the house and were marched upstairs to meditate on our enormities.

  We could hear the debate going on below, and now and then a gentle voice took up the cause. Presently a slow step mounted the stair and the door opened. It was a grave senior—owner of Don. We knew that we were gone.

  “Boys, didn’t you know better than that?”

  Three culprits looked at each other sideways and remained speechless. We were trying to figure out which was the more politic answer.

  “Now, this is Christmas—”

  “A time of peace and good-will,” said Met under his breath, but loud enough to be heard.

  “Yes—and that’s the reason I am going to appeal to you as to what should be done to you. Suppose you were in my place and I in yours, and you had told me never—never to take the pointers out to run hares, and I knew I was disobeying you, and yet I had done it deliberately—deliberately disobeyed you—what would you do?”

  I confess that the case seemed hopeless. But Met saved the day.

  “I’ll tell you what I’d do, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I’d give you another chance.”

  “Hm—ah—ur—”

  It was, however, too much for him, and he first began to smile and then to laugh. Met also broke out into a laugh, knowing that he had caught him.

  So peace and good-will were restored and Christmas really began.

  CANDLE AND CRIB, by K. F. Purdon

  CHAPTER I. MOLONEY’S

  It would be hard to find a pleasanter, more friendly-looking place in all Ardenoo than Moloney’s of the Crooked Boreen, where Big Michael and the wife lived, a piece up from the high-road. And well might you call the little causey “crooked” that led to their door! for rough and stony that boreen was, twisting and winding along by the bog-side, this way and that way, the same as if it couldn’t rightly make up its mind where it wanted to bring you. So it was all the more of a surprise when you did get to Moloney’s, to find a house with such an appearance of comfort upon it, in such a place.

  Long and low that house was, and very old. You could tell the great age of it by the thickness of the thatch, as well as by seeing, when you were standing inside upon the kitchen floor and looking up, that that same thatch was resting, not upon common planks, sawn with the grain and against the grain and every way, but upon the real boughs themselves, put there by them that had to choose carefully what would be suitable for their purpose, because there were few tools then for shaping timber. So that’s how the branches were there yet, the same as ever, bark and twigs and all; ay, and as sound as the day they were put there, two hundred years before.

  As for the walls at Moloney’s…mud, I’m not denying it! but the
thickness of them! and the way they were kept white-washed, inside and out! They’d dazzle you, to look at them; especially in the kitchen of an evening, when the fire would be strong. And that was a thing that occurred mostly always at Moloney’s. For Herself was a most notorious Vanithee; and there’s no better sign of good housekeeping than a clean, blazing hearth. Sure isn’t that, as a body might say, the heart of the whole house? Heart or hearth, isn’t it all the one thing, nearly? For if warmth and comfort for the body come from the one, doesn’t love and pleasant kindness come from the other? Ay, indeed!

  And now, here was the Christmas Eve come round again, when every one puts the best foot foremost, whether they can or not. And so by Moloney’s. The darkness had fallen, and a wild, wet night it was, as ever came out of the heavens. But that only made the light seem the brighter and more coaxing that the fire was sending out over the half-door, and through the little, twinkling bulls’-eyes windows, as if it was trying to say, “Come along in, whoever you are that’s outside in the cold and the rain! Look at the way the Woman has the floor swept, till there isn’t a speck upon it! and the tables and stools scoured like the snow, and the big old pewter plates and dishes upon the dresser polished till they’re shining like a goat’s eyes from under a bed! Come in! Sure every one is welcome here tonight, whether they come or not!”

  And still in all…!

  Well, one look round would tell you, with half an eye, that something was wrong at Moloney’s, Christmas Eve and all as it was. For Big Michael himself was standing there in the kitchen, cracking his red, wet fingers one after the other, and looking most uncomfortable. The wet was running down from his big frieze coat, but it wasn’t that he minded. He was too well used to soft weather to care about wet clothes. Beside him upon the floor was the big market-basket, with all manner of paper parcels, blue and brown, sticking out from under the lid that wouldn’t shut down, he had brought home so much from Melia’s shop. But that basket had a forgotten look about it, because there beside it stood Herself, and she not asking to unpack it or do a thing with it. She was a little bit of a woman, that you’d think you could blow off the palm of your hand with one puff of your breath. As thin as a whip she was, and as straight as a rush; and she was looking up now at Michael with flaming cheeks and eyes like troubled waters.

  “No letter!” she was saying; “and is it that you brought home no letter, after you being to the post! Sure it can’t be but they wrote to say were they coming or not, after they being asked here for the Christmas! Sure I thought you’d surely have word to say when to expect them; and was thinking even that they might be coming with yourself! Only I suppose the little ass and dray wouldn’t be grand enough for the wife! Of coorse I didn’t think of her writing; she may know no better, and isn’t to be blemt if she has no manners; she can’t help the way she was brought up! But Art! Sure there must be a letter from him…!”

  “Wait and I’ll try again!” said Big Michael slowly; and then he took to feel through his pockets again for the letter their son was to have sent them. But when he had done this, he could only shake his head, so that the rain-drops fell from his hair and beard—turning brackety gray, they were, Michael being on in years.

  “No, in trath! not as much as one letter have I this night!” he said slowly.

  At this the Woman began to laugh, in spite of the great annoyance that was on her.

  “Sure,” she said, “if Mrs. Melia had a letter for us, wouldn’t she have given it to you? What use would she have for it? And if she hadn’t, and told you so, where’s the sense in you feeling your pockets over and over? A body’d think you expected letters to grow there, the same as American apples in barrels! How could you have there what you didn’t put there? But let you go on off ou’er this now! Look at the state you have the clean floor in, with the rain dreeping from your cota-mor!”

  “Coming down it is, like as if it was out of a sieve!” said Michael; “and wasn’t it God that done it, that I took the notion to cut the holly ’n’ ivy while the day was someways fine, afore I started off to the shop! Has it safe below…so I’ll just go for it now, the way we can be settling out the Crib and all.…”

  “There’ll no holly ’n’ ivy go up on these walls tonight, if I’m to be let have a say in the business!” said Mrs. Moloney. “Sich trash and nonsense! making mess and trouble for them that has plenty to do without that! And as for the Crib, let it stop where it is.…”

  On the word she went back to her stool in the chimney-corner, where she always sat bolt upright, and took up her knitting, the same as if it wasn’t the Christmas Eve at all. For Art, their only child, that stocking was meant. But her hands were shaking so much that she dropped more stitches off the needles than she made, and still she persevered. Big Michael looked at her for a bit, very pitiful; even opened his mouth once, as if he wanted to say something; a nice, silent person he was, very even-going in himself. But he must have thought better of it, for he only shook his head again, and turned and went off out of the door into the wild storm and darkness, with the wind howling and threatening all about the bog and countryside, the shockingest ever you knew.

  And as soon as he was gone, didn’t the Woman throw down her knitting, and laid her head upon her knees, and cried and cried, till her blue checky apron was like as if it was after being wrung out of a tub of suds.

  “Och, Art!” she’d cry, “isn’t this the queer way for you to be going on! To say you never answered the letter that was wrote to you! This very day five-and-twenty years you came here to us! as lovely as a little angel you were! The grand big blue eyes of you! and the way you’d laugh up at me and put out the little hand…! And you the only one ever God sent us! And never a word between us, only when you took the notion to go off to Dublin; sure it near broke our hearts, but what could we do, only give you our blessing! And…and then hearing the good accounts of the way you were going on.… But it’s the wife that done it all, and has him that changed…! Too grand she is, no doubt, for the likes of us! Och, grand how-are-ye! no, but not half good enough for Art! He that was always counted a choice boy by all that knew him! And any word them that saw the wife beyant in Dublin with him brought back, was no great things. A poor-looking little scollop of a thing, they tell me she is; and like as if she’d have about as much iday of taking butter off a churn, or spinning a hank of yarn, as a pig would have of a holiday! What opinion could any sensible body have of that kind of a wedding, without even a match-maker to inquire into the thing, to see was it anyways suitable or not! Och, Art! Art! it’s little I thought, this day five-and-twenty years, the way the thing would be now!”

  CHAPTER II. THE STABLE

  While poor Mrs. Moloney was fretting like this, and it Christmas Eve and all, Big Michael was making his way through the wind and the sleety rain to where he had his stable, a piece off from the house. It was pitch-dark, so that he couldn’t see his hand before his eyes, if he held it up; but he had his lantern, and anyway he knew his way about blindfold. But even in daylight you might pass by that stable ready, unless you knew it was there. For it was very little, and being roofed with heather it looked only like a bit of the bog that had humped itself up a bit higher than the rest.

  Poor-looking and small as it was, Big Michael was very proud of that stable. He and Art had built it together, just before Art leaving home. It was wanted to keep the little wad of hay or straw safe from the weather, as well as to shelter the cow of a hard night. And after Art had gone off to the Big Smoke, and for no other reason only getting restless, as young hearts often do, many and many a time Michael would slope off to the stable, and sit down there to take a draw of the pipe and to wish he had his pleasant, active young boy back at home again. He missed Art full as much as the mother, and maybe more.

  In fact, it was getting into a habit with Michael to go off to the stable. He had the best of a wife, but still there were times when he’d wish to be with himself somewhere, so that he could take his ease, and still not be feeling himself a
n annoyance to a busy woman. Big Michael himself, the people said, always looked as if he thought tomorrow would do. But the Woman that owned him was of a different way of thinking, always going at something. So he got the fashion of keeping out of her way.

  When he got to the stable this night, a bit out of breath with the great wind, he took notice first of the cow, and he saw that she was comfortable, plenty of straw to lie upon, and plenty of fodder before her. So then he bethought him of the little ass that was outside under the dray yet.

  “I’ll put her in too!” he thought. “Destroyed she is and quite weakly with the wet, like all donkeys, God help them! let alone the mud and gutter she’s after travelling through, all that long ways from the shop! And carrit the things we were in need of, too! I’ll let her stand here near the cow. A good dry bed I’ll put under her, and give her a grain of oats to pet her heart. It’ll not go astray with her, and she has it well earned, the creature!”

  So he unyoked the ass and led her into the stable, and rubbed down her shaggy coat, all dripping like his own clothes, and fed her, and watched with a curious satisfaction the nice way, like a lady, that she took the feed he put before her.

  “Poor Winny!” he said, rubbing a finger up and down her soft ears; “many’s the time Art laughed at you, and said it was only one remove from a wheel-barra to be driving you! Ling-gerin’ Death is what he used to call you! But sure you do your best! and if you were the fastest horse ever won the Grand National, you could do no more!”

  He looked round then, with a very satisfied feeling. There he had them, the two poor animals that depended out of him, but that served him and his so well, too; had them safe and warm from the storm and rain outside. He swung the lantern to and fro, so that he could see everything that was in the stable. One end of it was filled with hay and straw. The light gleamed here, gleamed there upon the kind, homely plenty he had stored. Then it fell upon a heap of something else; something that glistened from many points, green and cheerful.