The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
"Oh, good Mr Llewellyn, dear, I never shall see nothing more of my great
brothers five, so long as ever I do live. And when they kicked me out of
bed every Sunday morning, and spread the basins over me, it was not that
they meant to harm--I do feel it, I do feel it; and perhaps my knees ran
into them. Under the sands, the sands, they are; and never to kick me
again no more! Of sorrow it is more than ever I can tell."
"Watty," said I, "why talk you so? Your brothers know every crick and
corner of this warren, miles and miles; and could carry a sandhill
among them. They are snug enough somewhere with their game, and perhaps
gone to sleep, like the little ones."
Of the babies' adventures he knew nothing, and only stared at me; so I
asked him what had scared him so.
"Under the sands, the sands, they are, so sure as ever I do live. Or the
rabbit-bag would not be here, and Dutch, who never, never leaves them,
howling at the rabbit-bag!"
Looking further through the tussocks, I saw that it was even so. Dutch,
the mongrel collie, crouched beside a bag of something, with her tail
curled out of sight, and her ears laid flat and listless, and her jowl
along the ground. And every now and then she gave a low but very
grievous howl.
"Now, boy, don't be a fool," I said, with the desire to encourage him;
"soon we shall find your brothers five, with another great sack of
rabbits. They left the bitch yonder to watch the sack, while they went
on for more, you see."
"It is the sack; the sack it is! And no other sack along of them. Oh, Mr
Llewellyn, dear, here is the bag, and there is Dutch, and never no sign
at all of them!"
At this I began to fear indeed that the matter was past helping--that
an accident and a grief had happened worse than the drowning of all the
negroes, which it has ever pleased Providence (in a darkness of mood) to
create for us. But my main desire was to get poor Watty away at once,
lest he should encounter things too dreadful for a boy like him.
"Go home," I said, "with the bag of rabbits, and give poor Dutch her
supper. Your father is down on the shore of the sea, and no doubt the
boys are with him. They are gone to meet a great shipwreck, worth all
the rabbits all the way from Dunraven to Giant's Grave."
"But little Dutch, it is little Dutch! They never would leave her, if
wreck there was. She can fetch out of the water so good almost as any
dog."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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