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only thing that young Buckney could say to express his
surprise at the wonderful stone buildings was “Blow
me!” He had expected to find that the great Canadian
city of Montreal would be just a few slab shacks, with
forests on all sides, and painted Indians prowling,
tomahawk in hand, in search of scalps. When he left
the big Atlantic liner with twenty other raw English
lads of his own street-bred sort, he thought he was
saying good-bye to civilization forever. And here, all
around him, arose the massive stone-built city, teeming
with life, with gayety, wealth, and poverty, carriages,
horses, motor cars—why, it was just like London,
after all! And once more “Buck” said, “Blow
me!”
“What’s that he
says, father?” asked a slender young lady who
had accompanied her father, the great surgeon, to help
him select a Barnardo boy to assist the stableman.
“Oh, it’s an English
street expression,” smiled the surgeon. “I
expect he’ll have dozens of queer sayings.
“Never mind,” said
the young lady; “he has a nice face, and his eyes
look terribly straight at one. I think we’ll take
him, father?”
Her voice rose in a question,
but it took Buck just two seconds to know she need not
have asked it. The great surgeon would have taken an
elephant if she had expressed a liking for it.
“Keep on the right side
of her and you’ll stand in wid de old man,”
whispered the boy next to him.
“Don’t yer t’ink
I sees dat?” sneered Buck. “Yer must t’ink
I lef’ my h’yes in Lunnon.” And the
shrewd [Page 139] young street arab
arose to his feet, touched his cap with his forefinger,
and said:
“H’all right sir;
I ’opes I’ll suit.”
That was the beginning of it,
yet, notwithstanding Buck had made up his mind that
whatever happened he would make himself “suit,”
still he met with a serious discouragement the very
next morning, when his unwilling ears overheard a conversation
between the surgeon and the stableman. The latter was
saying:
“I hope you will excuse
me speaking, Doctor, but I think you’ve made a
mistake getting this here green Barnardo boy to help
with the horses. They never do know nothin’, those
English boys, and you can’t teach ’em.”
“Well,” hesitated
the doctor, “we’ll have to give him a trial,
I suppose. Miss Connie took a fancy to him.”
“Oh, Miss Connie,
was it?” repeated the stableman, in quite another
tone. “Then that settles it, sir.” And it
did.
“So I owes dis ’ere
’ome to ‘Miss Connie,’ does I?”
remarked Buck to himself. “Den if dat is so, I’s
good for payin’ of her fer it.” Only he
pronounced “pay” “py.”
But it was a long two years
before the boy got any chance to “py” her
for her kindness, and when the chance did come, he would
have given his sturdy young life to avert it. By this
time, much mixing with Canadians had blunted his London
street-bred accent. To be sure he occasionally slipped
an “h,” or inserted one where it should
not be, but he was fast swinging into line with the
great young country he now called “home.”
He could eat Indian corn and maple syrup, he could skate,
toboggan, and ply a paddle, he could handle a horse
as well as Watkins, the stableman, who was heard on
several occasions to remark that he could not get along
without the boy.
In the holidays, when Miss Connie
was home from school, Buck was frequently allowed to
drive her, or sit in his cream and brown livery beside
her while she drove herself. These were always great
occasions, for no refined [Page 140]
feminine being had ever come into his life before. If
he ever had a mother—which he often doubted—he
certainly had no recollection of her or her surroundings.
To be sure the women about the “Home” in
far-off England were kind and good, but this slim Canadian
girl was so different. She looked like a flower, and
he had never heard her speak a harsh, unlovely word
in all those two years. Once as he stood at the carriage
door, the rug over his arm, waiting for Miss Connie
to descend the steps for her afternoon drive, an impudent
little “Canuck” jeered at him in passing.
“Hello, Hinglish!”
he yelled. “We’re a Barnardo boy, we h’is,
fer all our swell brass buttons.”
Buck winced. How he hated Watkins
on the box to hear this everlasting taunt cast at him
But a sweet voice from the steps called:
“You are quite right,
my boy. He is a Barnardo boy. I wish we were all as
great and good as Dr. Barnardo. I am proud to have one
of one of his boys in my household.”
The young urchin shrank away,
abashed, for it was Miss Connie’s voice. Buck
pulled himself together, touched his hat, and opened
the carriage door. But the girl paused on the steps,
and her voice was very sincere as she said: “I
mean it, Buckney” (she always called him “Buckney”).
“I am very proud to have you here.”
Buck touched his hat. “Thank
you, madam,” was all he said, but his young heart
sang with gratitude. Would he ever get the
chance to show her how he valued her kindness, he wondered.
And then—the chance came.
Buck was never a heavy sleeper;
his boyhood had been too bedless for him to attach much
importance to sleep now. Too often had the tip of a
policeman’s boot stirred him gently, as he lay
curled up near an alley-way in London. Too often had
rude kicks awakened him, when down in the “slums”
he huddled, numb with cold and hunger. His ears had
grown acute, his legs nimble in that dreadful, far-away
life, and listening while he slept became [Page
141] second nature. Thus he sat bolt upright
in his comfortable little bed above the carriage house
when a soft creeping footstep stole up the gravel walk
from the stables to the kitchen. The night was very
warm, and the open window at his elbow was shutterless.
In the dark he could see nothing at first, then he made
out the figure of a man, crouching low, and creeping
around the kitchen porch to the doctor’s surgery
window. Immediately afterwards a low, gentle, rasping
sound fell on his ears. He had seen enough of crime
in the old days to know the man was filing something.
Should he awaken Watkins? What was the use? Watkins
would probably jump up, exclaiming aloud. He always
did when awakened suddenly. Perhaps, after all, he could
alarm the family before the man got in. Then, to his
amazement, someone opened the window from the inside.
By this time Buck had got his “night-sight.”
The man inside was exactly like the man outside, and
he had evidently effected an entrance into the house
some time during the day when the maids were upstairs,
and had probably concealed himself in the cellar. Both
wore masks. Instantly Buck was out of bed, dragging
on his trousers. Then, barefooted and shirtless, he
slipped downstairs, slid the side door open enough to
squeeze through, and peered out. All he could see was
the last leg of a man disappearing through the window.
They were both inside now. Buck knew every room, hall
and door in that house, for every spring and fall he
had helped the maids “clean house,” taking
up and laying carpets. The knowledge stood him in good
stead now. What window upstairs would be open, he wondered.
The bath-room, of course; it was small, but he could
wriggle through it, he told himself, or he would break
every bone in his body, at least, trying. All this time
he was running and crouching along the shadow of the
high stone wall, that, bordered with shrubs, made splendid
“cover.” He reached the kitchen, and, without
waiting to think whether it would bear him [Page
142] or not, seized hold of the twisted vine
trunks of the old Virginia creeper that partly covered
the house from ground to roof. Fortunately they held,
and up he went like a young squirrel, his bare toes
clutching like claws in the tangle of the stems and
twigs. He gained the roof, crawled rapidly along, and
reached the bath-room window, only to find he could
barely clutch the sill with the tips of his fingers.
Standing on tiptoe, he got a little grip, then his bare
toes and knees started to work; inch by inch up they
went over the rough stone wall, while his hands slipped
further and further over the sill, until they could
seize the ledge on the inside. Twice his knees slid
back, then his toes refused to clutch. They grew wet,
and warm, and he knew the sickening slipping back was
because of blood oozing from his skin. But he was in
the bath-room now, and didn’t care. Then, as he
flung the door open, the whole downstairs hall was flooded
with light, and a strange choking sound came from below.
Then the doctor’s voice, smothered but audible,
begging, “Go back! Go back, Connie! Lock your
door!”
“You say one word aloud
and I’ll fire!” said a low voice, and Buck
reached the head of the stairs only to see Doctor Raymond
lying half dressed on the floor, his hands tied behind
him, and a grasp of strong, dirty fingers on his throat.
“Oh, you’re killing
him! You’re killing my father!” cried Miss
Connie, in a half scream, as, too frightened to move,
she stood huddled back in a corner, gripping a large
cloak about her.
Buck stared at the scene a fraction
of a second. He could understand it all. The doctor
had been alarmed and had gone downstairs to investigate.
Miss Connie had been awakened and had followed her father,
thinking probably that he was ill. All this flashed
through the boy’s mind as he flung out his weaponless
hands in despair, but the gesture was the salvation
of the household. His fingers touched something cold,
hard, polished. It [Page 143] was a
huge, heavy brass bowl that held a fern. How often his
strong young fingers had cleaned that bowl with powder
and chamois skin, with never a thought that it would
serve him well some time! Now he grasped it, and creeping
noiselessly around the large, square “balcony”
of the upstairs hall, he stood directly above the ruffian
whose fingers yet clutched the doctor’s throat.
“Catch that girl!”
the other man was saying. “She’ll scream!
Catch her, I say, and gag her!”
“Oh, my girl, my little
girl! Leave her alone, you demons!” gasped the
helpless doctor. But just as the fingers loosed their
brutal grasp on the father’s throat to reach for
the frail, delicate flesh of the daughter’s, straight
as a carpenter’s leaden plumb there crashed on
to the top of the assailant’s head a huge, polished
brass bowl. The man fell, limp, senseless as a corpse.
His confederate whirled on his heel, and fired his revolver
twice rapidly above his head, just missing Buck.
Connie shrieked, and the next
moment the big, unclean fingers had locked themselves
about her throat, and she was forced to her knees, while
a guttural voice said: “Scream, will you! Well,
try it! This is what you get!”
For weeks Buck’s ears
rang with that awful, smothered cry of his young mistress,
of the tortured voice of the doctor, helplessly choking,
“Oh, my girl! My daughter!” But by this
time Buck was three steps from the bottom, and the back
of the burglar was toward him as he crouched over the
struggling girl, choking the screams in her delicate
throat. Like a vampire, Buck sprang from the third stair,
landing on the man’s back, his legs worked inside
the man’s elbows, pinioning the scoundrel’s
arms back like a trussed turkey, his arms went round
the bull-like neck, and his tough young fingers closed
on a sinewy throat. He clung to the creature’s
back like an octopus, while they rolled over and over,
and the terrified girl struggled up, regaining her breath.
“Quick! quick! Miss Connie!
The telephone! The [Page 144] police!
Ring! Ring!” Buck managed to shout. Then, “Untie
the doctor’s hands and feet!”
But the burglar’s arms
were now gripping behind him, and digging, cruel fingers
pierced Buck’s flesh. But the boy never relaxed
his octopus hold. The tighter the big nails clutched,
the tighter his own boyish fingers stiffened on the
man’s throat.
An eternity seemed to elapse.
He saw Miss Connie fly to the telephone, then her weak
little hands struggled with the ropes on her father’s
wrists. But before she could begin to loose them, four
gigantic men in blue uniforms were climbing in the open
surgery window to encounter a sight not soon to be forgotten.
The doctor, bound and bruised, lay on the floor; beside
him, a man rapidly regaining consciousness and sitting
up in a dazed condition; a young girl, with brutal red
marks about her throat; and on the floor at her feet
a man with a boy clinging to his back like a barnacle
to a boat, his young arms and bare legs binding the
fellow like ropes. It took those police officers but
the twinkling of an eye to have the two burglars handcuffed
and cowed at the point of their revolvers, and to hear
the whole story of the rescued doctor.
“But who’s this
little duffer?” asked the inspector, gazing at
Buck. “Why, look at his knees and feet! They’re
dripping blood!”
“Got that shinning up
the creeper and the stone-wall into the bathroom,”
said Buck, feeling terribly awkward to be seen in such
a plight before Miss Connie. So he stammered out his
explanation, from the moment he had awakened to this
very instant.
“Dropped the Damascus
bowl on his head did you?” gasped the doctor.
Then, as he looked at Buck as if he saw him for the
first time, he beheld his bleeding feet and torn knees.
“Officers,” said the great surgeon, “you
asked who he is. He’s our boy! He’s my
boy! I never had a son of my own, but—but—Buckney
goes to college [Page 145] next year,
and he goes as my adopted son. This night has shown
me what he’s made of.”
Then, for the first time in
all that dreadful night, Miss Connie gave out. She sat
weakly down, crying like a very little child. “Oh,
Buckney!” she sobbed, “they told us not
to take a Barnardo boy; that they were, half of them,
just street arabs; that we—we couldn’t trust
them. So, sometimes I’ve been afraid to hope you
were all right; and now you have probably saved my life.”
“No ‘probably’
about it, Miss Connie,” said the officer; “he
undoubtedly has saved your life, and the doctor’s
too. But, come, child, don’t cry; get to bed—there’s
a good little girl. You’ve had a bad night of
it.” Then turning to his men he commanded: “March
those two choice specimens to the police station at
once. Well, good-night, doctor! Good-night, Miss Connie.”
And looking at Buck he said curiously, “Good-night,
youngster! So you’re a Barnardo boy, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said
Buck, lifting his chin a little. “I used to be
ashamed of it, but—”
“You needn’t be,”
said the officer. “It’s not what a boy was,
but what he is, that counts nowadays. Good-night!
I wish we had more Britishers like you.”
Then the door closed and the
tramp of the policemen and their prisoners died slowly
away in the night. [Page 146]
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