Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 1
Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City
His Progress and Adventures
: S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
CONTENTS.
ADVENTURE PAGE
I.—The outcasting of Cleg Kelly 1
II.—The burning of the Whinny Knowes 5
III.—Why Cleg Kelly hated his father 13
IV.—How Isbel Kelly heard sweet music 21
V.—The brigands of the city 29
VI.—Cleg turns burglar 38
VII.—The adventure of the cockroaches 45
VIII.—The flight of Sheemus 51
IX.—The warming of the Drabble 57
X.—The squaring of the police 62
XI.—The boy in the wooden hut 68
XII.—Vara Kavannah of the Tinklers' Lands 72
XIII.—Cleg's second burglary 80
XIV.—Cleg turns diplomatist 86
XV.—The fire in Callendar's yard 94
XVI.—In the key of boy natural 101
XVII.—The Knuckle Dusters 110
XVIII.—Big Smith subdues the Knuckle Dusters 116
XIX.—The pilgrims of the penny gaff 123
XX.—The difficulties of Adonis betwixt
two Venuses 129
XXI.—An idyll of Bogie roll 139
XXII.—The seduction of a bailie 143
XXIII.—The amorous adventures of a
night-shift man 147
XXIV.—The crook in the lot of Cleaver's boy 153
XXV.—A comely Providence in a new frock 157
XXVI.—R. S. V. P. 163
XXVII.—Janet of Inverness tastes the herb
bitter-sweet 167
XXVIII.—The engine-driver with the beard 172
XXIX.—Muckle Alick's Bannockburn 177
XXX.—How Geordie Grierson's engine broke
its buffer 181
XXXI.—The "awfu' woman" 184
XXXII.—Maid Greatheart and her pilgrims 190
XXXIII.—The babes in the haystack 194
XXXIV.—That of Mary Bell, byre lass 198
XXXV.—The knight in the soft hat 202
XXXVI.—The madness of Hugh Boy 207
XXXVII.—Boy Hugh finds out the nature of a kiss 212
XXXVIII.—Of Miss Briggs and her ten cats 216
XXXIX.—The adventure of Snap's porridge 222
XL.—A new kind of hero 227
XLI.—"Twa laddies—and a lassie" 233
XLII.—Muckle Alick considers 243
XLIII.—Town knight and country knight 247
XLIV.—Cleg relapses into paganism 253
XLV.—The cabin on the summit 262
XLVI.—A child of the devil 268
XLVII.—The sleep of James Cannon, signalman 275
XLVIII.—Muckle Alick sees the distant signal
stand at Clear 284
XLIX.—Cleg collects tickets 291
L.—General Theophilus Ruff 300
LI.—The General's establishment 309
LII.—The three coffins in the strong-room 318
LIII.—A stormy morning at Loch Spellanderie 326
LIV.—Kit Kennedy's farewell 335
LV.—A young man's fancy 341
LVI.—The voices in the marsh 349
LVII.—Fighting the beasts 359
LVIII.—Within the red door 367
LIX.—The beech hedge 377
LX.—Cleg's treasure-trove comes to him 383
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACING PAGE
From the lake arose the voice mocking
and bitter. (see page 260) _Frontispiece_
When "the Warrior" came. 11
"I shall be ruined!" 65
"Our roads separate here." 123
"He gripped them baith, but he hadna time to loup
clear o' the far rail." 182
"Out with it!" said the minister. 208
Along gloomy passages. 321
The dark figure ran past them. 358
ADVENTURE I.
THE OUTCASTING OF CLEG KELLY.
"It's all a dumb lie—God's dead!"
Such a silence had never fallen upon the Sunday school, since the
fatal day when the gate was blown into the middle of the floor
by Mickey McGranaghan, a recent convert (and a temporary one) to
the peculiar orthodoxy of Hunker Court. But the new explosion far
outstripped the old in its effects. For it contained a denial of all
the principles upon which the school was founded, and especially it
confounded and blasphemed the cheerful optimism of Mr. James Lugton,
its superintendent, otherwise and more intimately known as "Pund o'
Cannles."
The statement which contained so emphatic a denial of the eternity of
the Trinity was made by Cleg Kelly, a barelegged loon of eleven, who
stood lone and unfriended on the floor before the superintendent's desk
in the gloomy cellar known as Hunker Court school. Cleg Kelly had been
reported by his teacher for incorrigible persistence in misconduct. He
had introduced pins point upwards through the cracks in the forms. He
had an instrument of wire cunningly plaited about his fingers, by means
of which he could nip unsuspecting boys sitting as many as three or
four from him—which is a great advantage to a boy in a Sunday school.
Lastly, he had fallen backwards over a seat when asked a question; he
had stood upon his hands and head while answering it, resuming his
first position as if nothing had happened so soon as the examination
passed on to the next boy. In fact, he had filled the cup of his
iniquities to the brim.
His teacher did not so much object to the pranks of Cleg Kelly
himself. He objected mainly because, being ragged, barelegged, with
garments picturesquely ventilated, and a hat without a crown, he was
as irresistible in charm and fascination to all the other members of
his class as if he had been arrayed in silver armour starry clear.
For though Hunker Court was a mission school, it was quite a superior
mission. And (with the exception of one class, which was much looked
down upon) the lowest class of children were not encouraged to attend.
Now Cleg Kelly, by parentage and character, was almost, if not quite,
as the mothers of the next social grade said, "the lowest of the low."
So when Cleg's teacher, a respectable young journeyman plumber, could
stand no more pranks and had grown tired of cuffing and pulling, he led
Cleg up to the awful desk of the superintendent from which the rebukes
and prizes were delivered.
Thereupon "Pund o' Cannles," excellent but close-fisted tallow chandler
and general dealer, proceeded to rebuke Cleg. Now the rebukes of "Pund
o' Cannles" smelt of the counter, and were delivered in the tones in
which he addressed his apprentice boys when there were no customers in
the shop—a tone which was entirely different from the bland suavity
which he used when he joined his hands and asked, "And what is the next
article, madam?"
"Do you know, boy," said the superintendent, "that by such sinful
conduct you are wilfully going on the downward road? You are a wicked
boy, and instead of becoming better under your kind teacher, and taking
advantage of the many advantages of this place devoted to religious
instruction, you stick pins—brass pins—into better conducted boys than
yourself. And so, if you do not repent, God will take you in your
iniquity and cast you into hell. For, remember, God sees everything and
punishes the bad people and rewards the good."
The superintendent uttered, though he knew it not, the most ancient of
heresies—that which Job refuted.
It was at this point in the oration of "Pund o' Cannles" that Cleg
Kelly's startling interruption occurred. The culprit stopped making O's
on the dusty floor with his toe, amongst the moist paper pellets which
were the favourite distraction of the inattentive at Hunker Court; and,
in a clear voice, which thrilled through the heart of every teacher and
scholar within hearing, he uttered his denial of the eternity of the
Trinity.
"It's all a dumb lie—God's dead!" he said.
There was a long moment's silence, and small wonder, as the school
waited for the shivering trump of doom to split the firmament. And the
patient and self-sacrificing teachers who gave their unthanked care to
the youth of the court every Sunday, felt their breaths come short, and
experienced a feeling as if they were falling over a precipice in a
dream. At last Mr. James Lugton found his voice.
"Young and wicked blasphemer!" he said sternly, "your presence must no
longer, like that of the serpent in Paradise, poison the instruction
given at this Sabbath school—I shall expel you from our midst——"
Here Cleg's teacher interposed. He was far from disliking his scholar,
and had anticipated no such result arising from his most unfortunate
reference of his difficulty to the superintendent. For he liked Cleg's
ready tongue, and was amused by the mongrel dialect of Scots and Irish
into which, in moments of excitement, he lapsed.
"I beg pardon, sir," he said, "but I am quite willing to give Kelly
another chance—he is not such a bad boy as you might think."
The superintendent waved his hand in a dignified way. He rather fancied
himself in such scenes, and considered that his manner was quite as
distinguished as that of his minister, when the latter was preaching
his last memorable course of sermons upon the imprecatory psalms, and
making solemn applications of them to the fate of members of a sister
denomination which worshipped just over the way.
"The boy is a bold blasphemer and atheist!" he said; "he shall be cast
out from among our innocent lambs. Charles Kelly, I solemnly expel you
upon this Christian Sabbath day, as a wicked and incorrigible boy, and
a disgrace to any respectable mission school."
The attitude of the superintendent was considered especially fine at
this point. And he went home personally convinced that the excellent
and fitting manner in which he vindicated the good name of Hunker
Court upon this occasion, was quite sufficient to balance an extensive
practice of the use of light weights in the chandler's shop at the
corner of Hunker's Row. He further entirely believed judicious severity
of this kind to be acceptable in the highest quarters.
So as the resisting felon is taken to prison, Cleg Kelly, heathen of
eleven years, was haled to the outer door and cast forth of Hunker
Court. But as the culprit went he explained his position.
"It's all gammon, that about prayin'," he cried; "I've tried it heaps
of times—never fetched it once! An' look at my mother. She just prays
lashings, and all the time. An' me father, he's never a bit the
better—no, nor her neither. For he thrashes us black and blue when he
comes hame just the same. Ye canna gammon me, Pund o' Cannles, with
your lang pray-prayin' and your short weight. I tell you God's dead,
and it's all a dumb lie!"
The last accents of the terrible renunciation lingered upon the tainted
air even after the door had closed, and Cleg Kelly was an outcast. But
the awed silence was broken by a whiz and jingle which occurred close
to the superintendent's ear, as Cleg Kelly, Iconoclast, punctuated
his thesis of defiance by sending a rock of offence clear through the
fanlight over the door of Hunker Court mission school.
ADVENTURE II.
THE BURNING OF THE WHINNY KNOWES.
Cleg Kelly was now outcast and alien from the commonwealth. He had
denied the faith, cast aside every known creed, and defied the Deity
Himself. Soon he would defy the policeman and break the laws of
man—which is the natural course of progression in iniquity, as every
one knows.
So leaving Hunker Court he struck across the most unfrequented streets,
where only a stray urchin (probably a benighted Episcopalian) was
spending the Sabbath chivying cats, to the mountainous regions of
Craigside, where the tall "lands" of St. Leonards look out upon the
quarried crags and steep hill ridges of Arthur's Seat. For Cleg was
fortunate enough to be a town boy who had the country at his command
just over the wall—and a wall, too, which he could climb at as many
as twenty points. Only bare stubby feet, however, could overpass
these perilous clefts. Cleg's great toes, horny as if shod with iron,
fitted exactly into the stone crevices from which the mortar had been
loosened. His grimy little fingers found a purchase in the slightest
nicks. And once on the other side, there was no policeman, park-keeper,
or other person in authority, who could make the pace with Cleg's bare
brown legs, at least up the loose clatter of the shingle between the
lower greensward and the Radical Road.
So, after being expelled from Hunker Court, Cleg made straight for a
nook of his own among the crags. Here, like a prudent outlaw, he took
account of his possessions with a view to arranging his future career
of crime. He turned out his pockets into his hat. This was, indeed,
a curious thing to do. For the article which he wore upon his shaggy
locks was now little more than the rim of what had once been a covering
for the head, proof against wind and water. But though Cleg's treasures
rested upon the ground, the fact that they were within his hat-rim
focussed them, as it were, and their relative worth was the more easily
determined.
The first article which Cleg deposited upon the ground inside his hat
was a box of matches, which had been given him to light the gas with in
the outlying corners of Hunker Court school, for that dank cellar was
gloomy enough even on a summer afternoon. Then came some string, the
long-pronged nipping-wires which he had taken from his father's stores,
a pair of pincers, a knife with one whole and one broken blade, a pipe,
some brown-paper tobacco of a good brand, a half-written exercise-book
from the day-school at which Cleg occasionally looked in, five marbles
of a variety known as "commonies," one noble knuckler of alabaster
which Cleg would not have parted with for his life, a piece of dry
bread, and, lastly, half an apple, with encroaching bays and projecting
promontories, which indicated in every case but one the gap in Cleg's
dental formation on the left side of his upper jaw, which dated from
his great fight with Hole in the Wa' in the police yard. The exception
was a clean semicircle, bitten right into the apple-core. This was the
tidemark of a friendly bite Cleg had given to a friend, in whose double
row were no gaps. The perfect crescent had been made by the teeth of a
lassie—one Vara Kavannah.
The box of matches was to its owner the most attractive article in
all this array of wealth. Cleg looked into his hat-rim with manifest
pleasure. He slapped his knee. He felt that he was indeed well adapted
to the profession of outlaw. If he had to be a Cain, he could at least
make it exceedingly lively in the Land of Nod.
It was a chilly day on the craigs, the wind blowing bask from the East,
and everything underfoot as dry as tinder. The wild thought of a yet
untried ploy surged up in Cleg's mind. He grasped the matchbox quickly,
with thoughts of arson crystallising in his mind. He almost wished that
he had set Hunker Court itself on fire. But just in time he remembered
Vara Kavannah and her little brother Hugh.
"I'll get them to gang to anither school first," he said.
But in the meantime, with the thought of setting fire to something in
his heart and the matchbox in his hand, it was necessary to find the
materials for a blaze. He had no powder with him or he would have made
a "peeoye"—the simple and inexpensive firework of metropolitan youth.
He looked up at the heather and whin which covered the Nether Hill.
His heart bounded within him at the thought. He looked again at his
matchbox, which was one of the old oval shape, containing matches so
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