“A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”
                                        WORDSWORTH.

By the next morning Jim’s foot was wonderfully better, and he himself seemed very much at home. He wandered out at the back door when Alison had superintended his washing and dressing, and she subsequently found him critically inspecting the pigs.

“I like that one,” he said, with decision, when Alison joined him, indicating a small brown animal of a more lively disposition than all the rest.

“I’m no mindin’ aboot pigs,” said Alison; “I’m no denyin’ they’re useful, but I’m no mindin’ aboot them—they’re dirty beasts.”

“I like that pig,” repeated Jim, firmly. And then he pursued thoughtfully, “I was dirty ’fore I was washed. I was a dirty beast too. Will you wash the pig?”

“My certie!” cried Alison, with a laugh. “What next? Tinkers’ brats biddin’ me wash pigs! Hoot! laddie, dinna talk havers, and come awa’ in tae yer porridge.” And she conducted him to his breakfast in the kitchen.

“I want to play with that little pig,” Jim murmured, as he followed.

“Noo, ye’ll mind me,” said Alison, severely, as she poured a good supply of milk over his porridge. “If I find ye near tae that stye, dirtyin’ yerself wi’ thae pigs, I’ll tak’ the tawse tae ye”—a threat which lost some of its terror from the fact that Jim was totally ignorant what tawse might signify.

For the benefit of those whose knowledge is equally limited, I may describe this briefly as a piece of leather of, perhaps, eighteen inches by three, one end of which is cut up into six or seven strips about eight inches long, and is a safe and effectual means of administering corporal punishment to the youthful delinquent. Sometimes the strips are burned, to produce and extra hardness, but this verges on undue severity.

Early in the forenoon Miss Mercer sent “the lassie” to the Manse with a message to the effect that if the minister could spare time on his return from Dundee she would be glad to have the privilege of a few words with him. And, accordingly, about tea-time he walked up to Gail Cottage.

“I am in sore want of your advice,” Miss Mercer said, when she had greeted him. “You will excuse me calling you out after your long journey; but I have been much put about, not knowing what was right to do in the unusual circumstances.” And then she related her story and all the incidents connected with the finding of Jim.

“It is obvious, I should say,” observed the minister, “that it was the tinkers that brought him to the village. Whether he is their own bairn, or one they may have stolen for the sake of his clothes, is, of course, a question.”

“Yes,” said Miss Mercer; “and whichever he is, what would you think I should do about the bairn? The gipsy folk will be far enough away by now. And if we did find them, likely there would be no truth to be got from them anyway.”

I think the advertisement you suggested would be a good plan,” said the minister. “If he is the child of decent folk, he might be claimed. And till then——”

“And till then,” said Miss Mercer, hurriedly, “he can remain here. He’s—he’s clean now.”

“You say he can tell nothing about himself,” pursued the minister.

“Well,” said Miss Mercer, “neither Alison nor I could get at anything like his history; but, maybe, it would be well if you were to see him and question him yourself.” And she rang the bell for Alison, and summoned Jim.

He came in and inspected the white-haired minister with a calmness and thoroughness which seemed habitual to him.

“Well, my wee mannie,” said the minister, “and how are you?”

“It’s better,” said Jim, briefly, holding out one of his feet, which were now clad in white socks, contributed by Miss Mercer, and a pair of strong boots a size too large, which Alison had obtained ready-made from the Gailside shoemaker.

“How did you hurt it?” inquired the minister.

“It was a stone,” said Jim; but he put a descriptive adjective before the stone, which made Miss Mercer give a horrified start, and look appealingly at the minister.

“You must not say words like that, my man,” said the minister, gravely; “they’re bad. Though,” he added, in a kindly voice, as his eyes met the big brown ones fixed on him, “you will not know that.”

“Big Joe said it,” said Jim, not offering an excuse, but stating a fact.

“Yes,” said the minister, “I would not wonder if he did, and other words too, that it is not well you should say, and that it would not please your father and mother to hear you say.”

He looked at Jim attentively, as he made this suggestion, but could not observe that it produced any effect: the boy simply continued to regard him as before.

“Do you think you would come and sit on my knee?” the minister said. “I might find something in my pocket.”

He generally did, as the youth of Gailside well knew. Jim was not aware of it, of course, but he had taken the minister’s measure by this time. He advanced at once, allowing himself to be lifted up, and looking on with interest while his new friend drew a paper packet from his pocket, and, unfolding it, discovered therein the delicacy known at Gailside as “bull’s-eyes.”

“Do you think one would go into your mouth?” the minister inquired.

Jim nodded, and promptly absorbed the sweet, diffusing an odour of peppermint around.

“I like you,” he observed, as clearly as circumstances permitted. “And I like her,” pointing a finger at Miss Mercer; “and her,” looking vaguely at the door, “her that washed me.” He paused—and added thoughtfully, “She put soap in my eyes.” Then he went on cheerfully, and with more decision than he had put into any of the other likings, perhaps feeling this last sentiment might be combated, “And I like that little pig.”

“Had you pigs at home?” the minister inquired.

Jim shook his head.

“You will remember your mother?” the minister asked.

Jim sucked his bull’s-eye, and looked vague.

“Did she call you ‘Jim’?” pursued the minister.

Again the brown head was shaken.

“I wonder what she called you?” went on the minister in a soothing tone. “I wonder what it would be? Would it—would it be baby?”

But neither he nor Miss Mercer were prepared for the result of this question. Jim suddenly quivered, looked at them piteously, and then, collapsing into a little heap in the minister’s arms, he broke into the most heartrending sobs it had ever been the lot of these two people to hear.

The minister hushed him softly in his arms. “My wee mannie,” he said, “my wee mannie,” and rocked him gently backwards and forwards. “He has remembered now,” he said to Miss Mercer; “and, maybe, we’ll get at something. But we must be tender with the poor bit laddie.” And it was some time before he ventured to continue his investigations.

Presently, Jim was quiet but for an occasional little heaving sob. The minister administered another bull’s-eye to replace the original one, which in the first burst of emotion had been ejected on to the floor.

“I wonder what you left your mother for?” the minister ventured at last.

There was another gulp. “They took her—took her away.”

“Took her away,” said the minister. “I wonder where it would be to?”

“In a—in a box,” Jim sobbed.

And then Miss Mercer and the minister looked at each other; they understood something now: this was a little motherless boy they had to deal with.

“In a box,” repeated Jim, with a heaving sob, “in a black box.”

“That was what you thought,” said the minister, boldly—“that was what you thought, my wee lamb; but she’s away up there,” pointing out of the window and up at the blue sky with floating white clouds upon it. “Up there, with a white robe on her, and a golden harp in her hand, singing praises before the throne.” For, you see, the minister’s heaven was a very primitive one, and he had never thought of going beyond the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

Miss Mercer looked a little perplexed; she was not sure he might not be assuming too much, for what did they know about Jim’s mother, and what manner of woman she might have been? She changed the subject.

“You will mind your father?” she said. And the question had, at least, the effect of checking Jim’s sobs, and bringing a puzzled look to his face.

“Was he there when your mother—went away?” asked the minister.

Jim shook his head.

“Do you remember ever seeing him at all?” asked Miss Mercer.

Then Jim looked up with a sudden idea. “The picture,” he said.

“What picture?”

“The soldier—and mammie cried.”

“What else?” asked Miss Mercer, eagerly.

“Just mammie cried,” repeated Jim. Then, with an afterthought, “She held me up, and we kissed it.”

“Do you remember anything else in the house?” asked the minister.

“The sword,” said Jim, “the big sword—above the picture.”

“Fatherless and motherless, I doubt,” the minister said to Miss Mercer.

And she answered, “Yes.”

Then she turned to Jim again. “What sort of a house did you live in?” she asked. And then, seeing she had put too large a question, added, “Was it bigger than this?”

Jim opened his eyes, then shook his head, as he answered, “Oh no; littler.”

“I expect they have been in poor circumstances,” she said to the minister. “Perhaps the father was a common soldier. But there’s that about the bairn’s face bids me think he comes of gentle-folks too.”

“There’s no saying,” the minister responded, dubiously. “How did you come to be with these folks, my man—Big Joe and the rest?”

“Mammie was took away,” Jim said, his lip beginning to quiver again, “and I went out, and I ran, and I ran, and I ran—and then Sal came—and it’s a long time ago,” he concluded, lying back in the minister’s arms in a tired way.

“Yes,” said the minister, “I expect that is the whole story as far as we’ll get it from you, my laddie. Just one word more—the name of the place where you lived with your mammie, do you mind that?”

But Jim did not; obviously he had told them all he knew, and there was nothing further to be got from him.

“Then I think we’ll bid him run away to Alison and play,” the minister suggested to Miss Mercer, and she assenting, the door was opened for Jim, and he departed.

“Poor bairn!” said Miss Mercer, “I fear he’s alone in the world. The father must have been dead a while, and then when the mother went, he just ran and took up with the tinker folk.”

“Yes,” said the minister; “but I think we might try the advertisement, for there may be some relatives of the father’s or the mother’s somewhere that would own him.”

“We’ll just draw it up, then,” said Miss Mercer; and she and the minister proceeded to collaborate, and, after some discussion, succeeded in producing what they thought suitable for publication.

“If no one answers it,” she said, when the minister had written it out in a fair hand, and read it over to her—“if no one answers it—well, I cannot abide the thought of the poor’s-house—and he’s a bonnie wee laddie,” exculpating herself as well as she could. “And I—I could give him a plain education, and have him taught a decent trade. I would not put him above himself; for, after all, perhaps it’s unlikely he’s come of gentlefolks. He would just go to the Gailside school, and——”

But here piercing shrieks from the passage interrupted Miss Mercer. She and the minister rose hurriedly, and hastened to the rescue; Alison appearing on the scene at the same moment.

“Keep me!” she cried. “Is the bairn murdered?”

But the bairn was there unharmed in person, though damp and soapy as to clothing. Moreover, the heartrending shrieks were not proceeding from him, but from a wet and unhappy little brown pig whom Jim was pursuing in the passage, and finally captured on the door-mat by the simple expedient of falling on the top of it.

“I washed it,” he said proudly to Alison.

“Eh, ye bad laddie!” cried she, irate. “What a like mess ye’ve been makin’! Eh, but ye’ll get yer skelps for this!”

Jim drew himself up, and addressed Miss Mercer, incidentally dropping the pig in the process. “She said plenty soap and water never no harm for nothing. The little pig was a dirty beast same as me—it’s clean now.”

“I think, Alison,” said Miss Mercer, rather helplessly, “he meant well; but he mustn’t do it again. And—Alison, it’s a cold day; would it not be well if you were to give the poor beast a rub with a cloth before you put it out?”

Wherefore, the pig was dried.

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