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To prevent the loss of taws one of us was sent ahead to watch for their coming and listen for the faint thud of their fall, while the other three drove from the tee.
When Tam was nearly five years old, he was sent to school, chiefly no doubt to get him out of the way; but Scotch schools for the children of the working classes were in those days very rough hard places, where the taws or leather strap was still regarded as the chief instrument of education.
Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female, running with jugs on their heads, gamblers squatting over taws, merelles,* dice, vachettes, the ardent game of tringlet, quarrels in one corner, kisses in another, and the reader will have some idea of this whole picture, over which flickered the light of a great, flaming fire, which made a thousand huge and grotesque shadows dance over the walls of the drinking shop.
On such occasions he would hastily drain a dipper of rum and vichy water and become again the correct English gentleman. The denouement came swiftly. Gertrude never forgot it. It was the night of the great ball at Nosham Taws. The whole neighbourhood was invited.
The boy's mother didn't worry very much about the youngster, but the father had spells when he took the matter to the Lord in prayer, and afterward, growing impatient of an answer, fell to and used the taws without mercy. John Henry probably did this as much to relieve his own feelings as for the good of the boy, but doubtless he did not reason quite that far.
His perplexed parents sent him to another school, the teacher of which used more vigorous measures to cure him of his propensity, applying to his back an instrument of torture called "the taws." It was in vain. From this second school he was expelled, because some horse-leeches, which he had brought to school in a bottle, escaped, crept up the legs of the other boys, and drew blood from them.
IT was a wild and stormy night on the West Coast of Scotland. This, however, is immaterial to the present story, as the scene is not laid in the West of Scotland. For the matter of that the weather was just as bad on the East Coast of Ireland. But it is not necessary to pronounce either of these names in reading them. Nosham Taws was a typical English home.
"And we make taws and whips out of his thick hide to correct little boys, if they have too much to say sometimes," remarked Fil's father, who winked at me, showing that his words were more severe than were his intentions or acts. Like the terrier, he just liked to frighten people; his bark was worse than his bite, as the saying is. "Let us stop here," begged Fil.
Now, mind: next thee strikes first with thee fist, my lad, and hard, too." If I had seen our good Bishop White playing at taws, I could not have been more overcome, and I dare say my face may have shown it, for, glancing at me, he said demurely, "Thee has seen in thy lifetime how hard it is to get rid of what thee liked in thy days of boyhood."
His distant cousin of the older line, the true heir, had died in a Russian prison to which the machinations of the Earl, while Ambassador at Tschminsk, had consigned him. The daughter of this cousin was the true owner of Nosham Taws. The family story, save only that the documents before her withheld the name of the rightful heir, lay bare to Gertrude's eye. Strange is the heart of woman.
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