THE LAND OF HIS FATHERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19469, 27 October 1926, Page 22

THE LAND OF HIS FATHERS.

(A NEW ZEALAND STORY.)

BY E. MARY GURNEY

Four o'clock—and a pitch, dark morn--1 i ri SRupert slapped Peter's back, startling that indignant animal wide awake. "Now, then, Sleepyhead, "Rupert admonished him. "Come awake, 'i ou ve got to hustle out of this!" Peter humped himself disagreeably, and made himself as awkward as ever he could —which was very awkward, indeed. He was annoyed, thoroughly annoyed, for he had seen dreaming of Kenlovv. and Lady Lake, and Marion, and Carrisima; and now noisy, inconsiderate Rupert had to come banging about just as he had succeed rtdin dozing off, and reawaken him to the rattle and clank of the truck, with its sickening sway and lurch. Peter half took the bit that Rupert thrust into his mouth, then spat it out morosely, and turned his sulky head away from Rupert, and nosed the wall that separated liini from Cara Mia. Simon Peter, late of Kenlow, was thoroughly out of sorts, and was simply spoiling, Rupert or no Rupert, to smash things; and he was only waiting foi Rupert to grab the halter, and jeik his head back, with more haste than tact, before he started. Rupert, of course, did nothing of the sort. He put Peter's bridle back on the nail, and went through into Cara Mia's box, slapping Peter's back as he passed: and Peter heard him talking to Cara Mia —talking soft, sweet nothing that meant everything to the nervy, little mare, as lie bridled her, and got her ready for detraining. Presently the tram stopped at a station, and Rupert got out, and went into the next box, where Feather, who was used to travelling, greeted him with a fchrili, joyous neigh. It was nearly an hour before the train | stopped, and Rupert came back; by which j time Peter had decided to be good, and j took the bit very meekly. Rupert i laughed at him, and made a fuss of him . generally—which was Rupert's way—all i the time the trucks were being shunted— j a most disagreeable process for all con- j cerned. • ; After a long time, during which the j trucks were buffeted and banged to a j most alarming degree, they came to rest j in the correct siding, and Rupert tin- j bolted and unbarred the door, and led | Peter out. There's absolutely no doubt about it •—Peter behaved disgracefully. He was so awfully glad to get out again, to feel j the so'iid earth once more, firm beneath j his dainty lioofs. There were lamps in j the station, of course, but most of the j light was supplied by an immense, golden- j yellow moon; not that Peter cared a rap about light—it wouldn't have made a J scrap of difference if it had been dark j and silent as a family vault. Directly | he felt the earth beneath his feet, lie squealed and reared, and plunged, and then tried, desperately, to bolt; arid would | have, in spite of Rupert, if it hadn't | been for Feather. Lin had arrived out of the darkness, and had just de-trained the pacer. Peter all but capsized the pair of them, would have, but for the size of Feather. Feather was so annoyed that be squealed and reared, striking at the astonished Peter, as he stoofl on his hind legs, for all tile world like a great performing bear. | it disconcerted Peter, who was not ac- I customed to such insolence from his kind, j Peter checked his headlong rush, and also achieved a vertical position; but Rupert ' —interfering, meddling Rupert-—jerked I his head down, and at rne and the same j moment, banged himself into Peter's j shoulder. When Peter regained his feet, he was I thoroughly subdued, and followed Rupert I out onto the load without so much as ! ■a sneeze. They tramped down a dark, deserted 1 street, that echoed eerily to the click | and thud of their hoofs, and presently I they were all housed in a dim, warm j stable. Rupert gave them all a big feed—with bran and carrots—and then left them J to pass the rest of the night in compara- I tive comfort. Belinda took the car out, with their | little bits of luggage. She didn't know the way, and Rupert j •wouldn't tell her. "You follow your none west, out of the town," he said, "toward the moun-tains"-—Lin was delighted with the mountains—" till you come to the gorge. Then you take the lower road, till you come to the bridge. After that, you wait till I come up with you." "Shan't—won't!" said Liu, pulling a liorrid face at him. But she did. Rupert rode Feather, and led Peter on ono side, and Cara Mia on the other. Feather danced, and shook his fine head, and snorted joyously; and Rupert laughed, and caressed him. "Glad to bo back, old chap ?" he crooned to the pacer. So am I—back •where we can see the mountains, and feel the space o' the plains! Lord, but it's good!" Peter was somewhat mystified by that allusion to the plains —for Mihini—the little town they had just left, was set in a little pocket in the hills. Over in the west, Peter glimpsed the gleaming crest of the mountains, already clad in a soft mantle of early snow. But the plains? Rupert smacked Feather lightly on the shoulder, and Feather thing his head out, did a double shuflle, and sped away at a pace that astonished Peter. Along a straight, somewhat uninteresting road, for two hot, dusty miles. Then a slight turn to the left, with the hills a bare mile ahead; and away, and away, through a narrow gorge, where the river glinted and sparkled in the morning sun, Peter caught bis first glimpse of the plains, and bounding their farthest, utmost rim, the mountains reared their splendid, gleaming heads, cameo cut, j against the brazen blue of the sky. It gave hill-bred Peter a funny feeling, even that little glimpse; and he, who had been hanging back a trifle, suddenly forged ahead, snuffing eagerly at the scented air; and how should he know , that the funny feeling was the homing 1 instinct, that he was returning—after years of exile—-to the home c; his fathers? . The road forked at the foot of the hills, and Rupert took the lower one, \ that turned sharp to the right, and ran along the foot of the hills. Then it went 1 up steeply, over the shoulder of the hill. Rupert checked Feather, on the incline, : for Cara Mia was young and soft. ' Feather fretted, and Peter—whose mother had been born and bred on these very plains, and his father also—kept whinnying softly, and turning to Rupert with soft, beseeching eyes, asking dumbly, the. ( meaning of the sudden intolerable long- 1 ing—half pain, half joy—that had come to torture his erstwhile care-free heart. 1 From the crest of the hill they could see a bigger sweep, so hauntingly lovely, f that it brought a lump into Rupert's 1 throat, for he was going home, in more ! ways than one. ' Down the hill, and along the white 1 road that nestled at its feet; then out at, last, round a rugged limestone head- 1 land, onto the bank of til® river, and ( the wide, stony river-bed seemed to wind away, and away, across the endless sweep ' of the plains, right up to the watching 1 hills. Round a little curve, up one more t bill, and then, and then— I , Space. c ■ Mile upon endless mile, sweeping away on either side, till it was lost in the * hazy distance: and straight oiit in front, i gave way at last to gjPfc- Cuw.,- monretauw. To the J.

(COPYRIGHT.)

right, and to the left, little, silver threads of river winked and sparkled in the sun —came brawling through the sunny greygreen fields, under the overhanging banks of weeping willow, to meet, in a broad expanse of shingle, at the foot of the yellow headland. j Here and there, the dark green of pines, tafl and graceful, broke the greygreen of the paddocks; and plantations of poplars, flaming gold, raised their slim, exquisite spires; while endless willows, surpassing lovely, bent their ; tresses to the soft breeze, j And far, far beyond it all—the same I always —vet changing every moment; ris- : ing stark and sheer from the tiny footj iiiils; shrouded in an ever-changing veil of purple mist—the mountains. Rupert sat, and looked and looked, drinking in the silent splendour till he was fairly intoxicated the wonder of its ■stark, overwhelming grandeur. ! When he, rode on. iit last, a foolish, | unaccustomed mist hid for a moment, the i bine of his sunnv eyes. Peter and Feather danced and fretted, | but Cara Mia was weary, what though they had not tome more than four miles; but they had come, at a spanking pace, so Rupert curbed the impatient pair, and presently they went up, and round an alarming left-handed curve, that led onto a long, narrow, eoucrete bride. There Lin was waiting, "soaking beauty," she said, as Rupert dismounted, and came to the side of the car. "Then, you like my country?" said Rupert happily. "It's immense!" said Lin, very softly. "It—it gives me a funny feeling inside!" J Rupert nodded. " It's funny," he agreed. " I know | it. as well as I know my own right hand, yet if I go over it 20 times a day, I get that funny feeling every time 1 see it." "It's just too beautiful," complained Lin. "There's mist over th® lower ranges, and the foot-hills, and it's hurting me! And when they are quite clear, later oil, in the morning, I suppose they'll hurt more " ''Sure," agreed Rupert, turning to Peter, who was gazing wonderingly at the scene stretched out beneath his impatient feet. "It's given Peter a funny feeling inside, too; and he doesn't know why, poor, old chap!" ''His mother was bred here, wasn't she?" asked Lin. "And his mother's mother before him, and she was in foal to Fail-land's Pride, whoso father's father came to Fairlands 40 years ago," answered Rupert, regarding Peter, with soft, understanding eyes. "More than you, and more than I, Peter is coming home!" "To the land of his fathers," said Lin, and the funny feeling nearly got the better of her; so she started her engine with much force and then rounded on Rupert. " I feared .'is much, vcung man," she said bitterly. " You are sentimental." " Of course," retorted Rupert, cheerfully. " I'm sentimental and you are romantic; and you turn to your right after you cross the bridge and follow your j nose to the cross roads; where you can j take the one that pleases you most! " After Lin was gone, he stood a while j studying Peter—who, with head flung high, was staring intently out over the plains. Every now and then, his soft nostrils flared, as he eagerly snuffed the ' scented air, and eagerness was depicted in j every splendid line of him. When Rupert mounted, Peter flung forward impatiently, in the wake of the now distant car. (Jut across the plains at last, with a I soft north wind caressing them as they i passed, with the soft turf flying beneath swift, heedless hoofs. Past little nestl- j ing homes and lordly homesteads, past ) willows on the river bank, past gently- ; swaying plantations of poplars and scented 1 pine—where the autumn leaves rustled ; beneath their tread and breathed sweet i earthy fragrance into their eager lungs. [ Past stables and woolsheds and down a j long, straight road that called and called till suddenly they came to the cross roads j where Lin was patiently waiting. They went down the right-hand road j and Lin drove very slowly, with Rupert ' riding beside the little car and trying to ; make out that he didn't care a bit that i he was going home. Just a short half mile it was, a little ! cieam whare of two rooms and a bath- j room—very unpretentious—but Rupert j looked at it with his soul in his eyes— j and .ailed it Home. . . The very stable was bigger than Rupert's whare—but even so, the liny abode was big enough for two! And while Lin i and Rupert poked about and explored like i two excited children, Peter broke out of the stable and went exploring too! First of all, he got into the grain and implement shed and succeeded in upset- ,; ting two half-tins of motor oil, three- 1 quarters of a drum of liquid dip and most ! of a small barrel 1 c f best Stockholm tar — whicli he paddled all about the shed. Then he emptied halt a sack of perfectlygood wheat into the resultant mess, during which operation he managed to upset a large keg of staples from a bench. The noise of their fall was so devastating that Peter left the shed and chased Rupert's very best dog clean through the hen run, scattering the occupants thereof to the four corners of the earth. Peter wandered here and ho wandered there, from the cowshed to the pig sty and down the pad dock to the sheep yards and the woolshed; which fortunately-was fast locked and not all Peter's skill in picking locks and unfastening gates availed him, so he wandered back to the stable and then across to the whare. The garden gate was on the latch, so Peter pushed it open and wandered aaround trampling everything and sampling anything that happened to appeal to him. He went over the garden three times, but found very little worth eating; for it was late autumn and the garden had been sadly neglected during Rupert's prolonged absence Just as Peter was thinking of leaving for fresh hunting grounds he noticed the front door, which was also the back—was wide open, so he went down the path and peeped inside. Rupert and Lin were sitting on the table in front of the fire, partaking of light refreshment, and deeply ingrossed' in discusisng the house to be. At sight of Rupert—the one familiar thing in this vast, strange world—Peter ! whinnied joyously, and was all for join- j ing the little family party. Indeed, ho was half-way in before Rupert coulcl stop lim, which he did with extreme fierce- ■ ness—and the poker. j "Garn away, you miserable interloper!" ! j lie stormed, waving the. poker in Peter's ' ibashed face. " Git! 'Op it! Vamose! j rwo's company, you pesky animal! De- ; | >art.!" Peter backed hastily down the step, j ind departed, and Rupert gazed blankly i | rorn the door. " Lin," he said softly, " Just look ; lere!" i Lin looked. " How the—the dickens did he get out j . if the da—shed stable ? " he queried dis- ] nally, and Lin shook a despondent head. I " How does he always do things?" she ' , etorted. " We'd best go and see." They wandered sorrowfully round the 1 taiuen and out across the yard, where I hey encountered the devasted hen-run; '■ ind as they passed, Rupert's very best log crept out from under the hen-house I ind joined them. I Rupert saw the grain-shed door gaping vide and lilled with awful misgiving they | entered. * j I Silently they stood, gazing bleakly at < he awful mess, and not for many | noments was a sound heard. " j ■ Then Peter neighed triumphantly from lie stable and Rupert raised his bowed 11 lead and met Lin's eyes in a long look ■ if understanding. " Now I know why Marion was so | inxious to wish him off on us," he said, " n a still, small voice. » So Simon Peter came home to the i and of his fathers. j