Uncle Joe's Stories. Baron Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Brabourne
but because it was so very amusing to see the violent efforts which Miss Crinkles, the governess, used to make in order to avoid going into fits of laughter at some of our uncle's jokes, and the entire – though only temporary – loss of dignity which followed her inevitable failure to keep her countenance. Tom and Gerald and I (Harry is my name, and I was about twelve at the time of this story) were equally interested, and little Lucy and Mary were employed for several days beforehand in putting on their dolls' best dresses, that they might be in a fit state to receive this honoured relation.
Well, the day before Christmas Eve came – as it always comes every year, if you only look out for it – and our hearts beat high with expectation of Uncle Joe. But no Uncle Joe appeared at luncheon time (he often turned up about that time) and when tea-time had arrived, the hoped-for visit was not paid. Presently the dressing-bell rang, half-an-hour before dinner, and still no Uncle Joe. Even my father began to fidget now, and to wonder where the expected guest could be, and my mother became positively uneasy. If there was one thing rather than another about which our uncle was particular, it was the important point of being in time for dinner. The reason he always gave for this particularity was his sense of the unfairness to the cook which was occasioned by unpunctuality. No cook, he said, could contend against it, and you had no right to expect a good dinner unless you were ready to eat it at the hour for which it had been ordered.
The knowledge of this opinion on the part of Uncle Joe, and of the firmness – not to say obstinacy – with which he always maintained it – increased the uneasiness of my parents as the dinner hour grew nearer and nearer without his appearance, and when half-past seven arrived, and still no Uncle Joe, matters were held to be so serious that messengers were despatched in several directions to make inquiries whether anything had been heard or seen of the expected visitor. It was fortunate that this step was taken, because otherwise there exists a violent probability that this story might never have been told, and we children should have had to mourn over the loss of our favourite relative.
Uncle Joe was found lying by the roadside, barely a mile from our gate, at a spot where a path ran parallel with the road, but some twelve feet above it. His head was bruised and his left-arm broken, and, when found, he was insensible. There was snow on the ground: it had frozen during the day, and, about seven o'clock, light flakes of snow had begun to fall again, so that if my poor uncle had lain where he was much longer, he would either have been covered with snow, or frozen, and could in no case have come well out of the business. His story was, that, finding that he was at the station, some five miles off, in good time, he thought he would walk over to our house and have his portmanteau sent for from thence.
Some two miles from home there stood (and still stands) a convenient public-house by the road-side, bearing the respectable sign of "The Duke's Head," a staring picture of the head and shoulders of a man, displaying the prominent nose and distinctive features of the great Duke of Wellington, swinging gaily in front of the said inn. I believe it is a very old inn, and was originally named after the great Duke of Marlborough, and if England ever has another "great" Duke, I do not doubt that his picture will replace the present one, and the sign will do equally well for him.
At this hostelry, said Uncle Joe, he had pulled up to have a glass of hot brandy-and-water to cheer him on his way, and remembered to have observed several rough-looking characters hanging about the place at the time. He journeyed on, and at the spot at which he was found had been attacked by three foot-pads, whom he declared that he had resisted stoutly, but a blow with a short stick delivered by one of them had felled him to the earth with a broken arm, while he had been rendered insensible by a similar blow upon the head. The robbers seemed to have had some object other than that of mere plunder, for although Uncle Joe declared that they had taken all his money but half-a-crown, which was found in his waistcoat-pocket, yet it was so seldom that he had much more cash about him, that no one imagined that the robbers' booty could have been great, whilst they had left his big silver watch and chain untouched, and also the large old-fashioned silver pencil-case, which he always carried about with him. This he attributed to the stubbornness of his resistance, which had made the thieves glad to get away from the neighbourhood of so desperate a fellow as quickly as possible.
They were never traced, and as the snow soon afterwards came on more heavily, their footsteps could have been scarcely seen after the space of a very short time, and no one could tell in which direction they had fled. There were some people, indeed, who winked their eyes wickedly, and laid their fore-finger waggishly against the side of their noses whenever allusion was made to the attack upon Uncle Joe. They were unkind enough to declare that our good relative's story was true enough up to the time of his stopping at the "Duke's Head," but that at that point he had quitted the limits of strict veracity. They pretended to have the authority of the landlord of that highly respectable inn for the fact, that Uncle Joe, soon after six o'clock, came in and had, not one glass, but three good "stiff" tumblers of brandy-and-water before resuming his journey. They further maintained that he had gone on merrily for a while after this, but that it had had sufficient effect upon him to have rendered it very desirable that he should have kept in the road instead of following the pathway above it. Choosing the latter, however, he had lost his equilibrium at the spot near which he was found, tumbled down the steep bank into the road, and in this manner received the injuries to head and arm which he had undoubtedly sustained. The landlord, moreover, said these unbelievers, indignantly denied that any "rough-looking characters" had been near his house upon that day, and declared that the only people there at or about the time of Uncle Joe's visit were some Christmas ringers and singers preparing for, or proceeding with, their visits to the neighbouring villages, with the view of exchanging carols and hymns for pence and half-pence wherever they found Christian people ready for such a transaction.
These reports and doubts, however, about Uncle Joe's misfortune never reached us children at the time, and, if they had, we should not for a moment have attached the smallest weight to them. In our eyes the matter was one which placed our esteemed relative still higher in the rank of heroes to which our childish thoughts had long since raised him. Nor were we frightened at the idea of foot-pads or highwaymen having suddenly made their unwonted appearance in our happy and tranquil neighbourhood. It seemed to us only natural that curious and unusual things should attend Uncle Joe wherever he went, and it was with him and his life, and not with our home and its surroundings, that we connected the circumstance of this new feature in the locality.
However, the truth or falsehood of the story mattered little to us, so long as we had got our uncle safe and sound after all. There he was, and there he continued for several weeks; for a broken head and arm required attention, and he was nowhere so likely to receive it as at our house. During this long visit we saw more of Uncle Joe than we had ever done before, and it soon became an established practice that, after our tea and before dressing-time, he should narrate to us some of those wonderful stories of which I have spoken.
One of these I will relate, as nearly as possible in the words of my revered uncle, in order that my readers may be able to imagine the kind of way in which all his stories were told. But the other tales which I propose to chronicle I will tell after a different fashion, relating the substance of Uncle Joe's narrative, but leaving out the personal allusions to his own prowess with which it was embellished. Those who read have only to imagine that in the chief personage in every story they discern Uncle Joe, and they will easily discover the little alterations which I have thought it well to make in order to vary the form of each tale. The one which I am now going to tell was a favourite one with us boys, but the girls did not like so much killing, and rather thought Uncle Joe must have been a more cruel man in the days when these adventures happened to him than at the time he recounted them. Since then I have read a great many books from the pen of Cooper, Captain Mayne Reid, and Gustave Aimard, all dealing with the doings of Red Indians, their subtlety, their treachery, their implacable revenge, and other pleasing characteristics, and I have often thought that Uncle Joe must have intended a parody upon some of their most stirring recitals of Indian adventure in the following story. But, most certainly, he told it as having happened to himself, and threw so much vehemence into his manner of telling it, that we children never for a moment doubted that such was the case.
I remember quite well the day he first told it to us; and how intensely interested in it we all were. He began it at tea-time: I think he liked to tell his most extraordinary and unlikely stories at