October 15, 2025 • 26 mins
Welcome to our oder kids library at the Tale Teller Club
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tale-teller-kids--5908781/support.
👇🏼FREE KINDLE BOOKS👇🏼
https://amzn.to/474y2KX
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Apple Podcasts 🦊 🐞 👶 🌈 🦋 🦆 🐭 🐯 🦧 🍟
Rat Gang Crew Paperback
Kids' Kindle
Kids' Blog
YOU TUBE
🦊 🐞 👶 🌈 🦋 🦆 🐭 🐯 🦧 🍟
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tale-teller-kids--5908781/support.
👇🏼FREE KINDLE BOOKS👇🏼
https://amzn.to/474y2KX
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Apple Podcasts 🦊 🐞 👶 🌈 🦋 🦆 🐭 🐯 🦧 🍟
Rat Gang Crew Paperback
Kids' Kindle
Kids' Blog
YOU TUBE
🦊 🐞 👶 🌈 🦋 🦆 🐭 🐯 🦧 🍟
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter twenty one of Sir Gibby. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
from agen or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Sir Gibby by George mac Donald, Chapter twenty one, The Punishment.
(00:25):
The house he was approaching had a little the look
of a prison. Of the more ancient portion, the windows
were very small, and every corner had its turret with
a conical cap rough That part was all rough cast,
therefore gray as if with age. The more modern part
was built of all kinds of heartstone, roughly cloven or
(00:49):
blasted from the mounains, and its boulders granite, red and
gray blue, winestone, yellow ironstone were all mingled. Anyhow, fitness
of size and shape alone regarded in their conjunctions. But
the result that to color, was rather pleasing than otherwise,
(01:10):
and Gibby regard it with some admiration. Nor, although he
had received from Farragus such convincing proof that he was
regard as a culprit, had he any dread of the
evil awaited him. The highest embody the law which he
had acquaintanced was the police, and from not one of
(01:33):
them in all the city. Had he ever had a
harsh word. His conscience was void of offense, as ever
it had been, and the law, consequently, notwithstanding the threat
to Farragus, had for him no terrors. The laird was
(01:53):
an early riser, and therefore regarded the mere getting up
early as a virtue, although irrespected. How the time thus redeemed,
as he called it was spent this morning, As it
turned out, it would have been better spent in sleep.
(02:15):
He was talking to his gamekeeper, a heavy browed man,
by the coach house door, when Ferragus appeared, holding the
dwindled Brownie by the huge collar of his tatters. A
more innocent looking malefactor sure never appeared before Awful justice.
Only he was in racks. And there are others besides dogs,
(02:39):
whose judgments go by appearance. Mister Glabriuth was one of them,
and smiled, a grim and ugly smile. So this is
your vaunted brownie, mister Duff, he said, and stood looking
down upon Gibbey, as if in his small person he
(03:03):
saw superstition at the point of death, mocked thither by
arrows of his contemptuous wit. It's all the brown I
could lay my hands on, sir, answered Ferragus. I took
him in the act, boy, said the Laird, rolling his
(03:25):
eyes more unsteady than usual, with indenation in the direction
of Gibby. What have you to say for yourself? Gibby
had no say and nothing to say. His questioner could
have either understood or believed the truth from his lips,
(03:49):
would but have presented him a lying hypocrite to the
wisdom of his judge. As it was, he smiled, looked up,
fearless in the face the magistrate so awful in his
own esteem. What's your name? Asked the laird, speaking yet
(04:09):
more sternly. Gibbey still smiled and was silent, looking straight
into his questioner's eyes. He dreaded nothing from the laird.
Fegus had been him. But Fergus, he clasped with the
bigger boys who had occasionally treated him roughly. This was
(04:33):
a man and man, except they were foreign sailors more drunk.
We're never unkind. He had no idea of his silence
causing annoyance. Everybody in the city had known he could
not answer, and now when Fergus and the laird persistent
(04:53):
in questioning him, he thought they were only making kindly
game of him, and smil the more. Nor was there
much about mister Glapaith to rouse a suspicion of the contrary,
For he made a great virtue keeping his temper when
most he caused other people to lose theirs. I see
(05:16):
the young vagabond is as impertinent as he is vicious,
he said at last, finding that no interrogation, could he
drop forth any other response than a smile. Here, Angus,
he turned to the gamekeeper. Take him into the coach house,
and tach him a little behavior. A touch or to
(05:39):
the whip will find his tongue for him. Angus sees
a little gentleman by the neck, as if he'd been
a polecat, and at arm's length walked him unresistantly into
the coach house. There, with one vigorous tug, he tore
the jacket from his back, and his only other garment,
(06:02):
dependent thereupon by some device, when only to gibbey fell
from him, and he stood in helpless nakedness, smiling still,
he had never done anything shameful, therefore he had no
equaince with shame. But when the scowling keeper, to whom
(06:23):
poverty was first cousin approaching, and who hated tramps as
he hated vermin, approached him with a heavy cart whip
in his hand. He cast his eyes down at his
white sides, very white, between his brown arms and brown legs,
and then lifted them and mute a pill which somehow
(06:48):
looked as if they were for somebody else, against what
He could no longer fail to perceive the man's intent.
But he had no notion of what the thing threatened
amounted to. He had had a few hard blows in
his time, and had never felt a whip. Ya Dil's GluR,
(07:09):
cried the fellow lunching. The cruel teeth of one who
loved not his brother is lot. You can what comes
will breaking into honest, who says and taken was no urane.
A vision of the nod cheese, which he had never
touched since the idea of it being property awoke in him,
(07:31):
rose before Gibbey's mental eyes, and inwardly he bowed to
the punishment. But the look he fixed on ingus was
not without effect, for the man was a father, though
a severe one, and was not all a brute. He
turned and changed the cart whip for a Gigwin with
(07:53):
a broken shaft which lay near. It was well for
himself that he did so, for the other would probably
have killed Gibby. When the blow fell, the child shivered
all over, his face turned white, and without even under
eat a moan, he doubled up and dropped senseless. A
(08:16):
swollen signature like a red snake had risen all around
his waist, and from one spot in it the blood
was oozing. It looked as if the lash had cut
him in two. The blow had stung his heart, and
it has ceased to beat. But the gamekeeper understood vagrance,
(08:37):
the young blackguard was only showing up. We yeah, yeah,
di voud. But eyes got ya just as the stroke fell,
marking him from the nape all down to the spine.
So he now bore upon his back and read the sign.
(08:57):
The ass carries him black, piercing shriek as seld Angus's ears,
and his arm, which had mechanically raised itself for a
third blow hung arrested the same moment in at the
coach house door shot Geneva as white as Gibbie. She
darted to where he lay, and there stood over him,
(09:21):
arms rigid and hands clenched. Hard, shivering as he had shivered,
and sending forth from her body shriek after shriek, as
if her very soul were the breath of which her
cries were fashioned. It was as if the woman's heart
in her felt its roots torn from their home in
(09:45):
the bosom of God, and quivering in agony, and confronted
by the stare of an eternal possibility, shrieked against Satan Gangawa,
missy bright Angus, who had respect to this child, though
(10:05):
he had not yet learned to respect childhood. He's a
coarse creature on mine. He's whoops. But Geneva was death
to his evil charming. She stopped her cries, however, to
help Gibbie up, and took one of his hands to
raise him. But his arm hung limp and motionless. She
(10:30):
let it go. It dropped like a stick, and again
she began to shriek. Angus laid his hand on her shoulder.
She turned on him, and, opening her mouth wide, screamed
at him like a wild animal with all the hatred
of mingled love and fear. Then threw herself on the
(10:52):
boy and covered his body with her own. Angus stooping
to remove her Kippy's face and became uncomfortable. He's dead.
He's dead. You have killed him, Angus, you're a neal man,
she cried fiercely. I hate you. I tell on you.
(11:16):
I tell my papa oot wish, Missy said, Angus, it
was by your papa's ain't orders. I gave him the
whoop and he will deserved it for me, and geaned
you a gina. Gang away and be a geed young lady.
(11:37):
I'll give em a mare yet. Oh tell God, shrieked Geneva,
with fresh energy of defense, of love and wrath. Again
he sought to remove her, but she clung so with
both legs and arms to the insensible Gibbie that he
could but lift both together, and he had to leave
(12:00):
her alone. Leave you note touch him again, Angus. Oh
bite ya, bite cha biteja, she screamed, in a passage
wildly crescendo. The Laird and Ferragus walked away together, perhaps
(12:21):
neither of them quite comfortable at the orders given, but
the one too self sufficient to recall them, and the
other too submissive to interfere. They heard cries, nevertheless, and
had they known them, for Genevas would have rushed to
the spot, but the fearce emotion had so utterly changed
(12:46):
her voice, and indeed she had never in her life
cried out before that They took them for gibbies, and
supposed the whip had the desired effect, and loosened his tongue.
As to the rest of the household, which by this
time would have all gathered in the coach house, the
(13:08):
laird has taken his stand where he could intercept them.
He would not have the execution of the degrees of
justice interfered with. But Geneva shrieks bought gibbey to himself. Faintly,
he opened his eyes and stared, stupid with growing pain
(13:30):
at the tear blurred face beside him. In the confusion
of his thoughts, he fancied the pain he fell was Geneva's,
not his, and sought to comfort her, stroking her cheek
with feeble hand and putting up his mouth to kiss her.
But Angus, utterly scandalized at the proceeding, and restored to energy,
(13:54):
seeing that the boy was alive, caught her up suddenly
and carried her off, struck, writhing and scratching like a cat. Indeed,
she bit his arm, and that severely but the man
never even told his wife. Little Missy was a queen
(14:15):
and little Gibbey was vermin. But he was ashamed to
let the mother of his children know that the former
had bidden him for the sake of the latter. The
moment she thus disappeared, Gibby began to apprehend that she
was suffering for him, not he for her. His whole
(14:37):
body bore testimony to frightful abuse. This was some horrible
place inhabited by men such as those who killed Shambo.
He must fly, But would they hurt the little girl?
He thought not, she was at home. He started to
spring to his feet, but fell back, almost powerless. Then
(15:00):
he tried to move more cautiously and got up wearily,
for the pain and the terrible shock seemed to have
taken the strength out of every limb. Once on his feet,
he could scarcely stoop to pick up the renimans of
his trousers without again falling, and the effort made him
groan with distress. He was in the act of trying,
(15:23):
in vain to stand on one foot so as to
get the other into the garment, when he fancied heard
the step of his executioner returning doubtless to resume his torture.
He dropped the rag and darted out the door, for
getting aches and stiffness and agony. All naked as he was,
(15:47):
he fled like the wind, unseen, or at least unrecognized
of any eye. Fargus did catch a glimpse of something
white that flashed across the vista through the neighboring wood,
but he took it for a white peahawk, of which
there were two or three about the place. The three
(16:10):
men were disgusted with a little wretch when they found
he had actually fled into the open day without his clothes.
Poor Gibbie. It was such a small difference, It needed
little change to make a savage as an angel from him.
All depended on the eyes I saw him. He ran,
(16:31):
he knew not whither, feeling nothing but the desire first
to get to some covert and then to run farther.
His first rush was for the shrubbery, his next across
the little park to the wood beyond. He did not
feel the wood of his running on his bare skin.
He did not feel the hunger that had made him
(16:53):
so unable to bear the lash. On and on he ran, fancy,
never heard the crew angus behind him. If a dry
twig snapped, he thought it was the crack of the whip,
and a small wind that rose suddenly at the top
of the pine seemed the hiss with which was about
(17:13):
to descend upon him. He ran and ran, but there
seemed nothing between him and his persecutors. He felt no safety.
At length he came where a high wall joined us,
some water formed a boundary. The water was a brook
from the mountain. Here widened and deepened into a still pool.
(17:37):
He had been once out of his depth before he
threw himself in and swam straight across. Ever after that,
swimming seemed to him as natural as walking. Then first
awoke a faint sense of safety, for on the other
side he was knee deep in heather. He was on
(17:59):
the wild hill, with miles and miles of cover. Here
the human could not catch him. It must be the
same that Donald pointed out to him one day at
a distance. He had a gun, and Donald said he
had washed shot a poacher and killed him. He did
not know what a poacher was. Perhaps he was one himself,
(18:23):
and the man would shoot him. They could see him
quite well from the other side. He must cross the
knoll first, and then he might lie down and rest.
He would get right into the heather and lie with
it all around him and over him till the night came.
(18:44):
Where he would go then he did not know, But
it was all one. He could go anywhere. Donald must
mind his cows, and the men must mind their horses,
and Mistress Jean must mind or kitchen. But Sir Gibbie
could go wherever he pleased. He would go up dr side,
(19:09):
but he would not go just at once. That man
may be on the outlook for him, and he wouldn't
like to be shot. People who were shot lay still
and were putting holes in the earth and covered up.
He would not like that. Thus he communed with himself
(19:32):
as he went over the knoll. On the other side
he chose a tall patch of heather and crept under.
How nice and warm and kind the heather felt, though
it did hurt the wheels dreadfully sometimes if he only
had something to cover just them. There seemed to be
(19:54):
one down his back, as wells around his waist. And
now Sir Gibby, though not much poorer than he had been,
really possessed nothing separable except his hair and his nails.
Nothing therefore he could call his as distinguished from him.
(20:18):
His sole other possession was a negative quality, his hunger, namely,
for he had not even a meal in his body.
He had eaten nothing since the preceding noon. I am wrong.
He had one possession besides, though hardly a separable one,
about about a fair lady in her page, which Donald
(20:42):
had taught him. That he now began to repeat to himself,
but was disappointed to find it a good deal withered.
He was not nearly reduced to extremity. Yet though this
little hair of the world in his body, he had
splendid heuth, in his heart, great courage, and in his
(21:05):
soul an ever throbbing love. It was his love to
the very image of man that made the horror of
the treatment he had received. Angus was and was not
a man. After all, Gibby was still wont to regard
with holy envy. Poor Jinny. She was sent to bed
(21:28):
for interfering with her father's orders, and with rage and
horror and pity, an inespectable feeling of hopelessness took over her.
While all her affection for her father was greatly perhaps
for this world irretrievably injured by that morning's experience, something
(21:50):
remained that never passed from her, and that something, as
often as a stirred rose between him and her, told
his aunt what had taken place, and made much graham
of her brownie. But the more Gene thought about the affair,
(22:11):
the less she liked it. It was she upon whom
it all came. What did it matter who or what
her brownie was? And what did they whipped the creature for?
What harm had he done? If indeed he was a
little raged urchin, the thing was the only more inexplicable
he had taken nothing She had never missed so much
(22:34):
as a barley's gone. The cream had always brought her
the right quantity of butter. Not even a bannock, so
far as she knew, was ever gone from the press,
or an egg from the bossi where they lay heaped.
There was more than this than she could understand her
(22:55):
nephew's mighty feet. So far from explaining anything, it had
only stilled up the mystery. She could not help cherishing
a shadowy hope that when things had grown quiet, he
would again reveal his presence by his work, if not
by his visible person. It was mortifying to think that
(23:18):
he had gone as he had came, and she had
never set eyes upon him. But Ferragus's account of his
disappearance had also, in her judgment, a decided element of
the marvelous in it. She was strongly inclined to believe
that the Brownie had clasped a glamor over him and
(23:40):
the Laird and Angus all three, and had been making
game of them for his own amusement. Indeed, Dursaide generally
refused the explanation of the Brownie presented for its acceptance,
and the Laird scorned nothing against the arch enemy. Superstitious
(24:01):
Donald Grant, missing his croucher that day for the first time,
heard enough when he came home to satisfy him that
he had been acting the brown in the house and
the stable, as well as in the field. Incredible as
it might well appear that such a child should have
(24:21):
even the mere strength for what he did. Then first,
also after he had thus lost him, he began to
understand his worth, and to see how much he owed him. Well,
he'd imagine himself kind to the Urchin. The Hurchin had
been laying him under endless obligation, or he left him
(24:46):
with ever so much more in his brains than when
he came this book, and that through his aid he
had read thoroughly, and a score or so of propositions
had been added to his stock, and the elusid his
first feeling about the child revived as he pondered, namely
(25:09):
that he was not of this world. But even then
Donald did not know the best Gibby had done for him.
He did not know what far deeper and better things
he had. It was gentleness, his trust, his loving service,
his absolute unselfishness, so in the seeds in his mind.
(25:34):
On the other hand, Donald had in return done more
for Gibbey than he knew, though what he had done
for him, namely share his dinners with him, had been
less of a gift than he thought, and Donald had
been rather shared in Gibbie's dinner than Gibbey's and Donald's.
(25:57):
And to Chapter twenty one of Gibbey by George McDonald
Chapter twenty one of Sir Gibby. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
from agen or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Sir Gibby by George mac Donald, Chapter twenty one, The Punishment.
(00:25):
The house he was approaching had a little the look
of a prison. Of the more ancient portion, the windows
were very small, and every corner had its turret with
a conical cap rough That part was all rough cast,
therefore gray as if with age. The more modern part
was built of all kinds of heartstone, roughly cloven or
(00:49):
blasted from the mounains, and its boulders granite, red and
gray blue, winestone, yellow ironstone were all mingled. Anyhow, fitness
of size and shape alone regarded in their conjunctions. But
the result that to color, was rather pleasing than otherwise,
(01:10):
and Gibby regard it with some admiration. Nor, although he
had received from Farragus such convincing proof that he was
regard as a culprit, had he any dread of the
evil awaited him. The highest embody the law which he
had acquaintanced was the police, and from not one of
(01:33):
them in all the city. Had he ever had a
harsh word. His conscience was void of offense, as ever
it had been, and the law, consequently, notwithstanding the threat
to Farragus, had for him no terrors. The laird was
(01:53):
an early riser, and therefore regarded the mere getting up
early as a virtue, although irrespected. How the time thus redeemed,
as he called it was spent this morning, As it
turned out, it would have been better spent in sleep.
(02:15):
He was talking to his gamekeeper, a heavy browed man,
by the coach house door, when Ferragus appeared, holding the
dwindled Brownie by the huge collar of his tatters. A
more innocent looking malefactor sure never appeared before Awful justice.
Only he was in racks. And there are others besides dogs,
(02:39):
whose judgments go by appearance. Mister Glabriuth was one of them,
and smiled, a grim and ugly smile. So this is
your vaunted brownie, mister Duff, he said, and stood looking
down upon Gibbey, as if in his small person he
(03:03):
saw superstition at the point of death, mocked thither by
arrows of his contemptuous wit. It's all the brown I
could lay my hands on, sir, answered Ferragus. I took
him in the act, boy, said the Laird, rolling his
(03:25):
eyes more unsteady than usual, with indenation in the direction
of Gibby. What have you to say for yourself? Gibby
had no say and nothing to say. His questioner could
have either understood or believed the truth from his lips,
(03:49):
would but have presented him a lying hypocrite to the
wisdom of his judge. As it was, he smiled, looked up,
fearless in the face the magistrate so awful in his
own esteem. What's your name? Asked the laird, speaking yet
(04:09):
more sternly. Gibbey still smiled and was silent, looking straight
into his questioner's eyes. He dreaded nothing from the laird.
Fegus had been him. But Fergus, he clasped with the
bigger boys who had occasionally treated him roughly. This was
(04:33):
a man and man, except they were foreign sailors more drunk.
We're never unkind. He had no idea of his silence
causing annoyance. Everybody in the city had known he could
not answer, and now when Fergus and the laird persistent
(04:53):
in questioning him, he thought they were only making kindly
game of him, and smil the more. Nor was there
much about mister Glapaith to rouse a suspicion of the contrary,
For he made a great virtue keeping his temper when
most he caused other people to lose theirs. I see
(05:16):
the young vagabond is as impertinent as he is vicious,
he said at last, finding that no interrogation, could he
drop forth any other response than a smile. Here, Angus,
he turned to the gamekeeper. Take him into the coach house,
and tach him a little behavior. A touch or to
(05:39):
the whip will find his tongue for him. Angus sees
a little gentleman by the neck, as if he'd been
a polecat, and at arm's length walked him unresistantly into
the coach house. There, with one vigorous tug, he tore
the jacket from his back, and his only other garment,
(06:02):
dependent thereupon by some device, when only to gibbey fell
from him, and he stood in helpless nakedness, smiling still,
he had never done anything shameful, therefore he had no
equaince with shame. But when the scowling keeper, to whom
(06:23):
poverty was first cousin approaching, and who hated tramps as
he hated vermin, approached him with a heavy cart whip
in his hand. He cast his eyes down at his
white sides, very white, between his brown arms and brown legs,
and then lifted them and mute a pill which somehow
(06:48):
looked as if they were for somebody else, against what
He could no longer fail to perceive the man's intent.
But he had no notion of what the thing threatened
amounted to. He had had a few hard blows in
his time, and had never felt a whip. Ya Dil's GluR,
(07:09):
cried the fellow lunching. The cruel teeth of one who
loved not his brother is lot. You can what comes
will breaking into honest, who says and taken was no urane.
A vision of the nod cheese, which he had never
touched since the idea of it being property awoke in him,
(07:31):
rose before Gibbey's mental eyes, and inwardly he bowed to
the punishment. But the look he fixed on ingus was
not without effect, for the man was a father, though
a severe one, and was not all a brute. He
turned and changed the cart whip for a Gigwin with
(07:53):
a broken shaft which lay near. It was well for
himself that he did so, for the other would probably
have killed Gibby. When the blow fell, the child shivered
all over, his face turned white, and without even under
eat a moan, he doubled up and dropped senseless. A
(08:16):
swollen signature like a red snake had risen all around
his waist, and from one spot in it the blood
was oozing. It looked as if the lash had cut
him in two. The blow had stung his heart, and
it has ceased to beat. But the gamekeeper understood vagrance,
(08:37):
the young blackguard was only showing up. We yeah, yeah,
di voud. But eyes got ya just as the stroke fell,
marking him from the nape all down to the spine.
So he now bore upon his back and read the sign.
(08:57):
The ass carries him black, piercing shriek as seld Angus's ears,
and his arm, which had mechanically raised itself for a
third blow hung arrested the same moment in at the
coach house door shot Geneva as white as Gibbie. She
darted to where he lay, and there stood over him,
(09:21):
arms rigid and hands clenched. Hard, shivering as he had shivered,
and sending forth from her body shriek after shriek, as
if her very soul were the breath of which her
cries were fashioned. It was as if the woman's heart
in her felt its roots torn from their home in
(09:45):
the bosom of God, and quivering in agony, and confronted
by the stare of an eternal possibility, shrieked against Satan Gangawa,
missy bright Angus, who had respect to this child, though
(10:05):
he had not yet learned to respect childhood. He's a
coarse creature on mine. He's whoops. But Geneva was death
to his evil charming. She stopped her cries, however, to
help Gibbie up, and took one of his hands to
raise him. But his arm hung limp and motionless. She
(10:30):
let it go. It dropped like a stick, and again
she began to shriek. Angus laid his hand on her shoulder.
She turned on him, and, opening her mouth wide, screamed
at him like a wild animal with all the hatred
of mingled love and fear. Then threw herself on the
(10:52):
boy and covered his body with her own. Angus stooping
to remove her Kippy's face and became uncomfortable. He's dead.
He's dead. You have killed him, Angus, you're a neal man,
she cried fiercely. I hate you. I tell on you.
(11:16):
I tell my papa oot wish, Missy said, Angus, it
was by your papa's ain't orders. I gave him the
whoop and he will deserved it for me, and geaned
you a gina. Gang away and be a geed young lady.
(11:37):
I'll give em a mare yet. Oh tell God, shrieked Geneva,
with fresh energy of defense, of love and wrath. Again
he sought to remove her, but she clung so with
both legs and arms to the insensible Gibbie that he
could but lift both together, and he had to leave
(12:00):
her alone. Leave you note touch him again, Angus. Oh
bite ya, bite cha biteja, she screamed, in a passage
wildly crescendo. The Laird and Ferragus walked away together, perhaps
(12:21):
neither of them quite comfortable at the orders given, but
the one too self sufficient to recall them, and the
other too submissive to interfere. They heard cries, nevertheless, and
had they known them, for Genevas would have rushed to
the spot, but the fearce emotion had so utterly changed
(12:46):
her voice, and indeed she had never in her life
cried out before that They took them for gibbies, and
supposed the whip had the desired effect, and loosened his tongue.
As to the rest of the household, which by this
time would have all gathered in the coach house, the
(13:08):
laird has taken his stand where he could intercept them.
He would not have the execution of the degrees of
justice interfered with. But Geneva shrieks bought gibbey to himself. Faintly,
he opened his eyes and stared, stupid with growing pain
(13:30):
at the tear blurred face beside him. In the confusion
of his thoughts, he fancied the pain he fell was Geneva's,
not his, and sought to comfort her, stroking her cheek
with feeble hand and putting up his mouth to kiss her.
But Angus, utterly scandalized at the proceeding, and restored to energy,
(13:54):
seeing that the boy was alive, caught her up suddenly
and carried her off, struck, writhing and scratching like a cat. Indeed,
she bit his arm, and that severely but the man
never even told his wife. Little Missy was a queen
(14:15):
and little Gibbey was vermin. But he was ashamed to
let the mother of his children know that the former
had bidden him for the sake of the latter. The
moment she thus disappeared, Gibby began to apprehend that she
was suffering for him, not he for her. His whole
(14:37):
body bore testimony to frightful abuse. This was some horrible
place inhabited by men such as those who killed Shambo.
He must fly, But would they hurt the little girl?
He thought not, she was at home. He started to
spring to his feet, but fell back, almost powerless. Then
(15:00):
he tried to move more cautiously and got up wearily,
for the pain and the terrible shock seemed to have
taken the strength out of every limb. Once on his feet,
he could scarcely stoop to pick up the renimans of
his trousers without again falling, and the effort made him
groan with distress. He was in the act of trying,
(15:23):
in vain to stand on one foot so as to
get the other into the garment, when he fancied heard
the step of his executioner returning doubtless to resume his torture.
He dropped the rag and darted out the door, for
getting aches and stiffness and agony. All naked as he was,
(15:47):
he fled like the wind, unseen, or at least unrecognized
of any eye. Fargus did catch a glimpse of something
white that flashed across the vista through the neighboring wood,
but he took it for a white peahawk, of which
there were two or three about the place. The three
(16:10):
men were disgusted with a little wretch when they found
he had actually fled into the open day without his clothes.
Poor Gibbie. It was such a small difference, It needed
little change to make a savage as an angel from him.
All depended on the eyes I saw him. He ran,
(16:31):
he knew not whither, feeling nothing but the desire first
to get to some covert and then to run farther.
His first rush was for the shrubbery, his next across
the little park to the wood beyond. He did not
feel the wood of his running on his bare skin.
He did not feel the hunger that had made him
(16:53):
so unable to bear the lash. On and on he ran, fancy,
never heard the crew angus behind him. If a dry
twig snapped, he thought it was the crack of the whip,
and a small wind that rose suddenly at the top
of the pine seemed the hiss with which was about
(17:13):
to descend upon him. He ran and ran, but there
seemed nothing between him and his persecutors. He felt no safety.
At length he came where a high wall joined us,
some water formed a boundary. The water was a brook
from the mountain. Here widened and deepened into a still pool.
(17:37):
He had been once out of his depth before he
threw himself in and swam straight across. Ever after that,
swimming seemed to him as natural as walking. Then first
awoke a faint sense of safety, for on the other
side he was knee deep in heather. He was on
(17:59):
the wild hill, with miles and miles of cover. Here
the human could not catch him. It must be the
same that Donald pointed out to him one day at
a distance. He had a gun, and Donald said he
had washed shot a poacher and killed him. He did
not know what a poacher was. Perhaps he was one himself,
(18:23):
and the man would shoot him. They could see him
quite well from the other side. He must cross the
knoll first, and then he might lie down and rest.
He would get right into the heather and lie with
it all around him and over him till the night came.
(18:44):
Where he would go then he did not know, But
it was all one. He could go anywhere. Donald must
mind his cows, and the men must mind their horses,
and Mistress Jean must mind or kitchen. But Sir Gibbie
could go wherever he pleased. He would go up dr side,
(19:09):
but he would not go just at once. That man
may be on the outlook for him, and he wouldn't
like to be shot. People who were shot lay still
and were putting holes in the earth and covered up.
He would not like that. Thus he communed with himself
(19:32):
as he went over the knoll. On the other side
he chose a tall patch of heather and crept under.
How nice and warm and kind the heather felt, though
it did hurt the wheels dreadfully sometimes if he only
had something to cover just them. There seemed to be
(19:54):
one down his back, as wells around his waist. And
now Sir Gibby, though not much poorer than he had been,
really possessed nothing separable except his hair and his nails.
Nothing therefore he could call his as distinguished from him.
(20:18):
His sole other possession was a negative quality, his hunger, namely,
for he had not even a meal in his body.
He had eaten nothing since the preceding noon. I am wrong.
He had one possession besides, though hardly a separable one,
about about a fair lady in her page, which Donald
(20:42):
had taught him. That he now began to repeat to himself,
but was disappointed to find it a good deal withered.
He was not nearly reduced to extremity. Yet though this
little hair of the world in his body, he had
splendid heuth, in his heart, great courage, and in his
(21:05):
soul an ever throbbing love. It was his love to
the very image of man that made the horror of
the treatment he had received. Angus was and was not
a man. After all, Gibby was still wont to regard
with holy envy. Poor Jinny. She was sent to bed
(21:28):
for interfering with her father's orders, and with rage and
horror and pity, an inespectable feeling of hopelessness took over her.
While all her affection for her father was greatly perhaps
for this world irretrievably injured by that morning's experience, something
(21:50):
remained that never passed from her, and that something, as
often as a stirred rose between him and her, told
his aunt what had taken place, and made much graham
of her brownie. But the more Gene thought about the affair,
(22:11):
the less she liked it. It was she upon whom
it all came. What did it matter who or what
her brownie was? And what did they whipped the creature for?
What harm had he done? If indeed he was a
little raged urchin, the thing was the only more inexplicable
he had taken nothing She had never missed so much
(22:34):
as a barley's gone. The cream had always brought her
the right quantity of butter. Not even a bannock, so
far as she knew, was ever gone from the press,
or an egg from the bossi where they lay heaped.
There was more than this than she could understand her
(22:55):
nephew's mighty feet. So far from explaining anything, it had
only stilled up the mystery. She could not help cherishing
a shadowy hope that when things had grown quiet, he
would again reveal his presence by his work, if not
by his visible person. It was mortifying to think that
(23:18):
he had gone as he had came, and she had
never set eyes upon him. But Ferragus's account of his
disappearance had also, in her judgment, a decided element of
the marvelous in it. She was strongly inclined to believe
that the Brownie had clasped a glamor over him and
(23:40):
the Laird and Angus all three, and had been making
game of them for his own amusement. Indeed, Dursaide generally
refused the explanation of the Brownie presented for its acceptance,
and the Laird scorned nothing against the arch enemy. Superstitious
(24:01):
Donald Grant, missing his croucher that day for the first time,
heard enough when he came home to satisfy him that
he had been acting the brown in the house and
the stable, as well as in the field. Incredible as
it might well appear that such a child should have
(24:21):
even the mere strength for what he did. Then first,
also after he had thus lost him, he began to
understand his worth, and to see how much he owed him. Well,
he'd imagine himself kind to the Urchin. The Hurchin had
been laying him under endless obligation, or he left him
(24:46):
with ever so much more in his brains than when
he came this book, and that through his aid he
had read thoroughly, and a score or so of propositions
had been added to his stock, and the elusid his
first feeling about the child revived as he pondered, namely
(25:09):
that he was not of this world. But even then
Donald did not know the best Gibby had done for him.
He did not know what far deeper and better things
he had. It was gentleness, his trust, his loving service,
his absolute unselfishness, so in the seeds in his mind.
(25:34):
On the other hand, Donald had in return done more
for Gibbey than he knew, though what he had done
for him, namely share his dinners with him, had been
less of a gift than he thought, and Donald had
been rather shared in Gibbie's dinner than Gibbey's and Donald's.
(25:57):
And to Chapter twenty one of Gibbey by George McDonald
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.