“The precept is both good and old,” answered Clarence; “yet I think it was not a very favourite maxim of yours some years ago. I remember a time when you thought no happiness could exist out of ‘dingle and bosky dell.’ If not very intrusive on your secrets, may I know how long you have changed your sentiments and manner of life? The reason of the change I dare not presume to ask.”
“Certainly,” said the quondam gypsy, musingly, “certainly I have seen your face before, and even the tone of your voice strikes me as not wholly unfamiliar: yet I cannot for the life of me guess whom I have the honour of addressing. However, sir, I have no hesitation in answering your questions. It was just five years ago, last summer, when I left the Tents of Kedar. I now reside about a mile hence. It is but a hundred yards off the high road, and if you would not object to step aside and suffer a rasher, or aught else, to be ‘the shoeing-horn to draw on a cup of ale,’ as our plain forefathers were wont wittily to say, why, I shall be very happy to show you my habitation. You will have a double welcome, from the circumstance of my having been absent from home for the last three days.”
Clarence, mindful of his journey, was about to decline the invitation, when a few heavy drops falling began to fulfil the cloudy promise of the morning. “Trust,” said Cole, “one who has been for years a watcher of the signs and menaces of the weather: we shall have a violent shower immediately. You have now no choice but to accompany me home.”
“Well,” said Clarence, yielding with a good grace, “I am glad of so good an excuse for intruding on your hospitality.
‘O sky!
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak?’”
“Bravo!” cried the ex-chief, too delighted to find a comrade so well acquainted with Shakspeare’s sonnets to heed the little injustice Clarence had done the sky, in accusing it of a treachery its black clouds had by no means deserved. “Bravo, sir; and now, my palfrey against your steed,—trot, eh? or gallop?”
“Trot, if it must be so,” said Clarence, superciliously; “but I am a few paces before you.”
“So much the better,” cried the jovial chief. “Little John’s mettle will be the more up: on with you, sir; he who breaks into a canter loses; on!”
And Clarence slightly touching his beautiful steed, the race was begun. At first his horse, which was a remarkable stepper, as the modern Messrs. Anderson and Dyson would say, greatly gained the advantage. “To the right,” cried the ci-devant gypsy, as Linden had nearly passed a narrow lane which led to the domain of the ex-king. The turn gave “Little John” an opportunity which he seized to advantage; and, to Clarence’s indignant surprise, he beheld Cole now close behind, now beside, and now—now—before! In the heat of the moment he put spurs rather too sharply to his horse, and the spirited animal immediately passed his competitor, but—in a canter!
“Victoria!” cried Cole, keeping back his own steed. “Victoria! confess it!”