I had it in my ears, and more and more despairingly, as I sought the coverts and dead ferns and icy reed-wrecked pools, and flushed not the little oyseau passager of my gallantry’s desires. But at last, in a silent coomb, when my feet were frozen, and my fingers like bundles of newly-pulled red radishes, William keeper came upon me, and I confided my abortive wishes and sorrows to his velveteen bosom.
He smiled, warm soul, like a grate.
“Will’ee go up to feyther’s yonder, sir,” said he; “and sit by the fire, and leave the woodcock to me? The old man’ll be proud to entertain ye.”
“I will go,” I said meanly. “But tell me first, William, what is your very practical link with the past?”
He thought the frost had got into my blood; but when I had explained, he grinned again knowingly.
“ ’Tain’t me my lady meant, sir,” he said. “ ’Tis old feyther, and his story of how the mail coach was robbed.”
The cottage hung up on the side of the coomb, leaning its back to an ash wood, and digging its toes well into the slope to keep itself from pitching into the brook below. There were kennels under the faggot stacks, a horse-shoe on the door, red light behind the windows. It looked a very cosy corner after the white austerity of the woods. William led me to it, and introducing me and my errand to his father, left the two of us together by the fire.
It was a strange old shell of a man, russet and smooth yet in the face; but his breath would sometimes rattle in him to show how dried was the kernel within. Still his brown eye was glossy, and his voice full and shrewd; and in that voice, speaking straight and clear out of the past, and in an accent yet more of the roads than of the woods, he told me presently the story of the great mail robbery.
“It ruined and it made me, sir,” said he; “for the Captain, hearing as how the company had sacked me for neglect of duty, and knowing something of my character, swore I’d been used damnably, and that he’d back his opinion by making me his gamekeeper. And he did that; and here I be, waiting confident for him to check my accounts when I jine him across the river.”
He pointed to a dusky corner. There hung on the wall an ancient key-bugle, and an old, old napless beaver hat, with a faded gold band about it.