“What have I not suffered of humiliation as a priest,” he said, “to have thee breathing in the same wood!”
The world must have been an insufficient dormitory to this misogynist.
At noon, having wandered for hours through forest so green, so profound, that its deer-haunted vistas seemed the very byways to the infinite, we came out suddenly, when half faint with toil and hunger, upon the foot of a low hill, on whose summit was a queer octagonal stone tower, crowned with a dome like a pepper-box. My companion sputtered anathema upon seeing it, and stood stock still.
“What is it, Father?” I whispered, creeping up to him.
“We’ve overshot the mark, that’s all,” he growled, conceding a point to civility. “Here’s Shole beyond; and I aimed at no farther than Wellcot-Herring. Well, we must go over as the shortest way,” and he began to mount the slope.
I followed him, emboldened to ask, “What’s this we’re coming to?”
“Rupert’s Folly,” he answered viciously. “Old Lousy’s spy-house.”
“What’s he?” I asked.
He gave a rude laugh.
“He’s an itch on the skin of my lord that he can’t scratch away;” and, with these coarse, enigmatic words, he motioned me to fall behind.