“No doubt, if the seasoning can be procured,” said Hector, “but, alas for the salt and the pepper!”
“Well, we can eat them with the best of all sauces—hunger; and then, no doubt, there are crayfish in the gravel under the stones, but we must not mind a pinch to our fingers in taking them.”
“To-morrow then let us breakfast on fish,” said Hector. “You and I will try our luck, while Kate gathers strawberries; and if our line should break, we can easily cut those long locks from Catharine’s head, and twist them into lines,”—and Hector laid his hands upon the long fair hair that hung in shining curls about his sister’s neck.
“Cut my curls! This is even worse than cousin Louis’s proposal of making tinder and fishing-nets of my apron,” said Catharine, shaking back the bright tresses, which, escaping from the snood that bound them, fell in golden waves over her shoulders.
“In truth, Hec, it were a sin and a shame to cut her pretty curls, that become her so well,” said Louis. “But we have no scissors, ma belle, so you need fear no injury to your precious locks.”
“For the matter of that, Louis, we could cut them with your couteau-de-chasse. I could tell you a story that my father told me, not long since, of Charles Stuart, the second king of that name in England. You know he was the grand-uncle of the young Chevalier Charles Edward, that my father talks of, and loves so much.”
“I know all about him,” said Catharine, nodding sagaciously; “let us hear the story of his grand-uncle. But I should like to know what my hair and Louis’s knife can have to do with King Charles.”
“Wait a bit, Kate, and you shall hear, that is, if you have patience,” said her brother. “Well then, you must know, that after some great battle, the name of which I forget, [FN: Battle of Worcester.] in which the King and his handful of brave soldiers were defeated by the forces of the Parliament, (the Roundheads, as they were called,) the poor young king was hunted like a partridge upon the mountains; a large price was set on his head, to be given to any traitor who should slay him, or bring him prisoner to Oliver Cromwell. He was obliged to dress himself in all sorts of queer clothes, and hide in all manner of strange, out of the way places, and keep company with rude and humble men, the better to hide his real rank from the cruel enemies that sought his life. Once he hid along with a gallant gentleman, [FN: Colonel Careless.] one of his own brave officers, in the branches of a great oak. Once he was hid in a mill; and another time he was in the house of one Pendril, a woodman. The soldiers of the Parliament, who were always prowling about, and popping in unawares wherever they suspected the poor king to be hidden, were, at one time, in the very room where he was standing beside the fire.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Catharine, “that was frightful. And did they take him prisoner?”
“No; for the wise woodman and his brothers, fearing lest the soldiers should discover that he was a cavalier and a gentleman, by the long curls that the king’s men all wore in those days, and called lovelocks, begged of his majesty to let his hair be cropped close to his head.”