“Bah!” cried she. “I weep only because I am hungry. I am not afraid. Odzooks! She that has had the hemp about her neck to be strung up for a highwayman must not fear to encounter one of her own ilk,” and Her Ladyship essays to laugh as she plunges into the wood.
It proves a harmless, peaceful, if somewhat devious neighborhood, where an occasional rabbit scurries over the dry leaves of last autumn’s falling, and where a large company of rooks are holding a caucus, but ’tis interminable; and Peggy’s legs are not of steel, it seems, but of that lusty flesh and blood and bone which, when made to do duty fasting, now these twenty hours, begin to give out. Her head, too, spins, the knot of her cravat seems to choke her as she loosens it; the weight of the bundle appears like twenty stone at the least about her waist, and she cuts the bed-cord and lets it drop, just for a few moments’ ease, she tells herself, as, at last, the other side of the forest is gained and she beholds a wide stretch of downs and naught but the elusive tower of the distant Castle, appearing farther away even than at first.
What common can this be?
Once again she shades her blood-shot eyes and stares up at the sky. In crossing the woods, she must have struck mistakenly to the west. The sun is nearing the set, and Peggy now knows she has come to Farnham Heath where, report has it, some of the boldest cut-throats in the country rule the roost.
Shall she start to cross it? Kennaston Village lies only ten miles on t’other side of it. That will-o’-the-wisp tower? that castle yonder? yes ’tis home! and she such a dullard as not to have mistrusted it before!
She will push on. Why not? What has she, forsooth, to tempt any thief, unless he took her for ransom.
Well, let him, since Percy de Bohun at this very moment, in all liklihood, kneels at the feet of Lady Diana; if highwaymen want to bear her off, why should she complain? And just then the tinkle of the little brook at the wayside beckons in Her Ladyship’s ear, the Castle tower appears to he dancing up and down against the sky; the two stark trees, yonder on the heath, are surely turning somersaults; the bundle drags all forgotten at her heels, and presently lies in the tall grasses which she threaded on her way to the brook. Her head swam, ten thousand blunderbusses seemed to be firing off inside of it; she pulled off her wig and threw it far from her; she unbuttoned her coat and waistcoat, and drew her cloak in a twist about her; she staggered, caught at an elder; it swayed with her to the water, as she fell swooning with her thirsty lips just in touch of the sparkling bubbles; her wan face shining in the glint of sunshine, the whole round world and all the men and women in it quite forgot, even her sword, unbuckled with the bed-cord, now lay glinting its jewels in the sedges half a dozen rods away.
A pair of robins eyed her from the bushes, a bee swerved and swung above her mouth; the minnows darted next her cheek, but My Lady did not wake for any or all of these. She lay there motionless until the sun had gone down and all the sweet scents and drowsy sounds and whirrs and flutters of twilight had come up; until a fine coach with four horses and two postilions came prancing and pawing at a great rate of speed out of the wood to the heath. Until a little weazened fine gentleman, who had dozed in his bed until long past noon for fear of encountering a certain other gentleman, had risen leisurely, dined with relish, set out from the Queen and Artichoke only after being assured that the other gentleman had gone off on a ruined horse back to Garratt Lane in the hopes of obtaining a suitable mount, which same was not to be had short of the ten mile return; until the little gentleman, then, thrusting his face out of his coach window as the vehicle came to a sudden standstill, spoke:
“Is this the heath?” he asks with blinking eyes and a shiver.
“Yes, Sir Robin, Farnham Heath, Sir!” answers one of the postilions.