After a few days, however, all traces of winter again disappeared from those smiling valleys and shaggy woodlands that border the Severn Sea. Not a patch of white was left to spot the swarthy uplands where Dunkerry Beacon lords it over the moor, and along the warm sheltered coast from Watermouth to Watchet, summer seemed to have returned only softer and kinder for her desertion. But the fairest flower in Devon languished and faded in the genial sunshine, more obviously than she had drooped beneath the storm. Nelly Carew, in deep mourning for her grandfather, looking none the less beautiful in her sorrow, felt so lonely and unprotected now, that in her moments of despondency she almost wished she could die too, like the others, and be at rest.
Katerfelto vainly endeavoured to persuade her that by accompanying him in his flight to the Continent she might probably join John Garnet, who must surely have preceded them to some of the usual refuges for such political outlaws, believing, no doubt, that, accompanied by so beautiful an associate, he could ply his old trade with every prospect of success; but the girl's own sense of right forbade her to think for an instant of such a scheme, and he, too, went his way, after Master Carew's funeral, leaving Nelly entirely forsaken and alone. The neighbours, though liberal in expressions of sympathy, and offers of help which was not required, shook their heads and whispered to each other that there was something unlucky about the lass—things went wrong with all who took a fancy to her. The old grandfather, who couldn't keep his eyes off her, and thought gold wasn't good enough for her to eat off, he died—well—a man in years certainly, but still very little over eighty after all! Then there was that godless parson who broke his neck just above the Witches' Wash-pot, and indeed every bone of his body, so that they could scarce straighten him decently for burial. Was he not a lover of Mistress Nelly's?
As to the young spark, a comely lad, forsooth, and a gallant, who came and went with his grey horse like a flash of lightning, so that nobody in Porlock ever knew what was gone with him, why it wasn't likely, was it? that she would ever set eyes on him again! Altogether, Nelly felt very unhappy and despondent. It seemed hard, at her age, to be left so friendless, so utterly alone in the world.
But one afternoon, when the days were at their shortest, came a letter by the weekly post from Taunton, stamped with a French mark, tied in a bright new ribbon, and directed in a bold masculine hand to Mistress Nelly Carew.
From the date of its receipt the neighbours could not but observe how the girl's eye grew brighter, and the colour returned to her cheek. The hope that had nearly died out in her heart began to bloom once more, and her trust came back in John Garnet, just as poor Waif's did, but with better reason, and a happier result.
She learned that powerful friends had made interest for this proscribed young gentleman at court. The king was a thorough Englishman, placable, courageous, extremely averse to severity when an enemy was conquered and under foot. John Garnet counted on a free pardon, and even hinted at the possibility of the northern estates reverting hereafter to their rightful owner. Lord Bellinger had made a famous speech on the Cider Bill, which brought him into notice, and gave him, for the time, considerable influence. This influence he had exerted in Master Garnet's favour, reasoning, with characteristic inconsequence, that but for the exploit attributed to Galloping Jack, of which his penetration had discovered the real originator, he would have been buried alive in the West at the very time when he seized his opportunity to distinguish himself in the House of Lords. Nelly must be patient and constant, as the writer vowed to be himself. There was a good time coming, and she must wait.
That Nelly did wait, I gather from a picture in the possession of the Garnet family, representing a woman in the bloom of youth, with a pair of outrageously beautiful blue eyes, smiling from under a mushroom hat, on a child in a white frock and coral necklace at her feet. The whole purporting, as set forth in gold letters on a corner of the canvas, to be a portrait of Dame Elinor Garnet and her eldest son. If this be indeed the Nelly Carew of his desperate expedition into Devon, I can readily understand that sickness of heart which came over Waif, when peering stealthily into the orchard at Porlock, she espied so comely a damsel in affectionate converse with the man she loved.
But what became of the good grey horse? Tradition, on the authority of Red Rube, affirms that he was never retaken after his bridle broke, but passed on rejoicing, to life-long freedom in the moor. The harbourer was wont to declare that as soon as he had forwarded his rider, whom he kept in close hiding for a week, to the little coast town whence an escape was arranged by sea, he himself set out in pursuit of the incomparable stallion, determined to tax all his science and ingenuity for the capture of such a valuable prize. The very first day of his search, he came upon the saddle and furniture from which the horse had kicked himself clear. And many a time afterwards, he followed the iron-shod hoof marks till the iron too had dropped off, leaving only the print of a smooth oval foot, with the patience and persistency of his trade; but shyer, and warier than any red-deer, the animal never allowed him to come within hearing, and seldom within sight. Doubtless he joined those herds of wild horses and ponies, which to this day roam through the remote coombes and moorland wastes of West Somerset and North Devon, free and unrestrained as the very breeze that sweeps across the scanty herbage on which they feed. Here it is to be presumed that he fulfilled his destiny, doing good in his generation, for even now, when some bold and reckless rider has been carried more gallantly than usual, in one of those wild, glorious, but exhausting runs that seem peculiar to the West, he lays a loving hand on the reeking neck of his favourite, and observes, triumphantly, "It always tells at the finish. You never get to the end of them when they've a strain of blood that goes back to old Katerfelto!"
THE END.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS