"Have with you, have with you!" replied the yeoman. "I love the forest ground as well as any man, and often, when the season comes on, I turn woodman for the occasion, and, with my lord's good leave, help his foresters to kill the deer."
"Dangerous tastes in these days, Master Yeoman," said the peasant, and there the conversation dropped again, each falling back into that train of thought which had been awakened in their minds by the reference to Kate Greenly, and her probable fate; for, although we are accustomed to consider those as ruder times--and certainly, in the arts of life, man was not so far advanced as in the present day--yet the natural affections of the heart, the sound judgment of right and wrong, and the high emotions of the immortal spirit within us, do not depend upon civilization, at least as the term is generally applied, but exist independent of a knowledge of sciences, or skill in any of man's manifold devices for increasing his pleasures and his comforts. They are rather, indeed, antagonist principles, in many respects, to very great refinement; and the advance of society in the arts of luxury is but too often accompanied by the cultivation of that exclusive selfishness which extinguishes all the finer emotions, and leaves man but as one of the machines he makes.
The mind of the stout yeoman, following the track on which it had begun to run, represented to himself what would be the feelings of the rustic lover, to find himself abandoned for a comparative stranger, and not only to know that the girl he loved was lost to him for ever, but degraded and debased--a harlot, sported with for the time, to be cast away when her freshness was gone. He had no difficulty in sympathising from his honest heart with the sensations which young Harland would experience--with the bitter disappointment--with the anger mingled with tenderness towards her who in her folly blighted her own and his happiness for ever--with the pure and unmitigated indignation against him who, in his heartless vanity, came down to blast the peace of others for the gratification of an hour. He thought of the father, too; but there, indeed, his sympathies were not so much excited, for it needed but to see good John Greenly once or twice to perceive that there was no great refinement in his virtue--that self was his first object--and, after meditating over that part of the subject for two or three hundred yards, as they walked on through the hawthorns, he said aloud, with a half laugh, "I shouldn't wonder if he would rather have her a lord's leman than a countryman's wife!"
"Not at first," answered Hardy, understanding at once what he meant; "he will take it to heart at first, but will soon get reconciled to it." And again they fell into thought, walking on over the smooth turf, upon which it was a pleasure to tread, it was so soft, so dry, and so elastic.
As they proceeded, the hawthorns became mingled with other trees; large beeches, with their long waving limbs not yet fully covered with their leaves, stood out upon the banks, here and there an oak, too, was seen, with the young leaves still brown and yellow; while patches of fern broke the surface of the grass, and large cushions of moss covered the old roots that forced their way to the surface of the ground.
The trees, however, were still scattered at many yards' distance from each other, and cast long shadows upon the velvet green of the grass, as the sun, not many degrees above the horizon, poured its bright rays between them. But when the yeoman looked through the bolls, to the northward and westward, he could see a dim mass of darker green spreading out beyond, and showing how the forest thickened, not far off; while, every now and then, some cart-way, or woody path, gave him a long vista into the very heart of the woodland, with lines of light, where the beams of day broke through the arcade of boughs, marking the distances upon the road.
That they were getting into the domain of the beasts of chase was soon very evident. More than one hare started away before their footsteps, and limped off with no very hurried pace. Every two or three yards, a squirrel was seen running from tree to tree, and swarming up the boll; and, once or twice, at a greater distance, the practised eye of the good yeoman caught the form of a dun deer, bounding away up some of the paths, to seek shelter in the thicker wood.
The way did not seem long, however, and all the thousand objects which a woodland scene affords to please and interest the eye and ear, and carry home the moral of nature's beautiful works to the heart of man, occupied the attention of the stout Englishman, as they walked onward, till the distance between the trees becoming less and less, the branches formed a canopy through which the rays of the morning sun only found their way occasionally.
"Why, Master Ploughman," said the lord's man, at length, "you seem plunging into the thick of the wood. Does your dwelling lie in this direction?"
"In good sooth does it!" answered the ploughman;--"it will be more open presently."