"And who is this bishop they are seeking?" asked Sir William Arden, as he walked down on foot at Chartley's side, by a somewhat circuitous path, to the cottage of the woodman.
"The only bishop whose name is proclaimed," replied Chartley, avoiding a direct answer to the question; "is Doctor Morton, bishop of Ely; but I trust and believe that he is far out of their reach. However, I would have you take care, Boyd," he continued, turning towards the woodman, who was following; "and, if you should meet with the bishop in the wood, give him no help; for these men will visit it savagely on the head of any one against whom they can prove the having succoured him--I would fain hear how this hunting ends," he continued; "for I have seldom seen such a curious chase. Can you not give me intimation at Leicester?"
"And pray add," continued Sir Edward Hungerford, in a low tone, "some information concerning the sweet Lady Iola. Her beautiful eyes," he added, as Chartley turned somewhat sharply towards him, "have haunted me all night, like a melodious song which dwells in our ears for days after we have heard it."
"Or a bottle of essence," said the woodman, "that makes a man smell like a civet cat for months after it is expended."
"Drown me all puppies," exclaimed Arden. "A young cat that goes straying about with her eyes but half open, and her weak legs far apart, is more tolerable than one of these orange flowers of the court, with their smart sayings, which they mistake for wit;" and imitating, not amiss, the peculiar mode of talking of Hungerford and his class, he went on, "Gad ye good den, my noble lord! Fore Heaven, a pretty suit, and well devised, but that the exceeding quaintness of the trimming is worthy of a more marvellous furniture.--Pshaw! I am sick of their mewing; and if we have not a war soon, to mow down some of these weeds, the land will be full of nettles."
"Take care they don't sting, Arden," said Sir Edward Hungerford.
The other knight looked at him from head to foot, and walked on after Lord Chartley, with a slight smile curling his lip.
The party met no impediment on the way to the woodman's cottage. Chartley's horses were soon brought forth; and after lingering for a moment, to add a private word or two to Boyd, the young nobleman prepared to mount. Before he did so, however, he took the woodman's hand and shook it warmly, much to the surprise of Sir Edward Hungerford; and then the whole company resumed the road to Hinckley, passing a number of the patroles round the wood as they went, and hearing shouts and cries and notes upon the horn, which only called a smile upon Chartley's lips.
When they had passed the wood, however, and were riding on through the open country, Sir Edward Hungerford fell somewhat behind, to talk with a household tailor, whom he entertained, upon the device of a new sort of hose, which he intended to introduce; while Sir William Arden, naturally a taciturn man, rode on by Chartley's side, almost in silence. The young nobleman himself was now very grave. The excitement was over. All that had passed that night belonged to the past. It was a picture hung up in the gallery of memory; and he looked upon the various images it contained as one does upon the portraits of dead friends. He saw Iola, as she had sat beside him at the abbey in gay security. He felt the trembling of her hand upon his arm, in the hour of danger. Her cheek seemed to rest upon his shoulder again, as it had done, when, weary and exhausted, she had slept overpowered by slumber. Her balmy breath seemed once more to fan his cheek. The time since he had first known her was but very short; but yet he felt that it had been too long for him. That, in that brief space, things had been born that die not--new sensations--immortal offspring of the heart--children of fate that live along with us on earth, and go with us to immortality.
"She cannot be mine," he thought. "She is plighted to another whom she knows not--loves not." He would fain have recalled those hours. He would fain have wiped out the sensations they had produced. He resolved to try--to think of other things--to forget--to be what he had been before. Vain, vain hopes and expectations! Alas, he sought an impossibility. No one can ever be what he was before. Each act of life changes the man--takes something, gives something--leaves him different from what he was. He may alter; but he cannot go back. What he was is a memory, and never can be a reality again; and more especially is this the case with the light careless heart of youth. Pluck a ripe plum from the tree--touch it as tenderly as you will; the bloom is wiped away; and, try all the arts you can, you can never restore that bloom again, nor give the fruit the hue it had before. Happy those buoyant and successful spirits who can look onward at every step, from life's commencement to its close, and are never called upon to sit down by the weary way side of being, and long for the fair fields and meadows they have passed, never to behold again.