"No sir," I answered.
"Stupid oaf! Do you know where Charlwood Chase is?"
"Yes, sir; my schoolfellows have been nutting there, and I have heard them speak of it."
"Then you make the best of your way to Charlwood Chase, and go a-nutting there till you find the Blacks; you can't miss them; they're everywhere. Run, you little Imp. See! the time's up, and here comes the boy who stole the juicy pear." And the boy coming up, munching the remains of one of Gnawbit's juiciest pears, my patron was wheeled away, and I have never seen him from that day to this.
That very night I ran away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were, and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester John or the Man in the Moon might be.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF THE KING'S CASTLES IN THE EAST COUNTRY.
At the time when his Majesty Charles II. was so happily restored to the throne of these kingdoms, there was, and had been, confined for upwards of ten years, in one of his Majesty's Castles in the eastern part of this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. His Name was known to none, not even to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,—not even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were almost always storms lowering over or departing from that dismal place. The Castle was at least two miles from any human habitation; for the few fishermen's cabins, made of rotten boats, hogsheads nailed together, and the like, which had pitifully nestled under the lee of the Castle in old time, had been rigorously demolished to their last crazy timber when the Prisoner was brought there. At a respectful distance only, far in, and yet but a damp little islet in the midst of the fens, was permitted to linger on, in despised obscurity, a poor swamp of some twenty houses that might, half in derision and half in civility, be called a Village. It had a church without a steeple, but with a poor Stump like the blunted wreck of some tall ship's mainmast. The priest's wages were less than those of a London coal-porter. The poor man could get no tithes, for there were no tithes to give him. Three parts of his glebe were always under water, and he was forced to keep a little school for his maintenance, of which the scholars could pay him but scant fees, seeing that it was always a chance whether their parents were dead of the Ague, or Drowned. Yet there was a tavern in the village, where these poor, shrinking, feverish creatures met and drank and smoked, and sang their songs, contriving now and again to smuggle a few kegs of spirits from Holland, and baffle the riding-officers in a scamper through the fens. They were a simple folk, fond of telling Ghost-Stories, and with a firm belief in charms to cure them from the Ague. And, with an awe whose intensity was renewed each time the tale was told, they whispered among themselves as to that Prisoner of Fate up at the Castle yonder. What this man's Crime had been, none could tell. His misdeed was not, it was whispered, stated in the King's Warrant. The Governor was simply told to receive a certain Prisoner, who would be delivered to him by a certain Officer, and that, at the peril of his life, he was to answer for his safe custody. The Governor, whose name was Ferdinando Glover, had been a Captain of Horse in the late Protector Oliver's time; but, to the surprise of all men, he was not dismissed at his Majesty's Restoration, but was continued in his command, and indeed, received preferment, having the grade of a Colonel on the Irish establishment. But they did not fail to tell him, and with fresh instances of severity, that he would answer with his head for the safe keeping of his Prisoner.