"Hounds!" said Martin—"unworthy even to tend upon the generous animals you are hired to feed. Begone! pack—seek another roof, where you can batten on cold bits, and return kindness with base ingratitude." So saying, Martin saddled one of the steeds, and mounting himself, galloped into the town.
CHAPTER XXI.
DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS.
It is evening—damp, dreary, and heavy, like the day which has preceded it.
An unwholesome closeness pervades the air; a heavy drizzling rain descends from the clouds upon the earth, enveloping all around in a dense mist, which hides the surrounding scenery.
Leaving his home, the youthful Shakespeare takes his way across the meadows, in which our readers may remember to have first seen him in the opening chapter of this story. His step, however, is less buoyant, and his heart is heavier than on that occasion. The clouds, which drive steadily on, are not less gloomy than his presentiments. Sickness and misery are amongst the neighbours he leaves; sickness and sorrow are amongst those he seeks.
Yet still as that youth wends onwards, now crossing through the fern (laden and heavy with moisture,) now diving into the thick plantations which lead into the chase of Clopton, nothing escapes his notice. The crow, "as it wings to the rocky wood," in the thickening light,—the coney, as it flashes into the cover,—the darting lizard, as it disappears in the thick fern,—the stoat and weasel, as they pounce upon their prey in the brake, all are noted by him.
His mind was oppressed and desponding, but it was a mind which no circumstances could entirely destroy the elasticity of, even for a moment. "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," it hath been said by a modern poet; and there is society where none intrudes. But perhaps the feeling of pleasure experienced amidst solitude and sylvan scenery is only really and intensely felt by men of extraordinary parts and poetical imagination.
The fairest glade, and the wildest haunts of the untamed denizens of the woods, it was young Shakespeare's great delight to seek out and ponder amidst.