As they reached a part of the path which in crossed by the high road, they stopped, and a stately knight, accompanied by two ladies, and attended by several mounted serving men, rode by. The ladies seemed struck with the form of the handsome maiden; and the cavalier, after passing, turned and leant upon the cantle of his saddle, and steadily regarded the youth.
"'Tis he," said the Knight of Charlecote, to himself, "and the girl is Hathaway's daughter. 'Tis pity she should mate with so reckless a youth."
"Who, said ye, they are?" inquired the elder daughter of Sir Thomas; "methinks I have seen the youth at Clopton Hall."
"See him when and where thou wilt, Alicia," returned the knight, "I fear me you will have seen but a graceless suitor, from all I have learned through the scrivener Grasp. 'Tis the wool-comber's eldest son, young Shakespeare of Stratford."
After this brief discourse, the party rode on.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SHOTTERY HALL.
With lovers, days, weeks, and months pass swiftly by. The fair and witty Rosalind is made to tell us, however, that time trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized, for "if the interim be but a se'night, time's pace is so hard, that it seems the length of seven years."
With the swifter foot of time, however, during the even course of love between young Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, we shall pace over some few months in our history.