"The Sheriff, with a monstrous watch, is at the door."
King Henry IV.
Two hours' hard riding, considering that the riders were men armed in heavy mail, brought the party into the narrow, ill-paved streets of Kendal, at least two hours earlier than the time specified by Sir Foulke d'Oilly, and it was not above ten o'clock of the night when they pulled up before a long, low, thatched cabin, above the door of which, a bush and a bottle, suspended from a pole, gave note that it was a house of entertainment. Flinging his rein to one of half-a-dozen grooms and horse-boys, who were lounging about the gate, the knight raised the latch, and entered a long, smoky apartment, which seemed to occupy the whole ground floor of the building, affording room for the accommodation of fifty or sixty guests, on occasion of feasts, fairs, or holidays.
It was an area of thirty or forty feet in length, by ten or twelve in width, with bare rough-cast walls, and bare rafters overhead, blackened by the smoke which escaped from the ill-constructed chimneys at either end, and eddied overhead in a perennial canopy of sable. The floor, however, was strewed with fresh green rushes, green wreaths and branches were hung on the rough-cast walls, and a large earthen-vase or two of water-lilies and other showy wild-flowers adorned the board, which was covered with clean white napery of domestic fabric. At the upper end of this long table, half-a-dozen or eight men were supping on a chine of hill-kid, with roasted moor-fowl and wild-ducks, the landlord of the tavern being the bailiff of the town, and having his lord's license to take all small game, save bustard, heron, woodcock, and pheasant, for the benefit of his guest-table.
On the entrance of Sir Foulke, these men rose to their feet; and one, the best-armed and best-looking of the party, seeming to be a second esquire or equerry, asked him, in a subdued voice—
"What fortune, Sir Foulke; have you got the villeyn?"
"Safe enough, Fitz Hugh," replied the knight; "but he is no mere brute, as you fellows told me, but a perilous, shrewd, intelligent, clear-headed Saxon. He has been advised, too, in this matter, by some one well-skilled in the law, and was, I think, expecting our coming. I should not marvel much, if De Taillebois have notice of us. We must be in the saddle again as soon as possible. But I must have a morsel ere we start; I have not tasted aught since high-noon, and then it was but a beggarly oat-cake and a flask of mead. What have you there?"
"Some right good treble ale, beausire; let me fill you a tankard, and play cup-bearer for once." And, suiting the action to the word, he filled out a mighty horn of the liquid amber, capped with its snowy foam, and handed it to the knight, adding, "The supper is but fragments, but there is more at the fire now. I will go to the stables, and see the fresh horses saddled and caparisoned; and as I pass the buttery and tap, I will stir up the loitering knaves."
"Do so, Fitz Hugh," replied the other; "but hasten, Jesu Maria! hasten! I reckon but half done until we are out of this beggarly hole, and under way for merry Yorkshire. And hark you, Fitz Hugh, let them bring in the prisoner. We must have him along with us; and ten of the best men, lightly armed, and mounted on the pick of our stud. Ten more may tarry with the tired beasts we have just used, and bring them on with the baggage and sumpter horses to-morrow."
Then, as his officer left the hall to attend to his multifarious duties, he quaffed another huge flagon of the strong, heady ale; and, casting himself into a settle in the chimney-corner, what between the warmth of the fire, grateful after his hard ride in the chilly night air, and the fumes of the heady tankard, he sunk into a doze, from which he only aroused himself, when, half an hour afterward, in came a dozen clumsy village servants, stamping and clattering in their heavy-clouted shoes, and loaded the table with smoking platters and huge joints, of which, however coarse the cookery, the odors were any thing but unsavory.