Next morning I was up and breakfasted betimes, and the sunny hours of the forenoon saw me mounted, and, after passing the gate of Chillingham Park at a quick canter, I know not why, unless to soothe my mental irritation, slowly walking my horse in the neighbourhood of the Reculvers, and inhaling the pleasant breeze that came from the sea, whilom, as my companion of last night said, ploughed by the galleys of Cæsar, and along the same shore where the Kentish barbarians gathered, in their war paint, to oppose him.
The sunshine fell redly on the quaint spires of the old church and picturesque cottages of the secluded village. I passed the sign of King Ethelbert, and hovered for a moment at the gate of the cottage ornée, where I had been overnight. Its blinds were closely drawn; but a bird was singing gayly in a gilt wire cage that hung in the porch, which was covered with climbing trailers, already in full flower.
I passed on, and soon reached the rustic stile—the scene of last night's encounter with that interesting individual who had solicited alms with the aid of a black beard and a cudgel. It led to a narrow pathway through the fields and coppice to the sea. The birds were chirping, and some of the trees were already budding. The yellow blaze of noon streamed between their stems upon the green grass, and I could see the blue waves of the sea glittering in the glory of the sunshine far away.
On the summit of the moss-grown stile fancy conjured up the figure of the young girl; and I had a vague, undefined longing to meet her again, and learn something of her history, if she had one.
What was this girl to me, or I to her? Yet I had the desire to see her once more, and, as luck or fate would have it, something glittering among the grass caught my eye, and, on dismounting, I found it to be a little gold locket, containing a lock of brown hair, attached to a black velvet ribbon. It bore the initials "J.D.B." and the date, "1st June."
It had, no doubt, fallen, or been torn from the young lady's neck in the struggle of the night before. I resolved at once to restore it, and turned my horse's head towards the cottage, not without the unpleasant reflection that this was the 1st of April—All Fools' Day—and I might simply be courting a scrape of some kind.
Leaving my horse at the gate, I rang the bell, and the door was promptly opened by the old woman (whose face expressed such evident disappointment that I saw some one else had been expected), and whom I may as well introduce by name as Mrs. Goldsworthy.
She curtseyed very low, and eyed me doubtfully, as if the words of the mess-room song occurred to her—
The scarlet coats! the scarlet coats!
They are a graceless set,
From shoulder-strap of worsted lace
To bullion epaulette.
The deuce is in those soldiers' tongues;
What specious fibs they tell!
And what is worse, 'tis so perverse,
The women list as well.
If such were her speculations, I remembered that the lancers wore blue, and the alleged seductions of the scarlet were inapplicable to one who was in mufti.