CHAPTER II.
HEATH FARM.
The farm-house was one of those quaint, picturesque old buildings, which have long ago vanished from our public thoroughfares, and is only to be found in remote rural districts, approached by narrow cross-roads. Its high gables and chimneys, its bay windows, projecting several feet beyond the wall, and filled with diamonded panes of glass set in lead, and guarded by heavy iron stanchions, told a tale of past centuries, and carried you back to the feudal times, when every man's house was literally his castle, and presented a hostile front to the traveller.
A pointed porch, composed of very small dark red bricks, grey and rusty looking from the lichens which encrusted them, sheltered the front entrance from the bleak easterly winds, which swept over a long range of salt marshes, from the sea. A massy oak door opened from the porch, into a long square hall, paved with broad flag stones, in which the family generally assembled to take their meals.
Through that ancient doorway a band of Cromwell's soldiers had once passed, and been regaled at the huge oak table that held the centre of the floor. Silver flagons had foamed with nut-brown ale; and "success to the brave defenders of England's rights—and confusion to all tyrants"—had been drank 'mid uproarious shouts, that made the old rafters overhead, ring again.
Sir Lawrence Rushmere, the head of the family in those days, had been a person of some importance during the great struggle that revolutionized England, and laid the foundation of her present greatness.
A staunch adherent of the stern Protector, he had furnished a number of horses and arms at his own cost, for the use of the Commonwealth, and brought his own strong arm and stout heart to advocate the good cause. For the active part he took in the contest, his descendants had to suffer no small amount of robbery and wrong after the Restoration. The larger portion of their estates were forfeited to the crown; and the old house and two hundred acres of poor heathy waste land was all that remained to the impoverished family.