Chapter XXVI.
ALL ON A BRIGHT MARCH MORNING.
The March winds were blowing, and the daffydowndillies were nodding merry heads in the sunshine. The hawthorn hedges were dotted with the bright green of bursting buds; and behind this promise of cover from the prying eyes of predatory urchins, the small birds were busy house-building. The tall elms were still bare of leaves, but the rooks had framed their crazy nests, and were now busy following the ploughman, and waxing fat on succulent worms. The sedgy pools and ditches in the forest were noisy with the hoarse croaking of colonies of frogs. Lambs skipped in the farmers' meadows, and cropped the grass that had already lost the brown tinge of winter.
Spring was come, vouched for by the calendar, the place of King Sol in the blue heavens, and the changing aspect of reawakening nature.
By every token of a healthy youth and a glorious March morning, Johnnie's thoughts should have been light, fanciful, and centred round the fair image of Mistress Dorothy Dawe. Alas! they were dark as a midwinter night, and as gloomy as a funeral oration.
"'She only drove me to despair,
When—she—un-kind—did—prove.'"
Johnnie hummed the last few bars of a popular madrigal in slow and dirge-like tones. "She" was still wayward and unkind, and "He" was setting out on the morrow in search of treasure to lay at a maiden's feet. The young fellow's visions of the Indies were no longer rosy, but drab as November skies. He was pledged to set his face westward ho! but the zest was gone out of the enterprise. He leaned over a gate, and watched the gulls fishing in the river.
Johnnie did not hear a light step coming down the meadow towards him; no sound disturbed his melancholy reflections. "Jack!" murmured a soft voice.
The young man started as though an arrow had struck him. His face flushed hotly, and a gleam of pleasure lighted up its gloom.