Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=5fZLAAAAcAAJ
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

COLLECTION

OF ANCIENT AND MODERN

BRITISH AUTHORS.

VOL. CCCLXXXVI.

FOREST DAYS

A ROMANCE OF OLD TIMES.

PRINTED BY CRAPELET, 9, RUE DE VAUGIRARD.

FOREST DAYS

A ROMANCE OF OLD TIMES.

BY G. P. R. JAMES,

AUTHOR OF "MORLEY ERNSTEIN," "THE ROBBER," ETC.

PARIS,

BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY,

3, QUAI MALAQUAIS, NEAR THE PONT DES ARTS;
AND STASSIN ET XAVIER, 9, RUE DU COQ.

SOLD ALSO BY AMYOT, RUE DE LA PAIX; TRUCHY, BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS;
BROCKHAUS AND AVENARIUS, RUE RICHELIEU; LEOPOLD MICHELSEN, LEIPZIG;
AND BY ALL THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS ON THE CONTINENT.

1843.

TO

JAMES MILNES HASKILL, ESQ. M P. ETC.

MY DEAR SIR,

In offering you a book, which I fear is little worthy of your acceptance, and a compliment which has become valueless, I cannot help expressing my regret at having no other means of testifying my esteem and respect for one, who has not only always shown a most kindly feeling towards myself and my works, but has ever advocated the true interests of literature. You will, nevertheless, I am sure, receive the tribute not unwillingly, however inadequate it may be to convey my thanks for many an act of kindness, or to express a feeling of high esteem founded on no light basis.

In the volumes I send, you will find many scenes with which you are familiar, both in history and in nature; but one thing, perhaps, will strike you with some surprise. We have been so much accustomed, in ballad and story, to see the hero of the forest, Robin Hood, placed in the days of Richard I., that it will seem, perhaps, somewhat bold in me to depict him as living and acting in the reign of Henry III. But I think, if you will turn to those old historians, with whose writings you are not unfamiliar, you will find that he was, as I have represented, an English yeoman, of a very superior mind, living in the times in which I have placed him, outlawed, in all probability, for his adherence to the popular party of the day, and taking a share in the important struggle between the weak and tyrannical, though accomplished, Henry III., and that great and extraordinary leader, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.

In regard to the conduct of my story, I have nothing to say, but that I wish it were better. I think, however, that it will be found to contain some striking scenes of those times; and I trust that the struggle of feelings, depicted in the third volume, may afford you matter of some interest.

Believe me to be,

My Dear Sir,

With the highest esteem,

Your most faithful servant,

G. P. R. JAMES.

FOREST DAYS.

CHAPTER I.

Merry England!--Oh, merry England! What a difference has there always been between thee and every other land! What a cheerfulness there seems to hang about thy very name! What yeoman-like hilarity is there in all the thoughts of the past! What a spirit of sylvan cheer and rustic hardihood in all the tales of thy old times!

When England was altogether an agricultural land--when a rude plough produced an abundant harvest, and a thin, but hardy and generous peasantry, devoted themselves totally to the cultivation of the earth,--when wide forests waved their green boughs over many of the richest manufacturing districts of Great Britain, and the lair of the fawn and the burrow of the coney were found, where now appear the fabric and the mill, there stood, in a small town, or rather, I should call it, village, some fourteen miles from Pontefract, a neat little inn, well known to all the wayfarers on the road as a comfortable resting place, where they could dine on their journey to or from the larger city.

The house was constructed of wood, and was but of two stories; but let it not be supposed on that account that it was devoid of ornament, for manifold were the quaint carvings and rude pieces of sculpture with which it was decorated, and not small had been the pains which had been bestowed upon mouldings and cornices, and lintels and door-posts by the hand of more than one laborious artisan. Indeed, altogether, it was a very elaborate piece of work, and had probably been originally built for other purposes than that which it now served; for many were the changes which had taken place in that part of the country, as well as over the rest of England, between the days I speak of, and those of a century before.

Any one who examined the house closely, would have seen that it must have been constructed before the year 1180, for there was very strong proof, in the forms of the windows, and the cutting across of several of the beams which traversed the front, that at the period of its erection the use of glazed casements in private houses was not known. At the time I speak of, however, glass had become plentiful in England, and, though cottages were seldom ornamented with anything like a lattice, yet no house with the rank and dignity of an inn, where travellers might stop in rainy and boisterous weather, was now without windows, formed of manifold small lozenge-shaped pieces of glass, like those still frequently employed in churches, only of a smaller size.

The inn was a gay-looking, cheerful place, either in fine weather or in foul; for, as there are some men who, clothe them as you will, have a distinguished and graceful air, so are there some dwellings which look sunshiny and bright, let the aspect of the sky be what it will. The upper story of the house projected beyond the lower, and formed of itself a sort of portico, giving a shelter to two long benches placed beneath it, either from the heat of the summer sun, or the rain of the spring and autumn; and it need not be said that these benches formed the favourite resting place of sundry old men on bright summer evenings; and that many a time, in fine weather, a table would be put out upon the green before the house, the bench offering seats on one side, while settles and stools gave accommodation on the other, to many a merry party round the good roast beef and humming ale.

Before the door of the inn, spread out one of those pleasant open pieces of ground, which generally found room for themselves in every country village in England; on which the sports of the place were held; to which the jockey brought his horse for sale, and tried his paces up and down; on which many a wrestler took a fall, and cudgel-player got a broken head. There too, in their season, were the merry maypole and the dance, the tabor and the pipe. There was many a maiden wooed and won; and there passed along all the three processions of life--the infant to the font, the bride to the altar, the corpse to the grave.

Various were the memories attached to that village green in the hearts of all the neighbourhood; various were the associations which it called up in every bosom and various were the romances, probably much better worth listening to than this that we are going to tell, which that village green could have related. It had all the things pertaining to its character and profession: it had a dry, clear, sandy horse-road running at one side, it had two foot-paths crossing each other in the middle, it had a tall clump of elms on the south side, with a well, and an iron ladle underneath. It had a pond, which was kept clear by a spring at the bottom, welling constantly over at the side next the road, and forming a little rivulet, full of pricklebacks, flowing on towards a small river at some distance. It had its row of trees on the side next to the church, with the priest's house at the corner. The surface was irregular, just sufficiently so to let some of the young people, in any of their merry meetings, get out of sight of their elders for a minute or two; and the whole was covered with that short, dry, green turf, which is only to be found upon a healthy sandy soil. In short, dear reader, it was as perfect a village green as ever was seen, and I should like very much, if such a thing were possible, to transport you and me to the bench before the inn door on some fine afternoon in the end of the month of June, and there, with a white jug of clear Nottingham ale before us, while the sun sunk down behind the forest, and the sky began to glow with his slant rays, to tell you the tale which is about to follow, marking in your face the signs of interest which you would doubtless show--the hope, the fear, the expectation, perhaps the smile of surprise, perhaps the glistening drop of sympathy--suffering you to interrupt and ask a question here and there, but not too often--forgiving a moment's impatience when the tale was dull, and thanking you in the end for your friendship towards the good and noble who lived and died more than five centuries ago.

In truth, reader, you know not what a pleasure there is--when the mind is clear from care or sorrow, the heart well attuned, the object a good one, and the tale interesting--you know not what a pleasure there is, to sit down and tell a long story to those who are worthy of hearing one.

And now, having made a somewhat wide excursion, and finding it difficult to get back again to the tale by any easy and gradual process, I will even in this place, close the first chapter, which, by your leave, shall serve for a Preface and Introduction both.

CHAPTER II.

It was in the spring of the year, somewhere about the period which good
old Chaucer describes in the beginning of his Canterbury Tales,

"Whanne that April with his shoures sote, The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licour,
Of whiche vertue engendred is the flow'r:"

it was also towards the decline of the day, and the greater part of the travellers who visited the inn for an hour, on their way homeward from the neighbouring towns, had betaken themselves to the road, in order to get under the shelter of their own roof ere the night fell, when, at one of the tables in the low-pitched parlour--the beams of which must have caused any wayfarer of six feet high to bend his head--might still be seen a man in the garb of a countryman, sitting with a great, black leathern jug before him, and one or two horns round about, besides the one out of which he himself was drinking.

A slice of a brown loaf toasted at the embers, and which he dipped from time to time in his cup, was the only solid food that he seemed inclined to take; and, to say sooth, it probably might not have been very convenient for him to call for any very costly viands--at least, if one might judge by his dress, which, though good, and not very old, was of the poorest and the homeliest kind--plain hodden-grey cloth, of a coarse fabric, with leathern leggings and wooden-soled shoes.

The garb of the countryman, however, was not the only thing worthy of remark in his appearance. His form had that peculiarity which is not usually considered a perfection, and is termed a hump; not that there was exactly, upon either shoulder, one of those large knobs which is sometimes so designated, but there was a general roundness above his bladebones--a sort of domineering effort of his neck to keep down his head--which gave him a clear title to the appellation of hunchback.

In other respects he was not an unseemly man--his legs were stout and well turned, his arms brawny and long, his chest singularly wide for a deformed person, and his grey eyes large, bright and sparkling. His nose was somewhat long and pointed, and was not only a prominent feature, but a very distinguished one in his countenance. It was one of those noses which have a great deal of expression in them. There was a good deal of fun and sly merriment about the corners of his mouth and under his eyelids, but his nose was decidedly the point of the epigram, standing out a sort of sharp apex to a shrewd, merry ferret-like face; and, as high mountains generally catch the sunshine either in the rise or the decline of the day, and glow with the rosy hue of morning before the rest of the country round obtains the rays, so had the light of the vine settled in purple brightness on the highest feature of his face, gradually melting away into a healthy red over the rest of his countenance.

He wore his beard close shaven, as if he had been a priest; but his eyebrows, which were very prominent, and his hair, which hung in three or four detached locks over his sun-burnt brow and upon his aspiring neck, though they had once been as black as a raven's wing, were now very nearly white.

With this face and form sat the peasant at the table, sopping his bread in the contents of his jug, and from time to time looking down into the bottom of the pot with one eye, as if to ascertain how much was left. He stirred not from his seat, nor even turned his head away from the window, though a very pretty girl of some eighteen years of age looked in at him from time to time, and his was a face which announced that the owner thereof had at one time of his life had sweet things to say to all the black eyes he met with.

At length, however, the sound of a trotting horse was heard, and the peasant exclaimed, eagerly--"Here, Kate! Kate!--you merry compound of the woman and the serpent, take away the jack; they're coming now. Away with it, good girl! I mustn't be found drinking wine of Bourdeaux. Give me a tankard of ale, girl. How does the room smell?"

"Like a friar's cell," said the girl, taking up the black jack with a laugh. "Grape juice, well fermented, and a brown toast beside."

"Get thee gone, slut!" cried the peasant, "what dost thou know of friars' cells? Too much, I misdoubt me. Bring the ale, I say--and spill a drop on the floor, to give a new flavour to the room."

"I'll bring thee a sprig of rue, Hardy," said the girl; "it will give out odour enough. Put it in thy posset when thou gett'st home; it will sweeten thy blood, and whiten thy nose."

"Away with thee," cried the man she called Hardy, "or I'll kiss thee before company."

The girl darted away as her companion rose from his seat with an appearance of putting, at least, one part of his threat in execution, and returned a minute after, bearing in her hand the ale he had demanded.

"Spill some--spill some!" cried the peasant. But as she seemed to think such a proceeding, in respect to good liquor, a sin and a shame, the peasant was obliged to bring it about himself in a way which the manners of those days rendered not uncommon.

The girl set down the tankard on the table, and, with her pretty brown fingers still wet with a portion of the ale which had gone over, bestowed a buffet on the side of the peasant's head which made his ear tingle for a moment, and then carefully wiped her mouth with the corner of her apron, as if to remove every vestige of his salute.

As nearly as possible at the same moment that she was thus clearing her lips, the feet of the horse which had been heard coming, stopped at the door of the inn; and loud applications for attendance called the girl away from her coquettish sparring with Hardy, who, resuming his seat, put the tankard of ale to his lips, and did not seem to find it unpalatable, notwithstanding the Bourdeaux by which it had been preceded. At the same time, however, a considerable change took place in his appearance. His neck became more bent, his shoulders were thrown more forward; he untied the points at the back of his doublet, so that it appeared somewhat too loose for his figure; he drew the hair, too, more over his forehead, suffered his cheeks to fall in, and by these and other slight operations he contrived to make himself look fully fifteen years older than he had done the minute before.

While this was going on, there had been all that little bustle and noise at the door of the inn which usually accompanied the reception of a guest in those days, when landlords thought they could not testify sufficient honour and respect to an arriving customer without mingling their gratulations with scoldings of the horse-boys and tapsters, and manifold loud-tongued directions to chamberlains and maids.

At length the good host, with his stout, round person clothed in close-fitting garments, which displayed every weal of fat under his skin, led in a portly well-looking man, of about thirty, or five-and-thirty years of age, bearing the cognizance of some noble house embroidered on his shoulder. He was evidently, to judge by his dress and appearance, one of the favourite servants of some great man, and a stout, frank, hearty, English yeoman he seemed to be; a little consequential withal, and having a decidedly high opinion of his own powers, mental and corporeal, but good-humoured and gay, and as ready to take as to give.

"Not come!" he said, as he entered, talking over his shoulder to the landlord--"not come! That is strange enough. Why, I was kept more than half an hour at Barnsley Green to be the judge of a wrestling match. They would have me, God help us, so I was afraid they would be here before me. Well, give us a stoup of good liquor to discuss the time; I must not say give it of the best--the best is for my lord--but I do not see why the second best should not be for my lord's man; so let us have it quick, before these people come, and use your discretion as to the quality."

The wine that he demanded was soon supplied, and being set upon the table at which the peasant was seated, the lord's man took his place on the other side, and naturally looked for a moment in the face of his table-fellow; while the landlord stood by, with his fat stomach, over-hanging the board, and his eyes fixed upon the countenance of his new guest, to mark therein the approbation of his wine which he anticipated. The lord's man was not slow in proving the goodness of the liquor; but, without employing the horn cup, which the host set down beside the tankard, he lifted the latter to his mouth, drank a good deep draught, took a long sigh, drank again, and then nodded his head to the landlord, with a look expressive of perfect satisfaction.

After a few words between my host and his guest, in which Hardy took no part, but sat with his head bent over his ale, with the look of a man both tired and weakly, the landlord withdrew to his avocations, and the lord's man, fixing his eyes for a moment upon his opposite; neighbour, asked, in a kindly but patronising tone--

"What have you got there, ploughman? Thin ale,--isn't it? Come, take a cup of something better, to cheer thee. These are bad times, ar'n't they? Ay, I never yet met a delver in the earth that did not find fault with God's seasons. Here, drink that; it will make your wheat look ten times greener! Were I a ploughman, I'd water my fields with such showers as this, taken daily down my own throat. We should have no grumbling at bad crops then."

"I grumble not," replied the hunchback, taking the horn, and draining it slowly, sip by sip, "my crops grow green and plentiful. Little's the labour that my land costs in tillage, and yet I get a fat harvest in the season; and moreover, no offence, good sir, but I would rather be my own man and Heaven's, than any other person's."

"Not if you had as good a lord as I have," answered the serving-man, colouring a little, notwithstanding. "One is as free in his house as on Salisbury-plain; it's a pleasure to do his bidding. He's a friend, too, of the peasant and the citizen, and the good De Montfort. He's no foreign minion, but a true Englishman."

"Here's his health, then," said the peasant. "Is your lord down in these parts?"

"Ay, is he," replied the lord's man--"no farther off than Doncaster, and I am here to meet sundry gentlemen, who are riding down this way to York, to tell them that their assembling may not be quite safe there, so that they must fix upon another place."

"Ho, ho!" said the peasant, "some new outbreak toward, against the foreigners. Well, down with them, I say, and up with the English yeomen. But who have we here?--Some of those you come to seek, I'll warrant.--Let us look at their faces." And going round the table, with a slow, and somewhat feeble step, he placed his eye to one of the small lozenges of glass in the casement, and gazed out for a minute or two, while the serving-man followed his example, and took a survey of some new travellers who had arrived, before they were ushered into the general reception room.

"Do you know him?" asked the peasant. "I think I have seen that dark face down here before."

"Ay, I know him," answered the serving-man. "He's a kinsman of the Earl of Ashby, one of our people, whom I came principally to meet. He's a handsome gentleman, and fair spoken, though somewhat black about the muzzle."

"If his heart be as black as his face," said the peasant, "I would keep what I had got to say for the Earl's ears, before I gave it to his, were I in your place."

"Ha! say you so?" demanded the lord's man. "Methinks you know more of him, ploughman, than you tell us."

"Not much," replied the other, "and what I do know is not very good, so one must be careful in the telling."

"What keeps him, I wonder?" said the serving-man, after having returned to the table, and sipped some more of his wine.

"He's toying without, I'll aver," said the peasant, "with pretty Kate, the landlord's daughter. He had better not let young Harland, the franklin's son, see him, or his poll and a crab-stick cudgel may be better acquainted. It had well-nigh been so three months ago, when he was down here last."

These words were said in an undertone, for while one of two servants, who had accompanied the subject of their discourse, led away the horses to the stable, and the other kept the landlord talking before the inn, there was a sound of whispering and suppressed laughter behind the door of the room, which seemed to show that the Earl of Ashby's kinsman was not far off, and was employed in the precise occupation which the peasant had assigned to him.

The serving-man wisely held his tongue, and, in a minute after, the door opened, and gave entrance to a man somewhat above the middle size, of a slim and graceful figure, the thinness of which did not seem to indicate weakness, but rather sinewy activity. He was dressed in close-fitting garments of a dark marone tint, with riding-boots, and spurs without rowels. Over the tight coat I have mentioned, coming halfway down his thigh, was a loose garment called a tabard, of philimot colour, apparently to keep his dress from the dust, and above it again a green hood, which was now thrown back upon his shoulders. His sword peeped from under his tabard, and the hilt of his dagger showed itself, also, on the other side. His air was easy and self-possessed, but there was a quick and furtive glance of the eye from object to object, as he entered the room, which gave the impression that there was a cunning and inquisitive spirit within. His face was certainly handsome, though pale and dark; his beard was short and black, and his hair, which was remarkably fine and glossy, had been left to grow long, and was platted like that of a woman. His hand was white and fine, and it was evident that he paid no slight attention to his dress, by the tremendous length of the points of his boots, which were embroidered to represent a serpent, and buttoned to his knees with a small loop of gold. His hood, too, was strangely ornamented with various figures embroidered round the edge; and yet so great was the extravagance of the period, that his apparel would then have been considered much less costly than that of most men of his rank, for his revenues were by far too limited, and his other expenses too many and too frequent, to permit of his indulging to the full his taste for splendid garments.

As this personage entered the room, the sharp glance of the serving-man detected the figure of Kate, the host's daughter, gliding away from the opening door, but, turning his head discreetly, he fixed his eyes upon the new-comer with a low reverence, advancing at the same time towards him.

The Earl's kinsman, however, either did not, or affected not to know the person who approached him, and the lord's man was obliged to enter into explanations as to who he was, and what was his errand.

"Ha!" said Richard de Ashby, "danger at York, is there? My good lord, your master, has brought us down here for nothing, then, it seems. I know not how my kinsman, the Earl of Ashby, will take this, for he loves not journeying to be disappointed."

"My lord does not intend to disappoint the Earl," replied the serving-man; "he will give him the meeting in the course of to-morrow--somewhere."

"Know you not where?" demanded the gentleman; and, as the servant turned his eyes, with a doubtful glance, to the spot where the peasant was seated, the other added, "Come hither with me upon the green, where there are no idle ears to overhear."

If his words were meant as a hint for Hardy to quit the room, it was not taken; for the hunchback remained fixed to the table, having recourse from time to time to his jug of ale, and looking towards the door more than once, after Sir Richard and the lord's man had quitted the chamber.

Their conference was apparently long, and at length, first one of the gentleman's servants, and then another, entered the little low-roofed room, and approached the table at which the peasant sat.

"Hallo! what hast thou got here, bumpkin?" cried one of them--"wine for such a carle as thou art!" and, as he spoke, he took up the tankard from which the serving-man had been drinking.

"That is neither thine nor mine," replied Hardy, "so you had better let it alone."

"Heyday!" cried the servant of the great man's kinsman; "rated by a humpbacked ploughman! If it be not thine, fellow, hold thy tongue, for it can be nothing to thee! I shall take leave to make free with it, however," and, pouring out a cup, he tossed it off.

"You must be a poor rogue," said the peasant, "to be so fond of drinking at another man's cost, as not to pay for your liquor even by a civil word."

"What is that he says?" cried the man, turning to his companion--for, to say sooth, although he had heard every word, he was not quite prepared to act upon them, being one of those who are much more ready to bully and brawl, than to take part in a fray they have provoked--"what is that he says?"

"He called thee a poor rogue, Timothy," said his companion. "Turn him out by the heels, the misbegotten lump!"

"Out with him!" cried the other, seeing that his comrade was inclined to stand by him, "Out with him!" and he advanced, menacingly, upon the peasant.

"Hold your hands!--hold your hands!" said Hardy, shaking his head--"I am an old man, and not so well made as you two varlets, but I don't 'bide a blow from any poor kinsman's half-starved curs!--Take care, my men!" and as one of them approached rather too near, he struck him a blow, without rising from his stool, which made him measure his length upon the rushes that strewed the floor, crying out at the same time, in a whining tone, "To think of two huge fellows falling upon a poor, deformed old body."

It so happened that the personage whom the peasant had knocked down was the braver man of the two; and, starting up, he rushed fiercely upon his adversary; which his companion espying, darted upon Hardy at the same moment, and by a dexterous kick of his foot knocked the stool from under him, thus bringing the hunchback and his own comrade to the ground together. He then caught their enemy by the collar, and held his head firmly down upon the floor with both hands, as one has sometimes seen a child do with a refractory kitten.

"Baste him, Dickon--baste him!" he cried.

"I'll give him a dip in the horse-pond," said the other; "his nose will make the water fizz like a red-hot horseshoe."

At that moment, however, the noise occasioned by such boisterous proceedings called in pretty Kate Greenly, the landlord's daughter, who, although she had a great reverence and regard for all the serving men of Richard de Ashby, was not fond of seeing poor Hardy ill-treated. Glancing eagerly round, while the peasant strove with his two opponents, she seized a pail of water which stood behind the parlour door, and following the plan which she had seen her father pursue with the bulldog and mastiff which tenanted the back yard, she dashed the whole of the contents over the combatants as they lay struggling on the ground.

All three started up, panting; but the gain was certainly on the part of Hardy, who, freed from the grasp of his adversaries, caught up the three-legged stool on which he had been sitting, and whirling it lightly above his head, prepared to defend himself therewith against his assailants; who, on their part, with their rage heightened rather than assuaged by the cool libation which Kate had poured upon them, drew the short swords that they carried, and were rushing upon the old peasant with no very merciful intent.

Kate Greenly now screamed aloud, exerting her pretty little throat to the utmost, and her cries soon brought in the lord's man, followed, somewhat slowly, by Richard de Ashby. The good landlord himself--having established as a rule, both out of regard for his own person and for the custom of his house, never to interfere in any quarrels if he could possibly avoid it, which rule had produced, on certain occasions, great obtuseness in sight and in hearing--kept out of the way, and indeed removed himself to the stable upon the pretence of looking after his guests' horses.

The lord's man, however, with the true spirit of an English yeoman, dashed at once into the fray, taking instant part with the weakest.

"Come, come!" he cried, placing himself by Hardy's side, "two men against one--and he an old one! Out upon it! Stand off, or I'll break your jaws for you!"

This accession to the forces of their adversary staggered the two servants, and a momentary pause took place, in which their master's voice was at last heard.

"What! brawling, fools!" he exclaimed. "We have something else to think of now. Stand back, and let the old man go! Get you gone, ploughman; and don't let me find you snarling with a gentleman's servants again, or I will put you in the stocks for your pains."

"I will break his head before he's out of the house," said one of the men, who seemed to pay but little deference to his master's commands.

"I will break thine, if thou triest it," answered the lord's man, sturdily. "Come along, old man, come along; I will see thee safe out of the place, and let any one of them lay a finger on thee if he dare!"

Thus saying, he grasped Hardy's arm and led him forth from the inn, muttering as he did so, "By the shoulder-bone of St. Luke, the old fellow has got limbs enough to defend himself!--It's as thick as a roll of brawn, and as hard as a branch of oak! How goes it with thee, fellow?"

"Stiff--woundy stiff, sir," replied the hunchback; "but I thank you, with all my heart, for taking part with me; and I would fain give you a cup of good ale in return, such as you have never tasted out of London. If you could but contrive to come to my poor place to-morrow morning," he added, dropping his voice to a low tone, "I could shew some country sports, which, as you are a judge of such things, might please you."

"It must be early hours, then," replied the serving-man. "Those that don't come to-night will not be here till noon to-morrow, it is true: but still I think I had better wait for them."

"Nay, nay--come," said Hardy; "come and take a cup of ale with me," and, after a pause, he added, significantly, "besides, there's something I want to tell you which may profit your lord."

"But how shall I find my way?" demanded the serving-man, gazing inquiringly in his face, but with no expression of surprise at the intimation he received.

"Oh, I will shew you," answered the peasant. "Meet me at the church stile there, and I will guide you. It is not far. Be there a little before six, and you shall find me waiting. Give me your hand on't."

The serving-man held out his hand, and Hardy shook it in a grasp such as might be given by a set of iron pincers, at the same time advancing his head, and adding, in a low tone,

"Take care what you do--you have a traitor there! One of those men is a nidget, and the other is a false hound, come down to spy upon good men and true."

Thus saying, he relaxed his hold, and, turning away, was soon lost in the obscure twilight of the evening.

CHAPTER III.

The animal called the sluggard has greatly increased in modern days. In former times the specimens were few and far between. The rising of the sun was generally the signal for knight and yeoman to quit their beds, and if some of the old or the soft cumbered their pillows for an hour or so later, the sleeping time rarely if ever extended beyond seven in the morning.

The sky was still grey when the stout yeoman, whom we have mentioned under the title of the lord's man, but whose real name was Thomas Blawket, sprang lightly out of his bed, and made that sort of rapid, but not unwholesome toilet, which a hardy Englishman, in his rank of life, was then accustomed to use. It consisted merely in one or two large buckets of clean cold water poured over his round curly head and naked shoulders, and then, with but some small ceremony of drying, his clothes were cast on, and bound round him with his belt. The whole operation occupied, perhaps, ten minutes, and a considerable portion of that space of time was taken up in rubbing dry his thick, close, short-cut beard, which curled up under the process into little knots, like the coat of a French water dog.

"Give thee good day, host, give thee good day," he said, as he issued forth. "I will be back anon;" and, sauntering forward leisurely on the green, he stood for a moment or two looking round him, to prevent the appearance of taking any preconcerted direction, and then walked slowly towards the church, which stood behind the row of trees we have mentioned. After gazing up at the building, which was then in its first newness, he made a circuit round it, and passing the priest's house, he reached what was called the Church Stile, where two broad stones, put edgeways, with one flat one between them for a step, excluded all animals without wings--except man, and his domestic companion, the dog--from what was then called the Priest's Meadow.

On the other side of this stile, with his arms leaning upon the top stone, was Hardy the Hunchback, whistling a lively tune, and watching the lord's man as he came forward, without moving from his position till the other was close upon him. Their salutation was then soon made, and crossing the stile, the good yeoman walked on by the side of his companion, sauntering easily along through the green fields, and talking of all the little emptinesses which occupy free hearts in the early morning.

The first hour of the day, the bright first hour of a spring day I mean, appears always to me as if care and thought had nought to do with it. It seems made for those light and whirling visions--not unmingled with thanks and praise--which drive past the dreamy imagination like motes in the sunshine, partaking still, in a degree, of sleep, and having all its soft indistinctness, without losing the brightness of waking perception: thoughts, hopes, and fancies, that glitter as they go, succeeded each minute by clearer and more brilliant things, till the whole, at length, form themselves into the sterner realities of noonday life.

The two men wandered on in that dreamy hour. They listened to the sweet birds singing in the trees; and it was a time of year when the whole world was tuneful; they stopped by the side of the babbling brook, and gazed into its dancing waters; they watched the swift fish darting along the stream, and hallooed to a heron which had just caught one of the finny tribe in its bill.

"Now had we a hawk," said the peasant, "we would very soon have Master Greycoat there, as surely as foul Richard de Ashby will catch pretty Kate Greenly before he has done."

"Think you so?" said the lord's man, certainly not speaking of catching the heron. "Will she be so easily deceived, think you?"

"Ay, will she," answered the peasant. "Not that the girl wants sense or learning either, for the good priest took mighty pains with her, and she can read and write as well as any clerk in the land. Nor has she a bad heart either, though it is somewhat fierce and quick withal--like her mother's, who one day broke Tim Clough's head with a tankard, when he was somewhat boisterous to her, and then well-nigh died with grief when she found she had really cracked his skull. But this girl is as vain as a titmouse, and though I do believe she loves young Harland, the franklin's son, at the bottom, yet I have often told him that it is as great a chance she never marries him as that the river will be frozen next winter; and now I see this fellow come down again and hanging about her as he did before, I say her vanity will take her by the ears, and lead her to any market he chooses to carry her to."

"Alack and a-well-a-day!" said the lord's man, "that a gentleman like that cannot let a far off place such as this be in peace, with its quiet sunshine and good country-folks. He may find a light-o'-love easily enough in the great cities, without coming down to break a father's heart, and make a good youth miserable, and turn a gay-hearted country girl into a sorrowful harlot! I hope he may get his head broke for his pains!"

"He is like to get his neck broke for something else," replied the peasant, "If I judge rightly. But we will talk more of that anon. Let us get on."

Forward accordingly they walked, passed another field, and another, and then took their way down a narrow, sandy lane, which in the end opened out from between its high banks upon a long strip of ground covered with short grass, and old hawthorn trees, with many a bank and dingle breaking the turf, and Showing the yellow soil beneath.

"Why, you seem to live on the edge of the forest, ploughman," said the serving-man; "it must be poor ground here, I wot?"

"It's good for my sort of farming," replied the other, shooting a shrewd glance at him, along the side of his very peculiar nose; "you have a mile to go yet, Master Yeoman, and we may as well go through a bit of the woodland."

"Have with you, have with you!" replied the yeoman. "I love the forest ground as well as any man, and often, when the season comes on, I turn woodman for the occasion, and, with my lord's good leave, help his foresters to kill the deer."

"Dangerous tastes in these days, Master Yeoman," said the peasant, and there the conversation dropped again, each falling back into that train of thought which had been awakened in their minds by the reference to Kate Greenly, and her probable fate; for, although we are accustomed to consider those as ruder times--and certainly, in the arts of life, man was not so far advanced as in the present day--yet the natural affections of the heart, the sound judgment of right and wrong, and the high emotions of the immortal spirit within us, do not depend upon civilization, at least as the term is generally applied, but exist independent of a knowledge of sciences, or skill in any of man's manifold devices for increasing his pleasures and his comforts. They are rather, indeed, antagonist principles, in many respects, to very great refinement; and the advance of society in the arts of luxury is but too often accompanied by the cultivation of that exclusive selfishness which extinguishes all the finer emotions, and leaves man but as one of the machines he makes.

The mind of the stout yeoman, following the track on which it had begun to run, represented to himself what would be the feelings of the rustic lover, to find himself abandoned for a comparative stranger, and not only to know that the girl he loved was lost to him for ever, but degraded and debased--a harlot, sported with for the time, to be cast away when her freshness was gone. He had no difficulty in sympathising from his honest heart with the sensations which young Harland would experience--with the bitter disappointment--with the anger mingled with tenderness towards her who in her folly blighted her own and his happiness for ever--with the pure and unmitigated indignation against him who, in his heartless vanity, came down to blast the peace of others for the gratification of an hour. He thought of the father, too; but there, indeed, his sympathies were not so much excited, for it needed but to see good John Greenly once or twice to perceive that there was no great refinement in his virtue--that self was his first object--and, after meditating over that part of the subject for two or three hundred yards, as they walked on through the hawthorns, he said aloud, with a half laugh, "I shouldn't wonder if he would rather have her a lord's leman than a countryman's wife!"

"Not at first," answered Hardy, understanding at once what he meant; "he will take it to heart at first, but will soon get reconciled to it." And again they fell into thought, walking on over the smooth turf, upon which it was a pleasure to tread, it was so soft, so dry, and so elastic.

As they proceeded, the hawthorns became mingled with other trees; large beeches, with their long waving limbs not yet fully covered with their leaves, stood out upon the banks, here and there an oak, too, was seen, with the young leaves still brown and yellow; while patches of fern broke the surface of the grass, and large cushions of moss covered the old roots that forced their way to the surface of the ground.

The trees, however, were still scattered at many yards' distance from each other, and cast long shadows upon the velvet green of the grass, as the sun, not many degrees above the horizon, poured its bright rays between them. But when the yeoman looked through the bolls, to the northward and westward, he could see a dim mass of darker green spreading out beyond, and showing how the forest thickened, not far off; while, every now and then, some cart-way, or woody path, gave him a long vista into the very heart of the woodland, with lines of light, where the beams of day broke through the arcade of boughs, marking the distances upon the road.

That they were getting into the domain of the beasts of chase was soon very evident. More than one hare started away before their footsteps, and limped off with no very hurried pace. Every two or three yards, a squirrel was seen running from tree to tree, and swarming up the boll; and, once or twice, at a greater distance, the practised eye of the good yeoman caught the form of a dun deer, bounding away up some of the paths, to seek shelter in the thicker wood.

The way did not seem long, however, and all the thousand objects which a woodland scene affords to please and interest the eye and ear, and carry home the moral of nature's beautiful works to the heart of man, occupied the attention of the stout Englishman, as they walked onward, till the distance between the trees becoming less and less, the branches formed a canopy through which the rays of the morning sun only found their way occasionally.

"Why, Master Ploughman," said the lord's man, at length, "you seem plunging into the thick of the wood. Does your dwelling lie in this direction?"

"In good sooth does it!" answered the ploughman;--"it will be more open presently."

"Much need," rejoined the yeoman, "or I shall take thee for a forester, and not one of the King's either."

The peasant laughed, but made no reply, and in a minute or two after, the yeoman continued, saying--"Thou art a marvellous man, assuredly, for thou art ten years younger this morning than thou wert last night. Good faith, if I had fancied thee as strong and active as thou art, and as young withal, I think I should have left thee to fight it out with those two fellows by thyself."

"Would that I had them for but half an hour, under the green hawthorn trees we have just passed," said the peasant, laughing--"I would need no second hand to give them such a basting as they have rarely had in life--though I doubt me they have not had a few."

"Doubtless, doubtless!" answered the yeoman--"But word, my good friend, before we go farther: as you are not what you seemed, it is as well I should know where I am going?"

"I am not what I seemed, and not what I seem either, even now," said the peasant, with a frank and cheerful smile, "but there is no harm in that either, Master Yeoman. Here, help me off with my burden; I am not the first man who has made himself look more than he is. There, put your hand under my frock, and untie the knot you will find, while I unfasten this one in front."

So saying, he loosened a little cord and tassel that was round his neck, and with the aid of his companion, let slip from his shoulders a large pad, containing seemingly various articles, some hard, and some soft, but which altogether had been so disposed as to give him the appearance of a deformity that nature certainly had not inflicted upon him. As soon as it was gone, he stood before the honest yeoman, a stout, hearty, thick-set man, with high shoulders indeed, but without the slightest approach to a hump upon either of them; and regarding, with a merry glance, the astonishment of his companion--for those were days of society's babyhood, when men were easily deceived--he said, "So much for the hunch, Master Yeoman. Had those good gentlemen seen me now, they might not have been quite so ready with their hands; and had they seen this," he added, showing the hilt of a good stout dagger under his coat, "they might not have been quite so ready with their swords. And now let us come on without loss of time, for there are those waiting who would fain speak with you for a short time, and give you a message for your lord."

The yeoman hesitated for an instant, but then replied--"Well, it matters not! I will not suspect you, though this is an odd affair. I have helped you once at a pinch--at least, I intended it as help--and you will not do me wrong now, I dare say."

"Doubt it not, doubt it not," said the peasant--"you are a friend, not an enemy. But now to add a word or two to anything else you may hear to-day, let me warn you as we go, that one of those two men you saw struggling with me last night is a traitor and a spy. Ay! and though I must not say so much, I suppose, of a lord's kinsman, I rather think that he who brought him is little better himself."

"Hard words, hard words, Master Ploughman, or whatever you may be," said the lord's man, with a serious air--"I trust it is not a broken head, or an alehouse quarrel that makes you find out treason in the man. Besides, if he be a spy, he can only be a spy upon his own master."

"And who is his own master?" demanded Hardy. "Come, put your wit to, and tell me that."

"Why, Sir Richard de Ashby, to be sure," replied the man; "Truly!" answered Hardy. "Methought the cognizance of the house of Ashby was a tree growing out of a brasier?"

"And so it is," said the man, "and he has it on his coat."

"And what has he on his breast?" demanded Hardy. "Three pards, what they call passant?"

The man started. "Why that is the King's!" he cried.

"Or the Prince Edward's," added Hardy. "So now when you return, tell your lord to look well to the Earl of Ashby's kinsman--if not to the Earl himself. We had tidings of something of this kind, and I remained to see--for you must not think me such a fool as to give a serving-man hard words for nothing, and bring blows upon my head without an object."

"Did you see the leopards, then?" demanded Blawket. "Did you see them with your own eyes?"

"I grappled with him when he sprang upon me," answered his companion, "and with my two thumbs tore open his coat, while he thought that we were merely rolling on the floor like a terrier and a cat. Under his coat he had a gipon of sendull fit for a king, with three pards broidered in gold upon the breast. When I had seen that, I was satisfied; but that mad girl Kate thought I was brawling in earnest, I suppose, and dashed a pail of water over us, which made us all pant and lose our hold, and as for the rest, you know what happened after. He is no servant of Richard de Ashby; the poor knave keeps but one, and, on my life, I believe, that having long ago sold his soul to the devil for luxury and wastel bread, he has now sold the only thing he had left to sell, his friends, to some earthly devil, for gold to win away pretty Kate Greenly."

The yeoman cast down his eyes on the ground, and walked on for a step or two in grave deliberation.

"Marry," he said, at length, "if this tale be true,--that is to say, I do not doubt what you say, good comrade,--but if I can prove it to my lord's content, I shall be a made man in his opinion for discovering such a trick, and get the henchman's place, which I have long been seeking.--I never loved that Richard de Ashby; though he is as soft and sweet as his cousin Alured is rash and haughty."

"It will be easily proved," replied his companion. "Charge Sir Richard boldly, when your good lord and his friends have met, with bringing down a servant of the King, disguised as his own, to be a spy upon their counsels."

"Nay, nay--not so," replied the serving-man. "I am more experienced in dealing with lords than thou art. That will cause my master to take up the matter, and may make mischief between the two earls. Nay, I will pick a quarrel with him in the inn kitchen, will make him take off his coat to bide a stroke or two with me; and then, when we all see the leopards, we will drag him at once before his betters."

"First tell your lord the whole," said Hardy, somewhat sternly. "It may behove him to know immediately who he is dealing with."

"I will--I will!" replied the man; "and I will let him know my plan for proving the treachery. But what have we here?--Your cottage, I suppose?--Why, you have a goodly sight of sons, if these be all your children. Shooting at the butts, too, as I live! Ay, I see now how it is!"

CHAPTER IV.

As merry a peal as ever was rung, though not perhaps as scientific a one, ushered in the month of May, and as bright a sun as ever shone rose up in the eastern sky, and cast long lines of light over the green fields, glistening with the tears of departed night. The spring had been one of those fair seasons which have but rarely visited us in latter years, when, according to the old rhyme,

"March winds and April showers
Had brought about May flowers."

Almost every leaf was upon the trees, except, indeed, in the case of some of those sturdy old oaks, which, in their brown hardihood, seemed unwilling to put on the livery of spring. The snowdrop had had her season and was gone, but the violet still lingered, shedding her perfume in the shade, and the hawthorn flaunted her fragrant blossoms to the wooing air. It was, in short, the merry, merry month of May, and her ensigns were out in every hedge and every field, calling young hearts to gaiety and enjoyment, and promising a bright summer in her train.

Many a maiden had been out, before the sun rose, from behind the distant slopes, to gather May dew to refresh her beauty, and many a youth, seeking the blossom of the white-thorn, had met, by preconcerted accident, the girl he loved under the lover's tree, and kissed her as warmly as under the mistletoe. Young Harland, however, had looked for Kate Greenly at the place where he had found her on the same day in the former year, but had looked in vain; and, as he returned homeward, somewhat disappointed, had found her with a party of gay girls, sometimes laughing with their laughter, sometimes falling into deep and gloomy thought.

Her young companions broke away to leave her alone with her acknowledged lover; and Kate walked quickly home by his side, with a varying and a changeful air, which we must notice for a moment, though we cannot pause to tell all that passed between them. Sometimes she was gay and saucy, as her wont; sometimes she was thoughtful and even sad; sometimes she affected scorn for her lover's gentle reproaches; sometimes she raised her eyes, and gazed on him with a look of tenderness and regret that made him sorry he had uttered them. Her demeanour was as varying as an April day; but that it had often been before, and he saw not a deeper shadow that spread with an ominous cloud-like heaviness over all. They parted at the door of her father's house, and young Ralph Harland turned him home again, thinking of the pleasure of the merry dance and all the sports that were to come, and how a little gift, which he had prepared for her he loved, would quiet all idle quarrels between him and fair Kate Greenly.

The village green, the sweet little village green which we have described, was early decked out with all that could be required for the sports of the day. The tall May-pole in the centre, surmounted with a coronet of flowers, streaming with ribbons and green leaves, and every sort of country ornament, was prepared for the dance around it, which was soon to take place. Every tree was hung with garlands, and even the old well was decorated with wreaths and branches of the hawthorn and the oak. The inn itself was a complete mass of flowers; and, before the door, at a very early hour, were arranged the various prizes which were to reward the successful competitors in the rustic sports of the day. There was a runlet of wine stood beside the little bench beneath the eaves, and in a pen, formed by four hurdles, was a milk-white ram, with his horns gilded, and a chaplet twisted round his curly pate; and further off, leaning against the wall, stood a long yew bow, with a baldric, and sheaf of arrows, winged with peacock's feathers, bearing silver ornaments upon the quiver.

These prizes were the first object of curiosity, and at an early hour many a group of boys and girls, and youths and maidens, gathered round the pen where the fat, long fleeced ram was confined, and pulled him by the gilded horns, while others looked at the bow, and every now and then stretched out a hand to touch and examine it more closely, but were deterred by a loud shrill voice from one of the windows of the inn, shouting, "Beware the thong!"

No season of merriment occurred at that time in England without bringing together its crowd of minstrels and musicians; and even then so populous had the gentle craft become, and so dissolute withal, that laws and regulations were found necessary for the purpose of diminishing the numbers of its followers and regulating their manners.

"Free drink for the minstrels" was a general proverb assented to by all, and the consequence was, that having the opportunity, they seldom wanted the inclination to pour their libations too freely, a good deal to the inconvenience, very frequently, of their entertainers. The class, however, which came to a May-day merry-making in a common country village was, of course, not of the highest grade, either in musical skill or professional rank; and the first who appeared on the village-green was a piper, with his bag under his arm, producing, as he came, those extraordinary sounds which are found to have a very pleasant effect upon some portions of the human species, but are almost universally distasteful to the canine race. Upon this occasion almost all the dogs in the village followed him, either barking or howling. The good piper, however, did not seem to consider it as at all a bad compliment, but sitting himself down upon the bench before the inn door, played away to his square-headed auditory, till some human bipeds, and amongst the rest Jack Greenly himself, came forth with a jug of humming ale, and set it down beside him.

The piper drank, as pipers will drink, a long and hearty draught, then looked around him, and as a matter of course, commended liberally to the ears of his entertainer the preparations which had been made for the May-day games.

A floyter, or player on the flute, was not long behind, and he himself was succeeded by a man with a rote but the great musician of all, the performer on the viol, without whom the dance would not have been perfect, like all other important personages, caused himself to be waited for; and at length, when he did appear, came accompanied by his retinue, consisting of two long-eared curs, and a boy, carrying his viol, carefully wrapped up in the recesses of a fustian bag. With great airs of dignity, too, he took his way at once into the house, and both prudently and humanely tuned his instrument in a room where few if any ears were nigh to hear.

Fain would I, dear reader, could such a thing be permitted, indulge in a long description of the May-day games of old England. Fain would I tell you who in the wrestling match won the milk-white ram, or shot the best arrow, or hurled the best quoit; but there are more serious things before us, and to them we must hurry on, leaving to imagination to undertake the task of depicting not only these, but the still greater struggle which took place amongst many a hardy yeoman for a fine horse. of Yorkshire breed, given by Ralph Harland himself in honour of her he loved.

Suffice it then, for the present, that the sports of the morning were over, that the noonday meal, too, was at an end, that the girls of the village had rearranged their dress for the lighter amusement of the evening, and were gathering gaily under the group of trees to begin their first dance around the Maypole. Ralph Harland stood by Kate's side, and was asking anxiously what made her so sad, when suddenly he raised his eyes, and his countenance became even more overcast than hers.

The sound which had made him look up had certainly nothing unusual in it on that busy morning. It was but the tramp of three or four horses coming at a rapid pace, but the young man's heart was anxious; and when his eyes rested on the face of Richard de Ashby, who rode in, followed by three men, and dressed with unusual splendour, well might the young franklin's bosom be troubled with feelings bitter and indignant, especially as he saw her whom he loved turn red and white, and read in the changing colour the confirmation of many a dark suspicion.

The personage who had produced these sensations seemed at first to take no notice of the gay groups around him, but advancing at once to the low inn door, which was nearly blocked up by the jovial person of John Greenly himself, he sprang to the ground lightly and gracefully, asking, in such a tone that all around could hear what he said, whether the Earl of Ashby had yet arrived.

On finding that such was not the case, he turned round with an indifferent air, saying, "Good faith, then I must amuse myself as best I may, till my fair cousin comes. What have you going forward here--a May-day dance? Good sooth, I will make one. Pretty Kate," he continued, advancing to the spot where she stood, "will you give me your hand to lead you a measure round the Maypole?"

"It is promised to me," said Ralph Harland, in a stern tone, before Kate could reply, bending his brows angrily upon his rival.

"Is it, indeed!" cried Richard de Ashby, gazing at him from head to foot with that cool look of supercilious contempt which is so hard to bear, and yet so difficult to quarrel with.--"Well, but she has two hands; she shall give you one and me the other, and this pretty little damsel," he continued, to a girl of some twelve or thirteen years of age, who stood by listening, "this pretty little damsel shall take my other hand--so that is all settled. Come, Master Violer, let us hear the notes of the catgut! Come, sweet Kate, I long to see those lovely limbs playing in the graceful dance."

Poor Ralph Harland! it was one of those moments when it is equally difficult to act and not to act, especially for one inexperienced, young, and brought up in habitual deference for superior rank and station. A direct insult, an open injury, he would have avenged at once upon the highest head that wagged in all the realm; but the covert scorn of the manner, the hidden baseness of the design, he knew not how to meet; and following, rather than accompanying, his light-o'-love sweetheart to the dance, he joined in a pastime to which his heart was but ill attuned.

It is under such circumstances that those who are wronged have always the disadvantage. Ralph was fierce, silent, gloomy; while Richard de Ashby was all grace, self-possession, smiles, and cheerfulness. His speech and his glances were for Kate Greenly alone. His looks and his voice were full of triumph, his eyes full of meaning; and many a time and oft, as they danced gaily round, he whispered to her soft things, of which no one heard the whole, although there was a keen and eager ear close by, listening for every sound to fix a quarrel on the speaker.

At length the notes of the viol stopped, and the dance came to an end, just as Richard de Ashby was adding a word or two more to something he had been saying in a low tone to the fair coquette beside him, while her colour changed more than once, and eyelids were cast down. The sudden silence rendered the last half of the sentence audible. It was--"Then lose not a moment."

Ralph Harland cast her hand from him indignantly, and fronting Richard de Ashby, exclaimed--"To do what?"

"What is that to thee, peasant?" demanded Richard de Ashby, colouring as much with anger at his words having been overheard, as with pride.

"Everything that she does is matter to me," replied Ralph, fiercely, "if I am to be her husband; and if I am not, woe be to the man that makes her break her promise."

"You are insolent, peasant," replied the Earl's kinsman, with a look of scorn; "take care, or you will make me angry."

"It shall be done without care," replied Ralph Harland, feeling no more hesitation, now that he was fully embarked; "let go my arm, Kate, and I will soon show you and others of what egg-shells a lord's cousin can be made.--What brings you here to spoil our merriment, and mar our May-day games? Take that as a remembrance of Ralph Harland!" and he struck him a blow, which, although Richard de Ashby partially warded it off, made him stagger and reel back. But at that very moment, the three servants he had brought with him, who had hitherto stood at a distance, seeing their master engaged in a squabble with one of the dancers, ran up, and one of them, catching him by the arm, prevented him from falling.

His sword was now out of the sheath in an instant; the weapons of his attendants were not behind, and all four rushed upon the young franklin, exclaiming, "Cut off his ears! The villain has dared to strike a nobleman! Cut off his ears!"

All the villagers scattered back from the object of their fury, except two--Kate Greenly, who cast herself upon her knees before Richard de Ashby, begging him to spare her lover, and Ralph's old grey-headed father, who, running up from the inn door, placed a stout staff in his son's hand, exclaiming, "Well done, Ralph, my boy! Thrash 'em all! Ho! Greenly, give me another stick that I may help him!"

One of the serving-men, however, struck the old franklin with the pummel of his sword, and knocked him down, while the two others pressed forward upon Ralph, and the foremost caught his left arm, just as Richard de Ashby, putting Kate aside, came within arm's-length of him in front, reiterating with fierce vehemence, "Cut off his ears!"

It is probable that the order would have been executed unmercifully, had not a sudden ally appeared upon Ralph Harland's side.

Leaping from the window of the inn, a man clothed in a close-fitting coat, and hose of Lincoln green, with a sword by his side, a narrow buckler on his shoulder, a sheaf of arrows under his left arm, and a leathern bracer just below the bend of the elbow, sprang forward, with a pole some six feet long in his hand, and at three bounds cleared the space between the inn and the disputants. The third leap, which brought him up with them, was scarcely taken, when one blow of his staff struck the man who held Ralph by the left arm to the ground, and a second sent the sword of Richard de Ashby flying far over his head.

At the same moment he exclaimed, looking at the servant whom he had knocked down, "Ha! ha! my old acquaintance; when last we had a fall in yonder inn together, I thought we should meet again! Fair play! fair play!--Not four against one! Get you in, Kate Light-o'-love! out of harm's way! The day may not end so well as it has begun. Fair play, I say, or we may take odds too!"

Richard de Ashby looked round, furiously, after his sword, and laid his hand upon the dagger that hung at his right side; but the sight he saw, as he turned his eyes towards the inn, was one well calculated to moderate, at least, the expression of his rage, for some eight or nine men, all habited alike in close coats of Lincoln green, were coming up at a quick pace from behind the house, and their apparel, and appearance altogether, could leave little doubt that they were companions of him who had first arrived, and in whom he recognised with no slight surprise, the same blue-nosed old peasant whom he had found contending with his servants not many nights before. The hump, indeed, was gone, and the neck was straight enough. All signs of decrepitude, too, had passed away; but the face was not to be mistaken, and Richard de Ashby's countenance fell at the sight.

He was no coward, however; for, amongst the swarm of vices, and follies, and faults, which degraded so many of the Norman nobility of that day, cowardice was rarely, if ever, to be met with. They were a people of the sword, and never unwilling to use it.

His first thought, then, was to resist to the death, if need might be; his next, how to resist to the best advantage. Snatching his sword, then, which one of his servants had picked up, he looked to the clump of trees, but Harland, and the man in green, with a whole host of villagers, whose angry faces betokened him no good, were immediately in the way, so that his only resource seemed to be to retreat to the inn door.

The first step he took in that direction, however, produced a rapid movement on the part of the yeomen, or foresters, or whatever the green-coated gentlemen might be, which cut him off from that place of refuge, and, at the same moment, the voice of Hardy exclaimed, "Stop him from the church path, Much! This rat-trap of ours has too many holes in it, but that will close them all--Now, Master Richard de Ashby, listen to a word or two. You come here with no good purposes to any one, and we want no more of you. But you shall have your choice of three things:--You shall either get to your horse's back, and go away, swearing, as you believe in the blessed Virgin, never to set foot in this place again,--I don't think you dare break that oath,--or--"

"I will not!" replied Richard de Ashby, fiercely.

"Very well, then," said Hardy; "if that is the case, you shall stand out in the midst, cast away sword and dagger, betake you to a quarter-staff, and see whether, with the same arms, young Ralph Harland here will not thrash you like a sheaf of wheat."

"Fight a peasant with a quarter-staff!" cried Richard de Ashby. "I will not!"

"Well, then, the third may be less pleasant," said Hardy. "I have nothing else to offer, but that we all fall upon you and yours, and beat you till you remember Hendley-green as long as you call yourself a man."

"Murder us, if you will," said Richard de Ashby, doggedly; "but we will sell our lives dearly."

"I don't know that, worshipful sir," said the man with the purple nose; "we have no inclination to thrash more men than necessary, so all your servitors may take themselves off, if they like. Run, my men, run, if it so please you. But make haste, for my quarter-staff is itching to be about your master's ears!" And so saying, he made it whirl round in his hand like the sails of a mill.

One of the men needed no time to deliberate, but betook himself to his heels as fast as he could go. A second hesitated for a moment or two, and then saying, "It is no use contending with such odds," moved slowly away. The third, however--Hardy's old adversary in the hostelry--placed himself by Richard de Ashby's side, saying, "I will stand by you, sir!" and added a word or two in a lower tone.

"Now, Much--and you, Tim-of-the-Mill," cried Hardy, "let us rush on them all at once, beat down their swords with your bucklers, and tie them tight. Then we will set the bagpipe before them, and flog them half way to Pontefract. Quick! quick! I see the priest coming, and he will be for peace-making."

The first step was hardly taken in advance, however, when the blast of a trumpet sounded upon the high road, and a dozen different cries from the villagers of----

"Hold off! hold off!"

"Forbear! Here comes the Sheriff!"

"Run for it, Master Hardy--they are the lords Greenly talked of!"

"Away--away, good yeomen!" all uttered at once, gave notice to the gentlemen in green that some formidable enemy was in the rear.

In a moment after, two or three gentlemen of distinguished port, riding slowly at the head of some fifty horsemen, came down the road upon the green; and Hardy, as he was called, seeing that the day was no longer his own, was passing across to join his companions on the other side, when Richard de Ashby cast himself in his way, and aimed a blow at him with his sword. The stout yeoman parried it easily with his staff, and struck his opponent on the chest with the sharp end of the pole, thus clearing a path by which he soon placed himself at the head of the foresters.

"Come with us, Harland," he cried, "you will be safer away."

Richard de Ashby, however, shouting aloud, and waving his hand to the party of gentlemen who were advancing, soon brought some of them to his side. "Stop them! stop them!" he cried, pointing to the men in green. "I have been grossly ill used, and well-nigh murdered!--Let your men go round, my lord, and cut them off."

A word, a sign, from an elderly man at the head of the party, instantly set some twenty of the horsemen into a gallop, to cut off the foresters from the road to the church. They, on their part, took the matter very calmly, however, unslinging their bows, bending them, and laying an arrow on the string of each, with a degree of deliberation which shewed that they were not unaccustomed to such encounters.

The villagers however, scattered like a flock of sheep at these intimations of an approaching fray; the girls and the women, screaming, and running, and tumbling down, took refuge in the neighbouring houses, or ran away up the road. The greater part of the men decamped more slowly, looking back from time to time to see what was going on; while some six or seven stout peasants and the yeomen stood gathered together under one of the trees, armed, in some instances, with swords and bows, and one or two displaying a quarter-staff, but all seeming very well disposed to take part in the fray, on one side or the other.

Things were in this state, and that hesitating pause had intervened which usually precedes the first blow in a strife of any kind, when the priest, who had been seen before to quit his house, now hurried forward to the group of gentlemen who, without dismounting from their horses, had gathered round Richard de Ashby. His errand was, of course, to preach peace and forbearance; and although his face was round and rosy, his body stout, and indicating strongly a life of ease and a fondness for good things, it is but justice to say, that he not only urged the necessity of quiet and tranquillity with eagerness and authority, but he rated Richard de Ashby boldly for his conduct in the village, and showed that ho knew a great deal more of his proceedings than was at all pleasant to that personage.

"Sir, you are one of those," he said, "who are ever ready to play the fool with a poor village coquette, who, if in riding through a place they see a poor girl proud of a neat ankle or a jimp waist, are ever ready to take advantage of her vanity to work her ruin; and if such men put themselves in danger, and get a broken head, they must take the consequences, without running on to bloodshed and murder."

The priest was still speaking; the yeomen were slowly retreating towards the church, without at all heeding the horsemen in their way; two or three elderly noblemen were listening attentively to the works of the good clergyman; and two young ones, a step behind, were holding themselves somewhat apart from each other, with no great appearance of friendship between them, when the one on the left hand of the group suddenly put the magnificent horse on which he was mounted into a quick canter, and rode straight towards the foresters.

At first, supposing his purpose to be hostile, they wheeled upon him, raising their bows at once, and each man drew his arrow to his ear; but seeing that he was not followed, they assumed a more pacific aspect; and, while one of the old lords whom he had left behind, called to him loudly, by the name of Hugh, to come back, he not only rode on, but, to the surprise of all, sprang from his horse and grasped young Harland warmly by the hand.

This proceeding for the time drew all eyes in that direction, and the end of the priest's speech was but little attended to; but, at his request, one of the gentlemen sent off a servant to the horsemen near the church, telling them not to act without orders.

In the meantime a brief conversation between the young nobleman and the franklin took place, after which, remounting his horse, the former came back to the group, and said, "May I venture a few words, my lords?"

"Of course, Lord Hugh will take part against me," exclaimed Richard de Ashby, "or old Earl Hubert's blood will not be in his veins!"

"Not so," replied the young gentleman; "all old feuds between our families have--thanks to God and the wisdom of those two noble Earls--been done away. No one more rejoices in the friendship which now exists between our houses than I do--none will more strenuously strive to preserve it. I came merely to tell that which I know and that which I have just heard. The young man I have been speaking with is as honest and true as any knight or noble in the world. He once rendered me a good service, and no one shall harm him; for that at least I pawn my name and knighthood. He tells me, however, that this worthy gentleman here, having taken a fancy to his promised bride, thinks fit to intrude on their May-day sports, and, stretching somewhat the privileges of a gentleman, makes love to the girl before his face. His endurance, it seems, does not reach that length, and he struck our friend Sir Richard, who fell upon him again, sword in hand, with his three servants, when these good foresters of Barnesdale interfered to see fair play."

"The whole is true, I doubt not," cried the priest, "for----"

"Look! look!" cried Richard de Ashby, fiercely; "while you listen to such gossip, they are making their escape! They are going into the priest's house, as I live!"

As he spoke, a loud voice from the other side of the green shouted, in a laughing tone, "For Richard de Ashby's bonnet!"

All eyes were instantly turned in that direction, where, at the door of the priest's house, two or three of the foresters were still to be seen, the rest of them having gone in one by one. In front of the group stood the man they called Hardy, and he repeated again, with a loud shout, "For Richard de Ashby's bonnet!"

As soon as he saw that he had attracted attention, he suddenly raised the bow he held in his hand, drew it to the full extent of his arm, and an arrow whistled through the air. Richard de Ashby had started slightly on one side as soon as he saw the archer take his aim, but the forester altered the direction of his arm, with a laugh, even as he loosed the shaft from the string, and the missile, with unerring truth, passed through the hood that it was intended for, and would have fallen beyond had it not been stopped by a jewel in the front. As it was, the arrow remained hanging amongst his black hair, and when he drew it forth, with a white cheek, and a somewhat trembling hand, he read imprinted in black letters, on the wood just below the feather, "Scathelock. Remember!"

The nobles handed the arrow one to another, read the name, and the word that followed it, and then gazed in each other's faces with a meaning look.

"Call back the horsemen," said one of the elder gentlemen. "These men are gone; and it is as well as it is."

CHAPTER V.

Such events as we have described in the last chapter were by no means uncommon in the fairs and merry-makings of England at the period of history in which our tale is laid. The sunshiny gaiety of the morning, in the April day of states and societies, is too often changed into sorrow and clouds ere night.

The sports were not resumed upon the village green; and all the amusements and occupations with which a May-day generally closed--the fresh dances by the moonlight, on the delights of which old Fitz Stephen so fondly dwells, the parting of the garlands, the gifts of flowers, the light song, and the gay tale amongst the young; with the merry jest, the wassail cup, and the game of chance amongst the elder, were all forgotten. The villagers and country people dispersed each to their several homes, and the inn, with such conveniences as it could afford, was given up to the nobles and their train. Arrangements were made for accommodating all the men of high degree with chambers, if not suitable to their rank, at least possessing some degree of comfort. Truckle beds were found for pages and squires, and straw was laid down for the yeomen, who were accustomed to lie across the doors of their masters' rooms. Much bustle and confusion was of course created by all these proceedings; horses had to be taken care of as well as men; and the voice of the good host was heard frequently shouting aloud for his daughter Kate, or grumbling low at her giddy idleness in being absent at such a moment as that.

"Ay, Master Greenly, Master Greenly!" said the tapster--"it is May-day evening, remember. Pretty Kate has twenty lads courting her by this time, if you could but see. I should not wonder if she and young Harland were kissing and making-up behind the church, at this moment."

"Not they," replied the host; "it will take her a fortnight to get over that matter. Kate's a silly girl, she could'nt do better for herself than young Harland. Why his father, old Ralph, is as rich as an abbey, and as hospitable as a county knight; his table is never without a pie or a pasty from ten in the morning till vespers, and there's ale for whoever chooses to draw it. I would sooner be a franklin in these days than a baron by half. Run out, Bessy, and see if you can find Kate anywhere."

In the meanwhile, after some conversation on the green at the door of the inn, the lords had taken possession of the little room of common reception, while their chambers were prepared for sleeping; and a cook, who had been brought with the party, established himself in the kitchen, and, aided by his own particular assistant, or knave, as he called him, together with two women belonging to the household of John Greenly, was preparing a supper for his masters from all that he could lay hands on in the place, in addition to a large body of capons, young ducks, and pigeons, which, as well as spices and other rich condiments, had been brought thither on two sumpter horses. The scanty number of personages assembled in the little hall, indeed, did not justify the great profusion of good things which the cook was so busily concocting, but he very prudently considered that he himself was to be fed as well as the host, to whom, in case of civility and obedience, he made a point of extending his bounties, and that all the chief servants of the different gentlemen present, with his special favourites and friends in the retinue of his own master, would also expect to be regaled, at least as well as their several lords.

To that master and his companions, however--amounting, in the whole, to the number of ten personages--we must now turn; but it is only of four, out of the whole party, that we shall give any particular description, having already said enough of Richard de Ashby, and the five others being gentlemen, whose history, though mixed up in some degree with the fate of those we are most interested in, did not affect it so immediately as to require us to present a minute portrait of each to the eye of the reader.

The Earl of Ashby himself was a man considerably past the prime of life, and of what was then called a choleric temperament, which does not alone mean that he was hot in temper and disposition, but that he was constitutionally so. Age, indeed, had in some degree tamed his fiery blood; and a good deal of indulgence in the pleasures of the table, with no great distaste for good old wine of any country, had tended to enfeeble him more than even time had done.

He had still a great opinion of his own importance, however, and looked upon his skill in arms, wisdom in council, and judgment in matters of taste, as by no means inferior to the first in the land; and, to say the truth, when once upon his horse's back, and armed at all points, he would bide a blow, or lead a charge, with any man, although his knees bent somewhat under him when on foot, and he was glad enough to be freed from the weight of his armour as soon as possible. His judgment, too, was a sound one when not biassed by passion, though there was a certain degree of wavering unsteadiness in his character, proceeding more from temper than from weakness of mind, which rendered him an insecure ally in trying circumstances. He piqued himself much upon being just, too, but like many other people who do so, his justice had almost always a tinge of prejudice in it, and was in fact but a perception of specious arguments in favour of the side that he espoused.

His son, Alured de Ashby, resembled his father in many points; but many of his mother's qualities entered into his character likewise. The old Earl had married a foreigner, a sister of the King of Minorca--kingdoms being, in those days, very often but small things. Her dowry had been in proportion to her brother's territory; but to her husband she brought an accession of dignity, and increased his pride by her own. That pride was, perhaps, her only bad quality, for a strong and pertinacious determination of character, which she also possessed, was, of course, good or bad according to the direction in which it was guided. She, herself, being of a fine mind, and a high-spirited though tender heart, had employed the resolute firmness of which we speak to struggle against the misfortunes that beset her father and her brother during her early years, and to give them support and strength in resisting a torrent which seemed destined to sweep them away.

Her son, however, nurtured in prosperity, and pampered by praises and indulgence, possessed her pride in its full force, without the mitigating influence of her kindness and tenderness of heart; and, neither having so good a judgment, nor such high motives, as herself, what was firmness in her became obstinacy in him--an obstinacy of a harsh and unpleasant kind. He was by no means without talents, indeed,--was as stout a man-at-arms as ever sat in the saddle, had a natural taste and genius for war, and had distinguished himself in many of the expeditions, or chevauchées, of the time. He was a high and honourable man, too, kept his word strictly, wronged no one but through pride, and was generous and liberal of his purse. Thus he was esteemed and respected more than liked, and was more popular with his inferiors than with his equals.

One knightly quality, it is true, he wanted. He cared little for love, there being only one person in the world, after his mother's death, for whom he ever felt anything like real tenderness. That person was his sister. She was nine years younger than himself; he had held her on his knee when she was an infant; she had been a plaything to him in her childhood, and an object of interest during her whole life. Perhaps the reason that he so loved her was, that she was the very reverse of himself in all respects: gentle, yet gay, and lively almost to wildness; tenderhearted, clinging, and affectionate, yet with a spice of saucy independence withal, which often set rules and regulations at defiance, and laughed at anger which she knew would fall but lightly on her head.

As we shall have to speak more of her hereafter, however, we will now turn to another of our group, and talk of the good Earl, whose trusty man, Blawket, we have already introduced to the reader's notice. Hugh, Lord of Monthermer, or Mo'thermer, as it was generally pronounced--and whom, as his name is not a very musical one, we shall more frequently call "the Earl"--was in the fifty-ninth or sixtieth year of his age; and--as he had seen many perils by land and sea, had been in wars against the heathen, both in Spain and Palestine, and had spent the greater part of his life in the tented field, and on the battle plain--his frame was somewhat worn and shaken, though he had once well merited the name which had been bestowed upon him in early years, when people, from the hardships which he endured unshrinkingly, had called him Iron Monthermer. He was still strong and powerful, however--though gaunt and meagre; a brown tint of health was upon his face, and the light of clear and strong intelligence was in his eye. His features were aquiline, and somewhat harsh, his chin prominent, his brow strongly marked, and his forehead high and capacious, with his white hair lying lightly upon it, like snow upon a mountain. Notwithstanding several defects in point of beauty, and a sternness of outline in almost every feature, there was something uncommonly pleasing, as well as striking, in the whole expression of his countenance, and one read there kindness of heart, as well as firmness and decision of character. He was habited richly enough, but not gorgeously so; and, though not what was considered armed in those days, he carried more weapons, but of a different sort, about his person than is required for any modern trooper.

The fourth person, of whose appearance we shall now give some account, was the young man who had ridden forward to speak with Ralph Harland, Hugh de Monthermer by name, but commonly called by all who knew him, "The Lord Hugh." He was the only nephew of the Earl, and presumptive heir to his title and estates. At the same time, however, he was altogether independent of his uncle, being the son of that James de Monthermer, who was summoned to parliament in the first year of the reign of Henry the Third, as Baron Amesbury, having married the heiress of that ancient house. His father had long been dead; and as he had received his military education under his uncle, he still attached himself to that nobleman--respecting him as a parent, and treated by him as a son. He was some four or five years younger than Alured de Ashby, but had nevertheless gained considerable renown in arms, both under his uncle, and in service, which he had taken for a time with the King of Castile, in order to win his knightly spurs with honour. In person, he somewhat resembled the Earl, though he was taller, and his features were both softened by youth, and were smaller in themselves. His complexion was of a dark, warm brown, his hair short and curling, his hazel eyes full of light and fire, and a frank, but somewhat sarcastic smile, playing frequently about his well-cut lip. On the whole, it is seldom that a handsomer face meets the eye, and his countenance well expressed the spirit within, which was gay and cheerful, but none the less thoughtful and imaginative. There might be a slight touch of satirical sharpness in his disposition, which often prompted a laugh or a jest at any of the many follies that an observing eye, in all ages, and all states of society, must meet at every turn. But a kind heart and a well regulated mind taught him to repress, rather than to encourage such a disposition, and it seldom broke forth unless the absurdity was very gross.

In those ages it was rare to find a man in his station who possessed even a very low degree of learning. To read and write was an accomplishment, and anything like elegance of composition, or a knowledge of classical lore, was hardly, if ever, dreamt of. In these respects, however, circumstances had given Hugh de Monthermer an advantage over many of his contemporaries. Various foreign languages he had acquired in following his uncle; and having been crushed and nearly killed, by his horse falling in one of the passes of the Taurus, he had been left for several months in a convent amongst the mountains, while broken bones were set, and health restored, by the skill of the monks. There, some of the friars, more learned than the rest, had taken a pleasure in solacing his weary hours, by communicating to him what was then considered a rich store of knowledge. With a quick and intelligent mind, he had thus gained, not only much information at the time, but a taste for reading, which in after years excited some envy, and called forth many a scoff from others, who had themselves no inclination for any exercises but those of the body.

Amongst these was Alured de Ashby, who affected to hold his military talents cheap, and called him a book-worm; but, nevertheless, Hugh de Monthermer quietly pursued his course, although, to say the truth, for reasons of his own, he was not a little anxious to gain the friendship of the house of Ashby, which during many years had been separated from his own by one of those fierce and bloody feuds that so often existed in those days between the noble families of the land. The reconciliation of the two houses had been but lately effected, and could scarcely yet be called cordial, though the bond of party feeling brought them frequently into long and intimate communication with each other.

The dress of the young Lord was not so homely as that of his uncle; there might, indeed, be a little foppery in it; for though the colours were dark, yet the embroidery which appeared in every part was rich and costly, and the long and hanging sleeves of the loose coat he wore, was in itself one of the distinguishing marks of a petit maître of that day. Into the extreme, however, he did not go: there was no long and braided hair, there were no devils, and angels, and cupids, hanging over his head on a fanciful hood; but instead of that most ugly part of our ancient garments, he wore a cap or hat, a mode then common in Flanders and in Italy, with a long feather crossing from right to left, and nearly touching his shoulder. With the exception of the loose tunic, or gown, all the rest of his dress fitted as closely as possible, leaving nothing to embarrass the free action of his limbs, except, indeed, the long points of his shoes, which, though very moderate for that period, were certainly not less than twenty inches longer than necessary.

The rest of the party was composed of several noblemen, wealthy and powerful, but of less distinction than the two Earls we have mentioned, and evidently looking up to them as to their leaders; and besides these, was a distant cousin of the Earl of Monthermer, brought, as it were, to balance the presence of Richard de Ashby, though, to say the truth, if he more than outweighed that gentleman in wealth and respectability, he was very much his inferior in cunning and talents.

As a matter of course, the events which had just taken place upon the green formed the first subject of conversation with the personages assembled in the inn. The younger men only laughed over the occurrence. "You must get some fair lady to darn the hole in your hood, Richard," said the Lord Alured.

"I wonder," added another of the young noblemen, "that the arrow did not carry away one of those soft tresses."

"It might well have been called Scathelock, then," observed a third.

"It only disturbed a little of the perfume," rejoined Alured. The elder gentleman, however, treated the matter more seriously. The Earl of Ashby rated his kinsman with an angry brow for his licentiousness, and represented to him with great justice the evil of nobles bringing themselves into bad repute with the people.

"Do you not know," he said, "that at the present moment, between the king and his foreign minions on the one hand, and the people on the other, the English noblemen have to make their choice?--and, of course, it is by the people that we must stand. They are our support, and our strength, and we must avoid in all things giving them just cause of complaint. Scathelock?--Scathelock?--I have heard that name."

"You must have heard if often, my father," said Alured de Ashby. "It is the name of one of our good forest outlaws of Sherwood. I have seen the man twice in the neighbourhood of our own place, and though I did not mark this fellow with the arrow much, he has the same look and air."

"Seen him twice, and did not arrest him?" cried Richard de Ashby, with marked emphasis.

"Heaven forefend!" exclaimed Alured laughing. "What, arrest a good English yeoman, on account of a taste for the King's venison! If Harry would throw open his forests to us, and not give to proud Frenchmen and Spaniards rights that he denies to his English nobles, we might help him in such matters; but as it is, no free-forester shall ever be arrested by our people, or on our land."

The Earl of Monthermer and his nephew had both been silent, leaving the rebuke of Richard de Ashby to his own relations; for they well knew the jealousy of the nobles with whom they were leagued, and were anxious to avoid every matter of offence. The poor kinsman, however, had established a right to sneer even at the proud Earl of Ashby and his no less haughty son, upon grounds which at first sight would seem to afford no basis for such a privilege. His poverty and partial dependence upon them had taught them to endure much at his hands which they would have borne from no other man on earth; and he, keen-sighted in taking advantage of the higher as well as the lower qualities of all those he had to do with, failed not to render their forbearance a matter of habit, by frequently trying it as far as he dared to venture.

"Forgive an old proverb, Alured," he replied, "but you know, it is said, that 'fowls of a feather flock together.' Perhaps, as you love forest thieves so well, you have no distaste for the King's venison yourself?"

"An unlucky proverb for you, Richard," said the young lord, while his father's cheek got somewhat red; "if what we have heard be true, the fowls you flock with are not quite those that suit our present purposes."

"What you have heard!" exclaimed Richard de Ashby, turning somewhat pale. "If you have heard aught against me," he added, after an instant's thought, turning at the same time towards Hugh de Monthermer, and bowing low, "I know to what noble hands I may trace it."

"You are mistaken, sir," said Hugh, sternly. "Respect for these two noble lords, your kinsmen, has made me eager that no charge should be brought against you by any of our people. Of this they are well aware."

"And they are aware also," added the Earl, "that both I and my nephew declared from the first that we believe you utterly innocent of all knowledge of the fact, even if it should prove to be true."

"What fact?" demanded Richard, in a low tone, and with a wandering eye, which did not produce a very favourable impression on the minds Of those who observed his countenance. "What fact, my lord?--but any charge brought by a Monthermer, or one of a Monthermer's followers, against an Ashby; should be viewed with some slight caution, methinks."

"Certainly!" said Alured de Ashby, in a marked tone.

But to the surprise of both, the Earl of Monthermer added likewise, "Certainly!--Old feuds, even after they are happily laid at rest," he continued, calmly, "will leave rankling suspicions, especially in the minds of the low and the uneducated, and such I doubt not may be, in some degree at least, the origin of a charge to which I would not have listened for a moment, if it had not been that my good lord and friend here, who was present when it was made this morning, insisted that it should be inquired into.--The charge is this, sir, that you have with you, disguised as one of your servants, a spy of the King's. This accusation was brought by my good yeoman, Blawket, who vows he saw that man with you when I sent him to meet you and others here but a few days ago.--Sir, you seem agitated, and I know that such a charge must necessarily affect any gentleman deeply; but my Lord of Ashby here present is well aware that, from the first, I declared my conviction of your innocence of all share in the transaction."

"I assure you, my lord,--on my honour, gentlemen believe me," cried Richard de Ashby, hesitating, "it is not true--the man is a liar!"

"No, Sir Richard, no," said Hugh de Monthermer at once, "the man is no liar, but as honest a yeoman as ever lived. You may have been deceived, Sir Richard," he added, with a slight smile curling his lip; "we are all of us subject to be deceived, occasionally. Blawket may have been deceived, too; but that I should say may soon be proved, for he declares that the leopards of Henry of Winchester will be found upon the breast of your servant, Richard Keen."

"Fool!" muttered Richard de Ashby to himself, but at the same moment his kinsman, the Earl, exclaimed, "Let him be sent for--let him be sent for!"

"I will call him immediately," said Richard de Ashby, turning towards the door; "but I declare, so help me Heaven! if this man have ever been in the King's service, it is more than I know."

"Stay, stay, Richard!" exclaimed the Lord Alured. "Let some one else go and call him, and let no word be said to him of the matter in hand."

"Do you doubt me, my lord?" demanded his kinsman, turning upon him with a frowning brow. "If I am to have no support from my own relations----"

"An honest man needs no support, sir, but his own honesty," said Lord Alured, interrupting him. "Not that I doubt thee, Richard," he continued; "but I would fain have thee tell me how that fellow came into thy service, while some one else calls him hither. Sir Charles Le Moore, I pr'ythee bid them send hither this Richard Keen. Now, good cousin, tell us how this man came to thee, for he is not one of our own people born, that is evident. Richard Keen! I never heard the name."

"How he came to me, matters not much to the question," replied Richard de Ashby. "I hired him in London. I was told he was a serviceable knave, had been in France and Almaine, and--but here comes Sir Charles Le Moore. Have you not found him?"--and as he spoke he fixed his eyes eagerly, but with a dark smile, upon the face of the gentleman who entered, as if some anticipations of triumph had crossed his mind.

"The people have gone to seek him," said Sir Charles; "he is somewhere about the green, and it is growing dark; so I let them go, as I know not the place."

A moment or two elapsed, but before the conversation could be generally renewed, one of the attendants of the Earl of Ashby appeared at the door, bringing intelligence that Richard Keen was nowhere to be found, and that his horse and saddle-bags had disappeared also.

The kinsman of the Earl of Ashby affected to be furious at the news--"The villain has robbed me of the horse," he said, "and, doubtless, of other things also. My lord," he continued, tuning to the Earl of Monthermer, "I beg your pardon; doubtless your servant was right, and this man has fled, having obtained same intimation of the charge against him. Did any of you see him go?" he added, addressing the servant who had appeared.

"No, sir," replied the yeoman. "We were all upon the green, for it must have been, while these noble lords were talking with you, before they came in, that he went away. The host saw him go toward the stable, just before the arrow was shot that stuck in your hood."

Richard de Ashby frowned, for the man's tone was certainly not the most respectful. But before any observation could be made, a noise and bustle was heard without, which suspended the reply upon the lips of the Earl's kinsman; and the next moment, the landlord himself, with his full round face on fire with anger and grief, pushed his way into the room, exclaiming--"Noble lords and gentlemen, I claim justice and help. They have taken away my daughter from me--they have corrupted and carried off my poor Kate.--You, sir, you are at the bottom of this!" he continued, turning furiously to Richard de Ashby. "I have seen your whisperings and your talkings!--My good lords and gentlemen, I claim justice and assistance."

"How now!" cried Richard de Ashby, in as fierce a tone as his own, but not quite so natural a one. "Dare you say that I have anything to do with this? Your light-o'-love daughter has made mischief enough to-night already. Let us hear no more of her. Doubtless you will find her in some cottage, if not in the woods, with her lover, trying to make up by courtesies for her fickle conduct of this morning."

"No, sir--no, no, no!" replied the host, vehemently; "she is in neither of those places! She was seen, some half an hour ago, going out at the end of the village with your servant beside her; and a boy says that he found a black mare tied to a tree not a quarter of a mile along the road. Gentlemen, I pray you do me right, and suffer not my child to be taken from me in this way by any one, be he gentle or simple."

"Was your daughter going willingly!" demanded the Earl of Ashby.

"I know not, sir--I know not!" cried the host, wringing his hands; "all I know is, they have taken her, and I am sure this is the man who has caused it to be done."

"I know nothing of her, fellow!" replied Richard de Ashby. "You must hold your daughter's beauty very high to suppose that I would take the trouble of having her carried off."

"Why, Richard, you are not scrupulous," said his cousin.

"London and Winchester," cried another gentleman, with a laugh, "are indebted to him for many a fair importation, I believe."

"His taste lies amongst country wenches," added a third. And notwithstanding the misery of the injured father, a great deal of merriment and jesting was the first effect produced by the complaint of the host.

"If this tale be true," said Hugh de Monthermer, who had been looking down with a frowning brow, "I would strongly advise Sir Richard de Ashby to mount his horse, put his spurs to the flanks, and not draw a rein till he is safe in Nottingham. There be people about this neighbourhood who are likely to render such a course expedient."

"I shall do no such thing, sir," replied Richard de Ashby; "this good man's suspicions are false as far as they regard me, though it is not at all improbable that the knave, Keen, who has, it seems, deceived me--and is a good-looking varlet, moreover has played the fool with a buxom light-headed country wench, whose cheek I may once or twice have pinched for lack of something better to do."

"Such being the case, my Lord of Ashby," said the Earl, drily, "as your kinsman has nought to do with the affair, and as this servant of his has cheated and robbed him, injured this good man, and is suspected of being a spy--by your leave, I will send some of my people after him without farther delay. Without there! Is Blawket to be found?"

"Here, my lord," replied the man, standing forward as upright as a lance and as stiff as a collar of brawn, from amidst a group of six or seven servants, who were all discussing as vehemently on the one side of the door the events which had just taken place as their masters were on the other.

"Mount in a minute," said the Earl of Monthermer. "Take with you three of your fellows whose horses are the freshest; follow this Richard Keen, from the best information you call get, and bring him hither with all speed, together with the girl he has carried off."

"Shall I beat him, my lord?" asked the yeoman.

"Not unless he resists," replied the Earl; "but bring him dead or alive, and use all means to get information of his road."

"I will bring him, my lord," replied Blawket, and retired, followed by the host, who ceased not, till the man was in the saddle, to give him hints as to finding his daughter, mingled with lamentations over fate and praises of the house of Monthermer.

"Now," said the Earl, when they were alone, "let us speak of more important things;" but it being announced that supper was well-nigh ready, the Earl of Ashby, who had an affection for the good things of this life, proposed that any farther conversation should be put off till after that meal. The other Earl, knowing that his placability depended much upon the condition of his stomach, agreed to the suggestion; and after the ceremony of washing hands had been performed, the supper was served and passed over as such proceedings usually did in those days, with huge feeding on the part of several present, and much jesting on the part of the younger men. A good deal of wine was also drank, notwithstanding a caution from the Earl of Monthermer to be moderate. But moderation was little known at that time. Malvoisie was added to Bordeaux, and the spiced wine, then called claret, succeeded the Malvoisie; a cup of hippocras was handed round to sweeten the claret, and the Earl of Ashby fell asleep at the very moment the conference should have begun.

CHAPTER VI.

I cannot help grieving that amongst all the changes which have taken place,--amongst all the worlds, if I may so call them, which have come and gone in the lapse of time, the forest world should have altogether departed, leaving scarcely greater or more numerous vestiges of its existence than those that remain of the earth before the Flood. The green and bowery glades of the old forest, their pleasant places of sport and exercise, the haunts of the wild deer, the wolf, and the boar, the fairy-like dingles and dells, the woodcraft that they witnessed, the sciences, and the characters that were peculiar to themselves, have now, alas! passed away from most of the countries of Europe, and have left scarcely a glen where the wild stag can find shelter, or where the contemplative man can pause under the shade of old primeval trees, to reflect upon the past or speculate upon the future. The antlered monarch of the wood is now reduced to a domestic beast, in a walled park; and the man of thought, however much he may love nature's unadorned face, however much he may feel himself cribbed and confined amongst the works of human hands, must shut his prisoner fancies within the bounds of his own solitary chamber, unless he is fond to indulge them by the side of the grand but monotonous ocean. The infinite variety of the forest is no longer his: it belongs to another age, and to another class of beings.