University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

At little more than a mile's distance from Woolverton Hall, not situated, however,
on the Worcester turnpike, but on another road passing the principal entrance of the
Park, and forming its northern boundary, stood a small wayside inn, deeply embosomed
in the woodlands which, at the period of our narrative, overspread many a mile of that
fair country. This road, which entered the main turnpike some three miles to the eastward
of the Hall, was one of those innumerable country tracks which traverse all the
agricultural parts of England, winding about with no regard whatever to the space
occupied, or the needless miles included in their sinuosities; wandering `like rivers at
their own sweet will,' and affording the only means of communication to the inhabitants
of many a sequestered hamlet, many a lowly grange; devious indeed and long, but all-sufficient
to the simple wants of the people, and full in themselves of picturesque and
rural beauty. Its narrow wheel-track was bordered on each hand by many yards of
deep rich greensward, pied everywhere in the early spring-time with tufts of the soft
saffron primrose, and perfumed by the rich scent of unnumbered violets—tall straggling
hawthorn hedges, overrun in summer by the bee-haunted tendrils of the honeysuckles,
and the flaunting streamers of the dogrose, shaded it from the morning and the evening
sunbeams; while overhead, it was so thickly canopied by elm and ash and many a
giant oak, that scarce a ray could penetrate the shadowy foliage at high noon. So seldom
too did this road run any distance in a direct straight line, that spots were rare
indeed, where the eye of a traveller could see a hundred yards before him. It was upon
this winding lane, in preference to the broad and dusty turnpike, that the gates of the

Hall, consisting of a low massive arch of antique brickwork between two short and stubborn
looking towers, now so completely mantled with dark ivy that the very outlines of
their form were lost, had been placed by the original founder; and it was at about a
mile's distance from these, toward the west, and consequently so much the farther from
the highway, that the `Stag's Head,' for such was the well-known sign of the little
hostelrie, invited passers by to taste its humming ale and stores of rustic cheer.

It was a quaint and curious building, that old inn, consisting of a long front of a single
story, with three projecting gables, one in the centre and one at either end, protruding
some six feet into the road, and having the upper stories, which were in each entirely
occupied by a large latticed window of four or five compartments, again thrust forward
about the same distance in advance on their bases. Below the window in the central
gable was a wide low-browed doorway, or porch rather, of black oak, with the weather-bleached
skull and broad branched antlers of a huge red deer nailed above it, and a long
bench on either side within. The two end gables and the flat fronts between them,
showed several lattices, but of irregular heights and sizes, all neatly curtained with white
dimity, and decked with pots of lavender, balm, rosemary and other savory herbs, to
gratify the smell or tempt the dainty palate. A thick thatched roof, all green with moss
and lichens and masses of the yellow flowering stonecrop, with far projecting eaves,
whence hung in clusters the clay-built cradles of the summer-loving martlet, covered
the whole of this hospitable mansion—which was built of vast beams of jet-black oak,
curiously interlaced one with another, the interstices being filled up with neatly white-washed
plaster—and afforded a pleasant haunt to a score or two of plump-necked pigeons,
strutting to and fro from morning till night on the ridge-pole, filling the whole air
with their hoarse love-making, or wheeling in short flights about their happy home.

In front of this truly rustic inn the road expanded into a little bay or circle, with a
small meadow, of three or four acres at the utmost, fenced all around by deep plantations,
facing the windows—while at the back the building actually abutted on the park
wall, and was securely sheltered by the tall ranks of its immemorial clm-trees. Along the
palings of the meadow, moss-grown, and old, and weather-beaten like all about them,
ran a long horse-trough, fed constantly and full from a rude aqueduct of hollow trunks
by a bright and chrystal rill; which, keeping it still brimming over in the hottest seasons,
danced out with a fresh gurgling sound at the lower end in a mimic waterfall, and was
soon lost to sight among the rich tall herbage which it supplied with its perennial moisture.
But the chief boast and ornament of the Stag's Head was the enormous aged oak
—so aged that, as wise men said, it was recorded for a bound-mark in the pages of the
Domesday book—which stood exactly in the middle of the little circle, its gnarled gray
arms completely sheltering the space below, and its leaves rustling on the one extremity
against the diamond-shaped panes of the chamber windows, and on the other covering
the horse-trough with their cool cave-like umbrage.

Around the trunk of this vegetable giant was built a range of comfortable seats, with
a high back, and arms dividing it, as it were, into separate compartments—like the
boxes of a modern coffee-house—all framed of tortuous roots, and unbarked branches,
and each compartment having a round table in the middle for the benefit of the rustic
banqueters, who here were wont to solace themselves every evening after the heat and
burthen of the day's toils were over. It must not be omitted, that on a low artificial
mound in the meadow there stood a lofty maypole, round which in those blithe days,
before the sullen morose Puritans had clogged fair England with the curse of their black
creed—before the happy peasantry were changed by the loud lies of artful demagogues
into a horde of bitter discontented politicians—the young folks of the parish would meet
on many a spring or summer evening, with merriment and music, to twine their may-wreaths
from the abundant wild flowers, and at the sound of pipe and tabor present to
the great Architect of nature, an offering most grateful to divine beneficence—the offering
of innocent, rejoicing, grateful hearts.

Alas! where are they now, those festive meetings? where is the frolic mirth—the
innocence so cheaply pleased with trifles—the love of music, the affection—most natural

affection, and most indicative of pure and graceful spirits—for the sweet perfumes
of the dewy flowers the dance upon the greensward under the mellow eye of evening
—the cheerful congregation in the old village church on every Sunday morn, including
every inmate of the village, from the blind frail octogenarian to the wee toddling prattler
that sat grave eyed and hushed in decent awe by its young comely mother? Where is
the veneration for old age; the grateful reverence to the kind superiors; the love for
the frank, free spoken, learned churchman, who preached not one iota the less wisely,
nor prayed one tittle the less fervently, that he could chat with the old gossips by the
fireside, and jest with the young lasses on the green, and wing an arrow to the clout
with the featest yeoman in the ring? Where are they now, those once characteristics
of the people of the once merry England? Come, one and all—gone to return no more!
Surrendered—bartered—contemptuously cast aside for what? for a dream! a vain,
fitful, feverish dream—a dream of liberty! of freedom! free trade, free institutions, free
religion! a dream, which fills the prisons and the pothouses of that once happy realm
with desperate criminals, with brawling vicious plotters! a dream, which has converted
pure green fields into huge prisons of red brick, dungeons of toiling artizans, recking
with blasphemy, sedition, and licentiousness; day schools of all impiety, rife with the
agonies of tortured infancy—the woes of premature old age! a dream which has torn—
literally torn, the church asunder, and swelled with worshippers the shrine of every
loathsome creed, of every mad fanaticism, hard by the half-deserted doors of God's time-honored
temples.

Not then, however, had these things come to pass, although the events were even
then in progress which sowed the seeds of what should be thereafter; and though
throughout the land, full many a furious fanatic had fulminated the dread wrath to come
over the guilty dancers—licentious worshippers of Baal, circling like Moabitish women
with flutes and timbrels round the high places of false gods—the maypoles were not
yet entirely abandoned; and smiles were sometimes seen upon the faces, and songs
heard from the lips of youths and maidens. Drunkenness was not then the only authorized
amusement; the only licensed relaxation of the free British peasant.

At a very early hour of the morning following the events narrated heretofore—almost
indeed as soon as the sun was up—the Stag's Head saw collected under the old oak
tree a group of people, some two or three of whom were waiting, as it would seem, for
the first meal of their day; while the rest were for the most part countrymen, pausing a
moment on their way a-field, to take their morning draught of ale, and hear the gossip of
the times; or servants of the inn bustling about their hospitable duties.

The country people soon passed onward, and the company, when they were gone,
appeared to consist of four persons. One was an old gray-headed man, spare-made,
and tall and bony; but hale, fresh-colored, comely, and retaining still many signs of
strength which in his younger days must have been more than usually great. He was
dressed in a much worn long coat of forest green, with buckskin breeches, soiled and
glazed at the knees, and long calf gaiters. A rabbit, embroidered in tarnished silver on
the sleeve of his coat, and a brace of rough wire-haired terriers, long-backed and short.
legged—one of which was sleeping at his feet, while the other was making demonstrations
most decidedly hostile against a comfortable-looking tabby cat inside the kitchen
window—seemed to designate his profession as that of warrener to some neighboring
gentleman; and this was confirmed more fully by the appearance of an old gray pony
dozing in the shade, to whose wooden pack-saddle were attached a bundle of nets, a
spade, a bag which from its constant and eccentric agitations seemed to contain a ferret,
and a dozen or more of fine wild rabbits hanging by their heels across his withers, with
the blood dripping—so freshly had they been killed—from their long silvery ears.

The second of the group, who sat by the old warrener, talking to him and laughing
with a familiarity which showed as if they had been old acquaintances, was a man something
past the middle age, dressed like an ordinary yeoman, though perhaps something
better, in a suit of dark-colored fustian with a high broad-brimmed hat. His face, without
being actually good, was marked and striking; there was a keen quick twinkle of

intelligence in his sharp black eyes, and an expression of sly cunning humor about the
same feature, with a queer, half pleasant, half cynical smile constantly fluttering around
his mouth. His complexion was much tanned and sunburnt, as were his hands likewise;
on one of which, the right, there was a long seamed scar, as of a broadsword cut, which
having slightly grazed his fore and middle fingers had completely severed the two others
from the knuckles, and terminated only at the wrist. His garments and his shoes were
all powdered over with thick dust, as if he had travelled many miles; but there was
nothing about him to indicate his business—unless it were a peddler's pack, an ell wand
of stout oak rendered available as a weapon by a steel spear-head screwed into one end,
and a flat wooden box with a broad belt of leather; all of which lay on the table of the
box next to that in which he and the warrener were sitting, and which might, or might
not, have been his property. The third, and only remaining occupant of the seat
beneath the tree, was an athletic bronzed young fellow, with somewhat of a dare-devil
expression in his bright hazel eye, but a frank, cheerful, and good-humored smile; clad
as a forester or game-keeper, with a bucktail in the silver band of his black velvet cap,
and a badge on the sleeve of his green jerkin. A short rifle-gun or musketoon stood
in the corner of the settle at his elbow, with its appurtenances of powder-horn and bullet-pouch
lying upon the seat beside it; a long broad two-edged knife, with a handsome
buckhorn handle, thrust into his belt at left side, completed his equipment.

There was yet a fourth person present, but he was not one of that party, nor was he
one who had much part at all in the companionship of men; he sat a little way aloof
from the rest in a low wicker chair, placed where the morning sun fell full upon it; but
he saw not, or at least noticed not, the glorious sunlight with the innumerable living
atoms wheeling and circling in its golden radiance; he only felt its warmth, and dozed,
scarce conscious of the comfort it poured down upon him—a large, well-formed and
powerful lad of seventeen years or better, his muscular and shapely limbs giving the
promise of vast strength to be developed ere he should have attained to the full years of
manhood. One glance, however, at his features told in an instant his whole melancholy
tale; the low receding brow; the beadlike and unmeaning eye; the prominent mouth,
thick-lipped, with teeth as white and strong as those of a wild beast, which had scarred
all the lips around in the dread seizure of his convulsive paroxysms! He was an idiot
of the worst and lowest grade, scarcely endowed with speech, so inarticulate were the
sounds which alone his defective organs could produce; with instincts scarcely equal to
those of the inferior brutes, and amounting to little more than a sense and memory of
wrongs or kindnesses, with an occasional gleam of desperate animal ferocity, and now
and then, at rare—most rare and distant intervals—a burst of tender and affectionate
feeling, blended as it were with a partial revelation of deeper and more human thoughts
within, than anything in his external bearing could be held to indicate. During these
partially lucid intervals, it was remarkable, moreover, that all his powers seemed to expand
proportionably; eye, tongue, expression, all aiding the development of thoughts
which, if they were at work continually in the depths of his shrouded mind, left at the
least no token of their workings upon the stagnant surface. A large gaunt mastiff bitch,
now nearly toothless and grizzled over all her face, slept close beside his feet, keeping
nevertheless as it would seem a strict guard over her witless master, for ever—though she
seemed to sleep—if he but moved a limb, or drew a heavier breath than common, she
would unclose one eye, and watch him for a moment with an expression almost superhuman,
and with a quick nervous quiver of her thin pendulous ears, till, as she saw
him settle down again into his soulless musings, she too would relapse into her daylong
slumbers.

“Holloa! my pretty Cicley— what ails thee, lass, this morning?” cried the young
forester, as the last of the peasants moved off—“canst give us nought to break our fasts
withal? Here's old John Brent's been out since four of the clock, and Master Bartram
has walked all the way from Barrington—and that's ten miles—since daybreak, and
here am I, Frank Norman, not like to walk a mile—though I've got all my rounds
before me, and that's twenty good—till I've got cake and ale!”

“Coming! oh! coming, Master Frank,” cried the smart country lass, running across
the green, with her short petticoats displaying her clean ancle and neat foot as they
fluttered in the wind, and the bright ribbons in her cap paling beside the blush of her
soft peach-like cheek—“you mustn't flurry one so—there, you've just been and taken
all my breath away—there! there's your ale—double ale, too, six quarts of it, stirred
with a sprig of rosemary, and a nice roasted crab in it—and there's your glasses—and
here's hot cakes and sweet fresh butter—and here comes Jenny with the rasher and the
eggs, and I'll away to fetch the trenchers. Marry! will that do for you, Frank?”

“So nicely, Ciss, that I'll e'en pay thee with a kiss when thou hast brought them.”

“I won't go after them then, saucebox. Welsh Jenny here may fetch them you, and
serve your table, too! Marry come up! green jackets and bucktails must needs be
scarcer sights than they be now in these parts, when pretty girls like me buy kisses
of such chaps as thee for service.”

And tossing her pretty little head coquettishly, she tripped off into the porch, while
with a loud and cheery laugh John Brent rallied his young comrade.

“Hey! Norman, lad, she hit thee as clean as ever thou struck'st hart of grease—”

“With headless shaft at roving distance!” the young man interrupted him, for he
had caught a sly glance, and a wicked smile, cast over her shoulder as she disappeared,
which contradicted quite the import of her words—“but come, let's try the ale!”

For some minutes' space after this, they were so well employed over the eggs and
bacon that few words passed between them. While they were thus engaged, however,
a fifth personage was added to their number. It was no other than John Sherlock, the
stout yeoman whom the Puritans had stopped the preceding night, upon the heronry
bridge, while keeping watch over the inmates of the Hall. He was a right good specimen
of a fine blunt English farmer of the olden time, full six feet high, and with a
breadth of shoulder and a volume of muscle amply proportionate to his inches, clad in
his snugly-fitting doublet of gray broadcloth, buff breeches and blue woollen hose, with
heavy silver buckles in his strong ancle shoes, and a clasp of the same metal to the band
of his slouched beaver hat.

He came upon them suddenly—so much so, that although on horseback, the others
neither heard nor saw him till he was close beside them; for he came down the road
behind them from the westward, as they sat looking down it toward the park gates, so
that the body of the oak tree was interposed between the new-comer and the party;
and it was not, therefore, till he had well nigh passed, that he perceived them. When
he did so, however, the recognition was simultaneous.

“Ho! is it thou, John Sherlock? Best stop and take a horn.”

“What, Norman, lad, how be you? and how be you, John Brent? Good morrow,
Master Bartram.”

“Come, 'light down, John, 'light down—wilt not?” said the forester—“but what's
i' the wind now?” he continued, in accents that denoted no small wonder, as he looked
more steadily at the good yeoman. “Where, i' the fiend's name, didst get that beast
thou straddlest so gallantly?”

And well indeed might he ask and admire—for in sooth it was no sober cart-pad that
bore the jolly farmer, nor yet was it his own high-bred and powerful hunter—for he was
well to do in the world, and turned out now and then with the earl's stag-hounds, and
followed them as close as squire or knight or baron—but a tall, jet-black barb of Dongloa,
clean-limbed, with a coat bright and soft as satin, and a broad, flashing eye, and a
full nostril. The head-stall of his bridle was all adorned and studded, as were the bits,
the poitrel, and the crupper, with knobs and bosses of chased gold; the housings and
the padding of his demipique were of rich velvet, laid down with gold embroideries
of full three inches depth, while to match the color of the saddle-cloth, his flowing
mane was gathered up and plaited with blue ribbons.

“By George, but that's a baron's charger, at the least on't,” exclaimed old Brent.
“'Light down, 'light thee down, Master Sherlock, and tell us all about it.”

“Nay! I've got nought to tell,” returned the farmer, alighting, however, as he was

requested, and giving the rein to an old half-palsied hostler, who had tottered out at the
sound of the horse tramp. “Nay! I've got nought to tell you much. I found t'nag
down i' the heronry wood, tied to a young ash sapling. I was a passing by like, when
I heard him nickering and neighing a mile off or better—and there he'd been all night
for certain, for t'dew was thick on t'saddle, and all quite white on his long mane and
tail. I took him up to my own stable, and made the lads sort him down. Some gentleman
on the king's side has owned him, that got off from Worcester fight, I reckon.”

“Ay, ay!” responded all the listeners—“I warrant me.”

But John Brent went on speaking—“Ay! ay! He's owned him, I'll be bail, as they
red-coated roundheads was a looking arter, down at the Hall last night.”

“What's that—what's that? Tell us, John Brent—tell us man! what i' the fiend's
name are you thinking on, to tell us nought about it before this?” cried the young
forester, starting to his feet and snatching up his musketoon. “Did they trouble
Master Selby—did they dare harm fair Mistress Alice?”

“No, no! no wrong, Frank Norman; thou needst not be so hot upon't, lad,” answered
the old warrener. “They did scare Mistress Alice woundily, but no harm
done. You see they'd chased some gentleman clear down from Worcester field, and
fired at him from the top of Longmire hill, and lost all track of him, as it was growing
dark, down in the bottom by the bridge; and so they came and searched the old Hall
from the garret down—but, Lord! he wasn't there—not he! Old Master'd been in's
study, Jeremy says, all day, and Mistress Alice came in from the park, about an hour
or so afore the supper, and no one with her, any how—for Jeremy he let her in at the
water-gate, and Charles and Launcelot were with him; and they say nobody came
with her—no Christian, anyways, except the old Talbot—and so they went their ways,
arter they'd got done searching.”

“The devil's luck go with them,” added young Norman, playing with the trigger
of his gun lock; “there'll be no peace in England any more till the rogue-roundheads
are put down, and our good king enjoys his own again!”

“Ay, ay! that's right,” chimed in the peddler Bartram. “Heaven send the rogues
well down! A yard or two of Holland's linen, and a commodity of Scottish sergecloth,
and old calf-leather, is all the merchandise they need. Their very wenches
wont ware a tester on a top-knot. Heaven send them down, and we'll have jolly
times again. But now nought's doing—and for fine Flanders' lace, and Genoa velvets,
and Cypress lawns, and soft French taffetas, I'm fain to sell old sermons and stale
psalm tunes and such rubbish! But that has been a noble's horse, I warrant him—
why, that's all solid gold upon the trappings; and that gold lace is worth ten crowns
the Flemish ell, and all that velvet's prime Genoa. He's a lord's horse, at least! What
do you mean to make with him, hey, Master Sherlock?”

“Why, you see, lads,” said Sherlock, “the soldiers stopped me on the bridge last
night, of this same party that searched Woolverton—they watched about the house till
it was nigh-hand two o'clock, and all the lights was out—and they asked me a sight
of questions—but nothing seemed a-stirring—and they couldn't scent out anything—
and so they went off to their quarters. But I had heard them talk, you see, and
guessed, by what they told, that he had took to the woods; and I went off betimes
this morning to see if I could find the gentleman, and show him where to hide away.
By what they talked, he'd been a prime one!—fought to the very last by the king's
side at Worcester, and when their picquets came upon him in a barnyard, somewhere
nigh-hand the field where he had hid himself the first night, he shot two of them with
his pistols—they're discharged sure enough”—and as he spoke he drew two large
gold-mounted pistols from the holsters, with the hammers down and the pans black
with smoke—“and charged clean through their troop, cutting down one, and wounding
two more badly! and so I found his horse, but couldn't hit upon no track of him at all
—and then I thought I'd best go down to the Hall, and talk with Master Selby, and
he'd be telling me what I should do with him.”

“That's right, John; that's right,” said the warrener. “I'm going home myself

now with these rabbits—Andrew, cook, wants them for a pie, I reckon. Bartram,
you'd best step up, man, with your packs—young mistress will buy, like enow.”

“Well, I don't know but what I had,” returned the peddler, shouldering, as he spoke,
his box and bales, and grasping his ell-wand; “but we must pay the reckoning first.”

“No, no! that's mine,” said Norman; “the score's mine, this time anyhow; when
we next meet, you'll stand the treat for us, Bartram. I'll in and pay it up now; and
then I've got to tramp clean round by Reardon forest, and Low Moor, and down by
the Hagard-mere to Hazel-woods and Burford old-lane-end, and so home by the Ring-woods
and the Goshawk dingle. I would I might fall in with the young cavalier.
Well, good den, boys;” and, throwing his pouch and horn across his shoulders, he
caught up his gun and was turning to the house, when the arrival of a mounted party,
making itself heard a minute at least before it came into sight, by its clang and
clatter, arrested all their plans in a moment.