University of Virginia Library

14. XIV.
THE HOUSE BESIDE THE HIGHWAY.

The animal which my host had presented me with
was a superb hunter, in the finest condition. He plainly
asked nothing better than to be permitted to go at top
speed; and thus league after league fled from under
his feet, every moment bore me nearer and nearer to
Cecil Court.

I will not interrupt my narrative to speak of my
thoughts and feelings, or to paint the gloomy picture
of rural England in that winter of 1648. 'Twas terrible,
what I saw as I went on my rapid journey. War
had stamped its destroying heel on the lovely land
of the past, and a curse seemed hovering over the
once-smiling fields. I shall not speak further of my
journey, save to relate one singular incident which
befell me.

I was proceeding at a rapid gait in the direction of
Oxford, when, raising my eyes, which had been bent
upon the ground, I saw, beside the road I was following,
a small house which seemed familiar to me. A
second glance, and I had fully recognized it. 'Twas
that to which I had been conducted by Gregory Brandon
and his daughter, and where I had held the interview
with the sick dwarf Geoffrey Hudson.

As I drew near, I saw that the house was uninhabited;
but in front of the door stood a horse covered with

foam, apparently from a rapid journey. Who could
have thus stopped, I asked myself, to enter this deserted
house? To whom could this animal, covered
with foam-flakes, belong? I determined to solve the
question speedily, dismounted, and entered the house.
Before me, seated on a broken chair, and leaning his
head upon an old table, I saw no less a personage than
the dwarf Hudson.

As my footsteps resounded on the creaking floor, he
quickly raised his head.

“Ah, 'tis you?” he said, drearily. “At first I thought
'twas a ghost. Whence come you, sir?”

“From London. And you, friend?”

“From London also.”

“You have ridden rapidly.”

“I set out at midnight.”

“Then you saw all?”

“All.”

I looked at the strange being, who had answered my
questions in his thin voice with an accent of sombre
indifference. The dwarf seemed to be laboring under
the crushing weight of a sentiment which resembled
despair.

“You were in the crowd yonder?” I said, at a loss
how to continue the conversation.

“Yes,” he replied, in the same dull and dreamy
tone.

“You recognized—him; I mean the headsman?”

“Yes: 'twas Gregory Brandon.”

“And his assistant?”

“Hulet: they paid him a hundred pounds to assist
at the execution.”

“Hulet! is it possible? The man in the gray
beard Hulet?”

“Yes, Hulet,—the man who had Brandon dragged
from this place of concealment,—who persecuted to
the death the woman I loved,—who has paid at last
for all, and will plot no more.”

“Paid for all?”

“He is dead.'

“Dead?”

“Killed in a drunken brawl in a low tavern, at
nightfall after the execution.”

I remained silent at this strange intelligence. Then
I looked again at the dwarf.

“You say that Hulet persecuted to the death—
whom?”

“Janet Brandon, of whom I knew as Janet Gregory
here! He was crazy about her,—harassed her with
his importunities. She fell ill, and that wretch stood
beside her death-bed and taunted her.”

The dwarf turned pale as he spoke, and uttered a
low groan.

“All is ended for me in life,” he added, in the
same low dull tone. “I have left courts forever, and
go to my obscure home to hide my misery. You were
my friend, and here farewell! We shall never meet on
earth again,—but some day—I shall see her—yonder!”

He pointed to heaven, went out of the deserted
house, mounted his horse, and disappeared.

Such was my last meeting with this singular being,
of whom I never afterwards heard.