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!"