CHAPTER XIV.THE NEW HOME.

"O! the oak, the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,They flourish best at home in the north countree."

"O! the oak, the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,

They flourish best at home in the north countree."

Young sprouts of the juniper, soft ferns, and the delicious purple heather, now in its most luxurious flush of summer bloom and perfume, furnished agreeable and elastic couches; and, as the stores carried by the sumpter mules had been replenished by the large hospitality of the prior of Bolton, heronshaw and egret, partridge and moorgame, wildfowl and venison, furnished forth their board, with pasties of carp and eels, and potted trout and char from the lakes whither they were wending, and they fared most like crowned heads within the precincts of a royal city, there, under the shadow of the gray crags and bare storm-beaten brow of bleak Whernside, there where, in this nineteenth century, the belated wayfarer would deem himself thrice happy, if he secured the rudest supper of oat-cakes and skim-milk cheese, with a draught of thin ale, the luxuries of the hardy agricultural population of the dales.

"Sweetly blows the haw and the rowan-tree,Wild roses speck our thickets sae briery;Still, still will our walk in the green-wood be—Oh, Jeanie! there's nothing to fear ye."

"Sweetly blows the haw and the rowan-tree,

Wild roses speck our thickets sae briery;

Still, still will our walk in the green-wood be—

Oh, Jeanie! there's nothing to fear ye."

Hogg's Ballads.

On the following morning they entered Westmoreland; and as they approached the term of their journey, advancing the more rapidly as they entered the wilder and more sparsely-populated regions toward the lakes and fells, where the castellated dwellings of the knightly nobles and the cloisters of the ecclesiastical lords became few and far between, they reached Kendal, then a small hamlet, with a noble castle and small priory, before noon; and, making no stay, pressed onward to the shores of Windermere, which they struck, not far from the scattered cottages and small chapel of ease, tended by two aged brothers from Kendal, known then, as it is now, not having grown much since that day, as the village of Bowness.

On the lake, moored at a rude pier, lay a small but gayly-decorated yacht, or galley, with the arms of Sir Yvo de Taillebois emblazoned on its foresail, and a gay streamer flaunting from its topmast, awaiting the arrival of the party, which had been announced to their vassals by a harbinger sent forward from Bolton Abbey.

And here the nobles, with their immediate train, separated from the bulk of the party, the former going on board the galley, and crossing the pellucid waters of the beautiful lake to Sir Yvo's noble castle, which lay not a mile from the strand, embosomed in a noble chase, richly-wooded with superb oak and ash forests, midway of the gentle and green valley between the lake and the western mountains, over which his demesnes extended, while the escort, with the horse-boys, grooms, and servitors, took the longer and more difficult way around the head of the lake—a circuit of some twenty miles—over the sites of the modern towns of Ambleside and Hawkshead, the castle lying in Cumberland, although the large estates of De Taillebois extended for many miles on both sides of the water, and in both counties, being the last grand feudal demesne on the south side of the mountains.

Further to the north, again, where the country spread out into plains beyond Keswick, toward Penrith and Carlisle, and the untamed Scottish borders, there were again found vast feudal demesnes, the property of the Lords of the Marches, the Howards, the Percys, the Umfravilles, and others, whose prowess defended the rich lowlands of York and Lancaster from the incursions of the Border Riders.

To the north, the nearest neighbor of De Taillebois was the Threlkeld, of Threlkeld Castle, on the skirts of Keswick, at thirty miles or more of distance across the pathless mountains of Scafell, Helvellyn, Saddleback, and Skiddaw. Nigher to him, on the south, and adjoining his lands, lay the estates of the Abbots of Furness; and to the westward, beyond the wide range of moor and mountain, which it took his party-two days to traverse, and in which, from Bolton till they reached Kendal, they had seen, according to the words of the motto prefixed to this chapter,

—————- "neither rich, nor poor,But moss, and ling, and bare wild moor,"

—————- "neither rich, nor poor,

But moss, and ling, and bare wild moor,"

lay the lands of the Cliffords and the mighty Nevilles. All the inner country, among those glorious peaks, those deep glens, encumbered with old unshorn woods, those blue waters, undisturbed by the presence of a foreigner, since the eagles of the ubiquitous Roman glittered above his camps on the stern hill-sides, over that most unprofitable of his conquests, was virgin ground, uninhabited, save by fugitive serfs, criminal refugees from justice, and some wild families of liberty-loving Saxons, who had fled to the mountains, living by the strong hand and the bended bow, and content to sacrifice all else for the priceless boon of freedom.

It was, perhaps, the very wildness and solitude of the locality, as much as the exquisite charm of the loveliest scenery in England, to which, strange to say, he was fully alive—enhanced by the certainty that in those remote regions, where there were no royal forests, nor any territorial magnates who could in any way rival himself, his forest rights, of which every Norman was constitutionally jealous, were perfectly intangible and unassailable—which had so much attached Sir Yvo de Taillebois to his Cumbrian castle of High Furness, in preference to all his fair estates and castles in the softer and more cultivated portions of the realm.

Certain it is, that he did love it better than all his other lands united; and hither he resorted, whenever he could escape from the duties of camps and the restraint of courts, to live a life among his vassals, his feudal tenants, and his humbler villagers, more like that of an Oriental patriarch than of a Norman warrior, but for the feudal pomp which graced his castle halls, and swelled his mountain hunts into a mimicry of warfare.

At about ten miles distant across the lake, up toward the lower spurs of the north-eastern mountains, lies the small lake of Kentmere, the head-waters and almost the spring of the river Kent; which, flowing down southward through the vale of Kendal, falls into the western head of Morecambe Bay, having its embouchure guarded by the terrible sands of Lancaster, so fatal to foot-passengers, owing to the terrific influx of the entering tides.

Set like a gem of purest water in a rough frame of savage mountains, their lower sides mantled with rich deciduous woods, their purple heathery brows dotted with huge Scotch firs, single, or in romantic groups, their scalps bald and broken, of gray and schistous rock, Kentmere fills up the whole basin of the dell it occupies, with the exception of a verge of smooth, green meadow-land, never above a hundred or two of yards in width, margined with a silvery stripe of snow-white sand, and studded by a few noble oaks.

At the head of the lake, half encircled by the dancing brook which formed its only inlet, rose a soft swell of ground, smooth and round-headed, neither hill nor hillock; its southern face, toward the lake, cleared of wood, and covered with short, close greensward, its flanks and brow overgrown with luxuriant oak-wood of the second growth, interspersed with varnished hollies, silver-stemmed birches, and a score or two of gigantic fir-trees, overtopping the pale green foliage of the coppice, and contrasting its lightsome tints by their almost sable hue.

Behind this fairy knoll the hill rose in rifted perpendicular faces of rock, garlanded and crowned with hanging coppices, for two or three hundred feet in height; the nesting-place of noble falcons, peregrines, gosshawks, haggards of the rock, and of a single pair of golden eagles, the terror of the dale from time immemorial.

In all lake land, there is no lovelier spot than Kentmere. The deep meadows by its side in early spring are one glowing garden of many-colored crocuses, golden, white, purple lady-smocks, yellow king-cups, and all sweet and gay-garbed flowers that love the water-side; the rounded knoll and all the oak-wood sides are alive with saffron primroses, cowslips, and meadow-sweets; and the air is rife with the perfume of unnumbered violets, and vocal with the song of countless warblers.

And on the mid slope of that rounded, bosom-like swell of land, there stood, at the period of my tale, a low stone building of one story, long for its height, narrow, and massively built of blocks of the native gray stone of the hills, with a projecting roof of heavy flags, forming a porch over the door, and two chimneys, one at either end, of a form peculiar, to this day, to that district, each covered with a flat stone slab supported on four columns, to prevent the smoke from driving down into the chambers, under the influence of the whirling gusts from the mountain tops.

Glass windows were unknown in those days, save to the castellated mansions of the great, or the noble minsters and cathedrals of the great cities—the art having been first introduced, after the commencement of the dark ages, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, although it must have been well known and of common occurrence in England during its occupation by the Romans, who used glass for windows as well as implements so early as the time of Cicero, and who would seem to have brought its manufacture to a perfection unattainable by us moderns, since it is credibly asserted that they had the art to render it malleable. Horn and talc, or oiled parchment, were used by the middle classes, but this was a luxury confined to the dwellers in towns; and the square mullioned apertures, which here served for windows, were closed by day and in fine weather by slender lattices, and during storms or at night by wooden shutters. The want of these luxuries, however, being unknown, was unregarded; and the verdurer's house at Kentmere was regarded in those days as a fine specimen of rural architecture, and stood as high by comparison as many an esquire's hall of the present day.

For the rest, it was partly overrun with ivy and woodbine, and was overhung at the western end by a noble mountain-ash, from under the roots of which welled out a small crystal spring, and sheltered to the east by a group of picturesque Scotch firs. An out-building or two, a stone barn, a cow-house, and what, by the baying and din of hounds, was clearly a dog-kennel, stood a little way aloof, under the skirts of the coppice, and completed the appurtenances of what was then deemed a very perfect dwelling for a small rural proprietor, and would be held now a very tolerable mountain farm-house for a tenant cotter.

This was the new home of Kenric and Edith, now by the good offices of the old curate of Bowness made man and wife; and here, with the good old mother nodding and knitting by the hearth, and two stout boys, Kenric's varlets, to tend the hounds and hawks, and to do the offices of the small hill farm, they dwelt as happy as the day; he occupying the responsible position of head-forester of upper Kentdale, and warder of the cotters, shepherds, and verdurers, whose cottages were scattered in the woods and over the hill-sides, and both secure in the favor of their lovely lady, and proud of the confidence of their lord.

"Your knight for his lady pricks forth in career,And is brought home at even-song, pricked through with a spear."

"Your knight for his lady pricks forth in career,

And is brought home at even-song, pricked through with a spear."

Ivanhoe.

That was a dark day for Eadwulf, on which the train of Sir Yvo de Taillebois departed from the tower of Waltheofstow; and thenceforth the discontented, dark-spirited man became darker, more morose and gloomy, until his temper had got to such a pass that he was shunned and avoided by every one, even of his own fellows.

It is true, that in the condition of slavery, in the being one of a despised and a detested caste, in being compelled to labor for the benefit of others than himself, in the being liable at any moment to be sold, together with the glebe to which he is attached for life, like the ox or ass with which he toils as a companion, there is not much to promote contentedness, to foster a quiet, placable, and gentle disposition, to render any man more just, or grateful, or forbearing to his fellows. Least of all is it so, where there is in the slave just enough of knowledge, of civilization, of higher nurture, to enable him to desire freedom in the abstract, to pine for it as a right denied, and to hate those by whom he is deprived of it, without comprehending its real value, or in the least appreciating either the privileges which it confers or the duties which it imposes on the freeman—least of all, when the man has from nature received a churlish, gloomy, sullen temperament, such as would be likely to make to itself a fanciful adversity out of actual prosperity, to resent all opposition to its slightest wish as an injury, and to envy, almost to the length of hating, every one more fortunate than himself.

It may, however, as all other conditions of inferiority, of sorrow, or of suffering, be rendered lighter and more tolerable by the mode of bearing it. Not that one would desire to see any man, whether reduced by circumstances to that condition, or held to it from his birth, so far reduced to a tame and senseless submission as to accept it as his natural state, or to endure it apathetically, without an effort at raising himself to his proper position in the scale of humanity and nature.

It is perfectly consistent with the utmost abhorrence of the condition, and the most thorough determination to escape from it by any means lawful to a Christian, to endure what is unavoidable, and to do that which must be done, bravely, patiently, well, and therefore nobly.

But it was not in the nature of Eadwulf to take either part. His rugged, stubborn, animal character, was as little capable of forming any scheme for his own prospective liberation, to which energy, and a firm, far-reaching will, should be the agents, as it was either to endure patiently or to labor well.

Perpetually remiss, working reluctantly and badly, ever a recusant, a recreant, a sullen and morose grumbler, while he in no respect lightened, but, it is probable, rather enhanced his difficulties, he detracted from what slight hope there might exist of his future emancipation, by carefully, as it would seem, conciliating the ill-opinion and ill-will of all men, whether his equals or his superiors—while he entirely neglected to earn or amass such small sums as might be within his reach, and as might perhaps, in the end, suffice to purchase his liberation.

So long as Kenric and his mother remained in the hamlet of Waltheofstow, and he was permitted to associate with them in their quarter, in consequence of the character for patience, honesty, fidelity, and good conduct, which his brother had acquired with his masters, Eadwulf's temper had been in some sort restrained by the influence, unconfessed indeed, and only half-endured with sullen reluctance, which that brother obtained over him, through his clearer and stronger intellect. But when they had departed, and when he found himself ejected, as a single man in the first place, and yet more as one marked for a bad servant and a dangerous character, from the best cottage in the quarter, to which he had begun to fancy himself of right entitled, he became worse and worse, until, even in the sort of barrack or general lodging of the male slaves of the lowest order, he was regarded by his fellows as the bad spirit of the set, and was never sought by any, unless as the ringleader in some act of villainy, wickedness, or rebellion.

It is probable, moreover, that the beauty and innocence of Edith, who, however averse she might be to the temper and disposition of the man, had been wont, since her betrothal to his brother, to treat him with a certain friendship and familiarity, might have had some influence in modifying his manner, at least, and curbing the natural display of his passionate yet sullen disposition.

Certain it is, that in some sort he loved her—as much, perhaps, as his sensual and unintelligent soul would allow him to love; and though he never had shown any predilection, never had made any effort to conciliate her favor, nor dared to attempt any rivalry of his brother, whom he wholly feared, and half-hated for his assumed superiority, he sorely felt her absence, regretted her liberation from slavery, and even felt aggrieved at it, since he could not share her new condition.

His brother's freedom he resented as a positive injury done to himself; and his bearing away with him the beautiful Edith, soon to become his bride, he looked on in the light of a fraudulent or forcible abstraction of his own property. From that moment, he became utterly brutalized and bad; he was constantly ordered for punishment, and at length he got to such a pitch of idleness, insolence, and rebellion, that Sir Philip de Morville, though, in his reluctance to resort to corporeal punishment, he would not allow him to be scourged or set in the stocks, ordered his seneschal to take steps for selling him to some merchant, who would undertake to transport him to one of the English colonies in Ireland.

Circumstances, however, occurred, which changed the fate both of the master and the slave, and led in the end to the events, which form the most striking portion of the present narrative.

For some time past, as was known throughout all the region, Sir Philip de Morville had been, if not actually at feud, at least on terms of open enmity with the nobleman whose lands marched with his own on the forest side, Sir Foulke d'Oilly—a man well-advanced in years, most of which he had spent in constant marauding warfare, a hated oppressor and tyrant to his tenantry and vassals, and regarded, among his Norman neighbors and comrades, as an unprincipled, discourteous, and cruel man.

With this man, recently, fresh difficulties had arisen concerning some disputed rights of chase, and on a certain day, within a month after the departure of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, the two nobles, meeting on the debatable ground, while in pursuit of the chase, under very aggravating circumstances, the hounds of both parties having fallen on the scent of the same stag, high words passed—a few arrows were shot by the retainers on both sides, Sir Philip's being much the more numerous; a forester of Sir Foulke d'Oilly's train was slain; and, had it not been for the extreme forbearance of De Morville, a conflict would have ensued, which could have terminated only in the total discomfiture of his rival and all his men.

This forbearance, however, effected no good end; for, before the barons parted, some words passed between them in private, which were not heard by any of their immediate followers, and the effect of which was known only by the consequences which soon ensued.

On the following morning, at the break of day, before the earliest of the serfs were summoned to their labors, the castle draw-bridge was lowered, and Sir Philip rode forth on his destrier, completely armed, but followed only by a single esquire in his ordinary attire.

The vizor of the knight's square-topped helmet was lowered, and the mail-hood drawn closely over it. His habergeon of glittering steel-rings, his mail-hose, fortified on the shoulders and at the knees by plates of polished steel, called poldrons and splents, shone like silver through the twilight; his triangular shield hung about his neck, his great two-handed broad-sword from his left shoulder to his heel, and his long steel-headed lance was grasped in his right hand; none could doubt that he was riding forth to do battle, but it was strange that he wore no surcoat of arms over his plain mail, that no trumpet preceded, no banner was borne behind him, no retainers, save that one unarmed man, in his garb of peace, followed the bridle of their lord.

He rode away slowly down the hill, through the serf's quarter, into the wood; the warder from the turret saw him turn and gaze back wistfully toward his hereditary towers, perhaps half prescient that he should see them no more. He turned, and was lost to view; nor did any eye of his faithful vassals look on him in life again.

Noon came, and the dinner hour, but the knight came not to the banquet hall—evening fell, and there were no tidings; but, at nightfall, Eadwulf came in, pale, ghastly, and terrified, and announced that the knight and the esquire both lay dead with their horses in a glade of the wood, not far from the scene of the quarrel of the preceding day, on the banks of the river Idle. No time was lost. With torch and cresset, bow and spear, the household hurried, under their appointed officers, to the fatal spot, and soon found the tidings of the serf to be but too true.

The knight and his horse lay together, as they had fallen, both stricken down at the same instant, in full career as it would seem, by a sudden and instantaneous death-stroke. The warrior, though prostrate, still sat the horse as if in life; he was not unhelmed; his shield was still about his neck; his lance was yet in the rest, the shaft unbroken, and the point unbloodied—the animal lay with its legs extended, as if it had been at full speed when the fatal stroke overtook it. A barbed cloth-yard arrow had been shot directly into its breast, piercing the heart through and through, by some one in full front of the animal; and a lance point had entered the throat of the rider, above the edge of the shield which hung about his neck, coming out between the shoulders behind, and inflicting a wound which must have been instantaneously mortal.

Investigation of the ground showed that many horses had been concealed or ambushed in a neighboring dingle, within easy arrow-shot of the murdered baron; that two horsemen had encountered him in the glade, one of whom, he by whose lance he had fallen, had charged him in full career.

It was evident to the men-at-arms, that Sir Philip's charger had been treacherously shot dead in full career, by an archer ambushed in the brake, at the very moment when he was encountering his enemy at the lance's point; and that, as the horse was in the act of falling, he had been bored through from above, before his own lance had touched the other rider.

The esquire had been cut down and hacked with many wounds of axes and two-handed swords, one of his arms being completely severed from the trunk, and his skull cleft asunder by a ghastly blow. His horse's brains had been dashed out with a mace, probably after the slaughter of the rider; and that this part of the deed of horror had been accomplished by many armed men, dismounted, and not by the slayer of De Morville, was evident, from the number of mailed and booted footsteps deeply imprinted in the turf around the carcasses of the murdered men and butchered animals.

Efforts were made immediately to track the assassins by the slot, several, both of the men-at-arms and of the Yorkshire foresters, being expert at the art; but their skill was at fault, as well as the scent of the slow-hounds, which were laid on the trail; for, within a few hundred yards of the spot, the party had entered the channel of the river Idle, and probably followed its course upward, to a place where it flowed over a sheet of hard, slaty, rock; and where the land farther back consisted of a dry, sun-burned, upland waste, of short, summer-parched turf, which took no impression of the horses' hoofs.

There was no proof, nor any distinct circumstantial evidence; yet none doubted any more than if they had beheld the doing of the dastardly deed, that the good Lord de Morville had fallen by the hand of Sir Foulke d'Oilly and of his associates in blood-shedding.

For the rest, the good knight lay dead, leaving no child, wife, brother, nor any near relation, who should inherit either his honors or his lands. He had left neither testament nor next of kin. Literally, he had died, and made no sign.

The offices of the church were done duly, the masses were chanted over the dead, and the last remains of the good knight were consigned to dust in the chapel vaults of his ancestral castle, never to descend to posterity of his, or to bear his name again forever.

In a few days it was made known that Sir Philip had died deeply indebted to the Jews of York, of Tadcaster, even of London; that his estates, all of which were unentailed and in his own right, were heavily mortgaged; and that the lands would be sold to satisfy the creditors of the deceased. Shortly after, it was whispered abroad, and soon proclaimed aloud, that Sir Foulke d'Oilly had become purchaser of whatever was saleable, and had been confirmed by the royal mandate in the possession of the seigneurial and feudal rights of the lapsed fief of Waltheofstow. There had been none to draw attention to the suspicions which weighed so heavily against Sir Foulke in the neighborhood, and among the followers of the dead knight; they were men of small rank and no influence, and had no motive to induce them wantonly to incur the hatred of the most powerful and unscrupulous noble of the vicinity, by bringing charges which they had no means to substantiate, if true, and which, to disprove, it was probable that he had contrivances already prepared by false witness.

Within a little while, Sir Foulke d'Oilly assumed his rights territorial and seigneurial; but he removed not in person to Waltheofstow, continuing to reside in his own larger and more magnificent castle of Fenton in the Forest, within a few miles' distance, and committing the whole management of his estates and governance of his serfs to a hard, stern, old man-at-arms, renowned for his cruel valor, whom he installed as the seneschal of the fief, with his brother acting as bailiff under him, and a handful of fierce, marauding, free companions, as a garrison to the castle.

The retainers of the old lord were got rid of peacefully, their dues of pay being made up to them, and themselves dismissed, with some small gratuity. One by one the free tenants threw up the farms which they rented, or resigned the fiefs which they held on man-service; and, before Sir Philip had been a month cold in his grave, not a soul was left in the place, of its old inhabitants, except the miserable Saxon serfs, to whom change of masters brought no change of place; and who, regarded as little better than mere brutes of burden, were scarce distinguished one from the other, or known by name, to their new and vicarious rulers. On them fell the most heavily the sudden blow which had deprived them of a just, a reasonable, and a merciful lord, as justice and mercy went in those days, and consigned them defenseless and helpless slaves, to one among the cruellest oppressors of that cruel and benighted period—and, worse yet than that, mere chattels at the mercy of an underling, crueller even than his lord, and wanting even in the sordid interest which the owner must needs feel in the physical welfare of his property.

Woe, indeed, woe worth the day, to the serfs of Waltheofstow, when they fell into the hands of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, and tasted of the mercies of his seneschal, Black Hugonet of Fenton in the Forest!

It was some considerable time before the news of this foul murder reached the ears of Sir Yvo de Taillebois; and when it did become known to him, and measures were taken by him to reclaim the manor of Waltheofstow, in virtue of the mortgage he had redeemed, it was found that so many prior claims, and that to so enormous an extent, were in existence, as to swallow up the whole of the estates, leaving Sir Yvo a loser of the nineteen thousand zecchins which he had advanced, with nothing to show in return for his outlay beyond the freedom of Kenric and his family.

The good knight, however, was too rich to be seriously affected by the circumstance, and of too noble and liberal a strain to regret deeply the mere loss of superabundant and unnecessary gold. But not so did he regard the death of his dear companion and brother in arms; yet, though he caused inquiries to be set on foot as to the mode of his decease, so many difficulties intervened, and the whole affair was plunged in so deep a mystery and obscurity, that he was compelled to abandon the pursuit reluctantly, until, after months had elapsed, unforeseen events opened an unexpected clew to the fatal truth.

Then said King Florentyne,"What noise is this? 'Fore Saint Martyn,Some man," he said, "in my franchise,Hath slain my deer and bloweth the prize."

Then said King Florentyne,

"What noise is this? 'Fore Saint Martyn,

Some man," he said, "in my franchise,

Hath slain my deer and bloweth the prize."

Guy of Warwick.

One of those serfs, Eadwulf, was little disposed to resign himself tranquilly to his fate; as within a short period after the occupation of Waltheofstow by the new seneschal, his wonted contumacy had brought him into wonted disgrace and condemnation, and, there being no longer any clemency overruling the law for the mitigation of such penalties as should seem needful, the culprit was on several occasions cruelly scourged, and imprisoned in the lowest vaults of the castle dungeon.

Maddened by this treatment, he at length resolved to escape at all risks, and knowing every path and dingle of the forest, he flattered himself that he should easily elude pursuers who were strange, as yet, to that portion of the country; and having, on the departure of his brother, contrived stealthily to possess himself of the crossbow and bolts which had belonged to him, being intrusted to his care as an unusual boon, owing to his good conduct and his occupation as a sort of underkeeper in the chase, fancied that he should be able easily to support himself by killing game in the forests through which he must make his way, until he should arrive at the new residence of that brother, where he doubted not of finding comfort and assistance.

During the days which had elapsed between the emancipation of Kenric and his departure from the castle, much had been ascertained, both by the new freeman and his beautiful betrothed, concerning the route which led to their future abode, its actual position, and the wild and savage nature of the country on which it abutted.

All this had naturally enough become known to Eadwulf; and he, having once been carried as far as to Lancaster by the late lord's equerry, to help in bringing home some recently-purchased war-horses, knew well the general direction of the route, and, having heard, while there, of the fordable nature of the Lancastrian sands, made little doubt of being able to find his way to his brother, and by his aid to gain the wild hills, where he trusted to subsist himself as a hunter and outlaw on the vast and untraversed heaths to the northward.

It was his hope to gain sufficient start, in the first instance, to enable him to make off so long before his absence should be discovered, that bloodhounds could not be laid on his track until the scent should be already cold; and then keeping the forest-ground, and avoiding all cleared or cultivated lands, to cross the Lancaster sands, and thence, by following up the course of the Kent River, on which he knew Kenric would be stationed as verdurer, to gain the interior labyrinth of fells, moors, morasses, and ravines, which at that time occupied the greater part of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

To this end, he managed to conceal himself at nightfall not far from the quarter, before the serfs had collected in their dormitory, intending to prosecute his flight so soon as the neighborhood should be steeped in the silence of night, and the moon should give him sufficient light to find his way through the deep forest mazes; and thus, before daybreak, was already some twenty miles distant from Waltheofstow, where he concealed himself in a deep hazel brake, intending to sleep away the hours of daylight, and resume his flight once more during the partial darkness of the night.

It was true that his route lay through the woodland-chase, which spread far and wide over the environs of Fenton in the Forest, and was the property of his new master; but for this he cared little, since there had been so small intercourse between the tenantry and vassals of his late lord and those of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, that he had no fears of being recognized by any chance retainer whom he might possibly encounter, while he knew that, should he chance to be discovered by a passing serf of his own oppressed race, he should not be betrayed by them to their mutual tyrants. Armed, therefore, at large, and already at a considerable distance from the scene of his captivity, he considered himself well-nigh safe when he concealed himself, in the early gray of the dawn, in such a dingle as he felt sure would secure him from the chance intrusion of any casual wayfarers.

Under one difficulty, however, he sorely labored. He had been unable to carry with him any provision, however slender; and he must depend on his skill as a forester for his sustenance, by poaching in the woods which he had to traverse, and cooking his game as best he might, borrowing an hour or two of the darkness for the purpose, and kindling his fire in the most remote and obscure places, to avoid danger of the smoke being observed by day, or the glare of the fire by night.

He had lost his evening meal on the previous day, and the appetite of the Saxon peasant was proverbially mighty; while, as is ever the case with men who have no motives to self-restraint or economy, abstinence was an unknown power.

It was vastly to his joy, therefore, that when the sun was getting fairly above the horizon, after he had been himself lurking an hour or two in the thick covert, he saw among the branches a noble stag come picking his way daintily along a deer-path which skirted the dingle, accompanied by two slim and graceful does, evidently intending to lay up, during the day, in the very brake which he unwittingly had occupied.

He had no sooner espied the animal, which was coming down wind upon him, utterly unconscious of the proximity of his direst foe, then he crouched low among the fern, fitted a quarrel to the string of his arbalast, and waited until his game was within ten paces of his ambush.

Then the winch was released, the bow twanged, and the forked head of the ponderous bolt crashed through the brain of the noble stag. One great bound he made, covering six yards of forest soil in that last leap of the death agony, and then laid dead almost at the feet of his unseen destroyer. The terrified does fled in wild haste into the opener parts of the forest, and, in an instant, the keen wood-knife of the Saxon had pierced the throat of the deer, and selected such portions, carved from the still quivering carcass, as he could most easily carry with him. These thrust carefully into the sort of hunting-pouch, or wallet, which he wore slung under his left arm, he proceeded, with the utmost wariness and caution, to cover up the slaughtered beast with boughs of the trees and brackens, rejoicing in his secret soul that he had secured to himself provision for two days longer at the least, and hoping that on the fourth morning he would be in security, beyond the broad expanse of Morecambe Bay.

But wonderfully deceitful are the hopes of the human heart; and, in the present instance, as often is the case, the very facts which he regarded as most auspicious were pregnant with the deepest danger.

Even where he had most warily calculated his chances, and chosen his measures with the deepest precaution, selecting the full of the moon for the period of his escape, and choosing the route in which he had anticipated the least danger of interruption, he had erred the most signally.

For it had so fallen out that Sir Foulke d'Oilly, having appointed this very day for a grand hunting match in his woods of Fenton, had issued orders to a strong party of his vassals, under the leading of Black Hugonet, his seneschal, and his brother, Ralph Wetheral, the bailiff, to come up from Waltheofstow by daybreak, and rendezvous at a station in the forest not a league distant from the spot in which Eadwulf had so unhappily chosen to conceal himself.

At the very moment in which the serf had launched his fatal bolt against the deer, the bailiff, Ralph Wetheral, who was, by virtue of his office, better acquainted with his person than any others of the household, was within a half a mile of his lair, engaged in tracking up the slot of the very animal which he was rejoicing to have slain, by aid of a mute lymer, or slow-hound, of an especial breed, kept and trained for the purpose; and in furtherance of his pursuit, had dismounted from his horse, and was following the dog as he dragged him onward, tugging at the leash; while ten or fifteen of his companions were scattered through the woods behind him, beating them carefully, in order to track the stags or wild boars to their lairs, before the arrival of their lord.

It was, perhaps, half an hour after he had discharged the shot, when he was alarmed by a light rustling of the under-wood and the cracking of dry sticks under a cautious footstep, and at first surmised that a second beast of chase was following on the track of his predecessor. But, in a moment, he was undeceived, by hearing the voice of a man whispering a few low words of encouragement to a dog, and at once the full extent of his danger flashed upon him. The dog was evidently questing the animal he had shot, and, within an instant, would lead his master to the spot. Under the cruel enactment of the Norman forest-laws, to slay a deer was a higher offense than to kill a fellow-man; the latter crime being in many cases remissible on the payment of a fine, while the former inevitably brought down on the culprit capital punishment, often enhanced by torture. To be found hidden, close behind a warm and yet bleeding stag, was tantamount to being taken red-handed in the fact, and instant death was the least punishment to be looked for.

Discovery was so close at hand, that flight itself seemed impossible; yet in immediate flight lay the sole chance of safety. He had already started from his lair, when the slow-hound, coming on the track of the fresh blood, set up a wild and savage yell, broke from the leash, and in a second was standing over the slaughtered quarry, tearing away with his fangs and claws the bushes which covered the carcass.

At the same moment, the branches were parted, and the bailiff of Waltheofstow stood before the culprit, carrying an unbended long-bow in his hand, and having a score of cloth-yard arrows at his belt, a short anlace at his side, and his bugle slung about his neck.

The recognition on each side was immediate, and the Norman advanced fearlessly to seize the fugitive, raising his bugle to his lips, as he came on, to summon succor. But Eadwulf, who had already laid a quarrel in the groove of the crossbow, with some indefinite idea of shooting the dog before the man should enter upon the scene, raised the weapon quickly to his shoulder, and, taking rapid aim, discharged it full at the breast of the bold intruder.

The heavy missile took effect, just as it was aimed, piercing the cavity of the man's heart, that he sprang a foot or better up into the air, and fell slain outright upon the body of the deer, which his dog had discovered, his spirit passing away without a struggle or a convulsion.

The dog uttered a long, melancholy, wailing howl, stooped to snuff at and lick the face of its murdered master, and then, as Eadwulf was drawing forth a third quarrel, before he could bend the arbalast again, or fit the missile to the string, fled howling into the wood whence he had come, as if he foresaw his purpose.

"A curse upon the yelling cur; he will bring the hue-and-cry down on me in no time. There is nothing but a run for it, and but a poor chance at that."

And, with the words, he dashed away toward the northwest, through the opener parts of the forest, at a speed which, could he have maintained it, would have soon carried him out of the reach of pursuit. And wonderfully he did maintain it; for at the end of the second hour he had run nearly fifteen miles from the scene of the murder; and here, on the brink of a small brimful river, of perhaps forty or fifty yards in width, flowing tranquilly but rapidly through the greenwoods, in a course not very much from the direction which he desired to follow, he cast himself down on the turf, and lay panting heavily for some minutes on the sward, until he had in some degree recovered his breath, when he bathed his face in the cool water, drank a few swallows, and then crossing the stream by some large stepping-stones which lay here in a shallow spot, continued his flight with singular speed and endurance.

He had not, however, fled above a hundred or two of yards beyond the water, when he heard, at the distance of about three miles behind him, the sound he most dreaded to hear, the deep bay of bloodhounds. Beyond doubt, they were on his track; and how was he to shun their indomitable fury?

He was a man of some resource and skill in woodcraft, although rude and barbarous in other matters; and, in desperate emergencies, men think rapidly, and act on the first thought.

The second tone of the dogs had scarcely reached his ear, before he was rushing backward, as nearly as possible in his own tracks, to the river, into which, from the first stepping-stone, he leaped head-foremost, and swam vigorously and lightly down the current, which bore him bravely on his way. The stream was swift and strong; and its banks, clothed with thick underwood, concealed his movements from the eyes of any one on either margin; and he had floated down considerably more than a mile, before he heard the bloodhounds come up in full cry to the spot where he had passed the water, and cross over it, cheered by the shouts and bugle-blasts of the man-hunters.

Then their deep clamor ceased at once, where he had turned on his back track, and he knew they were at fault, and perceived that the men, by their vociferations and bugle-notes, were casting them to and fro in all directions, to recover his scent.

Still he swam rapidly onward, and had interposed nearly another mile between himself and his pursuers, when he heard, by their shouts coming down either bank, that they had divined the stratagem to which he had had recourse, and were trailing him down the margins, secure of striking his track again, wherever he should leave the river.

He was again becoming very anxious, when a singular accident gave him another chance of safety. A wood-pigeon, flapping its wings violently as it took flight, attracted his attention to the tree from which it took wing. It was a huge oak, overhanging the stream, into which one of its branches actually dipped, sound and entire below, but with a large hollow at about twenty feet from the ground, which, as he easily divined, extended downward to the level of the soil. No sooner seen, than he had seized the pendulous branch, swung himself up by it, through a prodigious exertion, and, springing with mad haste from bough to bough, reached the opening in the decayed trunk. It was a grim, dark abyss, and, should he enter it, he saw not how he should ever make his exit. But a nearer shout, and the sounds of galloping horsemen, decided him. He entered it foot-foremost, hung by his hands for a moment to the orifice, in hesitation, and then, relaxing his hold, dropped sheer down through the rotten wood, and spiders'-webs, and unhealthy funguses, to the bottom of the tunnel-shaped hollow. Aroused from their diurnal dreams by the crash of his descent, two great brown-owls rushed out of the summit of the tree, and swooped down over the heads of the men-at-arms, who just at the instant passed under the branches, jingling in their panoply, and effectually prevented any suspicion from attaching to the hiding-place.

For the moment he was safe; and there he stood, in almost total darkness, shivering with wet and cold, amid noisome smells and damp exhalations, listening to the shouts of his enemies, as they rode to and fro, until they were lost in the distance.

"Now tell me thy name, good fellow, said he,Under the leaves of lyne.Nay, by my faith, quoth bold Robin,Till thou have told mo thine."

"Now tell me thy name, good fellow, said he,

Under the leaves of lyne.

Nay, by my faith, quoth bold Robin,

Till thou have told mo thine."

Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne.

Until the last glimmer of daylight had faded out in the west, and total darkness had prevailed for several hours through the forest, Eadwulf remained a prisoner in his hollow trunk, unable to discover the whereabout of his enemies, yet well-assured that they had not returned, but had taken up some bivouac for the night, not very far in advance of his hiding-place, with the intention of again seeking for his trail on the morrow, when they judged that he would have once more taken the road. But as soon as, looking up the chimney-like aperture of his hiding-place, he discovered the foliage silvered by the moonbeams, he scaled the inside of the trunk, not without some difficulty, working his way upward with his back and knees, after the fashion of a modern chimney-sweep, and, emerging into the open air, drew a long breath, and again lowered himself as he had ascended, by the drooping-branches, and once more entered the channel of the stream. The rivulet was in this place shallow, with a hard bottom, the current which was swift and noisy, scarce rising to his knee, so that he waded down it without much difficulty, and at a tolerable speed.

After he had proceeded in this manner about two miles, he discovered a red-light in an open glade of the forest, at a short distance ahead, on the left bank of the river; and, as he came abreast of it, readily discovered his enemies, with the bloodhounds in their leashes, sitting or lying around a fire which they had kindled, ready, it was evident, to resume the search with the earliest dawn. This he was enabled to discern without quitting the bed of the stream, whose brawling ripples drowned the sound of his footsteps; and as the water deepened immediately ahead of him, he again plunged noiselessly, and swam forward at least two miles farther; when, calculating that he had given them a task of two or three hours at least before they could succeed in finding where he had quitted the water-course, if he had not entirely thrown them out, he took land on the opposite side to that, on which they were posted, and struck at his best pace across the waste.

It might have been ten o'clock in the evening when he left the oak-tree, and, though weary and hungry, he plodded forward at a steady pace, never falling short of four miles an hour, and often greatly exceeding that speed, where the ground favored his running, until perhaps an hour before daybreak. At that darkest moment of the night, after the moon had set, he paused in a little hollow of the hills, having placed, as he calculated, at least five-and-thirty miles between himself and his hunters, lighted a fire, cooked a portion of his venison, and again, just as the skies began to brighten, got under way, supposing that at about this hour his foes would resume their search, and might probably in a couple of hours get the hounds again upon his scent. Ere that, however, he should have gained another ten miles on them, and he well knew that the scent would be so cold that it would be many hours more before they could hunt it up, if they should succeed in doing so at all.

All day, until the sun was high at noon, he strode onward across the barren heath and wild moors into which the forest had now subsided, when, after catching from a hill-top a distant view of a town and castle to the northward, which he rightly judged to be Skipton, he reached an immense tract, seeming almost interminable, of green, oozy morasses, cut up by rivulets and streamlets, and often intersected by dangerous bogs, from which flowed the interlinked tributaries of the Eyre, the Ribble, and the Hodder. Through this tract, he was well aware, neither horse could follow nor bloodhound track him; and it was overgrown in so many places with dense brakes of willow and alder, that his flight could not be discovered by the eye from any of the surrounding eminences. Into this dreary region he, therefore, plunged joyously, feeling half-secure, and purposely selecting the deepest and wettest portions of the bog, and, where he could do so without losing the true line of his course, wading along the water-courses until about two in the afternoon, when he reached an elevated spot or island in the marsh, covered with thrifty underwood, and there, having fed sparingly on the provision he had cooked on the last evening, made himself a bed in the heather, and slept undisturbed, and almost lethargically, until the moon was up in the skies. Then he again cooked and ate; but, before resuming his journey, he climbed a small ash-tree, which overlooked the level swamp, and thence at once descried three watch-fires, blazing brilliantly at three several spots on the circumference of the morass, one almost directly ahead of him, and nearly at the spot where he proposed to issue on to the wild heathery moors of Bolland Forest, on the verge of the counties of York and Lancaster, and within fifty miles of the provincial capital and famous sands of the latter. By these fires he judged easily that thus far they had traced him, and found the spot where he had entered the bogs, the circuit of which they were skirting, in order once more to lay the death-hounds on his track, where ever he should again strike the firm ground.

In one hour after perceiving the position of his pursuers, he passed out of the marsh at about a mile north of the western-most watch-fire, and, in order as much as possible to baffle them, crawled for a couple of hundred yards up a shallow runnel of water, which drained down from the moorland into the miry bottom land.

Once more he had secured a start of six hours over the Normans, but with this disadvantage—that they would have little difficulty in finding his trail on the morrow, and that the country which he had to traverse was so open, that he dared not attempt to journey over it by daylight.

Forward he fared, therefore, though growing very weak and weary, for he was foot-sore and exhausted, and chilled with his long immersion in the waters, until the sun had been over the hills for about two hours, much longer than which he dared not trust himself on the moors, when he began to look about eagerly for some water-course or extensive bog, by which he might again hope to avoid the scent of the unerring hounds.

None such appeared, however, and desperately he plodded onward, almost despairing and utterly exhausted, without a hope of escaping by speed of foot, and seeing no longer a hope of concealment. Suddenly when the sun was getting high, and he began to expect, at every moment, the sounds of the death-dogs opening behind him, he crossed the brow of a round-topped heathery hill, crested with crags of gray limestone, and from its brow, at some thirty miles distance, faintly discerned the glimmering expanse of Morecambe Bay, and the great fells of Westmoreland and Cumberland looming up like blue clouds beyond them.

But through the narrow ghyll, immediately at his feet, a brawling stream rushed noisily down the steep gorge from the north, southerly. Headlong he leaped down to it, through the tall heather, which here grew rank, and overtopped his head, but before he reached it, he blundered into a knot of six or seven men, sleeping on a bare spot of greensward, round the extinct ashes of a fire, and the carcass of a deer, which they had slain, and on which they had broken their fast.

Startled by his rapid and unceremonious intrusion into their circle, the men sprang to their feet with the speed of light, each laying a cloth-yard arrow to the string of a bended long-bow, bidding him "Stand, or die."

For a moment, he thought his hour was come; but the next glance reassured him, and he saw that his fortune had again brought him safety, in the place of ruin.

The men were Saxons, outlaws, fugitives from the Norman tyranny, and several of them, like himself, serfs escaped from the cruelty of their masters. One of them had joined the party so recently, that, like Eadwulf, he yet wore the brazen collar about his neck, the badge of servitude and easy means of detection, of which he had not yet found the means to rid himself.

A few words sufficed to describe his piteous flight, and to win the sympathy and a promise of protection from the outlaws; but when the bloodhounds were named, and their probably close proximity, they declared with one voice that there was not a moment to be lost, and that they could shelter him without a possibility of danger.

Without farther words, one by one they entered the brook, scattering into it as if they were about to pass down it to the southward, but the moment their feet were in the water, turning upward and ascending the gorge, which grew wilder and steeper as they proceeded, until, at a mile's distance, they came to a great circular cove of rocks, walled in by crags of three hundred feet in height, with the little stream plunging down it, at the upward extremity, small in volume, but sprinkling the staircase of rocks, down which it foamed, with incessant sheets of spray.

Scarcely had they turned the projecting shoulder of rock which guarded the entrance of this stern circle, before the distant bay of the bloodhounds came heavily down the air; and, at the same instant, the armed party galloped over the brow of the bare moor which Eadwulf had passed so recently, cheering the fierce dogs to fresh exertions, and expecting, so hotly did their sagacious guides press upon the recent trail, to see the fugitive fairly before them.

Much to their wonder, however, though the country lay before their eyes perfectly open, in a long stretch of five or six miles, without a bush, a brake, or apparently a hollow which could conceal a man if he were in motion, he was not to be discovered within the limits of the horizon.

"By St. Paul!" exclaimed the foremost rider; shading his eyes with his hand, to screen them from the rays of the level sun, "he can not have gained so much on us as to have got already beyond the range of eyeshot. He must have laid up in the heather. At all events, we are sure of him. Forward! forward! Halloo! hark, forward!"

Animated by his cheering cry, the dogs dashed onward furiously, reached the brink of the rill, and were again at fault. "Ha! he is at his old tricks again;" shouted the leader, who was no other than Hugonet, surnamed the Black, the brother of the murdered bailiff. "But it shall not avail him. We will beat the brook on both banks, up and down, to its source and to its mouth, if it needs, but we will have him. You, Wetherall, follow it northerly to the hills with six spears and three couple of the hounds. I will ride down toward the sea; I fancy that will prove to be the line he has taken. If they hit off the scent, or you catch a view of him, blow me five mots upon your bugle, thus,sa-sa-wa-la-roa! and, lo! in good time, here comes Sir Foulke."

And thundering up on his huge Norman war-horse, cursing furiously when he perceived that the hounds were at fault, came that formidable baron; for his enormous weight had kept him far in the rear of his lighter-armed, and less ponderous vassals. His presence stimulated them to fresh exertions, but all exertions were in vain.

Evening fell on the wide purple moorlands, and they had found no track of him they sought. Wetherall, after making a long sweep around the cove and the waterfall, and tracing back the rill to its source, in a mossy cairn among the hills, at some five miles' distance, descended it again and rejoined the party, with the positive assurance that the serf had not gone in that direction, for that the hounds had beaten both banks the whole way to the spring-head, and that he had not come out on either side, or their keen scent would have detected him.

Meantime, the other party had pursued the windings of the stream downward, with the rest of the pack, for more than ten miles, at full gallop, until they were convinced that had he gone in that direction, they must long ere this have overtaken him. They were already returning, when they were met by Wetherall, the bearer of no more favorable tidings.

Sorely perplexed how their victim should have thus vanished from them, in the midst of a bare open moor, as if he had been swallowed up by the earth,aut tenues evasit in auras, and half suspecting witchcraft, or magic agency, they lighted fires, and encamped on the spot where they had lost his track, intending to resume the research on the morrow, and, at last, if the latest effort should fail of recovering the scent, to scatter over the moors, in small parties or troops, and beat them toward the Lancaster sands, by which they were well-assured, he meditated his escape.

In the interval, the band of outlaws quickening their pace as they heard the cry of the bloodhounds freshening behind them, arrived at the basin, into which fell the scattered rain of the mimic cataract, taking especial care to set no foot on the moss or sand, by the brink, which should betray them to the instinct of the ravening hounds.

"Up with thee, Wolfric," cried one of the men to one who seemed the chief. "Up with thee! There is no time to lose. We must swear him when we have entered the cave. Forward comrade; this way lies your safety." And, with the words, he pointed up the slippery chasm of the waterfall.

Up this perilous ladder, one by one, where to an unpracticed eye no ascent appeared possible, the outlaws straggled painfully but in safety, the spray effacing every track of their footsteps, and the water carrying off every trace of the scent where they had passed, until they reached the topmost landing-place. There the stream was projected in an arch from the rock, which jutted out in a bold table; and there, stooping under the foamy sheet, the leader entered a low cavern, with a mouth scarce exceeding that of a fox earth, but expanding within into a large and roomy apartment, where they ate and caroused and slept at their ease, during the whole day and all the succeeding night; for the robbers insisted that no foot must be set without their cavern by the fugitive, until they should have ascertained by their spies that the Normans had quitted their neighborhood. This they did not until late in the following day, when they divided themselves into three parties, and struck off northwesterly toward the upper sands at the head of the bay, for which they had evidently concluded that Eadwulf was making, after they had exhausted every effort of ingenuity to discover the means of his inexplicable disappearance, on the verge of that tiny rivulet, running among open moors on the bare hill-sides.

So soon as they were certain of the direction which the enemy had taken, and of the fact that they had abandoned the farther use of the bloodhounds, as unprofitable, the whole party struck due westerly across the hills, on a right line for Lancaster, guiding their companion with unerring skill across some twenty miles of partially-cultivated country, to the upper end of the estuary of the Lon, about one mile north of the city, which dreary water they reached in the gloaming twilight. Here a skiff was produced from its concealment in the rushes, and he was ferried over the frith, as a last act of kindness, by his entertainers, who, directing him on his way to the sands, the roar of which might be heard already in the distance, retreated with all speed to their hill fastnesses, from which they felt it would be most unsafe for them to be found far distant by the morning light.

The distance did not much exceed four miles; but, before he arrived at the end, Eadwulf met the greatest alarm which had yet befallen him; for, just as it was growing too dark to distinguish objects clearly, a horseman overtook him, or rather crossed him from the northward, riding so noiselessly over the sands, that he was upon him before he heard the sound of his tread.

Though escape was impossible, had it been a foe, he started instinctively to fly, when a voice hailed him friendly in the familiar Saxon tongue.

"Ho! brother Saxon, this is thou, then, is it?"

"I know not who thou art," replied Eadwulf, "nor thou me, I'll be sworn."

"Ay! but I do, though, bravely. Thou art the Saxon with the price of blood on thy head, whom the Normans have chased these three days, from beyond Rotherham. They lie five miles hence on the hither side the Lon, and inquired after thee at twilight. But fear not for me. Only cross the sands early; the tide will answer with the first gray glimmer; and thou art safe in Westmoreland. And so God speed thee, brother."

A mile or two farther brought him to the verge of the wet sands, and there in the last brushwood he laid him down, almost too weary to be anxious for the morrow.

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