Part 28 (1/2)

They both quickened their pace, and gaining the other side of the hedge, did indeed perceive two men in carters' frocks, strolling on towards the village.

”They are strangers too,” said the Squire suspiciously, ”not Gra.s.sdale men. Humph! could they have overheard us, think you?”

”If men whose business it is to overhear their neighbours--yes; but not if they be honest men,” answered Aram, in one of those shrewd remarks which he often uttered, and which seemed almost incompatible with the tenor of the quiet and abstruse pursuits that he had adopted, and that generally deaden the mind to worldly wisdom.

They had now approached the strangers, who, however, appeared mere rustic clowns, and who pulled off their hats with the wonted obeisance of their tribe.

”Hollo, my men,” said the Squire, a.s.suming his magisterial air, for the mildest Squire in Christendom can play the Bashaw, when he remembers he is a Justice of the Peace. ”Hollo! what are you doing here this time of day? you are not after any good, I fear.”

”We ax pardon, your honour,” said the elder clown, in the peculiar accent of the country, ”but we be come from Gladsmuir; and be going to work at Squire Nixon's at Mow-hall, on Monday; so as I has a brother living on the green afore the Squire's, we be a-going to sleep there to-night and spend the Sunday, your honour.”

”Humph! humph! What's your name?”

”Joe Wood, your honour, and this here chap is, Will Hutchings.”

”Well, well, go along with you,” said the Squire: ”And mind what you are about. I should not be surprised if you snare one of Squire Nixon's hares by the way.”

”Oh, well and indeed, your honour.”--”Go along, go along,” said the Squire, and away went the men.

”They seem honest b.u.mpkins enough,” observed Lester.

”It would have pleased me better,” said Aram, ”had the speaker of the two particularized less; and you observed that he seemed eager not to let his companion speak; that is a little suspicious.”

”Shall I call them back?” asked the Squire.

”Why it is scarcely worth while,” said Aram; ”perhaps I over refine. And now I look again at them, they seem really what they affect to be. No, it is useless to molest the poor wretches any more. There is something, Lester, humbling to human pride in a rustic's life. It grates against the heart to think of the tone in which we unconsciously permit ourselves to address him. We see in him humanity in its simple state; it is a sad thought to feel that we despise it; that all we respect in our species is what has been created by art; the gaudy dress, the glittering equipage, or even the cultivated intellect; the mere and naked material of Nature, we eye with indifference or trample on with disdain. Poor child of toil, from the grey dawn to the setting sun, one long task!--no idea elicited--no thought awakened beyond those that suffice to make him the machine of others--the serf of the hard soil! And then too, mark how we scowl upon his scanty holidays, how we hedge in his mirth with laws, and turn his hilarity into crime! We make the whole of the gay world, wherein we walk and take our pleasure, to him a place of snares and perils. If he leave his labour for an instant, in that instant how many temptations spring up to him! And yet we have no mercy for his errors; the gaol--the transport-s.h.i.+p--the gallows; those are our sole lecture-books, and our only methods of expostulation--ah, fie on the disparities of the world! They cripple the heart, they blind the sense, they concentrate the thousand links between man and man, into the two basest of earthly ties--servility, and pride. Methinks the devils laugh out when they hear us tell the boor that his soul is as glorious and eternal as our own; and yet when in the grinding drudgery of his life, not a spark of that soul can be called forth; when it sleeps, walled around in its lumpish clay, from the cradle to the grave, without a dream to stir the deadness of its torpor.”

”And yet, Aram,” said Lester, ”the Lords of science have their ills.

Exalt the soul as you will, you cannot raise it above pain. Better, perhaps, to let it sleep, when in waking it looks only upon a world of trial.”

”You say well, you say well,” said Aram smiting his heart, ”and I suffered a foolish sentiment to carry me beyond the sober boundaries of our daily sense.”

CHAPTER IV.

MILITARY PREPARATIONS.--THE COMMANDER AND HIS MAN.--ARAM IS PERSUADED TO Pa.s.s THE NIGHT AT THE MANOR-HOUSE.

Falstaff.--”Bid my Lieutenant Peto meet me at the town's end.

.. I pressed me none but such toasts and b.u.t.ter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads.”

--Henry IV.

They had scarcely reached the Manor-house, before the rain, which the clouds had portended throughout the whole day, began to descend in torrents, and to use the strong expression of the Roman poet--the night rushed down, black and sudden, over the face of the earth.

The new watch were not by any means the hardy and experienced soldiery, by whom rain and darkness are unheeded. They looked with great dismay upon the character of the night in which their campaign was to commence.

The valorous Peter, who had sustained his own courage by repeated applications to a little bottle, which he never failed to carry about him in all the more bustling and enterprising occasions of life, endeavoured, but with partial success, to maintain the ardour of his band. Seated in the servants' hall of the Manor-house, in a large arm-chair, Jacobina on his knee, and his trusty musket, which, to the great terror of the womankind, had never been unc.o.c.ked throughout the day, still grasped in his right hand, while the stock was grounded on the floor; he indulged in martial harangues, plentifully interlarded with plagiarisms from the wors.h.i.+pful translations of Messrs. Sternhold and Hopkins, and psalmodic versions of a more doubtful authors.h.i.+p.

And when at the hour of ten, which was the appointed time, he led his warlike force, which consisted of six rustics, armed with sticks of incredible thickness, three guns, one pistol, a broadsword, and a pitchfork, (a weapon likely to be more effectively used than all the rest put together;) when at the hour of ten he led them up to the room above, where they were to be pa.s.sed in review before the critical eye of the Squire, with Jacobina leading the on-guard, you could not fancy a prettier picture for a hero in a little way, than mine host of the Spotted Dog.