Part 4 (2/2)
”They are pretty ments my sorrow that ye had not ht, ”ould ye? The beginning of a feast and the end of a fray, sir er;” and he mounted into his saddle ”Why!
ho!” he cried ”John! Joanna! Nay, by the sacred rood! where is she? Host, where is that girl?”
”Girl, Sir Daniel?” cried the landlord ”Nay, sir, I saw no girl”
”Boy, then, dotard!” cried the knight ”Could ye not see it was a wench?
She in the murrey-coloured ue--where is she?”
”Nay, the saints bless us! Master John, ye called hione I saw hione; 'a was saddling a grey horse”
”Now, by the rood!” cried Sir Daniel, ”the wench orth five hundred pound to er, with bitterness, ”while that ye are here, roaring for five hundred pounds, the real lost and won”
”It is well said,” replied Sir Daniel ”Selden, fall me out with six cross-bowmen; hunt , let me find her at the Moat House Be it upon your head And now, sir ood trot, and Selden and his six men were left behind upon the street of Kettley, with the staring villagers
CHAPTER II--IN THE FEN
It was near six in the May an to ride down into the fen upon his homeay The sky was all blue; the jolly wind blew loud and steady; the wind; and the s over all the fen rippling and whitening like a field of corn He had been all night in the saddle, but his heart was good and his body sound, and he rode right merrily
The path went down and down into thelandmarks but Kettley windmill on the knoll behind him, and the extreme top of Tunstall Forest far before On either hand there were great fields of blowing reeds and s, pools of water shaking in the wind, and treacherous bogs, as green as emerald, to teht through the morass It was already very ancient; its foundation had been laid by Roes much of it had sunk, and every here and there, for a few hundred yards, it lay subnant waters of the fen
About a mile from Kettley, dick came to one such break in the plain line of causehere the reeds and s grew dispersedly like little islands and confused the eye The gap, besides, was ht coht hi, of the lad whom he had so imperfectly directed As for himself, one look backward to where the windainst the blue of heaven--one look forward to the high ground of Tunstall Forest, and he was sufficiently directed and held straight on, the water washi+ng to his horse's knees, as safe as on a highway
Half-way across, and when he had already sighted the path rising high and dry upon the farther side, he are of a great splashi+ng on his right, and saw a grey horse, sunk to its belly in the h it had divined the neighbourhood of help, the poor beast began to neigh ly It rolled, meanwhile, a blood-shot eye, insane with terror; and as it spraing in the quag, clouds of stinging insects rose and buzzed about it in the air
”Alack!” thought dick, ”can the poor lad have perished? There is his horse, for certain--a brave grey! Nay, comrade, if thou criest to me so piteously, I will do all man can to help thee Shalt not lie there to drown by inches!”
And he h the creature's head
dick rode on after this act of ruggedclosely about hin of his less happy predecessor in the way ”I would I had dared to tell hiht; ”for I fear he has h”
And just as he was so thinking, a voice cried upon his na over his shoulder, he saw the lad's face peering fro in ”Ye lay so close a the reeds that I had passed you by I saw your horse beony; which, by my sooth! an ye had been a more merciful rider, ye had done yourself But co Here be none to trouble you”
”Nay, good boy, I have no arms, nor skill to use the forth upon the pathway
”Why call me 'boy'?” cried dick ”Y' are not, I trow, the elder of us twain”
”Good Master Shelton,” said the other, ”prithee forgive me I have none the least intention to offend Rather I would in every way beseech your gentleness and favour, for I a lost -rod and spurs, and never a horse to sit upon! And before all,” he added, looking ruefully upon his clothes--”before all, to be so sorrily besmirched!”