Part 7 (2/2)
Matchaed by what dick had seen, hurried through the rean to rew roves, with heathy places in between, sandy, gorsy, and dotted with old yews The ground became more and more uneven, full of pits and hillocks And with every step of the ascent the wind still blew the shriller, and the trees bent before the gusts like fishi+ng-rods
They had just entered one of the clearings, when dick suddenly clapped down upon his face aan to crawl slowly backward towards the shelter of the grove Matchareat bewilderht, still imitated his coained the harbour of a thicket that he turned and begged him to explain
For all reply, dick pointed with his finger
At the far end of the clearing, a fir grew high above the neighbouring wood, and planted its black shock of foliage clear against the sky For about fifty feet above the ground the trunk grew straight and solid like a coluhs; and in the fork, like a reen tabard, spying far and wide The sun glistened upon his hair; with one hand he shaded his eyes to look abroad, and he kept slowly rolling his head froularity of a lances
”Let us try to the left,” said dick ”We had near fallen foully, Jack”
Ten minutes afterwards they struck into a beaten path
”Here is a piece of forest that I know not,” dick reoeth me this track?”
”Let us even try,” said Matcham
A few yards further, the path cao down abruptly into a cup-shaped hollow At the foot, out of a thick wood of flowering hawthorn, two or three roofless gables, blackened as if by fire, and a single tall chimney marked the ruins of a house
”What may this be?” whispered Matcham
”Nay, by the mass, I know not,” answered dick ”I a hearts, they descended through the hawthorns Here and there, they passed signs of recent cultivation; fruit trees and pot herbs ran wild arass; it seearden Yet a little farther and they came forth before the ruins of the house
It had been a pleasantdeep about it; but it was now choked with ed by a fallen rafter The two farther walls still stood, the sun shi+ning through their e had collapsed, and now lay in a great cairn of ruin, grimed with fire Already in the interior a few plants were springing green a the chinks
”Now I bethink me,” whispered dick, ”this must be Grimstone It was a hold of one Simon Malmesbury; Sir Daniel was his bane! 'Twas Bennet Hatch that burned it, now five years agone In sooth, 'twas pity, for it was a fair house”
Down in the hollohere no wind blew, it was both war one hand upon dick's arer
”Hist!” he said
Then ca on the quiet It ice repeated ere they recognised its nature It was the sound of a bighis throat; and just then a hoarse, untuneful voice broke into singing
”Then up and spake theof the outlaws: 'What reenwood shaws?'
And Gamelyn made answer--he looked never adown: 'O, they must need to walk in wood that er paused, a faint clink of iron followed, and then silence
The two lads stood looking at each other Whoever he hbour was just beyond the ruin And suddenly the colour came into Matcham's face, and nextcautiously on the huge pile of lumber that filled the interior of the roofless house dick would have withheld him, had he been in tiht in the corner of the ruin, two rafters had fallen crosswise, and protected a clear space no larger than a pew in church Into this the lads silently lowered theh an arrow-loophole coh this, they were struck stiff with terror at their predicament To retreat was impossible; they scarce dared to breathe
Upon the very in of the ditch, not thirty feet from where they crouched, an iron caldron bubbled and stea fire; and close by, in an attitude of listening, as though he had caught so the ruins, a tall, red-faced, battered-looking ht hand, a horn and a forer; plainly he had been stirring the caldron, when so the lumber had fallen upon his ear A little further off, another , rolled in a brown cloak, with a butterfly hovering above his face All this was in a clearing white with daisies; and at the extree, a bow, a sheaf of arrows, and part of a deer's carcase, hung upon a flowering hawthorn