; but yet days in which persons were not valued
according to the precise mode of their dress or equipage, when hearts
were not appraised by the hat or gloves, nor the mind estimated by the
carriages or horses.
Man was considered far more abstractedly then than at present; and
although illustrious ancestors, great possessions, and hereditary claims
upon consideration, were allowed more weight than they now possess, yet
the minor circumstances of each individual,--the things that filled his
pocket, the dishes upon his table, the name of his tailor, or the club
that he belonged to,--were seldom, if ever, allowed to affect the
appreciation of his general character.
However that might be, it was an age, as we have said, of pack-saddles
and pillions; and no one, at any distance from the capital itself, would
have been the least ashamed to be seen with a lady or child mounted
behind him on the same horse, while he jogged easily onward on his
destined way.
It was thus that, about a quarter of an hour before nightfall, a, tall
powerful man was seen riding along through one of the north-western
counties of England, with a boy of about eight years of age mounted on a
pillion behind him, and steadying himself on the horse by an
affectionate embrace cast round the waist of his elder companion.
Lennard Sherbrooke--for the reader has already divined that this was no
other than the personage introduced to him in our first chapter--Lennard
Sherbrooke, then, was still heavily armed, but in other respects had
undergone a considerable change. The richly laced coat had given place
to a plain dark one of greenish brown; the large riding boots remained;
and the hat, though it kept its border of feathers, was divested of
every other ornament. There were pistols at the saddle-bow, which indeed
were very necessary in those days to every one who performed the
perilous and laborious duty of wandering along the King's Highway; and
in every other respect the appearance of Lennard Sherbrooke was well
calculated neither to attract cupidity nor invite attack.
About ten minutes after the period at which we have again introduced him
to our readers, the traveller and his young companion stopped at the
door of an old-fashioned inn, or rather at the porch thereof; for the
door itself, with a retiring modesty, stood at some distance back, while
an impudent little portico with carved oak pillars, of quaint but not
inelegant design, stood forth into the road, with steps leading down
from it