er feelings might have done it: he might have been
tempted to speak aloud in calm meditation and thought, either gloomy or
joyful; but his heart, when wrung and broken by the last hard grasp of
fate, like the wolf at his death, was dumb.
He remained for full two minutes, however, beneath the porch, motionless
and silent; then springing on his horse's back, he urged him somewhat
rapidly up the slope. Ere he had reached the top, either from
remembering that the beast was weary, or from some change in his own
feelings, he slackened his pace, and gave himself up to meditation
again. The first agony of the blow that he had received was now over,
and once again he not only reasoned with himself calmly, but expressed
some of his conclusions in a murmur.
"What!" he said, "a peer without a penny! the name attainted, too, and
all lands and property declared forfeit! No, no! it will never do! Years
may bring better times!--Who knows? the attainder may be reversed; new
fortunes may be gained or made! The right dies not, though it may
slumber; exists, though it be not enforced. A peer without a penny! no,
no!--far better a beggar with half a crown!"
Thus saying he rode on, passed through the wood we have mentioned,--the
dull meadows, and the wooden gates; and entering the high road, was
proceeding towards the inn, when an event occurred which effected a
considerable change in his plans and purposes.
It was by this time one of those dark nights, the most propitious that
can be imagined for such little adventures as rendered at one time the
place called Gad's Hill famous alike in story and in song. It wasn't
that the night was cloudy, for, to say sooth, it was a fine night, and
manifold small stars were twinkling in the sky; but the moon, the sweet
moon, was at that time in her infancy, a babe of not two days old, so
that the light she afforded to her wandering companions through the
fields of space was of course not likely to be much. The stars twinkled,
as we have said, but they gave no light to the road; and on either side
there were sundry brakes, and lanes, and hedges, and groups of trees
which were sufficiently shady and latitant in the mid-day, and which
certainly were impervious to any ray of light then above the horizon.
The mind of Lennard Sherbrooke, however, was far too busy about other
things to think of dangers on the King's Highway. His purse was
certainly well armoured against robbery; and the defence was on the
inside and not on the out; so that--ha