Having thus set his snare, he left it, and sulkily, for the sun was getting up in the sky and they had come far without breaking their fast. So Phil followed him and they lay on a bank, with an open vale before them where yellow daffodils were in full bloom, and nursed their hunger.
After a while Martin slipped away deftly but returned with a face darker than he took, and though he went three times to the snare and scarcely stirred a leaf,—which spoke more of experience in such lawless sports than some books might have told,—each time his face, when he returned, was longer than before.
"A man must eat," he said at last, "and here in his own bailiwick and warren will I eat to spite him. Yea, and leave guts and fur to puzzle him. But there's another way, quicker and surer, though not so safe."
So they went together over a hill and down a glade to a meadow.
"Do thou," he whispered, "lie here in wait."
With a club in his hand and a few stones in his pocket he circled through the thicket, and having in his manner of knowing his business and of commanding the hunt, resumed his old bravado, he now made a great show of courage and resourcefulness; but Phil, having flung himself down at full length by the meadow, smiled to hear him puffing through the wood.
Off in the wood wings fluttered and Martin murmured under his breath. Presently a stone rapped against a tree-trunk and again there was the sound of wings.
Then the lad by the meadow heard a stone rip through the leaves and strike with a soft thud, whereupon something fell heavily and thrashed about in the undergrowth, and Martin cried out joyously.
He had no more than appeared, holding high a fine cock-pheasant, with the cry, "Here's meat that will eat well," when there was a great noise of heavy feet in the copse behind him, and whirling about in exceeding haste, he flung the pheasant full in the face of the keeper and bolted like a startled filly. Thereupon scrambling to his feet, Phil must needs burst out laughing at the wild look of terror Martin wore, though the keeper was even then upon him and though he himself was of no mind to run. He lightly stepped aside as the keeper rushed at him, and darting back to where Martin had dropped his cudgel, snatched it up and turned, cudgel in hand. He was aware of a flash of colour in the wood, and the sound of voices, but he had no leisure to look ere the keeper was again at him, when for the first time he saw that the keeper was the selfsame red-faced countryman who had brought the gun to Moll Stevens's alehouse by the Thames—that it was Jamie Barwick.
Now the keeper Barwick was at the same moment aware of something familiar about his antagonist, but not until he was at him a second time in full tilt did he recollect where and when he had last seen him. He then stopped short, so great was his amazement, but resumed his attack with redoubled fury. His stick crashed against the cudgel and broke, and ducking a smart rap, he dived at Phil's knees.
To this, Phil made effective reply by dropping the cudgel and dodging past the keeper to catch him round the waist from behind (for his arms, exceeding long though they were, were just long enough to encompass comfortably the man's great belly), and the lad's iron clutch about the fellow's middle sorely distressed him. As they swayed back and forth the keeper suddenly seized Phil's head over his own shoulder and rose and bent forward, lifting Phil from the ground bodily; then he flung himself upon his back and might have killed the lad by the fall, had Phil not barely wriggled from under him.
Both were on their feet in haste, but though the keeper was breathing the harder, Philip Marsham, having come far without food, was the weaker, and as Barwick charged again, Phil laid hands on his dirk, but thought better of it. Then Barwick struck from the shoulder and Phil, seizing his wrist, lightly turned and crouched and drew the man just beyond his balance so that his own great weight pitched him over the lad's head. It is a deft throw and gives a heavy fall, but Phil had not the strength to rise at the moment of pitching his antagonist,—which will send a man flying twice his length,—so Barwick, instead of taking such a tumble as breaks bones, landed on his face and scraped his nose on the ground.
He rose with blood and mud smearing his face and with his drawn knife in his hand; and Philip Marsham, his eyes showing like black coals set in his stark white face, yielded not a step, but snatched out his dirk to give as good as he got.
Then, as they shifted ground and fenced for an opening, a booming "Holla! Holla!" came down to them.
They stopped and looked toward the source of the summons, but Phil, a shade the slower to return to his antagonist, saw out of the corner of his eye that Barwick was coming at him. He leaped back and with his arm knocked aside Barwick's blow.
"Holla, I say! Ha' done, ha' done! That, Barwick, was a foul trick. Another like that, and I'll turn you out."
A crestfallen man was Barwick then, who made out to stammer, "Yea, Sir John—yea, Sir John, but a poacher—'e's a poacher, Sir John, and a poacher—"
"A foul trick is a foul trick."
The speaker wore a scarlet cloak overlaid with silver lace, and his iron-grey hair crept in curls from under a broad hat. His face, when he looked at Barwick, was such that Barwick stepped quietly back and held his tongue. The man had Martin by the collar (his sleek impudence had melted into a vast melancholy), and there stood behind them a little way up the bank, Phil now saw, a lady no older than Phil himself, who watched the group with calm, dark eyes and stood above them all like a queen.
"Throw down those knives," the knight ordered, for it took no divining to perceive that here was Sir John Bristol in the flesh. "Thrust them, points into the ground. Good! Now have on, and God speed the better man."
To Philip Marsham, who could have expected prison at the very least, this fair chance to fight his own battle came as a reprieve; and though he very well knew that he must win the fight at once or go down from sheer weakness and want of food, his eyes danced.
The knight's frown darkened, observing that Barwick appeared to have got his fill, and he smote the ground with his staff. Then Barwick turned and Philip Marsham went in upon him like a ray of light. Three times he threw the big man, by sheer skill and knowledge, for the other by his own weight hindered himself, but after the third time the world went white and the lad fell.
He sat up shortly and looked into Sir John's face.
"'Tis the lack of food," he stammered, "or I'd out-last him as well as out-wrestle him."
Sir John was laughing mightily. "You gave him full measure, and thank God you are fresh from a fast or I'd ha' lost a keeper. As for food, we shall remedy that lack. Two things I have to say: one to you, Barwick. You attempted a foul trick. I'll have none such in my service. If it happens again, you go. And as for you, you white-livered cur, that would leave a boy to a beating and never turn a hand to save him, I'll even take you in hand myself."
And with that, Sir John flung back his cloak and raising his staff with one hand while with the other he kept hold of Martin's coat-collar, he thrashed the man till he bellowed and blubbered—till his coat was split and his shirt was bloody and his head was broken and his legs were all welts and bruises.
"Help! Help! O Holy Mary! Saints in Heaven! Help! O Jamie, Jamie, Jamie! O sir! Kind sir! let me go! Let me go!"
Sir John flung him away with a last whistling stroke of the great staff. "That," said he, "for cowardice."
And Jamie Barwick, having already forgotten his own rebuke, was broadly smiling.
Sir John turned then and looked Philip Marsham in the eye. "It was a good fight," he said, and smiled. "Courage and honour will carry a man far."
He then looked away across his wide acres to the distant village. For a while he was lost in revery and the others waited for him, but he came to himself with a start and turned brusquely, though not unkindly, to Philip Marsham.
"Come now, begone, you vagabond cockerel! If a farm is robbed from here to the Channel, or a hundred miles the other way, I'll rear the county upon your track and scour the countryside from the Severn to the Thames. I'll publish the tale of you the country over and see you h
anged when they net you."
He stood there looking very fierce as he spoke, but there was a laugh in his eyes, and when Phil turned to go, he flung the lad a silver coin.
Phil saw the gesture and picked the money from the air, for he was quick with his fingers, but before he caught it Sir John seemed to have forgotten him; for he bent his head and walked away with his eyes on the ground. There was something in the knight's manner that stung the lad, who looked at the coin in his hand and almost as quick as thought hurled it back at Sir John.
"How now?" cried Sir John, turning about.
"I'll take no money that is thrown me," Phil replied.
"So!" Sir John stood looking at him. "I have a liking for thee," he said, and smiled. But he then, it seemed, again forgot that there was such a lad, for he once more bent his head and walked away with the lady who had stood above them in the wood.
As for Phil, he did not so lightly forget Sir John. He watched him until he had fixed in his mind every line of his tall, broad figure, every gesture of his hand and every toss of his head. He then walked off, and when he turned to look back a last time Sir John was gone.
"What was that he said of hanging?" Martin whispered.
The fellow's face was so white and his lips and his bruises were so blue that Phil laughed at him before his eyes, who thereupon lost his temper and snarled, "It's all well enough to take things lightly, you who got no beating; but hanging is no laughing matter."
He then looked cautiously around and ran back the way they had come. When he returned he held between thumb and forefinger the silver coin Phil had thrown back at the burly knight. Martin bought food with it and Phil, though he thought it would have choked him, helped him eat it; and so they survived the day.
"That keeper, Barwick," Martin said that evening as the two tramped west along the highway, "is my brother, and an ungrateful wretch he is."
"I knew he was your brother," Phil said. But he was not thinking of Martin or his brother. He was thinking of the old knight in the scarlet cloak so bravely decked with silver lace. There was only one man Philip Marsham had ever known, who had such a rough, just, heavy-handed humour as Sir John Bristol or any such indomitable sense of fair play, and that man was Phil's dead father.
CHAPTER VI
THE ROSE OF DEVON
They came to Bristol over the hills that lie to the south of the town. They had lost time on the way and had grown weary and sore of foot; and finding at last that there was little hope of overtaking at Bideford the thin man with whom they had parted on the road, they had turned north in Somerset at the end of Polton Hill. They passed first across a lonely waste where for miles the only human being they saw was an aged man gathering faggots; then over the Mendip Hills and through rough valleys and rougher uplands, and so at last to the height whence Bristol and Avon Valley and Bristol Channel in the east lie spread in a vast panorama.
Far away in Hungroad and Kingroad ships were anchored, but the vessels at the wharves of Bristol lay with their keels in mud, for the tide was out and the tides of Bristol, as all know, have a wonderful great flow and ebb.
The two went on into the town, where there were seafaring men standing about and talking of ships, which gave Phil Marsham a feeling of being once more at home after his inland travels; and passing this one tavern and another, they came to a square where there was a whipping-post and a stocks, and a man in the stocks.
Now a man in stocks was a pleasing sight to Phil, for he was not so old that he missed the humour of it, and he paused to grin at the unlucky wight who bore with ill grace the jeers of the urchins that had assembled to do him honour; but when Martin saw the fellow he looked a second time and turned very hastily round. Straightway seizing Phil by the arm he whispered hoarsely, "Come now, we must hie us away again, and that speedily."
"Why in so great haste?" Phil returned. "Here is a pleasant jest. Let us stay a while. Who knows but some day we may ourselves sit in the bilboes and yonder ballad-maker may take his fill of pleasure at our misfortune. Why, then, turn about is fair play. Let us enjoy his while there's time." And he waited with quiet glee for Martin's angry reply.
"Fool!" Martin whispered. "Stay and be hanged, an thou wilt."
Thereupon Martin posted in all haste back the way he had come and Phil, of no mind to be left now, since they had journeyed together thus far, followed at his heels with a curiosity that he was intent on satisfying.
"'Sin,' according to the proverb," he called after Martin, "'begins with an itch and ends with a scar,' but methinks thy scars, which are numerous, are all an-itch."
"Hist, fool," Martin snarled. "Be still! For ha'pence I'd slit thy throat to still thy tongue. I swear I can already feel the hemp at my weasand. It burns and spreads like a tetter." And he made haste up out of the town till despite his great weight and short wind he had Phil puffing at his heels.
"This is queer talk of ropes and hangings. It buzzeth through thy noddle like bees in clover. In faith, though thy folly be great, yet it sorely presses upon thee, for I have seldom seen a man walk faster. Yet at thine ordinary gait a tin-pedlar's broken-down jade can set a pace too fast for thee to follow."
"Yea, laugh at me! Wouldst thou stay for sugared pills of pleasure with the hangman at thy heels?"
"What has a poor devil in stocks to do with the hangman, prithee? And why this fierce haste?"
"Th' art no better than a gooseling—fit for tavern quarrels. And did you never see a man dance on air? 'Tis a sight to catch the breath in the throat and make an emptiness in a man's belly."
"There be no hangings without reason."
"Reason? Law, logic, and the Switzers can be hired to fight for any man, they say. 'Tis true, in any event, of the law. I've seen the learned men in wigs wringing a poor man's withers and shaping the halter to his neck."
They had talked breathlessly at long intervals in their hasty flight, and thus talking they had come out of the town and up from the valley; nor would Martin stay to rest till from the southern hill that had given them their first prospect of Bristol city they looked back upon the houses and the river and the ships. Martin breathed more easily then and mopped his forehead and sat down until his wildly beating heart was quieter.
"To Bideford we must go, after all," said he, "and 'twere better by far had we never turned from the straight road."
"I am of no mind to go farther," Phil replied, looking back. "There will be more vessels sailing out of Bristol than out of Bideford. A man can choose in which to go."
Martin gulped and rubbed his throat. "Nay, I'll not hear to it. Daniel went but once into the lion's den."
He sighed mightily as he thought of begging his long way through Somerset and Devon, for he was a big heavy man and lazy and short of wind; but he would not go back, though he refused to speak further of his reason for it; and Phil, though in truth he liked Martin little, was too easy-going to part thus with his companion of the road. The lad was young, and the world was wide, and it was still spring in England.
So they turned toward the hills, which were blue and purple in the setting sun,—a shepherd, did he but know it, lives in halls more splendid than a king's,—and set forth upon their journey through the rough lands of Somerset. They went astray among the mines but found their way to Wells where, as they came out from the town, they passed a gallows, which gave Martin such a start that he stopped for neither breath nor speech until he had left that significant emblem of the law a mile behind him. They went through Glastonbury, where report has it that Joseph of Arimathea and King Arthur and King Edgar lie buried, and through Bridgewater, where to their wonder there was a ship of a hundred tons riding in the Parret. They went through Dulverton on a market day, and crossed the Dunsbrook by the stone bridge and so passed into Devon. They went on over heath and hill and through woods and green valleys until at the end of seven days from Bristol—for time and again they had lost their way, and a sailor on shore is at best like a lame horse on a rough road—they crossed the Taw at
Barnstable. Again going astray, they went nearly to Torrington before they learned their blunder and turned down the valley of the Torridge. But all things come to an end at last, and one pleasant evening they crossed the ancient bridge built on stately Gothic arches into the populous town of Bideford.
At the river front there lay a street the better part of a mile long, in which were the custom house and a great quay, and there they saw ships of good burden loading and unloading in the very bosom of the town, as the scribe hath it. Thither Phil would have gone straightly but Martin shook his head. So turning up from the river, they passed another long street, where the houses of wealthy merchants stood, and this, too, Martin hastened quickly by. He shot glances to one side and the other as if fearing lest he see faces that he knew, and led his companion by an obscure way, as night was falling, to a cottage whence a dim light shone through a casement window.
Standing on the rough doorstone under the outcropping thatch, which projected beyond the line of the eaves to shield the door from rain, he softly knocked. There was no answer, no sound, but the door presently moved ajar as if by its own will.
"Who knocks?" an old woman whispered. "'Tis that dark I cannot see thy face."
"'Tis thine eyes are ailing. Come, open the door and bid us enter."
"Thy voice hath a familiar ring but I know thee not. Who art thou?"
"We be two honest men."
"Ah, two honest men? And what, prithee, are two honest men doing here?"
"Yea, 'tis a fair thrust and bites both ways! Thou old shrew, dost bar the door to Martin Barwick?"
"So 'tis thou. I believe it even is. Enter then, ere the watch spy thee. Th' art a plain fool to stand here quibbling thus, though 'tis to be expected, since thou wert ever quicker of thy tongue than thy wit. But who's thy fellow?"
"Nay, thou old shrew, open to us. He is to be one of us, though a London man by birth."
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