Jesse Cliffe | Page 4

him in
virtue of their indentures, and that whatever might be the future destiny
of his unlucky apprentice, whether frozen or famished, hanged or
drowned, the blame would rest with the cattle-dealer aforesaid, to
whom they resolved to refer all claims on their protection, whether
advanced by Jesse himself or by others.
Small intention had Jesse Cliffe to return to their protection or their
workhouse! The instinct of freedom was strong in the poor boy--quick
and strong as in the beast of the field, or the bird of the air. He betook
himself to the Moors (one of his earliest and favourite haunts) with a

vague assurance of safety in the deep solitude of those wide-spreading
meadows, and the close coppices that surrounded them: and at little
more than twelve years of age he began a course of lonely, half-savage,
self-dependent life, such as has been rarely heard of in this civilised
country. How he lived is to a certain point a mystery. Not by stealing.
That was agreed on all hands--except indeed, so far as a few roots of
turnips and potatoes, and a few ears of green corn, in their several
seasons, may be called theft. Ripe corn for his winter's hoard, he
gleaned after the fields were cleared, with a scrupulous honesty that
might have read a lesson to peasant children of a happier nurture. And
they who had opportunities to watch the process, said that it was
curious to see him bruise the grain between large stones, knead the rude
flour with fair water, mould his simple cakes, and then bake them in a
primitive oven formed by his own labour in a dry bank of the coppice,
and heated by rotten wood shaken from the tops of the trees, (which he
climbed like a squirrel,) and kindled by a flint and a piece of an old
horse-shoe:--such was his unsophisticated cookery! Nuts and berries
from the woods; fish from the Kennett--caught with such tackle as
might be constructed of a stick and a bit of packthread, with a strong
pin or needle formed into a hook; and perhaps an occasional rabbit or
partridge, entrapped by some such rough and inartificial contrivance,
formed his principal support; a modified, and, according to his vague
notions of right and wrong, an innocent form of poaching, since he
sought only what was requisite for his own consumption, and would
have shunned as a sin the killing game to sell. Money, indeed, he little
needed. He formed his bed of fern or dead grass, in the deepest recesses
of the coppice--a natural shelter; and the renewal of raiment, which
warmth and decency demanded, he obtained by emerging from his
solitude, and joining such parties as a love of field sports brought into
his vicinity in the pursuit of game--an inspiring combination of labour
and diversion, which seemed to awaken something like companionship
and sympathy even in this wild boy of the Moors, one in which his
knowledge of the haunts and habits of wild animals, his strength,
activity, and actual insensibility to hardship or fatigue, rendered his
services of more than ordinary value. There was not so good a
hare-finder throughout that division of the county; and it was curious to
observe how completely his skill in sportmanship overcame the

contempt with which grooms and gamekeepers, to say nothing of their
less fine and more tolerant masters, were wont to regard poor Jesse's
ragged garments, the sunburnt hair and skin, the want of words to
express even his simple meaning, and most of all, the strange obliquity
of taste which led him to prefer Kennett water to Kennett ale.
Sportsmanship, sheer sportsmanship, carried him through all!
Jesse was, as I have said, the most popular hare-finder of the
country-side, and during the coursing season was brought by that good
gift into considerable communication with his fellow creatures:
amongst the rest with his involuntary landlord, John Cobham.
John Cobham was a fair specimen of an English yeoman of the old
school--honest, generous, brave, and kind; but in an equal degree,
ignorant, obstinate and prejudiced. His first impression respecting Jesse
had been one of strong dislike, fostered and cherished by the old
labourer Daniel Thorpe, who, accustomed for twenty years to reign sole
sovereign of that unpeopled territory, was as much startled at the sight
of Jesse's wild, ragged figure, and sunburnt face, as Robinson Crusoe
when he first spied the track of a human foot upon his desert island. It
was natural that old Daniel should feel his monarchy, or, more correctly
speaking, his vice-royalty, invaded and endangered; and at least equally
natural that he should communicate his alarm to his master, who sallied
forth one November morning to the Moors, fully prepared to drive the
intruder from his grounds, and resolved, if