The Armourers Prentices | Page 2

lay a stretch of pasture ground, some parts
covered by "lady-smocks, all silver white," with the course of the little
stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river of shining
kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay tracts of brown heath and
brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and miles along
the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly brake, and here
and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure, purpling in
the distance.
Cultivation was not attempted, but hardy little ponies, cows, goats,
sheep, and pigs were feeding, and picking their way about in the
marshy mead below, and a small garden of pot-herbs, inclosed by a
strong fence of timber, lay on the sunny side of a spacious rambling
forest lodge, only one story high, built of solid timber and roofed with
shingle. It was not without strong pretensions to beauty, as well as to
picturesqueness, for the posts of the door, the architecture of the deep
porch, the frames of the latticed windows, and the verge boards were
all richly carved in grotesque devices. Over the door was the royal
shield, between a pair of magnificent antlers, the spoils of a deer
reported to have been slain by King Edward IV., as was denoted by the
"glorious sun of York" carved beneath the shield.

In the background among the trees were ranges of stables and kennels,
and on the grass-plat in front of the windows was a row of beehives. A
tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a large rough
deer-hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was
a mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal,
for the once black muzzle was touched with grey, and there was a film
over one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked
his ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as two
boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful
appealing air, came and laid his head against one of the pair who had
appeared in the porch. They were lads of fourteen and fifteen, clad in
suits of new mourning, with the short belted doublet, puffed hose, small
ruffs and little round caps of early Tudor times. They had dark eyes and
hair, and honest open faces, the younger ruddy and sunburnt, the elder
thinner and more intellectual--and they were so much the same size that
the advantage of age was always supposed to be on the side of Stephen,
though he was really the junior by nearly a year. Both were sad and
grave, and the eyes and cheeks of Stephen showed traces of recent
floods of tears, though there was more settled dejection on the
countenance of his brother.
"Ay, Spring," said the lad, "'tis winter with thee now. A poor old rogue!
Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his teeth
when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old Spring, thou
shalt share thy master's fortunes, changed though they be. Oh, father!
father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!" And throwing
himself on the grass, he hid his face against the dog and sobbed.
"Come, Stephen, Stephen; 'tis time to play the man! What are we to do
out in the world if you weep and wail?"
"She might have let us stay for the month's mind," was heard from
Stephen.
"Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer
thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I."
"There would still be the Forest! And I saw the moorhen sitting yester

eve! And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the woods are full
of song. Oh! Ambrose! I never knew how hard it is to part--"
"Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always
meant to seek your fortune--not bide here like an acorn for ever."
"I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father's
burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow- souled--"
"Hist! hist!" said the more prudent Ambrose.
"Let him hear who will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done!
All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to
turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in his
grave," cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his
passionate sense of wrong.
"That's womanish," said Ambrose.
"Who'll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?"
cried Stephen, sitting up.
At that moment there came through the