The Armourers Prentices | Page 7

of hindrances being thrown in their way.
Moreover, contrary to their expectation, their elder brother came forth,
and declared his intention of setting them forth on their way, bestowing
a great amount of good advice, to the same purport as that of nurse Joan,
namely, that they should let their uncle Richard Birkenholt find them
some employment at Winchester, where they, or at least Ambrose,
might even obtain admission into the famous college of St. Mary.
In fact, this excellent elder brother persuaded himself that it would be

doing them an absolute wrong to keep such promising youths hidden in
the Forest.
The purpose of his going thus far with them made itself evident. It was
to see them past the turning to Beaulieu. No doubt he wished to tell the
story in his own way, and that they should not present themselves there
as orphans expelled from their father's house. It would sound much
better that he had sent them to ask counsel of their uncle at Winchester,
the fit person to take charge of them. And as he represented that to go
to Beaulieu would lengthen their day's journey so much that they might
hardly reach Winchester that night, while all Stephen's wishes were to
go forward, Ambrose could only send his greetings. There was another
debate over Spring, who had followed his master as usual. John uttered
an exclamation of vexation at perceiving it, and bade Stephen drive the
dog back. "Or give me the leash to drag him. He will never follow me."
"He goes with us," said Stephen.
"He! Thou'lt never have the folly! The old hound is half blind and past
use. No man will take thee in with him after thee."
"Then they shall not take me in," said Stephen. "I'll not leave him to be
hanged by thee."
"Who spoke of hanging him!"
"Thy wife will soon, if she hath not already."
"Thou wilt be for hanging him thyself ere thou have made a day's
journey with him on the king's highway, which is not like these forest
paths, I would have thee to know. Why, he limps already."
"Then I'll carry him," said Stephen, doggedly.
"What hast thou to say to that device, Ambrose?" asked John, appealing
to the elder and wiser.
But Ambrose only answered "I'll help," and as John had no particular

desire to retain the superannuated hound, and preferred on the whole to
be spared sentencing him, no more was said on the subject as they went
along, until all John's stock of good counsel had been lavished on his
brothers' impatient ears. He bade them farewell, and turned back to the
lodge, and they struck away along the woodland pathway which they
had been told led to Winchester, though they had never been thither,
nor seen any town save Southampton and Romsey at long intervals. On
they went, sometimes through beech and oak woods of noble, almost
primeval, trees, but more often across tracts of holly underwood,
illuminated here and there with the snowy garlands of the wild cherry,
and beneath with wide spaces covered with young green bracken,
whose soft irregular masses on the undulating ground had somewhat
the effect of the waves of the sea. These alternated with stretches of
yellow gorse and brown heather, sheets of cotton-grass, and pools of
white crowfoot, and all the vegetation of a mountain side, only that the
mountain was not there.
The brothers looked with eyes untaught to care for beauty, but with a
certain love of the home scenes, tempered by youth's impatience for
something new. The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out before
them, the wild duck and moorhen glanced on the pools. Here and there
they came on the furrows left by the snout of the wild swine, and in the
open tracts rose the graceful heads of the deer, but of inhabitants or
travellers they scarce saw any, save when they halted at the little hamlet
of Minestead, where a small alehouse was kept by one Will Purkiss,
who claimed descent from the charcoal- burner who had carried
William Rufus's corpse to burial at Winchester--the one fact in history
known to all New Foresters, though perhaps Ambrose and John were
the only persons beyond the walls of Beaulieu who did not suppose the
affair to have taken place in the last generation.
A draught of ale and a short rest were welcome as the heat of the day
came on, making the old dog plod wearily on with his tongue out, so
that Stephen began to consider whether he should indeed have to be his
bearer--a serious matter, for the creature at full length measured nearly
as much as he did. They met hardly any one, and they and Spring were
alike too well known and