The Disowned | Page 2

my heart," rejoined the younger stranger; "and not the less
willingly from the brisk pace you walk. I thought I had few equals in
pedestrianism; but it should not be for a small wager that I would
undertake to keep up with you."
"Perhaps, sir," said the man, laughing, "I'll have had in the course of
my life a better usage and a longer experience of my heels than you
have."
Somewhat startled by a speech of so equivocal a meaning, the youth,
for the first time, turned round to examine, as well as the increasing
darkness would permit, the size and appearance of his companion. He
was not perhaps too well satisfied with his survey. His fellow
pedestrian was about six feet high, and of a corresponding girth of limb
and frame, which would have made him fearful odds in any encounter
where bodily strength was the best means of conquest. Notwithstanding
the mildness of the weather, he was closely buttoned in a rough
great-coat, which was well calculated to give all due effect to the
athletic proportions of the wearer.
There was a pause of some moments.

"This is but a wild, savage sort of scene for England, sir, in this day of
new-fashioned ploughs and farming improvements," said the tall
stranger, looking round at the ragged wastes and grim woods, which
lay steeped in the shade beside and before them.
"True," answered the youth; "and in a few years agricultural innovation
will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a single furze- blossom for the
bee or a tuft of green-sward for the grasshopper; but, however
unpleasant the change may be for us foot-travellers, we must not repine
at what they tell us is so sure a witness of the prosperity of the
country."
"They tell us! who tell us?" exclaimed the stranger, with great vivacity.
"Is it the puny and spiritless artisan, or the debased and crippled slave
of the counter and the till, or the sallow speculator on morals, who
would mete us out our liberty, our happiness, our very feelings by the
yard and inch and fraction? No, no, let them follow what the books and
precepts of their own wisdom teach them; let them cultivate more
highly the lands they have already parcelled out by dikes and fences,
and leave, though at scanty intervals, some green patches of unpolluted
land for the poor man's beast and the free man's foot."
"You are an enthusiast on this subject," said the younger traveller, not a
little surprised at the tone and words of the last speech; "and if I were
not just about to commence the world with a firm persuasion that
enthusiasm on any matter is a great obstacle to success, I could be as
warm though not so eloquent as yourself."
"Ah, sir," said the stranger, sinking into a more natural and careless
tone, "I have a better right than I imagine you can claim to repine or
even to inveigh against the boundaries which are, day by day and hour
by hour, encroaching upon what I have learned to look upon as my own
territory. You were, just before I joined you, singing an old song; I
honour you for your taste: and no offence, sir, but a sort of fellowship
in feeling made me take the liberty to accost you. I am no very great
scholar in other things; but I owe my present circumstances of life
solely to my fondness for those old songs and quaint madrigals. And I
believe no person can better apply to himself Will Shakspeare's

invitation,--
'Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And tune his
merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither,
come hither, Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough
weather.'"
Relieved from his former fear, but with increased curiosity at this
quotation, which was half said, half sung, in a tone which seemed to
evince a hearty relish for the sense of the words, the youth replied,--
"Truly, I did not expect to meet among the travellers of this wild
country with so well-stored a memory. And, indeed, I should have
imagined that the only persons to whom your verses could exactly have
applied were those honourable vagrants from the Nile whom in vulgar
language we term gypsies."
"Precisely so, sir," answered the tall stranger, indifferently; "precisely
so. It is to that ancient body that I belong."
"The devil you do!" quoth the youth, in unsophisticated surprise; "the
progress of education is indeed astonishing!"
"Why," answered the stranger, laughing, "to tell you the truth, sir, I am
a gypsy by inclination, not birth. The illustrious Bamfylde Moore
Carew is not the only example of one of gentle blood and honourable
education whom the fleshpots of Egypt