The Herd Boy and His Hermit | Page 6

it were a mouse, and Watch
joined in the game in full amity. Mother Dolly, busy with her distaff,
looked on, not displeased, except when she had to guard her spindle
from the kitten's pranks, but she was less happy when the children
began to talk.
'You have seen a tilt-yard?'
'Yea, indeed,' he answered dreamily. 'The poor squire was hurt--I did
not like it! It is gruesome.'
'Oh, no! It is a noble sport! I loved our tilt-yard at Bletso. Two knights
could gallop at one another in the lists, as if they were out hunting. Oh!
to hear the lances ring against the shields made one's heart leap up!
Where was yours?'
Here Dolly interrupted hastily, 'Hal, lad, gang out to the shed and bring
in some more sods of turf. The fire is getting low.'
'Here's a store, mother--I need not go out,' said Hal, passing to a pile in
the corner. 'It is too dark for thee to see it.'
'But where was your castle?' continued the girl. 'I am sure you have
lived in a castle.'
Insensibly the two children had in addressing one another changed the

homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second
person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, 'You are a
little witch.'
'No great witchcraft to hear that you speak as we do at home in
Bedfordshire, not like these northern boors, that might as well be
Scots!'
'I am not from Bedfordshire,' said the lad, looking much amused at her
perplexity.
'Who art thou then?' she cried peremptorily.
'I? I am Hal the shepherd boy, as I told thee before.'
'No shepherd boy are you! Come, tell me true.'
Dolly thought it time to interfere. She heard an imaginary bleat, and
ordered Hal out to see what was the matter, hindering the girl by force
from running after him, for the snow was coming down in larger flakes
than ever. Nevertheless, when her husband was heard outside she threw
a cloak over her head and hurried out to speak with him. 'That maid
will make our lad betray himself ere another hour is over their heads!'
'Doth she do it wittingly?' asked the shepherd gravely.
'Nay, 'tis no guile, but each child sees that the other is of gentle blood,
and women's wits be sharp and prying, and the maid will never rest till
she has wormed out who he is.'
'He promised me never to say, nor doth he know.'
'Thee! Much do the hests of an old hogherd weigh against the wiles of a
young maid!'
'Lord Hal is a lad of his word. Peace with thy lords and ladies, woman,
thou'lt have the archers after him at once.'
'She makes no secret of being of gentle blood--a St. John of Bletso.'
'A pestilent White Rose lot! We shall have them on the scent ere many
days are over our head! An unlucky chance this same snow, or I should
have had the wench off to Greystone ere they could exchange a word.'
'Thou wouldst have been caught in the storm. Ill for the maid to have
fallen into a drift!'
'Well for the lad if she never came out of it!' muttered the gruff old
shepherd. 'Then were her tongue stilled, and those of the clacking
wenches at York--Yorkists every one of them.'
Mother Dolly's eyes grew round. 'Mind thee, Hob!' she said; 'I ken thy
bark is worse than thy bite, but I would have thee to know that if aught

befall the maid between this and Greystone, I shall hold thee--and so
will my Lady--guilty of a foul deed.'
'No fouler than was done on the stripling's father,' muttered the
shepherd. 'Get thee in, wife! Who knows what folly those two may be
after while thou art away? Mind thee, if the maid gets an inkling of
who the boy is, it will be the worse for her.'
'Oh!' murmured the goodwife, 'I moaned once that our Piers there
should be deaf and well-nigh dumb, but I thank God for it now! No fear
of perilous word going out through him, or I durst not have kept my
poor sister's son!'
Mother Doll trusted that her husband would never have the heart to
leave the pretty dark-haired girl in the snow, but she was relieved to
find Hal marking down on the wide flat hearth-stone, with a bit of
charcoal, all the stars he had observed. 'Hob calls that the Plough--
those seven!' he said; 'I call it Charles's Wain!'
'Methinks I have seen that!' she said, 'winter and summer both.'
'Ay, he is a meuseful husbandman, that Charles! And see here! This
middle mare of the team has a little foal running beside her'--he made a
small spot beside