William Herbert

“ A sad, deep gloom o’ercast his large dark eye, and threw a shadow over his massy forehead. His lip had forgot to smile, his glance to lighten; yet was there no remorse, no doubt, no wavering in his calm, noble features—only fixed, settled sorrow. His long and waving hair of the darkest chestnut, evenly parted on his crown, fell down on either cheek, and flowed over the broad, plain collar of his shirt, which, decked with no embroidery-lace, was folded back over the cape of a plain black pourpoint, made of fine cloth indeed, but neither laced nor passemented, nor even slashed with velvet ”

“ I tell you, Archer, if Tim ever dies of thirst, it must be where there is nothing wet, but water!"
"Now hark to the old scoundrel, Frank," said Archer, "hark to him pray, and if he doesn't out-eat both of us, and out-drink anything you ever saw, may I miss my first bird to-morrow--that's all! Give me a slice of beef, Frank; that old Goth would cut it an inch thick, if I let him touch it; out with a cork, Tom! Here's to our sport to-morrow!" ”

“ Flat on his back, with his arms stretched out right and left, his legs extended close together to their full length, he lay even as he had fallen; for not a struggle had convulsed his limbs after he struck the earth; life having actually fled while he yet stood erect, battling with all the energies of soul and body against man's latest enemy. The bosom of his gray tunic, rent asunder, displayed the deep gash which had let out the spirit, whence the last drops of the thick crimson life-blood were ebbing with a slow half-stagnant motion. ”

“ Something between a shudder and a start seemed to shake the manly form of Kenric for an instant; and his young wife, perceiving it as she clung to his arm, looked up to his face for explanation.
"Something is going wrong up yonder," said the verdurer; "some marauder after the roe-deer, I trow. I must up and after him. Give me my bugle, Edith, my wood-knife, and my gisarme; I will take the black alan with me; he lies under the settle, by the hearth. ”

“ During all this time, amidst all the kicking of tussocks, threshing of bog-grass, and banging of guns, and, worst of all, bouncing up of fresh birds, from the instant when they dropped at the first shot, neither one of Harry's dogs, nor Tom's little Dash, had budged from their down charge. Now, however, they got up quickly, and soon retrieved all the dead birds. "Now, then, we will divide into two parties," said Harry. "Frank, you go with Tom; and you come with me, Commodore. It will never do to have you two jealous fellows together, you wont kill a bird all day," he added, in a lower voice. ”

“ Carefully, eagerly, I gazed out to mark the wary bird; but the discharge of Harry's piece assured me, as I thought, that further watch was needless; and stupidly enough I dropped the muzzle of my gun.
Just at the self-same point of time--"Mark! mark, Frank!" shouted Archer, "mark! there are a brace of them!"--and as he spoke, gliding with speed scarcely inferior to a bullet's flight upon their balanced pinions, the noble birds swept past me, so close that I could have struck them with a riding whip. ”

“ Bang! bang! "Mark--ma-ark!" bang! bang! "mark, Harry Archer, mark," came down the wind in quick succession from the other party, who were beating some thick briers by the brook side, at three or four fields' distance.
"Quick, Forester, quick!" shouted Archer; "over the wall, lad, and mark them! those are quail; I'm man enough to get this fellow by myself. Steady, lads! steady-y-y!" as they were roading on at the top of their pace. "Toho! toho-o-o, Chase; fie, for shame--don't you see, sir, Shot's got him dead there under his very nose in those cat-briers. Ha! dead! good lads--good lads; dead! ”

“ And now the low wall of the Plebeian burying ground arose before them, shaded by mighty cypresses and overgrown with tangled ivy. At one wild bound the hunted slave leaped over it, into the trackless gloom. At one wild bound the fierce pursuer followed him. Scarcely a yard asunder they alighted on the rank grass of that charnel grove; and not three paces did they take more, ere Cataline had hurled his victim to the earth, and cast himself upon him ”

“ I will not love you, if you so much as breathe it to me again, Aradas!"
"That were a penalty," said the young man, half-sadly smiling; "but, can you help it, Guendolen?"
"Don't trust in that, sir," she said. "One can do any thing—every thing—by trying."
"Can one, pardie! I would you would show me, then, how to win these spurs of gold, by trying."
"I can. Be firm, be faithful, and, above all, be patient. Remember, without hope, without patience, there is no evidence of faith; without faith, there is, there can be, neither true chivalry nor true love. ”

“ And every voice responded of all who heard his words; every voice, save one, responded, “Let us pray!” and every knee was bent as they bowed them in a sorrowing circle around their monitor and friend—every knee, save that of Maurice Champrèst; but he stood erect, and pulled his hat over his brows, and folded his arms across his chest, and exclaimed, as the ravishers of his sweet wife wound through the dale into the larger valley: “Earth has no justice, Heaven no pity! Man197 has no honor, God no vengeance!” ”

“ But he, with his child's blood smoking on his hand, shook his sword aloft fiercely against the legionaries, and leaping on his black horse which had arisen from the ground unhurt by its fall, gallopped across the bridge; and plunging through the underwood into the deep chesnut forest was lost to the view of the soldiers, who had spurred up in pursuit of him, that they abandoned it ere long as hopeless.
It was not long that Lucia lay oblivious of her sufferings. ”

“ Gods! Gods!" he repeated half dubiously—"Yet, if there should—ha! ha! art thou turned dotard, Catiline! There are no Gods, or why sleep their thunders? Aye! there it is again," he added, gazing on vacancy. "By my right hand! it is very strange! three times last night, the first time when the watch was set, and twice afterward I saw him! And three times again tonight, since the trumpet was blown. Lentulus, with his lips distorted, his face black and full of blood, his eyes starting from their sockets, like a man strangled! ”

“ Without one word, he grasped the bridle of his charger, tightened his girths, and then, setting no foot to stirrup, vaulted almost without an effort into the steel-bound demipique. Raising his arm aloft, he pointed into the long aisles of the forest, wherein the followers of Rufus had long since disappeared.
“Our thoughts are one!” he hissed, in accents scarcely articulate, between his grinded teeth; “what need of words? Are not we soldiers, gentlemen, and Normans, and shall not deeds speak for us?” ”

“ It was my intent to have bought those border lands of Clifford's, that march with my moorlands on Hawkshead, but it seems he will not sell, and I am doubly glad that it gives me the occasion to serve you. I will direct my bailiff at once to take horse for Tadcaster and redeem your mortgage, and you can take your own time and pleasure to repay it. There is no risk, Heaven knows, for Waltheofstow is well worth nineteen thousand zecchins three times told, and, in lieu of usance money, you shall transfer the man Kenric from thee and thine to me and mine, forever. ”

“ Here was the rostrum, beaked with the prows of ships, a fluent orator already haranguing the assembled people from its platform—there, the seat of the city Prætor, better known as the Puteal Libonis, [pg 73] with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as he promulgated his irrevocable edicts.
It was a grand sight, surely, and one to gaze on which men of the present day would do and suffer much; and judge themselves most happy if blessed with one momentary glance of the heart, as it were, of the old world's mistress. ”

“ Hold! What is the time of day?"
"The sun is high already; it must be now near the fourth hour!"
"So late! you did ill, Chærea, to let me lie so long. Call me Arminius hither; and send me one of the boys; or rather go yourself, Chærea, and pray Cornelius Lentulus the Prætor, to visit me before he take his seat on the Puteal Libonis. It is his day, I think, to take cognizance of criminal matters. Begone, and do my bidding!" ”

“ But in reply, across the narrow gorge, came the hoarse roar of Catiline, above the din of his thundering gallop.—"By Hades! Death! or vengeance!"
"Ride! ride!" shrieked Lucia from behind, "Ride, I say, fool! you are not saved! He will not halt for a beat when revenge spurs him! For your life! ride!"
It was a fearful crisis.
The Thracian charger reached the bridge. The hollow arch resounded but once under his clanging hoofs—the second stride cleared it. ”

“ The third step I took, over I went upon my nose, but luckily avoided shoving my gun-barrels into the filthy mire.
"Steady, Frank, steady! I'm ashamed of you!" said Harry; "so hot and so impetuous; and your gun too at the full cock; that's the reason, man, why you missed firing at your first bird, this morning. I never cock either barrel till I see my bird; and, if a bevy rises, only one at a time. The birds will lie like stones here; and we cannot walk too slow. Steady, Shot, have a care, sir!" ”

“ Frank fired but once, and killed, using his cartridge first, and thinking it in vain to fire the loose shot. The remaining birds skimmed down the hill, and lighted in the thick bushy hedge-row, as Archer had foreseen.
"So much for Ely!" exclaimed Harry--"had we both used two of them, we should have bagged four then. As it is, I have killed one which we shall not get; a thing that I most particularly hate." ”

“ No marble statue could stand more silently or still than Harry and his favorite gray, who, with erected ears and watchful eye, trembling a little with excitement, seemed to know what he was about, and to enjoy it no less keenly than his rider. Tom and the Commodore, quickening their pace as they got out of ear-shot, retraced their steps quite back to the turnpike road, along which Harry saw them gallop furiously, in a few minutes, and turn up, half a mile off, toward the further gulley--he saw no more, however ”

“ Give me my tunic. So—never mind the feminalia; there, clasp my sandals! Death and furies! how slow thou art, now my dagger, and my toga. Hark, now. I go to the house of Lentulus. See thou, and have my chariot harnessed for a journey, with the four [pg 103] Thracian steeds; put into it my armor, a sword, casque and buckler for thyself; and all the gold which is locked in the great chest in the Atrium. Here is the key. Tarry not for thy life, and bring the car thyself to the arch of Fabius Allobrox; wait there until I come to thee. ”

“ Here you have been three days about this bag, hard all; and when it's done, it is not half as good a one as you can buy at Cooper's for a dollar, with all this new-fangled machinery of loops and buttons, and I don't know what."
"And you, Master Frank," retorted Harry, nothing daunted, "to be a good shot and a good sportsman--which, with some few exceptions, I must confess you are--are the most culpably and wilfully careless about your appointments I ever met. I don't call a man half a sportsman, who has not every thing he wants at hand for an emergency, at half a minute's notice. ”

“ And passing into the central room of the three, they made one end of the rope fast about the waist of Niger, and the other to an upright mullion in the embrasure, which, although broken half way up, afforded ample purchase whereby to lower him into the chasm.
This done, the man clambered out of the window very coolly, going backward, as if he were about to descend a ladder; but, when his face was on the point of disappearing below the sill, as he hung by his hands alone, having no foothold whatever, he said quietly, "If I shout, Caius Crispus, haul me up instantly. ”

“ And, as he spoke, he put his weapon back into his girdle, where it was perfectly concealed by the folds of the penula.
"Ho!—stand!" he whispered, as the two men whose steps he had heard, entered the archway, "Stand, Friends and Brethren."
"Hail, Sergius!" replied the foremost; a tall and splendidly formed man, with a dark quick eye, and regular features, nobly chiselled and in all respects such—had it not been for the bitter and ferocious sneer, which curled his haughty lip, at every word—as might be termed eminently handsome. ”

“ Had known him any time the last ten years, as serf, both to Sir Philip de Morville, and to his own lord, Sir Foulke d'Oilly. Had seen him last on the night of September the 12th, in the castle court at Waltheofstow; but had tracked him thence with bloodhounds to the verge of Borland Forest; had followed him by hue and cry across the moors to the sands of Morecambe Bay; had seen the fugitive crossing the bay; had seen him land on the Westmoreland shore, nor ever had lost the track of him, until he saw him taken in the cottage at Kentmere. The prisoner at the bar is the man. ”

“ Catiline is near enough to me, when he is twenty paces distant."
"Thou art right, soldier, and didst well and wisely," said Lucia, hastily. "Hadst thou tarried to strike until he reached the middle, thou never wouldst have stricken at all. One foot without that window, he would have cleared that chasm, as easily as I would leap a furrow. But come! come! come! we must not loiter, nor lose one instant. He will not so submit to be thwarted, I have two horses by the roadside yonder. Their speed alone shall save us." ”