Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/97

 19, 1862.] “Surely I know about the Frenchwoman, and this Scottishwoman, seeing what they do against religion. I was sent for, when I came through London, to interpret for the poor fellows from Havre,—the garrison that were driven away by the Papists. They brought the smallpox with them; and when several of them were at the worst, there was a call to some of us who had lived abroad to speak for them. The things that they had to tell!”

“What things?” asked Dr. Pantlin.

“The treatment of the godly in France; and worse still, in the Low Countries. There are thousands upon thousands of poor Flemings who have had their tongues cut out.”

“Those Havre men must have been in the height of the fever when they said that,” Polly quietly remarked.

“No, it was when they were recovering, and taking the air,” Sampson said.

Dr. Pantlin knew the fact also. The pretence for the cruelty was that those protestants should be deprived of the means of protesting. Where were they now?—Most of them were dead; for few could survive that injury: but still there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, living in England and in Switzerland. Dr. Pantlin was, in fact, himself acquainted with two of these dumb martyrs.

“I do not believe that sorrowful lady had any concern in such doings,” Polly declared: and as for her having had three husbands that was certainly an idle story about one so young.

Again the preacher justified what Sampson had said; and Polly observed, with a vexed air, that travellers’ tales were very wonderful. She turned homewards in the twilight, and Sampson stayed behind when she walked away.

Polly was wanted at home,—sorely wanted. Her father was in from the field; her mother was weary with the tending of the ewes, and had brought in two or three half alive lambs, which began to make a noise as the warmth of the chimney corner revived them. The good wife remarked that they had made her neglect her own dear lamb; and she leaned over the crib in which lay her sick child, quietly crying because the noise prevented him from sleeping. The pottage was simmering over the wood fire; but the board was not spread, for the serving woman was milking. Polly exerted herself, under some sense of fault for having lingered in the twilight longer than she ought. She set the trestles in the middle of the floor, and lifted the boards without troubling anybody to help. Then she brought down the trenchers from the shelf, and placed them on the rough boards; and lastly, she spread a linen cloth over a part of the upper end, and put upon it a pewter platter from the beaufet, and a pewter mug, and a small salt-cellar and spice-box. These were for the preacher, who was to be the yeoman’s guest till over Sunday. This done, Polly fetched down, from their proper shelf, three or four iron cups, furnished with hooks, and filled with fat. She supplied each with a wick, lighted it, and hooked it upon a staple in the wall. She turned out the pottage into its bowl, threw down the wooden spoons on the board, placed her father’s three-cornered chair, and then begged her mother to go to supper. She would take little Dick on her lap the while.

This was about to be done when one person after another entered. The first was the preacher, who had only to lay aside his hat, say grace, and sit down to supper. Before his platter could be filled, there was a knock at the door,—a hasty knock, and one of the hangers-on of the Castle came in. The Castle could not accommodate all the gentlemen who had joined the Earl’s riding party; and the neighbours must be hospitable. Here was a gentleman who must have a lodging.

“I would make the gentleman welcome,” said Farmer Chell, “but that there is not room. The Minister is here.”

The Castle servant showed no reverence to the minister. On the contrary, he observed in an undertone that a man who preached in the forest when there were churches all over the land, might make shift to sleep in his own sort of vestry. There was room enough in the woods for all the priests that were shut out of the churches, and moss and dead leaves enough for all their beds. Dr. Pantlin declared his intention of being no hindrance to anyone: but yeoman and housewife would not hear of a clergyman being turned out of doors after dark. It was the other gentleman who must take his chance.

The other gentleman seemed quite willing to take his chance. He declared that he was so used to every sort of accommodation in his fishing and fowling rambles, that he did not know till next morning where and how he had slept. He was so merry and good-humoured that Polly presently returned her little sick brother to his crib, and went to work to fill a bedsack with fresh straw, and a bolster-sack with sweet dry chaff. These, a sheet and a rug, made a good bed on the broad settle in the living-room.

During his hearty meal, the stranger explained that he had taken horse at short notice, and without any previous notion of attending her Grace of Scotland. His dearest friend and nearest neighbour was Mr. Felton, of the Manor-house by Chesterfield.

“Then you are Mr. Stansbury?” observed Dr. Pantlin.

“I am; and I remember you when you had the pulpit in Derby. Felton and I were making flies for our spring fishing after supper yesterday, when we heard the tramp of horsemen in the avenue. There were so many that we went out to see whether we were under her Majesty’s displeasure, and her Grace’s arrest. But we were told that a lady was overwrought with her journey, and unable to go further; and we opened the doors to as many as chose to enter. The lady turned out to be her Scottish Grace; and when we saw the jades she and her ladies were mounted on, the wonder was that all were not sick alike.”

All present agreed that it was a strange want of courtesy to mount these ladies on miserable horses. It was not like the Earl to do such a thing.

“It was not the Earl’s doing; no Talbot would do it—”