Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/98

 90 “Unless Bess of Hardwick,” somebody observed.

“She is no Talbot. But, in truth, it was nobody’s fault. There was a lively alarm of a swoop from the Border, at any moment. The ladies opposed themselves to any removal with a vehemence which looked ominous; and Sir Francis Knollys sent out for horses, and must take such as could be got.”

“I wonder he and the Earl consented to stop at Chesterfield,” the Minister observed.

“There was a watch set against the Borderers, all the country round,” Stansbury explained. “I told Felton that, as host, he must take her Grace’s part against all comers, night or day; and I verily believe the poor lady hoped the occasion might arise. I never leave Felton, nor he me, when any adventure befals; so I rode on in the train to-day, to see the end of the march. We thought to ride back, or to take lodgings together in the nearest inn; but her Grace will not hear of Felton being dismissed to-night: so he is the Earl’s guest, and I am yours, at your service.”

At this moment the servants came in—the two men from the field and stall, and Bridget, who had been milking the ewes. They were to have their supper; and there was no more discourse at the upper end of the board about the company at the Castle. Dr. Pantlin said grace for the meal which was ending, and then for that of the servants, which was beginning. Stansbury did not leave the table; but the Minister observed that he turned half away, and that he certainly crossed himself.

“You perceive,” said Stansbury, “that I am not of any new persuasion. I am of the Church.”

“Nor am I of any new persuasion,” said Dr. Pantlin. “I am of the Church as it was before the passions and lusts of men corrupted it.”

“Yes, yes; we know our grounds of difference,” said Stansbury, refusing by his manner to enter upon any religious discussion. “We are each out of favour with the government of the day: and if we must discuss the matter of our churches, we had better take the only common ground, and find fault with the sect which has usurped the pulpits of the kingdom.”

“Better say nothing at all,” remarked Farmer Chell. “The days are past when a man might say what he liked within his own four walls. Now that these foreigners come in swarms, and settle where they see fit, asked or unasked, one is never sure that all one’s neighbours are honest. And when they are honest, they are hardly civil. They frown at any jest, and make such a noise about any innocent pastime, that we have little pleasure in our feast-days, and little freedom at any time.”

“You may thank the Papists for that last,” his wife remarked. “They are the real spies, and I dare say the gentleman knows it as well as we do.”

Dr. Pantlin’s smile said “Perhaps rather better;” and Stansbury returned the smile. He said he hated spying and plotting—they were the curse of the land. Everybody was spying upon everybody else, and the merriment of Old England was spoilt, it was the proper punishment for the violence which had been offered to the Church. When the silliest children of a household insisted on correcting their mother, how should there not be confusion, high and low? Here was Dr. Pantlin, a deprived pastor, preaching in barns or in the lanes; there was his pulpit at Derby empty, and the doors shut, Sunday after Sunday; there were the Anabaptists collecting crowds in the streets by their antics; and, if you wanted the true clergy, they were where they could give you no good,—shut up in the dark in prisons, and fed on bread and water. This was what merry England had come to!

Polly did not see that times were so bad for gentlemen who were free to amuse themselves as they liked. A man who sat at his loom abroad—anywhere in France or the Low Countries—was never sure of being in possession of his own tongue or his own life at the end of the day

“You mean if he is a Calvinist,” observed Stansbury.

“Yes, of course; but you Popish gentlemen can sit making flies for your fishing, and can ride on your own errands, and entertain Papist princesses without molestation from anybody.”

“Unless they plot,” her father put in.

“Oh! if they plot, they must expect what may happen. We are speaking of those who do not plot.”

“I have one plot,” said Stansbury; “and that is to get some fishing while I am here. Can I get any good fellow to go out with me?”

No man could be spared from the field at this season. Polly was of opinion that no craftsman could be induced to leave his loom or his workshop, because all were preparing for the Easter fair—the great market of the year. There was one neighbour, however, who preferred roving to sitting at his loom. Perhaps Sampson Rudd would go out with the gentleman.

years ago, a roving disposition placed me in the pleasant little town of Buffalo, which lies at the foot of Lake Erie, and at the head of its outlet, the famous Niagara river. The great cataract is twenty miles below. Buffalo had then about twenty thousand inhabitants: now it has three or four times that population. Situated at the lower terminus of the navigation of the great lakes, and at the opening of the Erie Canal, which connects the lakes with the Atlantic, it was a busy, thriving, and important town, seven or eight months in the year.

But in that region, though several degrees below our latitude, all internal navigation is closed, as a rule, by the 1st of December, and the great inland seas are sometimes covered with solid ice on May-day. The winter puts a period to all labours connected with navigation, and Buffalo, in winter, was full of lake sailors, steamboat men, canallers, and hundreds more, connected with trade and navigation, spending their summer wages, with nothing to do, and ready, as idle hands, for Satan’s work of mischief.

It was about this time that the late William