Page:The Black Arrow - Stevenson, 1888.djvu/208

196 I was fourteen years of mine age and first ran away from mine abbey, with the sacrist's gold chain and a mass-book that I sold for four marks. I have been in England and France and Burgundy, and in Spain, too, on a pilgrimage for my poor soul; and upon the sea, which is no man's country. But here is my place, Master Shelton. This is my native land, this burrow in the earth. Come rain or wind—and whether it's April, and the birds all sing, and the blossoms fall about my bed, or whether it's winter, and I sit alone with my good gossip the fire, and robin red-breast twitters in the woods—here is my church and market, my wife and child. It's here I come back to, and it's here, so please the saints, that I would like to die."

Tis a warm corner, to be sure," replied Dick, "and a pleasant, and a well hid."

"It had need to be," returned Lawless, "for an they found it, Master Shelton, it would break my heart. But here," he added, burrowing with his stout fingers in the sandy floor, "here is my wine cellar and ye shall have a flask of excellent strong stingo."

Sure enough, after but a little digging, he produced a big leathern bottle of about a gallon, nearly three parts full of a very heady and sweet wine; and when they had drunk to each other comradely, and the fire had been replenished and blazed up again, the pair lay at full length, thawing and steaming, and divinely warm.

"Master Shelton," observed the outlaw, "yave