Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/63

Rh instead of the pedlar's staff: accept, therefore, my hand, and be assured that a Selby—as hot and as proud as the lordliest of his ancestors—feels honoured in thus touching in friendship the hand of a gallant gentleman.'

"I felt much pleased with this adventure, and looked on the person of the stalwart Borderer as he received and returned the friendly grasp of Walter Selby: he had a brow serene and high, an eye of sedate resolution, and something of an ironic wit lurking amid the wrinkles which age and thought had engraven on his face. I never saw so complete a transformation; and could hardly credit that the bold, martial-looking, and courteous cavalier at my side had but an hour or two before sung rustic songs and chaffered with the peasants of Cumberland about the price of ends of ribbon and twopenny toys and trinkets. He seemed to understand my thoughts, and thus resolved the riddle in a whisper: 'Fair lady, these are not days when a knight of loyal mind may ride with sound of horn and banner displayed, summoning soldiers to fight for the good cause; of a surety, his journey would be brief. In the disguise of a calling—low, it is true, but honourable in its kind—I have obtained more useful intelligence, and enlisted more good soldiers, than some who ride aneath an earl's pennon.'

"Our party, during this nocturnal march, had been insensibly augmented; and when the grey day came I could count about three hundred horsemen—young, well mounted, and well armed—some giving vent to their spirit or their feelings in martial songs, others examining and proving the merits of their swords and pistols, and many marching on in grave silence, forecasting the hazards of war and the glory of success. Leaving the brown pastures of the moorlands, we descended into an open and cultivated country, and soon found ourselves upon the great military road which connects all the north country with the capital. It was still the cold and misty twilight of the morning, when I happened to observe an old man close beside me, mounted on a horse seemingly coeval with himself—wrapped, or rather shrouded, in a grey mantle or plaid, and all the while looking steadfastly at me from under the remains of a broad slouched hat. I had something like a dreamer's recollection of his looks; but he soon added his voice to assist my recollection, and I shall never forget the verses the old man chanted with a broken and melancholy, and I think I may add prophetic, voice: