HOW HORDLE JOHN COZENED THE FULLER OF LYMINGTON.

It is not, however, in the nature of things that a lad of twenty, with young life glowing in his veins¹ and all the wide world before him, should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning for what he had left. Long ere Alleyne was out of sound of the Beaulieu bells he was striding sturdily along, swinging his staff and whistling as merrily as the birds in the thicket². It was an evening to raise a man's heart. The sun shining slantwise through the trees threw delicate traceries across the road, with bars of golden light between. Away in the distance before and behind, the green boughs³, now turning in places to a coppery redness, shot their broad arches across the track. The still summer air was heavy with the resinous⁴ smell of the great forest. Here and there a tawny⁵ brook⁶ prattled⁷ out from among the underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save the dull piping of insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence everywhere—the sweet restful silence of nature.

And yet there was no want of life—the whole wide wood was full of it. Now it was a lithe⁸, furtive⁹ stoat which shot across the path upon some fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat which squatted¹⁰ upon the outlying branch of an oak and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and dubious¹¹ eye. Once it was a wild sow which

分享到：