* * * * *
"Now, Springall--I love to call you by that name," said the Buccaneer,
"though you have taken your old one, and made it even more honoured than
it was before,--the evening has closed in--the children a-bed--God bless
them! We will draw nearer round our cheerful hearth, and talk of days
long gone. Barbara, let's have some fresh logs on the fire; and now, for
past and present times."
"I am a bad hand at a long yarn--you know I always was so,
captain,"--said the naval officer, smiling, "and the news of poor Jack's
death has damped my canvass. I always thought he'd make a queer end of
it--so fond of plunder--so careless--so unprincipled--but brave, brave
to the backbone."
"Do you remember what he dared, by way of adventure, not a hundred miles
from this; when Major Wellmore and Walter De Guerre were masquing it
here so gaily?" inquired Robin.
"Ay, ay! But he and Grimstone were both half-seas over, or they'd have
hardly ventured it:--poor Grim paid the penalty."
"And deserved it too," added Robin. "He whom they assaulted was a
wonder--a being that will serve future ages to talk about, when the
rulers of the present day are either execrated or forgotten. Marry! but
it makes one's head swim to think of the warm blood and true that has
been spilled and wasted to raise up a throne for obscenity and folly!
Chambering and wantonness walk together as twin-born, along the very
halls where Cromwell, and Ireton, and Milton, and--my head's too hot to
recollect their names; but they are graven on my heart, as men who made
England a Queen among the nations."
"Then their Popery plots!" chimed in the Buccaneer; "the innocent blood
that has flooded the scaffold, as if the earth was thirsty for it--and
upon what grounds? the evidence, I hear, of one villain, supported by
the evidence of another! I grieve for one thing, truly--that I was ever
instrumental in forwarding the King's views. Robin said a true word in
jest the other day, that men as well as puppies were born blind, only it
takes a much longer period to open our eyes, than those of our
four-footed friends."
"So it does," said Springall, laughing; "that was one of Robin's wise
sayings. Barbara!--I beg your pardon,--Mistress Hays--do you think him
as wise as ever?"
"I always thought him wise; but I know it now," she replied, smiling.
"Sit ye down, Barbara," said Robin, "and our friend here will tell you
how much he admires our children; they are fine, healthy, and, though I
say it, handsome--straight withal--straight as Robin Hood's own arrow;
and I do bless God for that--for that especially! I would rather have
seen them dead at my feet than----"