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The Buccaneer - A Tale

Page 68

A party, consisting of ten or twelve persons, at Queenborough, had

gathered round the trunk of a withered and hollow oak, growing in front

of a public-house, that displayed the head of the Lord Protector--a

political lure, that was certain to attract all Commonwealth people to

the receipt of custom. The noble tree had been one of magnificent

growth, but age or accident had severed the trunk, and within its heart

decay had long been revelling. It was now perfectly hollow, and afforded

a free passage; two enormous props had been found necessary, to prevent

its making a last resting-place of the earth it had for ages

triumphantly protected. The cavity that time had created was

sufficiently extensive to afford shelter during a storm to three or

four persons; and it was not unfrequently resorted to by the people of

the inn, as a storehouse for fuel, or farming utensils, when a plentiful

harvest rewarded the toil of the husbandman. Its branches, which had so

often sheltered the wayfarer alike from the tempest and the hot summer's

sun, had been hewn away, to serve the purposes of strife in the shape of

spear-handles, or to the doom of the winter fire; one solitary arm of

the blighted tree alone remained, extending its scraggy and shattered

remnants to a considerable distance over the greensward which had been,

from time immemorial, trodden by the merry morrice dancers, and broken

by the curvetting of the hobby-horse and the Dragon of Wantley, sports

it was now deemed sinful but to name. From a fragment of this

dilapidated branch, hung the sign of mine host of the Oliver's Head; and

right glad would he have been, if rumour had lied with each returning

morn, so that the lie could but fill his dwelling with so many

profitable guests. Thrice had the party, by whom had been appropriated

the seat beneath the oak, emptied the black jack of its double-dub ale;

and the call for a fourth replenishing was speedily answered, as the sun

was setting over the ocean, and tinging the sails and masts of the

distant vessels with hues that might have shamed the ruby and the

sapphire.

"To have our day go for nothing, after a trudge of some twenty miles, to

this out-of-the-way place,--Adad, sirs, it's no joke!" exclaimed a

sturdy, bluff-looking man, to our friend little Robin Hays, who sat upon

the corner of the bench, one leg tucked under (doubtless for the purpose

of enabling him to sit higher than nature had intended,) while the other

swung methodically backward and forward: "Adad, sir, it's no joke!" he

repeated.

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