LITMIR.BIZ

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we shall make all worthy a general of your illustrious name – for he was a great general, Pisistratus the First – was he not, brother?"

      "All tyrants are," said my father: "the knack of soldiering is indispensable to them."

      "Oh, you may say what you please here!" said Roland, in high good humour, as he drew me down stairs, still apologising for my quarters, and so earnestly that I made up my mind that I was to be put into an oubliette. Nor were my suspicions much dispelled on seeing that we had to leave the keep, and pick our way into what seemed to me a mere heap of rubbish, on the dexter side of the court. But I was agreeably surprised to find, amidst these wrecks, a room with a noble casement commanding the whole country, and placed immediately over a plot of ground cultivated as a garden. The furniture was ample, though homely; the floors and walls well matted; and, altogether, despite the inconvenience of having to cross the courtyard to get to the rest of the house, and being wholly without the modern luxury of a bell, I thought that I could not be better lodged.

      "But this is a perfect bower, my dear uncle! Depend on it, it was the bower-chamber of the Dames de Caxton – heaven rest them!"

      "No," said my uncle, gravely; "I suspect it must have been the chaplain's room, for the chapel was to the right of you. An earlier chapel, indeed, formerly existed in the keep tower – for, indeed, it is scarcely a true keep without chapel, well, and hall. I can show you part of the roof of the first, and the two last are entire; the well is very curious, formed in the substance of the wall at one angle of the hall. In Charles the First's time, our ancestor lowered his only son down in a bucket, and kept him there six hours, while a Malignant mob was storming the tower. I need not say that our ancestor himself scorned to hide from such a rabble, for he was a grown man. The boy lived to be a sad spendthrift, and used the well for cooling his wine. He drank up a great many good acres."

      "I should scratch him out of the pedigree, if I were you. But, pray, have you not discovered the proper chamber of that great Sir William, about whom my father is so shamefully sceptical?"

      "To tell you a secret," answered the Captain, giving me a sly poke in the ribs, "I have put your father into it! There are the initial letters W. C. let into the cusp of the York rose, and the date, three years before the battle of Bosworth, over the chimneypiece."

      I could not help joining my uncle's grim low laugh at this characteristic pleasantry; and after I had complimented him on so judicious a mode of proving his point, I asked him how he could possibly have contrived to fit up the ruin so well, especially as he had scarcely visited it since his purchase.

      "Why," said he, "about twelve years ago, that poor fellow you now see as my servant, and who is gardener, bailiff, seneschal, butler, and anything else you can put him to, was sent out of the army on the invalid list. So I placed him here; and as he is a capital carpenter, and has had a very fair education, I told him what I wanted, and put by a small sum every year for repairs and furnishing. It is astonishing how little it cost me, for Bolt, poor fellow, (that is his name,) caught the right spirit of the thing, and most of the furniture, (which you see is ancient and suitable,) he picked up at different cottages and farmhouses in the neighbourhood. As it is, however, we have plenty more rooms here and there – only, of late," continued my uncle, slightly changing colour, "I had no money to spare. But come," he resumed, with an evident effort – "come and see my barrack: it is on the other side of the hall, and made out of what no doubt were the butteries."

      We reached the yard, and found the fly-coach had just crawled to the door. My father's head was buried deep in the vehicle, – he was gathering up his packages, and sending out, oracle-like, various muttered objurgations and anathemas upon Mrs Primmins and her vacuum; which Mrs Primmins, standing by, and making a lap with her apron to receive the packages and anathemas simultaneously, bore with the mildness of an angel, lifting up her eyes to heaven and murmuring something about "poor old bones." Though, as for Mrs Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years, and you might as soon have found a Plesiosaurus in the fat lands of Romney Marsh as a bone amidst those layers of flesh in which my poor father thought he had so carefully cottoned up his Cardan.

      Leaving these parties to adjust matters between them, we stepped under the low doorway, and entered Rowland's room. Oh, certainly Bolt had caught the spirit of the thing! – certainly he had penetrated down even to the very pathos that lay within the deeps of Roland's character. Buffon says "the style is the man;" there, the room was the man. That nameless, inexpressible, soldier-like, methodical neatness which belonged to Roland – that was the first thing that struck one – that was the general character of the whole. Then, in details, there, in stout oak shelves, were the books on which my father loved to jest his more imaginative brother, – there they were, Froissart, Barante, Joinville, the Mort d'Arthur, Amadis of Gaul, Spenser's Fairy Queen, a noble copy of Strutt's Horda, Mallet's Northern Antiquities, Percy's Reliques, Pope's Homer, books on gunnery, archery, hawking, fortification – old chivalry and modern war together cheek by jowl.

      Old chivalry and modern war! – look to that tilting helmet with the tall Caxton crest, and look to that trophy near it, a French cuirass – and that old banner (a knight's pennon) surmounting those crossed bayonets. And over the chimneypiece there – bright, clean, and, I warrant you, dusted daily – are Roland's own sword, his holsters, and pistols, yea, the saddle, pierced and lacerated, from which he had reeled when that leg – I gasped – I felt it all at a glance, and I stole softly to the spot, and, had Roland not been there, I could have kissed that sword as reverently as if it had been a Bayard's or a Sidney's.

      My uncle was too modest to guess my emotion; he rather thought I had turned my face to conceal a smile at his vanity, and said, in a deprecating tone of apology – "It was all Bolt's doing, foolish fellow."

      CHAPTER XLIX

      Our host regaled us with a hospitality that notably contrasted his economical thrifty habits in London. To be sure, Bolt had caught the great pike which headed the feast; and Bolt, no doubt, had helped to rear those fine chickens ab ovo; Bolt, I have no doubt, made that excellent Spanish omelette; and for the rest, the products of the sheepwalk and the garden came in as volunteer auxiliaries – very different from the mercenary recruits by which those metropolitan Condottieri, the butcher and green-grocer, hasten the ruin of that melancholy commonwealth called "genteel poverty."

      Our evening passed cheerfully; and Roland, contrary to his custom, was talker in chief. It was eleven o'clock before Bolt appeared with a lantern to conduct me through the court-yard to my dormitory, among the ruins – a ceremony which, every night, shine or dark, he insisted upon punctiliously performing.

      It was long before I could sleep – before I could believe that but so few days had elapsed since Roland heard of his son's death – that son whose fate had so long tortured him; and yet, never had Roland appeared so free from sorrow! Was it natural – was it effort? Several days passed before I could answer that question, and then not wholly to my satisfaction. Effort there was, or rather resolute systematic determination. At moments Roland's head drooped, his brows met, and the whole man seemed to sink. Yet these were only moments; he would rouse himself up like a dozing charger at the sound of a trumpet, and shake off the creeping weight. But, whether from the vigour of his determination, or from some aid in other trains of reflection, I could not but perceive that Roland's sadness really was less grave and bitter than it had been, or than it was natural to suppose. He seemed to transfer, daily more and more, his affections from the dead to those around him, especially to Blanche and myself. He let it be seen that he looked on me now as his lawful successor – as the future supporter of his name – he was fond of confiding to me all his little plans, and consulting me on them. He would walk with me around his domains, (of which I shall say more hereafter,) – point out, from every eminence we climbed, where the broad lands which his forefathers owned stretched away to the horizon; unfold with tender hand the mouldering pedigree, and rest lingeringly on those of his ancestors who had held martial post, or had died on the field. There was a crusader who had followed Richard to Ascalon; there was a knight who had fought at Agincourt; there was a cavalier (whose picture was still extant, with fair lovelocks) who had fallen at Worcester – no doubt the same who had cooled his son in that well which the son devoted to more agreeable associations. But of all these

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