The Last Of The Barons, Volume 9.

ng into one common army by the extraordinary vigour not only of Edward, but of Gloucester and Hastings,-when one morning, just after the event

s had something of masculine audacity and rudeness; health itself seemed in them more loathsome than disease. Upon those faces of bronze, vice had set its ineffable, unmistaken seal. To those eyes never had sprung the tears of compassion or woman's gentle sorrow; on those brows never had flushed the glow of modest shame: their very voices half belied their sex,-harsh and deep and hoarse, their laughter loud and dissonant. Some amongst them were not destitute of a certain beauty, but it was a beauty of feature with a common hideousness of expression,-an expression at once cunning, bold, callous, licentious. Womanless through the worst vices of woman, passion

ng into their large ears the boasting narratives of the soldiers. At a small table, apart from the revellers, but evidently listening with attention to all the news of the hour,

e raptrils run when King Edward himself led the charge! Marry, it was like a cat in a rabbit burrow

wn his tankard, "who made a good fight and dour, and, but f

s, and ought to have been knighted,

?" asked one of the bystanders, w

he was Robin of Redes

ntagu o

ral voices. "Ay, he was eve

s!" cried the principal trooper. "Have

nd neighbour, and mighty glib of the tongue. Don't ye mind, neighbours," he added rapidly, eager to change the conversation, "how he made us leave off when we were just about burning Adam W

, looked up at the last speech, and her eye followed the gesture of the butcher,

ye would have burned

ssed privilege of burning nigromancers; and, sure enough, old Adam Warner was adv

ner; he now pushed his stool nearer to the principal gr

f a gentleman wanted a coat of mail, or a cloth tunic; if his dame needed a Norwich worsted; if a yeoman lacked a plough or a wagon, or his good wife a pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the armourer, and the draper, and the tailor, and the weaver, and the wheelwright, and the blacksmith,-but, hey presto! Master Warner set his imps a-churning, and t

said the fri

city. A murmur of wrath and hatred was heard amongst the bystanders. The soldiers indifferently turned to their female companions. There was

ack. Old Madge, his handmaid, has bought cimnel- cakes of me the last week or so; not

s roost! An' it were not for the king's favour, I would soon see how t

spered one of the young tym

ss me, my

ses I tr

mbestere-"avaunt! I have neither liefe nor halfpence for thee and thine. Out on th

r hand to her knife; then turning to a soldier by

t is only because Red Grisell can take care of herself against twenty such lozels as thou. These honest girls have been to the wars with us; King Edwa

ring teeth with the grin of a young tigress; "but one was a captain.

with a wife and children, who are dear to me; and if I have a grudge to the nigromancer, it is because he glamoured my poor boy Tim. See!"-and he caught up a blue- eyed, h

ay when the foul wizard took this little one in his arms: well, three weeks afterwards-that very day three weeks-as he was standing like a lamb by the fire, the good wife's c

!" groaned

w again attempted remonstrance. "The hot water went over the

ll!" and the mechanic again raised his weighty arm. The child did not this time await the blow; he dodged under the butcher's apron, gained the door,

ards Adam Warner's melancholy house, "I say again, if the king did not protect the vile sor

dren, that the king sent the wretch neck and crop out of the palace for having bewitched the Earl of Warwick and his grace the Lord Clarence, so that they turned unnaturally against their

true, and a mighty one; but he never did harm to the poor;

ave hanged Friar Bungey for crossing old Adam, if he had not called three times, in a loud voice, 'Presto pepranxenon!' changed himself into a bird, and flown out of the window. As soon as Master Adam Warner found the field clear to himself, he employed his daughter to bewitch the Lord Hastings; he set brother against brother, and made the king and Lord George fall to loggerheads; he stirred up the rebellion; and where he would have stopped the foul fiend only knows, if your friend Friar Bungey, who, though a wizard as you say, is only so for your benefit (and a holy priest into the bargain), had not, by aid of a good spirit, whom he conjured up in the island of Tartary, disenchanted the king,

said Tim's father, laying

ymbesteres, starting up from the lap of her

stor. "Right, lassie, right; and he now goes to the palace of the Tower, to mutter good spells in Ki

besteres leaped lightly on the table, put one foot on the soldier's shoulder, and sprang through the open l

. We must not be noted together out of door in the daylight. There's a gr

uld not have nimmed from a hedge, but whom I last saw in sarcenet and lawn, with a great lord for her fere." The tymbestere's eyes shone with malignant envy, as she added, "Graul Skellet loves not to see

my kisses. And as for the father, I want not the man's life,-that is, not very specially,-but his model, his

ks of the cards, and thy great art of

l give thee, to boot, the Gaul of the parricide that thou hast prayed me so oft for. Hum! thou hast a girl in thy tro

s in the air, and humming no holy ditty,

in his clerical and courtly elevation, he did not disdain an ancient connection that served him well with the populace; for these grim children of vice seemed present in every place, where pastime was gay, or strife was rampant,-in peace, at the merry-makings and the hostelries; in war, fo

ld interchange the anecdotes each picked up in their different lines. The tymbestere could t

of his adored theory; and yet, somehow or other, the theory itself consoled him. At the worst, he should find some disciple, some ingenious student, more fortunate than himself, to whom he could bequeath the secret, and who, when Adam was in his grave, would teach the world to revere his name. Meanwhile, his time was his own; he was lord

the seasons. I feel that we are walking in the pleasant spring. Young days come bac

ack into the chrysalis shroud of torpor? The vast disparity between herself and Hastings had not struck her so forcibly at the court; here, at home, the very walls proclaimed it. When Edward had dismissed the unwelcome witnesses of his attempted crime, he had given orders that they should be conducted to their house through the most private ways. He naturally desired to create no curious comment upon their departure. Unperceived by their neighbours, Sibyll and her father had gained access by the garden gate. Old Madge received them in dismay; for she had been in the habit of visiting Sibyll weekly at the palace, and had gained, in the old familiarity subsisting, then, between maiden and nurse, some in

old man spoke of the blessed spring, the holiday time of lovers and of love, and the y

,-I too have ambition, and it should find its goal." Now what contrast between the two,-the man enriched and honoured, if to-day in peril or in exile, to-morrow free to march forward still on his career, the world the country to him whose heart was bold and whose name was stainless! and she, the woman, brought back to the prison-ho

. The day was declining. Adam mounted to his stu

s over; the great earl, his sweet daughter, safe upo

er who served under Lord Hastings himself; he is unscathed, he is in London. But they say that one

me to England and t