CHAPTER XX.

HOLYDAY'S FURTHER ADVENTURES.

"O, when will this same year of night have end?" --_The Two Angry Women of Abington._

Master Holyday at first thought himself lucky to be left alive, though naked to his shirt and bound to a tree by hempen cords which were tied around his wrists behind him, and around his ankles. But he soon began to doubt the pleasures of existence, and the possibility of its long continuance, in his situation. There was a smarting pain between his eyes, his face felt swollen all around those organs, his arms ached from their enforced position, the chill of the night assailed his naked skin.

He bemoaned the inconveniences of a stationary condition, and for the first time in his life realised what it was to be a tree, rooted to one spot all its days. He no longer deemed it a happy fate that the gods bestowed on the old couple as a reward for their hospitality, in the Metamorphoses,--that of being turned, at their death, into oaks. And he became swiftly of opinion that the damsel who escaped the pursuit of Apollo by transforming herself into a laurel would have been wiser to endure the god's embraces. And yet, as an accession of dampness--mist, if one could have seen it in the blackness of the forest--set his bare legs trembling and shrinking, he envied the trees their bark; and as each arm felt its cramped state the more intolerably, he coveted their freedom of waving their limbs about in the wind. At this, he strained petulantly to move his wrists apart, and, to his amazement, the cord yielded a little. He exerted his muscles again, and the hemp eased yet more. A few further efforts enabled him to slip free his hands. In their haste his two despoilers had made their knots carelessly. They had been more thorough in fastening his ankles. But, bending his knees, and lowering his body, he set to work with his fingers, and after many a scrape of his skin against the bark, many a protest of discomfort on the part of his strained legs, he set himself at liberty. Surprised at having been capable of so much, he stepped forward with the joy of regained freedom, but struck his toe against a fallen bough, and went headlong into a brake of brambles.

Cursing the darkness, and his fate, with every one of the hundred scratches that gave him anguish of limb and body, he backed out of the thicket, and moved cautiously in the opposite direction, holding his hands before him, and feeling the earth with his toes before setting foot in a new place.

"This is what it is to be a blind man," quoth he. Often, despite his precautions, he hurt his feet with roots and sticks, and cut them upon sharp-edged stones. He began to think he was doomed to a perpetual labour of wandering through a pitch-dark forest; it seemed so long since he had known peace of body and mind that he fancied he should never again be restored to the knowledge. He knew not, in the darkness, which way he was going; he moved on mainly from a disinclination to remain in one place, lest he should experience again the feelings of a rooted plant.

He began to speculate upon his chances of falling in with dangerous beasts, and upon the probable outcome of such an encounter. He had known of a man upon whom a threatened buck had once wrought the vengeance so vastly overdue from its race to mankind; in his poaching expeditions with Sir Nicholas the vicar he had often shuddered with a transient fear of a similar fate. In those expeditions he had always had company, had been armed and clad; the strange sense of helplessness that besets an undressed man was a new feeling to him.

At last, to his temporary relief, he came out of the wood, as he knew by the less degree of darkness, the change of air, and the smooth turf which was delicious to his torn feet. But presently the turf became spongy; water oozed out as it gave beneath his feet. He turned to the left, thinking to avoid the marsh without entering the wood again; but the ground became still softer; a few more steps brought him into sedgy pools several inches deep.

"This is worse than the wood," he groaned, and put his face in what he took to be the direction of the trees. But the farther he went, the deeper he sank in water. He now knew not which way to go in order to find the wood, or even the comparatively solid turf on which he had formerly been. So he stood, railing inwardly against the spiteful destiny that had selected him for the butt of its mirth. He had a sensation of being drawn downward; he remembered, with horror, the stories of people sucked under by the marshes, and he lifted first one foot and then the other. He kept up this alternate motion, trying each time to set his foot in a fresh place, and yet fearing to move backward or forward lest he find himself worse off. The dread of becoming a fixture in the earth came over him again, as a greater probability than before, and impelled him to move his legs faster.

"Would I were a morris-dancer now, with practice of this motion," he thought, as the muscles of his legs became more and more weary; and he marvelled understandingly at Will Kempe's famous dance to pipe and tabor from London to Norwich. "Better, after all, to be a tree," he sighed, "and not have to toil thus all night lest the earth swallow me."

His legs finally rebelling against this monotonous exercise, he resolved to go forward whatever befall; and just at that moment he saw, at what distance he could not determine, a faint light. He uttered a cry of satisfaction, supposing it to be a cottage window, or a lantern borne by some night-walking countryman. As it moved not at his cry, he decided it was a cottage window, and he hastened toward it, through the tall grass, careless how far he sank into the marsh. But, as he drew near, it started away from him; then he told himself it was a lantern, and he called out to its bearer not to be afraid, as he was but a poor scholar lost in the fen. The light fled all the faster. As he increased his pace, so did it. At last, out of breath, he stopped in despair. The lantern stopped, also. He started again; it started, too.

"Oh, churl, boor, clodpate, whatever thou art!" he shouted. "To treat a poor benighted traveller thus, that means thee no harm! These are country manners, sure enough. Go to the devil, an thou wilt. I'll no more follow thee."

But as the light now came to a stand, he ran toward it, thinking the rustic had taken heart. He was almost upon it, when suddenly it separated into three lights, which leaped in three different directions. Knowing not which to follow, he stood bewildered. After a moment, he made for the nearest light; it disappeared entirely. He turned to watch the others; they had vanished.

"Oh, this is ridiculous!" he said. "This cannot be real. I perceive what it is. It is a dream I am having; a foolish, bad dream. It has been a dream ever since--since when? I was writing a puppet play, and I must have fallen asleep; I wrought my mind into a poetic fever, and therefore my dream is so troubled and wild. My courtship of that maid,--but no, that was in bright day, 'tis certain, and 'tis never bright day in dreams. Well, when I wake, I shall see where I am, and learn where the dream began; perchance I am still at that horrible tree. No; alas! these aches and scratches, this wretched marsh, are too palpable. 'Tis no dream. Would it were. Perhaps those rascals killed me in the wood, and I am in hell. Well, I will on, then, till I meet the devil; he may condescend to discourse with a poor scholar; he should have much to tell worth a man's hearing; no doubt, if he cannot talk in English, he can in Latin. Ah, what? I am again on _terra firma_: but _terra incognita_ still. I'll go on till something stops me. Oh!" he ejaculated, as he bumped against a tree. "Here is another wood. Or is it the same wood? I know not; but I will on."

A brief uncovering of the moon--the same which revealed to Millicent the huddled roofs of Marshleigh Grange--gave Holyday a view of his surroundings. Looking back across the fen, he saw what must be the wood from which he had come. He stood, therefore, on the border of a second wood. He knew the wind was from the west; hence, noting the direction in which the clouds were flying, he perceived that his course had been southward and from the river. He ought to be on familiar ground now, which he had often scoured with the parson and their fellow poachers; but ere he could assure himself, moon and earth were blotted out, and he was again in a world of the black unknown.

Turning his back to the marsh, he traversed the second wood. A swift, loud wind raced over the tree-tops, bringing greater dampness. He came into what might be a glade, or a space of heath, which he proceeded to cross. As he had been gradually ascending in the past few minutes, he had no fear of another bog at this place. He was by this time ready to drop with fatigue. Stumbling over a little mound, he fell upon soft grass. He lay there for some minutes, resting, till his body seemed to stiffen with cold. Then he rose, and plunged wearily on in despair. Suddenly, to the joy of his heart, he heard voices ahead.

"I'll take oath 'tis no deer," said one. "Come on; the keeper is abroad in this walk; I tell you I spied the candle in's window to light him home."

"I'll have a shot at it, for all that," said another.

Poachers, thought Holyday; and they were speaking of him. He flung himself down, just in time to hear the twang of a crossbow where the voices were, and the whizz of a bolt through the air where his body had been.

"'Fore God, thou hast laid the thing low," said a third voice. Recognising it, Holyday leaped up with a cry, and ran forward, calling out:

"Sir Nicholas! oh, Sir Nick, thou poaching rascal, 'tis I!"

"God save us, 'tis a ghost; a human ghost!" cried the first speaker.

"'Tis a white thing on two legs, sure," answered the vicar, with trepidation.

"'Tis the devil come for you; he spoke your name," said their companion, affrightedly; and instantly came the sound of feet running away like mad.

Holyday pursued, shouting, "'Tis I, Ralph Holyday!" But the poachers, hearing the name, and thinking it to be the spirit of Holyday come to announce his own death, were soon quite out of hearing.

Losing their direction, and knowing his wornout legs were no match for their fresher ones, Holyday sank to the earth, ready to weep with vexation.

"I see," he wailed. "'Tis a mockery devised to torment me. To lift me out of the mire of despair into the very arms of my friend, and then to fling me back deeper! A fine joke, no doubt, on the part of Heaven; but why one poor scholar should provide all the mirth, I do not clearly perceive. Was it indeed Sir Nick, or was it but an illusion of mine ears? 'Tis all the same. Well, I will sit shivering here till daylight; what else can I do?"

But suddenly came the rain, a wind-driven deluge, showing its full fury at the outset. In a trice the scholar was drenched; the drops seemed to beat him down; there was no surcease of them. He ran for cover, and presently gained that of another part of the wood. But even the trees could not keep out this downpour. Water streamed from the branches upon his head and body. He was flung upon, buffeted, half-drowned. Never had he received such a castigation from man or nature. He thought the elements were arrayed against him, earth to trip and bruise him, air to chill him, fire to delude him, water to flog him to death. But on he went, moved always by a feeling that any spot must be better than that whereon he was. At last he saw another light.

"Nay, nay," said he; "I am not to be fooled so again. Go to, Jack-with-the-lantern! I chase no more will-o'-the-wisps."

But he bethought him that such a rain would put out any false fire; moreover, he was in a wood, on high ground. And then, as he approached, the light took the form of a candle in a window. He remembered what the poacher had said. This must be the keeper's lodge; if the candle was still in the window, the keeper had not yet come home,--the rain had caught him too. The keeper being still abroad, his door might not be fastened. With a sense of having reached the limit of endurance of the rain's pelting,--for his thin shirt was no protection,--he dashed blindly for the window, which was on the leeward side of the lodge. He felt his way along the front of the house to the entrance, pushed the door open, and stepped into a low, comfortable apartment, like the kitchen and living room of a yeoman's cottage. Out of the rain and wind at last, his grateful legs bore him across the room to a bench. He sat down, nestling back to a great deer-skin that hung against the bare wall of wood and plaster.

At one side of the room was a door to another apartment; at the back was a ladder-like set of wooden steps leading to a trap-way in the ceiling. Holyday had scarce observed these details by the candle in the window, when a coarse female voice, as of one suddenly roused from sleep, called out from the other room: "Is't thou, Jack? Time thou wert home!--hear the rain."

Holyday kept silence. Then he heard a bed creak as under the movements of a heavy body. The woman was coming out to see what had made the noise. And he, clad only in the briefest of shirts! A double terror shook him; he sprang across the room and blew out the candle. The door opened, and a heavy, unshod tread sounded upon the floor.

"Ecod, the light's out!" said the woman. "And the door open." She found her way in the dark to the door which Holyday had neglected to close upon entering. "'Twas the wind, I wis. Fool Jack, to leave the door ill-fastened! Well, he is served right, for the wind hath blown out his candle. I must make another light, forsooth."

Holyday, standing perfectly still near the window, heard the woman grumbling about the task of striking a light. He felt himself blushing terribly in the dark; he was surely undone. But with a timely inspiration, and glad for once that his feet were bare, he went tiptoe back to where he had sat, stepped over the bench, and slipped behind the deer-skin, flattening himself as much as possible against the wall as he stood.

The woman got the candle aflame, looked around the room, replaced the light in the window, and went back to the other chamber. Hearing the bed creak again as it received her weight, Holyday came out from his hiding-place. What should he do in order to profit for the rest of the night by the comforts of this abode without discovery? He knew who this woman was, and who Jack, her husband, was. He had fallen foul of this keeper before he had left for London, and the keeper was a fellow who would take revenge when occasion offered. Pondering on the situation, Holyday was almost of a mind to face the stormy night again rather than risk capture by the man in such circumstances. Before he could make up his mind, he heard a gruff voice outside ordering a dog to its kennel. It was Jack's voice. Master Holyday fled panic-stricken up the narrow stairs, through the open trap-door.

He was in a place of darkness. He forgot that the height of the cottage--which served but to house an under-keeper and his wife, and was not the principal lodge pertaining to this chase--forbade that the upper story should be more than a mere loft; but of this he was speedily reminded by a bump of his head against a rafter. The loft was warm and probably unoccupied, for Jack rarely had a guest. The rain upon the roof made a din in Holyday's ears. He felt his way to one end of the place, and lay down, near a small window. He heard Jack entering below, swearing at the storm, fastening the door, and finally joining his spouse in the sleeping-chamber. There was some conversation in low tones, and then the house was still.

Holyday's foot struck against the end of a wooden chest. Crawling to it, he opened the top, and found what he had hoped for,--soft garments in which to lie. He tore off his wet shirt, rolled himself up in what seemed to be a woman's gown,--Jack's wife required dresses of ample capacity,--and sank away in sweetest comfort to oblivion.

He woke from a dream of delicious warmth and wondrous light, and found the sunshine in his face. His window was toward the south. The sun had passed the line of noon. Holyday gathered himself up; surveyed the garment of russet wool he had slept in; and finally dressed himself in it in proper manner. It hung loose upon him, but it covered his nakedness.

A creak of the stairway drew his eyes toward the trap. There rose into view the frowsy head and fat face of Jack's wife.

"Ecod, I knew I heard somebody!" she cried, staring at Holyday fiercely. "And dressed in my clothes, too! Oh, thou thief, I'll tear thy skin from thee!"

She came up the steps as fast as her bulk allowed. But Master Holyday, with one glance at her great clenched fists, kicked open the casement behind him, fell upon all fours, and backed out of the window, from which he dropped as the woman reached it. He alighted on a bank of flowers, scrambled to his feet, and, holding his skirt above his knees, trusted all to his bare legs. He heard the woman's furious threats from the window, but tarried not to answer. Plunging through the forest with the new strength derived from his long sleep, he was soon far from the cottage. Easing into a walk, he crossed heath and fields till he came in sight of a pleasant mansion on a green hill. Between him and the hill lay a road, which he must needs cross to reach Sir Nicholas's house. He gained this road, and, seeing nobody about, walked along it some distance so as to skirt the base of the hill. Unexpectedly, from a lane he was passing, came a resonant voice:

"Well, God-'a'-mercy! what transformation have we here?"

Holyday turned, and beheld Captain Ravenshaw.