CHAPTER XIV.

THE NEW HOME.

"Sweetly blows the haw and the rowan-tree, Wild roses speck our thickets sae briery; Still, still will our walk in the green-wood be-- Oh, Jeanie! there's nothing to fear ye."

HOGG'S BALLADS.

On the following morning they entered Westmoreland; and as they approached the term of their journey, advancing the more rapidly as they entered the wilder and more sparsely-populated regions toward the lakes and fells, where the castellated dwellings of the knightly nobles and the cloisters of the ecclesiastical lords became few and far between, they reached Kendal, then a small hamlet, with a noble castle and small priory, before noon; and, making no stay, pressed onward to the shores of Windermere, which they struck, not far from the scattered cottages and small chapel of ease, tended by two aged brothers from Kendal, known then, as it is now, not having grown much since that day, as the village of Bowness.

On the lake, moored at a rude pier, lay a small but gayly-decorated yacht, or galley, with the arms of Sir Yvo de Taillebois emblazoned on its foresail, and a gay streamer flaunting from its topmast, awaiting the arrival of the party, which had been announced to their vassals by a harbinger sent forward from Bolton Abbey.

And here the nobles, with their immediate train, separated from the bulk of the party, the former going on board the galley, and crossing the pellucid waters of the beautiful lake to Sir Yvo's noble castle, which lay not a mile from the strand, embosomed in a noble chase, richly-wooded with superb oak and ash forests, midway of the gentle and green valley between the lake and the western mountains, over which his demesnes extended, while the escort, with the horse-boys, grooms, and servitors, took the longer and more difficult way around the head of the lake--a circuit of some twenty miles--over the sites of the modern towns of Ambleside and Hawkshead, the castle lying in Cumberland, although the large estates of De Taillebois extended for many miles on both sides of the water, and in both counties, being the last grand feudal demesne on the south side of the mountains.

Further to the north, again, where the country spread out into plains beyond Keswick, toward Penrith and Carlisle, and the untamed Scottish borders, there were again found vast feudal demesnes, the property of the Lords of the Marches, the Howards, the Percys, the Umfravilles, and others, whose prowess defended the rich lowlands of York and Lancaster from the incursions of the Border Riders.

To the north, the nearest neighbor of De Taillebois was the Threlkeld, of Threlkeld Castle, on the skirts of Keswick, at thirty miles or more of distance across the pathless mountains of Scafell, Helvellyn, Saddleback, and Skiddaw. Nigher to him, on the south, and adjoining his lands, lay the estates of the Abbots of Furness; and to the westward, beyond the wide range of moor and mountain, which it took his party-two days to traverse, and in which, from Bolton till they reached Kendal, they had seen, according to the words of the motto prefixed to this chapter,

----------- "neither rich, nor poor, But moss, and ling, and bare wild moor,"

lay the lands of the Cliffords and the mighty Nevilles. All the inner country, among those glorious peaks, those deep glens, encumbered with old unshorn woods, those blue waters, undisturbed by the presence of a foreigner, since the eagles of the ubiquitous Roman glittered above his camps on the stern hill-sides, over that most unprofitable of his conquests, was virgin ground, uninhabited, save by fugitive serfs, criminal refugees from justice, and some wild families of liberty-loving Saxons, who had fled to the mountains, living by the strong hand and the bended bow, and content to sacrifice all else for the priceless boon of freedom.

It was, perhaps, the very wildness and solitude of the locality, as much as the exquisite charm of the loveliest scenery in England, to which, strange to say, he was fully alive--enhanced by the certainty that in those remote regions, where there were no royal forests, nor any territorial magnates who could in any way rival himself, his forest rights, of which every Norman was constitutionally jealous, were perfectly intangible and unassailable--which had so much attached Sir Yvo de Taillebois to his Cumbrian castle of High Furness, in preference to all his fair estates and castles in the softer and more cultivated portions of the realm.

Certain it is, that he did love it better than all his other lands united; and hither he resorted, whenever he could escape from the duties of camps and the restraint of courts, to live a life among his vassals, his feudal tenants, and his humbler villagers, more like that of an Oriental patriarch than of a Norman warrior, but for the feudal pomp which graced his castle halls, and swelled his mountain hunts into a mimicry of warfare.

At about ten miles distant across the lake, up toward the lower spurs of the north-eastern mountains, lies the small lake of Kentmere, the head-waters and almost the spring of the river Kent; which, flowing down southward through the vale of Kendal, falls into the western head of Morecambe Bay, having its embouchure guarded by the terrible sands of Lancaster, so fatal to foot-passengers, owing to the terrific influx of the entering tides.

Set like a gem of purest water in a rough frame of savage mountains, their lower sides mantled with rich deciduous woods, their purple heathery brows dotted with huge Scotch firs, single, or in romantic groups, their scalps bald and broken, of gray and schistous rock, Kentmere fills up the whole basin of the dell it occupies, with the exception of a verge of smooth, green meadow-land, never above a hundred or two of yards in width, margined with a silvery stripe of snow-white sand, and studded by a few noble oaks.

At the head of the lake, half encircled by the dancing brook which formed its only inlet, rose a soft swell of ground, smooth and round-headed, neither hill nor hillock; its southern face, toward the lake, cleared of wood, and covered with short, close greensward, its flanks and brow overgrown with luxuriant oak-wood of the second growth, interspersed with varnished hollies, silver-stemmed birches, and a score or two of gigantic fir-trees, overtopping the pale green foliage of the coppice, and contrasting its lightsome tints by their almost sable hue.

Behind this fairy knoll the hill rose in rifted perpendicular faces of rock, garlanded and crowned with hanging coppices, for two or three hundred feet in height; the nesting-place of noble falcons, peregrines, gosshawks, haggards of the rock, and of a single pair of golden eagles, the terror of the dale from time immemorial.

In all lake land, there is no lovelier spot than Kentmere. The deep meadows by its side in early spring are one glowing garden of many-colored crocuses, golden, white, purple lady-smocks, yellow king-cups, and all sweet and gay-garbed flowers that love the water-side; the rounded knoll and all the oak-wood sides are alive with saffron primroses, cowslips, and meadow-sweets; and the air is rife with the perfume of unnumbered violets, and vocal with the song of countless warblers.

And on the mid slope of that rounded, bosom-like swell of land, there stood, at the period of my tale, a low stone building of one story, long for its height, narrow, and massively built of blocks of the native gray stone of the hills, with a projecting roof of heavy flags, forming a porch over the door, and two chimneys, one at either end, of a form peculiar, to this day, to that district, each covered with a flat stone slab supported on four columns, to prevent the smoke from driving down into the chambers, under the influence of the whirling gusts from the mountain tops.

Glass windows were unknown in those days, save to the castellated mansions of the great, or the noble minsters and cathedrals of the great cities--the art having been first introduced, after the commencement of the dark ages, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, although it must have been well known and of common occurrence in England during its occupation by the Romans, who used glass for windows as well as implements so early as the time of Cicero, and who would seem to have brought its manufacture to a perfection unattainable by us moderns, since it is credibly asserted that they had the art to render it malleable. Horn and talc, or oiled parchment, were used by the middle classes, but this was a luxury confined to the dwellers in towns; and the square mullioned apertures, which here served for windows, were closed by day and in fine weather by slender lattices, and during storms or at night by wooden shutters. The want of these luxuries, however, being unknown, was unregarded; and the verdurer's house at Kentmere was regarded in those days as a fine specimen of rural architecture, and stood as high by comparison as many an esquire's hall of the present day.

For the rest, it was partly overrun with ivy and woodbine, and was overhung at the western end by a noble mountain-ash, from under the roots of which welled out a small crystal spring, and sheltered to the east by a group of picturesque Scotch firs. An out-building or two, a stone barn, a cow-house, and what, by the baying and din of hounds, was clearly a dog-kennel, stood a little way aloof, under the skirts of the coppice, and completed the appurtenances of what was then deemed a very perfect dwelling for a small rural proprietor, and would be held now a very tolerable mountain farm-house for a tenant cotter.

This was the new home of Kenric and Edith, now by the good offices of the old curate of Bowness made man and wife; and here, with the good old mother nodding and knitting by the hearth, and two stout boys, Kenric's varlets, to tend the hounds and hawks, and to do the offices of the small hill farm, they dwelt as happy as the day; he occupying the responsible position of head-forester of upper Kentdale, and warder of the cotters, shepherds, and verdurers, whose cottages were scattered in the woods and over the hill-sides, and both secure in the favor of their lovely lady, and proud of the confidence of their lord.