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Leaning against a tree, Martin mopped the sweat from his brow. "Had I but a sword," he cried, "I'd ha' given them theme for
thought, the scurvy knaves!"
"It seems thy brother, of whom we were to have got so much, bears thee little love." And Phil smiled.
For this Martin returned him an oath, and sat upon a stone.
On the left lay the village whence they had come, and, though the sun was not yet up, the spire of the church and the thatched
roofs of the cottages were very clearly to be seen in the pure morning air. Smoke was rising from chimneys and small sounds
of awakening life came out to the vagabonds on the lonely road, as from the woods at their back came the shrill, loud laugh of
the yaffle, and from the marsh before them, the croaking of many frogs.
Martin's shifty eyes ranged from the cows standing about the straw rack in a distant barton in the east to a great wooded park
on a hill in the west. "I will not go hungry," he cried with an oath, "because it is his humour to deny me. We shall see what
we shall see."
He rose and turned west and with Phil at his heels he came presently to the great park they had seen from a distance.
"We shall see what we shall see."
With that he left the road and following a copse beside a meadow entered the wood, where the two buried themselves deep in
the shade of the great trees. The sun was up now and the birds were fluttering and clamouring high overhead, but to the
motion and clamour of small birds they gave no heed. From his pocket Martin drew a bit of strong thread, then, looking
about, he wagged his head and pushed through the undergrowth. "Hare or pheasant, I care not which. Here we shall spread
our net -- here -- and here." Whereupon he pulled down a twig and knotted the thread and formed a noose with his fingers.
"Here puss shall run," he continued, "and here, God willing, we shall eat."
Having thus set his snare, he left it, and sulkily, for the sun was getting up in the sky and they had come far without breaking
their fast. So Phil followed him and they lay on a bank, with an open vale before them where yellow daffodils were in full
bloom, and nursed their hunger.
After a while Martin slipped away deftly but returned with a face darker than he took, and though he went three times to the
snare and scarcely stirred a leaf-- which spoke more of experience in such lawless sports than some books might have told --
each time his face, when he returned, was longer than before.
"A man must eat," he said at last, "and here in his own bailiwick and warren will I eat to spite him. Yea, and leave guts and
fur to puzzle him. But there's another way, quicker and surer, though not so safe."
So they went together over a hill and down a grade to a meadow.
"Do thou," he whispered, "lie here in wait." With a club in his hand and a few stones in his pocket he circled through the
thicket, and having in his manner of knowing his business and of commanding the hunt, resumed his old bravado, he now
made a great show of courage and resourcefulness; but Phil, having flung himself down at full length by the meadow, smiled
to hear him puffing through the wood.
Off in the wood wings fluttered and Martin murmured under his breath. Presently a stone rapped against a tree- trunk and
again there was the sound of wings.
Then the lad by the meadow heard a stone rip through the leaves and strike with a soft thud, whereupon some- thing fell
heavily and thrashed about in the undergrowth, and Martin cried out joyously.
He had no more than appeared, holding high a fine cock-pheasant, with the cry, "Here's meat that will eat well," when there
was a great noise of heavy feet in the copse behind him, and whirling about in exceeding haste, he flung the pheasant full in
the face of the keeper and bolted like a startled filly. Thereupon scrambling to his feet, Phil must needs burst out laughing at
the wild look of terror Martin wore, though the keeper was even then upon him and though he himself was of no mind to run.
He lightly stepped aside as the keeper rushed at him, and darting back to where Martin had dropped his cudgel, snatched it up
and turned, cudgel in hand. He was aware of a flash of colour in the wood, and the sound of voices, but he had no leisure to
look ere the keeper was again at him, when for the first time he saw that the keeper was the selfsame red-faced countryman
who had brought the gun to Moll Stevens's alehouse by the Thames -- that it was Jamie Barwick.
Now the keeper Barwick was at the same moment aware of something familiar about his antagonist, but not until he was at
him a second time in full tilt did he recollect where and when he had last seen him. He then stopped short, so great was his
amazement, but resumed his attack with redoubled fury. His stick crashed against the cudgel and broke, and ducking a smart
rap he dived at Phil's knees.
To this, Phil made effective reply by dropping the cudgel and dodging past the keeper to catch him round the waist from
behind (for his arms, exceeding long though they were, were just long enough to encompass comfortably the man's great
belly), and the lad's iron clutch about the fellow's middle sorely distressed him. As they swayed back and forth the keeper
suddenly seized Phil's head over his own shoulder and rose and bent forward, lifting Phil from the ground bodily; then he
flung himself upon his back and might have killed the lad by the fall, had Phil not barely wriggled from under him.
Both were on their feet in haste, but though the keeper was breathing the harder, Philip Marsham, having come far without
food, was the weaker, and as Barwick charged again, Phil laid hands on his dirk, but thought better of it. Then Barwick struck
from the shoulder and Phil, seizing his wrist, lightly turned and crouched and drew the man just beyond his balance so that
his own great weight pitched him over the lad's head. It is a deft throw and gives a heavy fall, but Phil had not the strength to
rise at the moment of pitching his antagonist--which will send a man flying twice his length--so Barwick, instead of taking
such a rumble as breaks bones, landed on his face and scraped his nose on the ground.
He rose with blood and mud smearing his face and with his drawn knife in his hand; and Philip Marsham, his eyes showing
like black coals set in his stark white face, yielded not a step, but snatched out his dirk to give as good as he got.
Then, as they shifted ground and fenced for an opening, a booming
"Holla! Holla!" came down to them.
They stopped and looked toward the source of the summons, but Phil, a shade the slower to return to his antagonist, saw out
of the corner of his eye that Barwick was coming at him. He leaped back and with his arm knocked aside Barwick's blow.
"Holla, I say! Ha' done, ha' done! That, Barwick, was a foul trick. Another like that, and I ll turn you out."
A crestfallen man was Barwick then, who made out to stammer, "Yea, Sir John--yea, Sir John, but a poacher -- 'e's a poacher,
Sir John, and a poacher --"
"A foul trick is a foul trick." The speaker wore a scarlet cloak overlaid with silver lace, and his iron-grey hair crept in curls
from under a broad hat. His face, when he looked at Barwick, was such that Barwick stepped quietly back and held his
tongue. The man had Martin by the collar (his sleek impudence had melted into a vast melancholy), and there stood behind
them a little way up the bank, Phil now saw, a lady no older than Phil himself, who watched the group with calm, dark eyes
and stood above them all like a queen.
"Throw down those knives," the knight ordered, for it took no divining to perceive that here was Sir John Bristol in the flesh.
"Thrust them, points into the ground. Good! Now have on, and God speed the better man."
To Philip Marsham, who could have expected prison at the very least, this fair chance to fight his own battle came as a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]