If he can see the ruin with
a good enough grace, who knows but he may fall in favour with my
lord; who knows but his son may become the last and least among the
servants at his lordship's kennel - one of the two poor varlets who
get no wages and sleep at night among the hounds?
For all that, the forest has been of use to Jacques, not only warming
him with fallen wood, but giving him shelter in days of sore trouble,
when my lord of the chateau, with all his troopers and trumpets, had
been beaten from field after field into some ultimate fastness, or
lay over-seas in an English prison. In these dark days, when the
watch on the church steeple saw the smoke of burning villages on the
sky-line, or a clump of spears and fluttering pensions drawing nigh
across the plain, these good folk gat them up, with all their
household gods, into the wood, whence, from some high spur, their
timid scouts might overlook the coming and going of the marauders,
and see the harvest ridden down, and church and cottage go up to
heaven all night in flame. It was but an unhomely refuge that the
woods afforded, where they must abide all change of weather and keep
house with wolves and vipers.
Pages:
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210