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The world he had so recently left, with its busy nations and great enterprises, seemed very far away. Recollections occasionally obtruded recollections of marts and galleries and crowded thoroughfares, of evening dress and social functions, of good men and dear women he had known but they were dim memories of a life he had lived long centuries agone, on some other planet.
He then struck me in friendly fashion on the back, and cried "An unlucky day for thee, and for England. This very day, two years agone, that limb of the devil drove us by her sorceries from before Orleans. But to-morrow " and he laughed grossly in his beard. "Storey, you are a good fellow, though a fool at the dice." "Faith, I have met my master," I said.
Audrey of the garden had shining eyes, a wild elusive grace, laughter as silvery as that which had rung from her sister's lips, years agone, beneath the sugar-tree in the far-off blue mountains, quick gestures, quaint fancies which she feared not to speak out, the charm of mingled humility and spirit; enough, in short, to make Audrey of the garden a name to conjure with.
It came, a cabinet photo of a tall, slender, well-built young fellow with dark eyes and brows and thick, curving lashes and oval, attractive face, despite its boyishness, and nine men out of ten who saw and compared it with the face of the dead declared it looked as though it had been taken for the latter perhaps a year or so agone.
"Lord," said he, leaning him on his bow, "the attack doth languish, methinks, wherefore I do praise the good God, for had they won the town ah, when I do think on her she that is so pure and sweet and Ivo's base soldiery O sweet Jesu!" and Giles shivered. "Forsooth, thou didst see fair Belsaye sacked five years agone, Giles?" "Aye, God forgive me master, for I I O, God forgive me!"
Then quoth Robin, "How cometh it that I saw young David of Doncaster with thee and thy men, Sir Knight?" Then straightway the Knight told all about his stay at Denby and of the happening at the fair, and how it was like to go hard with young David; so he told his tale, and quoth he, "It was this, good Robin, that kept me so late on the way, otherwise I would have been here an hour agone."
"Were you shipwrecked?" "Nay, mate," said he "marooned." I had heard the word, and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender is put ashore with a little powder and shot, and left behind on some desolate and distant island. "Marooned three years agone," he continued, "and lived on goats since then, and berries, and oysters.
But forty years agone I do believe I must 'a heaved you out o' window." "Why, Colonel, why? Now be reasonable. Not a word have I said reflecting either upon you or your country; and a finer offer than I have made can not come to many of you, even in this land of gold.
The wild heath around is crisp with frost and white with snow, it appears a dense solitude; away to the east lies the town of Hamelsham, or Hailsham; to the west the downs about Lewes; to the south, at a short distance, one sees the lofty towers and monastic buildings of a new and thriving community, surrounded by a broad and deep moat; to the north copse wood, brake, heath, dell, and dense forest, in various combinations and endless variety, as far as the lodge of Cross in Hand, so called from the crusaders who took the sacred sign in their hands, and started for the earthly Jerusalem not so many years agone.
"She was main fond of you; never seemed the same after you went away to Australee. She died 'bout a year agone. 'Tis her pup." Stoner found it difficult to regret her decease; as a witness for identification she would have left something to be desired. "You'll go for a ride, Master Tom?" was the next startling proposition that came from the old man.