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Drays were conveying sawn timber from the banks of the broad stream which flowed by on one side a saw-mill, turned by its water, being already busily at work. A little way off, the tall trees were falling with loud crashes before the woodmen's axes, engaged in enlarging the borders of the settlement.
Thus did he speak and his words set them all weeping and mourning about the poor dumb dead, till rosy-fingered morn appeared. Then King Agamemnon sent men and mules from all parts of the camp, to bring wood, and Meriones, squire to Idomeneus, was in charge over them. They went out with woodmen's axes and strong ropes in their hands, and before them went the mules.
The only tools the settlers took were the two woodmen's axes, which they could use to cut a path through the thick forests, as also the instruments, the telescope and pocket-compass.
He spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand. As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the timber-dealer's troubles.
Two great roads have been cut through the forest, and sundry woodmen's paths penetrate it at different points. In the centre there is a little hamlet, of a few miserable huts, called Hohenlinden. In this forest, on the night of the 3d of December, 1800, Moreau, with sixty thousand men, encountered the Archduke John with seventy thousand Austrian troops.
There was no sound of the swineherds' horn, though the evening was coming on, and but for the frost it was time for their charges to be taken homeward, and the woodmen's axes were idle. Even the scream of some hawk high overhead had been welcome to me, and the harsh cry of a jay that I scared was like the voice of a friend. It was the fault of none but myself that I was lost.
Thus the adventures of Warbel, and his strange midnight visit to their bedchamber, had never been told to Sir Oliver or his wife. All they knew was that the man had taken refuge from the anger of the Lord of Mortimer in one of their woodmen's huts.
Then came the rough-and-ready sentence of the camp-followers. The prisoner was to be "dragged" the most humiliating punishment on the woodmen's code. Gillsey's tears of fright were of no avail. He was wrapped in a sort of winding-sheet of canvas, smeared from head to foot with grease to make him slip smoothly, and hitched by the fettered wrists to a pair of horses.
All at once he touched their tombs with a divining-rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts, some in woodmen's dresses, most in warriors' mail; queer archers leapt forth, with yew bows and quivers, and giants stalked shaking spears! The gray chronicler smiled, and taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland.
"Yes, but they would not suit our disguises. But when we get into the town I will buy two woodmen's axes and a couple of the long knives that all the peasants here carry. I fancy from what I heard when we were at Hall with Turenne that the country between Eichstadt and there is for the most part a great forest, and there are rough hills to pass before we get to Hall.
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