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Updated: June 17, 2025
"Here's an old chum of mine alongside, Peter Purkiss; he'll take us ashore and will rig us in smock-frocks and gaiters, to look for all the world like countrymen. You slip first into his boat, and as soon as it's dark I'll follow; we'll then start away out of the town, and by the morning we shall be a long stretch off, my boy; no fear of being caught then."
Here and there they came on the furrows left by the snout of the wild swine, and in the open tracts rose the graceful heads of the deer, but of inhabitants or travellers they scarce saw any, save when they halted at the little hamlet of Minestead, where a small alehouse was kept by one Will Purkiss, who claimed descent from the charcoal-burner who had carried William Rufus's corpse to burial at Winchester the one fact in history known to all New Foresters, though perhaps Ambrose and John were the only persons beyond the walls of Beaulieu who did not suppose the affair to have taken place in the last generation.
I am helping you off, and I expect to be paid for what I'm doing, as well as for the clothes I got for you. A five-pound note will satisfy me, though it wouldn't if you were not a chum of my old shipmate Ben." Dick paid the money without hesitation, for he knew that old Purkiss might have fleeced him, had he been so disposed, of every sixpence in his pocket.
The poor gentleman positively became ill through the anxiety consequent upon his nephew's dissipations. "I wish, my dear Richard, that you would let me know what to do," he wrote. "I wish, my dear uncle, that you would do what you think best," was his nephew's reply. "Will you let Purkiss and Quaid look into the business?" said the badgered Francis. "I hate lawyers," said Richard.
Three days after the body of William Rufus had been brought from the forest to Winchester by Purkiss, the charcoal burner, Gerard, who was the Bishop of Winchester’s nephew, assisted at the coronation of Henry I., for which service it was said he was promised the first vacant archiepiscopal see.
No one cared for the corpse beneath the oak, and there it lay till evening, when one Purkiss, a charcoal-burner of the forest hamlet of Minestead, came by, lifted it up, and carried it on his rude cart, which dripped with the blood flowing from the wound, to Winchester.
"Pushed for money!" cried Mr. Wade, in horror. "Why, Purkiss said the property was worth twenty thousand a year." "So it might have been five years ago but my horse-racing, and betting, and other amusements, concerning which you need not too curiously inquire, have reduced its value considerably." He spoke recklessly and roughly. It was evident that success had but developed his ruffianism.
"Put on these duds, and keep close until I come back, when you and Ben may start together," said old Purkiss, as he left him to return to his boat. "Maybe he'll find it a harder matter to slip away than I did," said Dick to himself, "and if he doesn't come, I shall look foolish. Still, I have no fancy to go back and be bullied by that Lord Reginald and his toady Voules."
Dick waited some hours; at last old Purkiss came back. "Poor Ben's in for it," he said. "He was just slipping down the side when the master-at-arms laid hands on him, and I'm afraid he's in limbo and very little chance of getting out of it until the ship goes to sea.
Just say you've been down to see an old friend, Peter Purkiss, and that's true for the most part, and that you are going home again to your father and mother. Now, lad, it's time to be off. I'll put you in the way out of the town, and when once you are in the country strike away north-east.
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