nunnery, they dined pleasantly by the waterside at the sign of Bishop Blaise, patron of the woolcombers of the town, and halted long enough to refresh Ambrose, who was equal to very little fatigue. It amused Stephen to recollect how mighty a place he had once thought the little town.
Did mine host know Master Randall? What Master Randall of Baddesley? He should think so! Was not the good man or his good wife here every market-day, with a pleasant word for every one! Men said he had had some good office about the Court, as steward or the like-for he was plainly conversant with great men, though he made no boast. If these guests were kin of his, they were welcome for his sake.
So the brothers rode on amid the gorse and heather till they came to a broad-spreading oak tree, sheltering a farmhouse built in frames of heavy timber, filled up with bricks set in zigzag patterns, with a high- pitched roof and tall chimneys. Barns and stacks were near it, and fields reclaimed from the heath were waving with corn just tinged with the gold of harvest. Three or four cows, of the tawny hue that looked so home-like to the brothers, were being released from the stack-yard after being milked, and conducted to their field by a tall, white-haired man in a farmer's smock with a little child perched on his shoulder, who gave a loud jubilant cry at the sight of the riders. Stephen, pushing on, began the question whether Master Randall dwelt there, but it broke off half way into a cry of recognition on either side, Harry's an absolute shout. 'The lads, the lads! Wife, wife! 'tis our own lads!'
And as Perronel, more buxom and rosy than London had ever made her, came forth from her dairy, and there was a
'And by my troth, he needs good country diet and air!' cried Perronel. 'Thou hast had none to take care of thee, Ambrose. They have let thee pine and dwine over thy books. I must take thee in hand.'
''Tis what I brought him to thee for, good aunt,' said Stephen, smiling.
Great was the interchange of news over the homely hearty meal. It was plain that no one could be happier, or more prosperous in a humble way, than the ex-jester and his wife; and if anything could restore Ambrose it would surely be the homely plenty and motherly care he found there.
Stephen heard another tale of his half-brother. His wife had soon been disgusted by the loneliness of the verdurer's lodge, and was always finding excuses for going to Southampton, where she and her daughter had both caught the plague, imported in some Eastern merchandise, and had died. The only son had turned out wild and wicked, and had been killed in a broil which he had provoked: and John, a broken-down man, with no one to enjoy the wealth he had accumulated, had given up his office as verdurer, and retired to an estate which he had purchased on the skirts of the Forest.
Stephen rode thither to see him, and found him a dying man, tyrannised over and neglected by his servants, and having often bitterly regretted his hardness towards his young brothers. All that Stephen did for him he received as tokens of pardon, and it was not possible to leave him until, after a fortnight's watching, he died in his brother's arms. He had made no will, and Ambrose thus inherited a property which made his future maintenance no longer an anxiety to his brother.
He himself seemed to care very little for the matter. To be allowed to rest under Perronel's care, to read his Erasmus' Testament, and attend mass on Sundays at the little Norman church, seemed all that he wished. Stephen tried to persuade him that he was young enough at thirty-five to marry and begin life again on the fair woodland river-bordered estate that was his portion, but he shook his head. 'No, Stephen, my work is over. I could only help my dear master, and that is at an end. Dean Colet is gone, Sir Thomas is gone, what more have I to do here? Old ties are broken, old bonds severed. Crime and corruption were protested against in vain; and, now that judgment is beginning at the house of God, I am thankful that I am not like to live to see it.'
Perronel scolded and exhorted him, and told him he would be stronger when the hot weather was over, but Ambrose only smiled, and Stephen saw a change in him, even in this fortnight, which justified his forebodings.
Stephen and his uncle found a trustworthy bailiff to manage the estate, and Ambrose remained in the house where he could now be no burthen. Stephen was obliged to leave him and take home young Giles, who had, he found, become so completely a country lad, enjoying everything to the utmost, that he already declared that he would much rather be a yeoman and forester than an armourer, and that he did not want to be apprenticed to that black forge.
This again made Ambrose smile with pleasure as he thought of the boy as keeping up the name of Birkenholt in the Forest. The one wish he expressed was that Stephen would send down Tibble Steelman to be with him. For in truth they both felt that in London Tib might at any time be laid hands on, and suffer at Smithfield for his opinions. The hope of being a comfort to Ambrose was perhaps the only idea that could have counterbalanced the sense that he ought not to fly from martyrdom; and as it proved, the invitation came only just in time. Three days after Tibble had been despatched by the Southampton carrier in charge of all the comforts Dennet could put together, Bishop Stokesley's grim 'soumpnour' came to summon him to the Bishop's court, and there could be little question that he would have courted the faggot and stake. But as he was gone out of reach, no further inquiries were made after him.
Dennet had told her husband that she had been amazed to find how, in spite of a very warm affection for her, her husband, and children, her father hankered after the old name, and grieved that he could not fulfil his old engagement to his cousin Robert. Giles Headley had managed the business excellently during Stephen's absence, had shown himself very capable, and gained good opinions from all. Rubbing about in the world had been very good for him; and she verily believed that nothing would make her father so happy as for them to offer to share the business with Giles. She would on her part make Aldonza welcome, and had no fears of not agreeing with her. Besides-if little Giles were indeed to be heir to Testside was not the way made clear?
So thus it was. The alderman was very happy in the arrangement, and Giles Headley had not forfeited his rights to be a freeman of London or a member of the Armourers' Guild. He married Aldonza at Michaelmas, and all went well and peacefully in the household. Dennet never quitted her father while he lived; but Stephen struggled through winter roads and floods, and reached Baddesley in time to watch his brother depart in peace, his sorrow and indignation for his master healed by the sense of his martyrdom, and his trust firm and joyful. 'If this be, as it is, dying of grief,' said Hal Randall, 'surely it is a blessed way to die!'
A few winters later Stephen and Dennet left Giles Headley in sole possession of the Dragon, with their second son as an apprentice, while they themselves took up the old forest life as Master and Mistress Birkenholt of Testside, where they lived and died honoured and loved.
THE END.
