"Pauca verba, my son!" said Campian: but as he spoke, up from the ditch close beside him, as if rising out of the earth, burst through the furze bushes an armed cavalier.
"Pardon, gentlemen!" shouted he, as the Jesuit and his horse recoiled against the groom. "Stand for your lives!"
"Mater cœlorum!" moaned Campian: while Parsons, who, as all the world knows, was a blustering bully enough (at least with his tongue), asked: "What a murrain right had he to stop honest folks on the queen's highway?" confirming the same with a mighty oath, which he set down as peccatum veniale, on account of the sudden necessity; nay, indeed fraus pia, as proper to support the character of that valiant gentlemen of Wales, Mr. Evan Morgans. But the horseman, taking no notice of his hint, dashed across the nose of Eustace Leigh's horse, with a "Hillo, old lad! where ridest so early?" and peering down for a moment into the ruts of the narrow track-way, struck spurs into his horse, shouting, "A fresh slot! right away for Hartland! Forward, gentlemen all! follow, follow, follow!"
"Who is this roysterer?" asked Parsons, loftily.
"Will Cary, of Clovelly; an awful heretic: and here come more behind."
And as he spoke four or five more mounted gallants plunged in and out of the great dikes, and thundered on behind the party; whose horses, quite understanding what game was up, burst into full gallop, neighing and squealing; and in another minute the hapless Jesuits were whirling along over moor and moss after a "hart of grease."
Parsons, who, though a vulgar bully, was no coward, supported the character of Mr. Evan Morgans well enough; and he would have really enjoyed himself, had he not been in agonies of fear lest those precious saddle-bags in front of him should break from their lashings, and rolling to the earth, expose to the hoofs of heretic horses, perhaps to the gaze of heretic eyes, such a cargo of bulls, dispensations, secret correspondences, seditious tracts, and so forth, that at the very thought of their being seen, his head felt loose upon his shoulders. But the future martyr behind him, Mr. Morgan Evans, gave himself up at once to abject despair, and as he bumped and rolled along, sought vainly for comfort in professional ejaculations in the Latin tongue.
"Mater intemerata! Eripe me e—Ugh! I am down! Adhæsit pavimento venter!—No! I am not! Et dilectum tuum e potestate canis—Ah! Audisti me inter cornua unicornium! Put this, too, down in—ugh!—thy account in favor of my poor—oh, sharpness of this saddle! Oh whither, barbarous islanders!"
Now riding on his quarter, not in the rough track-way like a cockney, but through the soft heather like a sportsman, was a very gallant knight whom we all know well by this time, Richard Grenvile by name; who had made Mr. Cary and the rest his guests the night before, and then ridden out with them at five o'clock that morning, after the wholesome early ways of the time, to rouse a
