few silver coins yet remaining to him; and though he must have calculated that, after paying his bill, there could scarcely be three shillings left, he chucked two of them towards the Hag, who, clutching them with a profound curtsey, then handed them to the fallen monarch by her side, with a loyal tear and a quick sob that might have touched the most cynical republican.
In a few minutes more, Losely was again on horseback; and as he rode towards Ouzelford, Rugge and his dusty Faithful shambled on in the opposite direction--shambled on, footsore and limping, along the wide, waste, wintry thoroughfare--vanishing from the eye, as their fates henceforth from this story. There they go by the white hard milestone; farther on, by the trunk of the hedgerow-tree, which lies lopped and leafless--cumbering the wayside, till the time come to cast it off to the thronged, dull stackyard. Farther yet, where the ditch widens into yon stagnant pool, with the great dung-heap by its side. There the road turns aslant; the dung-heap hides them. Gone! and not a speck on the Immemorial, Universal Thoroughfare.
CHAPTER V.
NO WIND SO CUTTING AS THAT WHICH SETS IN THE QUARTER FROM WHICH THE SUN RISES.
The town to which I lend the disguising name of Ouzelford, which, in years bygone, was represented by Guy Darrell, and which, in years to come, may preserve in its municipal hall his effigies in canvas or stone, is one of the handsomest in England. As you approach its suburbs from the London Road, it rises clear and wide upon your eye, crowning the elevated table-land upon which it is built;--a noble range of prospect on either side, rich with hedgerows not yet sacrificed to the stern demands of modern agriculture--venerable woodlands, and the green pastures round many a rural thane's frank, hospitable hall;--no one Great House banishing from leagues of landscape the abodes of knight and squire, nor menacing, with "the legitimate influence of property," the votes of rebellious burghers. Everywhere, like finger-posts to heaven, you may perceive the church-towers of rural hamlets embosomed
