Ch. 9: Master John Horseleigh, Knight - Page 2

Roger's face grew dark. He was a man with a considerable reserve of
strong passion, and he asked his informant what he meant by speaking
thus.

The man explained that shortly after the young woman's bereavement a
stranger had come to the port. He had seen her moping on the quay, had
been attracted by her youth and loneliness, and in an extraordinarily
brief wooing had completely fascinated her--had carried her off, and, as
was reported, had married her. Though he had come by water, he was
supposed to live no very great distance off by land. They were last
heard of at Oozewood, in Upper Wessex, at the house of one Wall, a timber-
merchant, where, he believed, she still had a lodging, though her
husband, if he were lawfully that much, was but an occasional visitor to
the place.

'The stranger?' asked Roger. 'Did you see him? What manner of man was
he?'

'I liked him not,' said the other. 'He seemed of that kind that hath
something to conceal, and as he walked with her he ever and anon turned
his head and gazed behind him, as if he much feared an unwelcome pursuer.
But, faith,' continued he, 'it may have been the man's anxiety only. Yet
did I not like him.'

'Was he older than my sister?' Roger asked.

'Ay--much older; from a dozen to a score of years older. A man of some
position, maybe, playing an amorous game for the pleasure of the hour.
Who knoweth but that he have a wife already? Many have done the thing
hereabouts of late.'

Having paid a visit to the graves of his relatives, the sailor next day
went along the straight road which, then a lane, now a highway, conducted
to the curious little inland town named by the Havenpool man. It is
unnecessary to describe Oozewood on the South-Avon. It has a railway at
the present day; but thirty years of steam traffic past its precincts
have hardly modified its original features. Surrounded by a sort of
fresh-water lagoon, dividing it from meadows and coppice, its ancient
thatch and timber houses have barely made way even in the front street
for the ubiquitous modern brick and slate. It neither increases nor
diminishes in size; it is difficult to say what the inhabitants find to
do, for, though trades in woodware are still carried on, there cannot be
enough of this class of work nowadays to maintain all the householders,
the forests around having been so greatly thinned and curtailed. At the
time of this tradition the forests were dense, artificers in wood
abounded, and the timber trade was brisk. Every house in the town,
without exception, was of oak framework, filled in with plaster, and
covered with thatch, the chimney being the only brick portion of the
structure. Inquiry soon brought Roger the sailor to the door of Wall,
the