Chapter 20 - Page 2

underwood, bodily disappeared into
the earth.

The beech had, in some violent gale, been half-uprooted, and had
torn up a considerable stretch of turf and it was under this that
old Lawless had dug out his forest hiding-place. The roots served
him for rafters, the turf was his thatch; for walls and floor he
had his mother the earth. Rude as it was, the hearth in one
corner, blackened by fire, and the presence in another of a large
oaken chest well fortified with iron, showed it at one glance to be
the den of a man, and not the burrow of a digging beast.

Though the snow had drifted at the mouth and sifted in upon the
floor of this earth cavern, yet was the air much warmer than
without; and when Lawless had struck a spark, and the dry furze
bushes had begun to blaze and crackle on the hearth, the place
assumed, even to the eye, an air of comfort and of home.

With a sigh of great contentment, Lawless spread his broad hands
before the fire, and seemed to breathe the smoke.

"Here, then," he said, "is this old Lawless's rabbit-hole; pray
Heaven there come no terrier! Far I have rolled hither and
thither, and here and about, since that I was fourteen years of
mine age and first ran away from mine abbey, with the sacrist's
gold chain and a mass-book that I sold for four marks. I have been
in England and France and Burgundy, and in Spain, too, on a
pilgrimage for my poor soul; and upon the sea, which is no man's
country. But here is my place, Master Shelton. This is my native
land, this burrow in the earth! Come rain or wind - and whether
it's April, and the birds all sing, and the blossoms fall about my
bed - or whether it's winter, and I sit alone with my good gossip
the fire, and robin red breast twitters in the woods - here, is my
church and market, and my wife and child. It's here I come back
to, and it's here, so please the saints, that I would like to die."

"'Tis a warm corner, to be sure," replied Dick, "and a pleasant,
and a well hid."

"It had need to be," returned Lawless, "for an they found it,
Master Shelton, it would break my heart. But here," he added,
burrowing with his stout fingers in the sandy floor, "here is my
wine cellar; and ye shall have a flask of excellent strong stingo."

Sure enough, after but a little digging, he produced a big leathern
bottle of about a gallon, nearly three-parts full of a very heady
and sweet wine; and when they had drunk to each other comradely,
and the fire had been replenished and blazed up again, the pair lay
at full length, thawing and steaming, and divinely warm.

"Master Shelton," observed the outlaw, "y' 'ave had two mischances
this last while, and y' are like to lose the maid - do I take it
aright?"