This is the place, the centre of the grove;

Here stands the oak, the monarch of the wood.

JOHN HOME.

The sun had risen on the broad boughs of the forest, but without the power of penetrating into its recesses, which hung rich with heavy dewdrops, and were beginning on some of the trees to exhibit the varied tints of autumn; it being the season when Nature, like a prodigal whose race is well-nigh run, seems desirous to make up in profuse gaiety and variety of colours, for the short space which her splendour has then to endure. The birds were silent — and even Robin-redbreast, whose chirruping song was heard among the bushes near the Lodge, emboldened by the largesses with which the good old knight always encouraged his familiarity, did not venture into the recesses of the wood, where he encountered the sparrow-hawk, and other enemies of a similar description, preferring the vicinity of the dwellings of man, from whom he, almost solely among the feathered tribes, seems to experience disinterested protection.

The scene was therefore at once lovely and silent, when the good Dr. Rochecliffe, wrapped in a scarlet roquelaure, which had seen service in its day, muffling his face more from habit than necessity, and supporting Alice on his arm, (she also defended by a cloak against the cold and damp of the autumn morning,) glided through the tangled and long grass of the darkest alleys, almost ankle-deep in dew, towards the place appointed for the intended duel. Both so eagerly maintained the consultation in which they were engaged, that they were alike insensible of the roughness and discomforts of the road, though often obliged to force their way through brushwood and coppice, which poured down on them all the liquid pearls with which they were loaded, till the mantles they were wrapped in hung lank by their sides, and clung to their shoulders heavily charged with moisture. They stopped when they had attained a station under the coppice, and shrouded by it, from which they could see all that passed on the little esplanade before the King’s Oak, whose broad and scathed form, contorted and shattered limbs, and frowning brows, made it appear like some ancient war-worn champion, well selected to be the umpire of a field of single combat.

The first person who appeared at the rendezvous was the gay cavalier Roger Wildrake. He also was wrapped in his cloak, but had discarded his puritanic beaver, and wore in its stead a Spanish hat, with a feather and gilt hatband, all of which had encountered bad weather and hard service; but to make amends for the appearance of poverty by the show of pretension, the castor was accurately adjusted after what was rather profanely called the d — me cut, used among the more desperate cavaliers. He advanced hastily, and exclaimed aloud —“First in the field after all, by Jove, though I bilked Everard in order to have my morning draught. — It has done me much good,” he added, smacking his lips. —“Well, I suppose I should search the ground ere my principal comes up, whose Presbyterian watch trudges as slow as his Presbyterian step.”

He took his rapier from under his cloak, and seemed about to search the thickets around.

“I will prevent him,” whispered the Doctor to Alice. “I will keep faith with you — you shall not come on the scene — nisi dignus vindice nodus — I’ll explain that another time. Vindex is feminine as well as masculine, so the quotation is defensible. — Keep you close.”

So saying, he stepped forward on the esplanade, and bowed to Wildrake.

“Master Louis Kerneguy,” said Wildrake, pulling off his hat; but instantly discovering his error, he added, “But no — I beg your pardon, sir — Fatter, shorter, older. — Mr. Kerneguy’s friend, I suppose, with whom I hope to have a turn by and by. — And why not now, sir, before our principals come up? Just a snack to stay the orifice of the stomach, till the dinner is served, sir? What say you?”

“To open the orifice of the stomach more likely, or to give it a new one,” said the Doctor.

“True, sir,” said Roger, who seemed now in his element; “you say well — that is as thereafter may be. — But come, sir, you wear your face muffled. I grant you, it is honest men’s fashion at this unhappy time; the more is the pity. But we do all above board — we have no traitors here. I’ll get into my gears first, to encourage you, and show you that you have to deal with a gentleman, who honours the King, and is a match fit to fight with any who follow him, as doubtless you do, sir, since you are the friend of Master Louis Kerneguy.”

All this while, Wildrake was busied undoing the clasps of his square-caped cloak.

“Off — off, ye lendings,” he said, “borrowings I should more properly call you —”

So saying, he threw the cloak from him, and appeared in cuerpo, in a most cavalier-like doublet, of greasy crimson satin, pinked and slashed with what had been once white tiffany; breeches of the same; and nether-stocks, or, as we now call them, stockings, darned in many places, and which, like those of Poins, had been once peach-coloured. A pair of pumps, ill calculated for a walk through the dew, and a broad shoulderbelt of tarnished embroidery, completed his equipment.

“Come, sir!” he exclaimed; “make haste, off with your slough — Here I stand tight and true — as loyal a lad as ever stuck rapier through a roundhead. — Come, sir, to your tools!” he continued; “we may have half-a-dozen thrusts before they come yet, and shame them for their tardiness. — Pshaw!” he exclaimed, in a most disappointed tone, when the Doctor, unfolding his cloak, showed his clerical dress; “Tush! it’s but the parson after all!”

Wildrake’s respect for the Church, however, and his desire to remove one who might possibly interrupt a scene to which he looked forward with peculiar satisfaction, induced him presently to assume another tone.

“I beg pardon,” he said, “my dear Doctor — I kiss the hem of your cassock — I do, by the thundering Jove — I beg your pardon again. — But I am happy I have met with you — They are raving for your presence at the Lodge — to marry, or christen, or bury, or confess, or something very urgent. — For Heaven’s sake, make haste!”

“At the Lodge?” said the Doctor; “why, I left the Lodge this instant — I was there later, I am sure, than you could be, who came the Woodstock road.”

“Well,” replied Wildrake, “it is at Woodstock they want you. — Rat it, did I say the Lodge? — No, no — Woodstock — Mine host cannot be hanged — his daughter married — his bastard christened, or his wife buried — without the assistance of a real clergyman — Your Holdenoughs won’t do for them. — He’s a true man mine host; so, as you value your function, make haste.”

“You will pardon me, Master Wildrake,” said the Doctor —“I wait for Master Louis Kerneguy.”

“The devil you do!” exclaimed Wildrake. “Why, I always knew the Scots could do nothing without their minister; but d — n it, I never thought they put them to this use neither. But I have known jolly customers in orders, who understood how to handle the sword as well as their prayer-book. You know the purpose of our meeting, Doctor. Do you come only as a ghostly comforter — or as a surgeon, perhaps — or do you ever take bilboa in hand? — Sa — sa!”

Here he made a fencing demonstration with his sheathed rapier.

“I have done so, sir, on necessary occasion,” said Dr. Rochecliffe.

“Good sir, let this stand for a necessary one,” said Wildrake. “You know my devotion for the Church. If a divine of your skill would do me the honour to exchange but three passes with me, I should think myself happy for ever.”

“Sir,” said Rochecliffe, smiling, “were there no other objection to what you propose, I have not the means — I have no weapon.”

“What? you want the de quoi? that is unlucky indeed. But you have a stout cane in your hand — what hinders our trying a pass (my rapier being sheathed of course) until our principals come up? My pumps are full of this frost-dew; and I shall be a toe or two out of pocket, if I am to stand still all the time they are stretching themselves; for, I fancy, Doctor, you are of my opinion, that the matter will not be a fight of cock-sparrows.”

“My business here is to make it, if possible, be no fight at all,” said the divine.

“Now, rat me, Doctor, but that is too spiteful,” said Wildrake; “and were it not for my respect for the Church, I could turn Presbyterian, to be revenged.”

“Stand back a little, if you please, sir,” said the Doctor; “do not press forward in that direction.”— For Wildrake, in the agitation of his movements, induced by his disappointment, approached the spot where Alice remained still concealed.

“And wherefore not, I pray you, Doctor?” said the cavalier.

But on advancing a step, he suddenly stopped short, and muttered to himself, with a round oath of astonishment, “A petticoat in the coppice, by all that is reverend, and at this hour in the morning — Whew — ew — ew!”— He gave vent to his surprise in a long low interjectional whistle; then turning to the Doctor, with his finger on the side of his nose, “You’re sly, Doctor, d — d sly! But why not give me a hint of your — your commodity there — your contraband goods? Gad, sir, I am not a man to expose the eccentricities of the Church.”

“Sir,” said Dr. Rochecliffe, “you are impertinent; and if time served, and it were worth my while, I would chastise you.”

And the Doctor, who had served long enough in the wars to have added some of the qualities of a captain of horse to those of a divine, actually raised his cane, to the infinite delight of the rake, whose respect for the Church was by no means able to subdue his love of mischief.

“Nay, Doctor,” said he, “if you wield your weapon broadsword-fashion, in that way, and raise it as high as your head, I shall be through you in a twinkling.” So saying, he made a pass with his sheathed rapier, not precisely at the Doctor’s person, but in that direction; when Rochecliffe, changing the direction of his cane from the broadsword guard to that of the rapier, made the cavalier’s sword spring ten yards out of his hand, with all the dexterity of my friend Francalanza. At this moment both the principal parties appeared on the field.

Everard exclaimed angrily to Wildrake, “Is this your friendship? In Heaven’s name, what make you in that fool’s jacket, and playing the pranks of a jack-pudding?” while his worthy second, somewhat crest-fallen, held down his head, like a boy caught in roguery, and went to pick up his weapon, stretching his head, as he passed, into the coppice, to obtain another glimpse, if possible, of the concealed object of his curiosity.

Charles in the meantime, still more surprised at what he beheld, called out on his part —“What! Doctor Rochecliffe become literally one of the church militant, and tilting with my friend cavalier Wildrake? May I use the freedom to ask him to withdraw, as Colonel Everard and I have some private business to settle?”

It was Dr. Rochecliffe’s cue, on this important occasion, to have armed himself with the authority of his sacred office, and used a tone of interference which might have overawed even a monarch, and made him feel that his monitor spoke by a warrant higher than his own. But the indiscreet latitude he had just given to his own passion, and the levity in which he had been detected, were very unfavourable to his assuming that superiority, to which so uncontrollable a spirit as that of Charles, wilful as a prince, and capricious as a wit, was at all likely to submit. The Doctor did, however, endeavour to rally his dignity, and replied, with the gravest, and at the same time the most respectful, tone he could assume, that he also had business of the most urgent nature, which prevented him from complying with Master Kerneguy’s wishes and leaving the spot.

“Excuse this untimely interruption,” said Charles, taking off his hat, and bowing to Colonel Everard, “which I will immediately put an end to.” Everard gravely returned his salute, and was silent.

“Are you mad, Doctor Rochecliffe?” said Charles —“or are you deaf? — or have you forgotten your mother-tongue? I desired you to leave this place.”

“I am not mad,” said the divine, rousing up his resolution, and regaining the natural firmness of his voice —“I would prevent others from being so; I am not deaf — I would pray others to hear the voice of reason and religion; I have not forgotten my mother-tongue — but I have come hither to speak the language of the Master of kings and princes.”

“To fence with broomsticks, I should rather suppose,” said the King — “Come, Doctor Rochecliffe, this sudden fit of assumed importance befits you as little as your late frolic. You are not, I apprehend, either a Catholic priest or a Scotch Mass-John to claim devoted obedience from your hearers, but a Church-of-England-man, subject to the rules of that Communion — and to its HEAD.” In speaking the last words, the King lowered his voice to a low and impressive whisper. Everard observing this drew back, the natural generosity of his temper directing him to avoid overhearing private discourse, in which the safety of the speakers might be deeply concerned. They continued, however, to observe great caution in their forms of expression.

“Master Kerneguy,” said the clergyman, “it is not I who assume authority or control over your wishes — God forbid; I do but tell you what reason, Scripture, religion, and morality, alike prescribe for your rule of conduct.”

“And I, Doctor,” said the King, smiling, and pointing to the unlucky cane, “will take your example rather than your precept. If a reverend clergyman will himself fight a bout at single-stick, what right can he have to interfere in gentlemen’s quarrels? — Come, sir, remove yourself, and do not let your present obstinacy cancel former obligations.”

“Bethink yourself,” said the divine — “I can say one word which will prevent all this.”

“Do it,” replied the King, “and in doing so belie the whole tenor and actions of an honourable life — abandon the principles of your Church, and become a perjured traitor and an apostate, to prevent another person from discharging his duty as a gentleman! This were indeed killing your friend to prevent the risk of his running himself into danger. Let the Passive Obedience, which is so often in your mouth, and no doubt in your head, put your feet for once into motion, and step aside for ten minutes. Within that space your assistance may be needed, either as body-curer or soul-curer.”

“Nay, then,” said Dr. Rochecliffe, “I have but one argument left.”

While this conversation was carried on apart, Everard had almost forcibly detained by his own side his follower, Wildrake, whose greater curiosity, and lesser delicacy, would otherwise have thrust him forward, to get, if possible, into the secret. But when he saw the Doctor turn into the coppice, he whispered eagerly to Everard —“A gold Carolus to a commonwealth farthing, the Doctor has not only come to preach a peace, but has brought the principal conditions along with him!”

Everard made no answer; he had already unsheathed his sword; and Charles hardly saw Rochecliffe’s back fairly turned, than he lost no time in following his example. But, ere they had done more than salute each other, with the usual courteous nourish of their weapons, Dr. Rochecliffe again stood between them, leading in his hand Alice Lee, her garments dank with dew, and her long hair heavy with moisture, and totally uncurled. Her face was extremely pale, but it was the paleness of desperate resolution, not of fear. There was a dead pause of astonishment — the combatants rested on their swords — and even the forwardness of Wildrake only vented itself in half-suppressed ejaculations, as, “Well done, Doctor — this beats the ‘parson among the pease’— No less than your patron’s daughter — And Mistress Alice, whom I thought a very snowdrop, turned out a dog-violet after all — a Lindabrides, by heavens, and altogether one of ourselves.”

Excepting these unheeded mutterings, Alice was the first to speak.

“Master Everard,” she said —“Master Kerneguy, you are surprised to see me here — Yet, why should I not tell the reason at once? Convinced that I am, however guiltlessly, the unhappy cause of your misunderstanding, I am too much interested to prevent fatal consequences to pause upon any step which may end it. — Master Kerneguy, have my wishes, my entreaties, my prayers — have your noble thoughts — the recollections of your own high duties, no weight with you in this matter? Let me entreat you to consult reason, religion, and common sense, and return your weapon.”

“I am obedient as an Eastern slave, madam,” answered Charles, sheathing his sword; “but I assure you, the matter about which you distress yourself is a mere trifle, which will be much better settled betwixt Colonel Everard and myself in five minutes, than with the assistance of the whole Convocation of the Church, with a female parliament to assist their reverend deliberations. — Mr. Everard, will you oblige me by walking a little farther? — We must change ground, it seems.”

“I am ready to attend you, sir,” said Everard, who had sheathed his sword so soon as his antagonist did so.

“I have then no interest with you, sir,” said Alice, continuing to address the King —“Do you not fear I should use the secret in my power to prevent this affair going to extremity? Think you this gentleman, who raises his hand against you, if he knew”—

“If he knew that I were Lord Wilmot, you would say? — Accident has given him proof to that effect, with which he is already satisfied, and I think you would find it difficult to induce him to embrace a different opinion.”

Alice paused, and looked on the King with great indignation, the following words dropping from her mouth by intervals, as if they burst forth one by one in spite of feelings that would have restrained them —“Cold — selfish — ungrateful — unkind! — Woe to the land which”— Here she paused with marked emphasis, then added —“which shall number thee, or such as thee, among her nobles and rulers!”

“Nay, fair Alice,” said Charles, whose good nature could not but feel the severity of this reproach, though too slightly to make all the desired impression, “You are too unjust to me — too partial to a happier man. Do not call me unkind; I am but here to answer Mr. Everard’s summons. I could neither decline attending, nor withdraw now I am here, without loss of honour; and my loss of honour would be a disgrace which must extend to many — I cannot fly from Mr. Everard — it would be too shameful. If he abides by his message, it must be decided as such affairs usually are. If he retreats or yields it up, I will, for your sake, wave punctilio. I will not even ask an apology for the trouble it has afforded me, but let all pass as if it were the consequence of some unhappy mistake, the grounds of which shall remain on my part unenquired into. — This I will do for your sake, and it is much for a man of honour to condescend so far — You know that the condescension from me in particular is great indeed. Then do not call me ungenerous, or ungrateful, or unkind, since I am ready to do all, which, as a man, I can do, and more perhaps than as a man of honour I ought to do.”

“Do you hear this, Markham Everard?” exclaimed Alice —“do you hear this? — The dreadful option is left entirely at your disposal. You were wont to be temperate in passion, religious, forgiving — will you, for a mere punctilio, drive on this private and unchristian broil to a murderous extremity? Believe me, if you now, contrary to all the better principles of yo............