and exhibited all varieties of forest scenery; coppices with “Autumn’s fiery finger” on their tender leaves; still, shining pools, where water-fowl bred and dwelt; broad pathways, across which the fallow deer could bound at leisure; or one would leap in haste, and half a hundred follow in groundless panic.  The wealth of animal life in that green solitude, where the voice of man was hardly ever heard, was prodigious; the rarest birds were common there; even those who had their habitations by the sea were sometimes lured to this as silent spot, and skimmed above its undulating dells as o’er the billow.  The eagle and the osprey had been caught there; and, indeed, a specimen of each was caged in a sort of aviary, which Grange had had constructed at the back of the lodge; while Yorke’s sitting-room was literally stuffed full of these strange feathered visitants, which had fallen victims to the keeper’s gun.  The horse-hair sofa had a noble cover of deer-skin; the foot-stool and the fire-rug were made of furs, or skins that would have fetched their price elsewhere, and been held rare, although once worn by British beast or “varmint.”  The walls were stuck with antlers, and the very handle of the bell-rope was the fore-foot of a stag.  Each of these had its story; and nothing pleased the old man better than to have a listener to his long-winded tales of how and where and when the thing was slain.  All persons whose lives are passed in the open air, and in comparative solitude, seem in this respect to be descendants of Dame Quickly; their wearisome digressions and unnecessary preciseness as to date and place try the patience of all other kinds of men, and this was the chief cross which Grange’s lodger had to bear as an offset to the excellence of his quarters.  It must be confessed that he did not bear it meekly.  To stop old Walter in mid-talk—­without an open quarrel—­was an absolute impossibility; but his young companion would turn the stream of his discourse, without much ceremony, from the records of slaughter into another channel (almost as natural to it)—­the characteristics and peculiarities of his master Carew.  Of this subject, notwithstanding that that other made him fret and fume so, Yorke never seemed to tire.

“I should like to know your master,” he had said, half musingly, after listening to one of these strange recitals, soon after his arrival; to which Grange had answered, laughing:  “Well, Squire’s a very easy one to know.  He picks up friends by every road-side, without much troubling himself as to who they are, I promise you.”

The young man’s face grew dark with anger; but the idea of self-respect, far less of pride, was necessarily strange to a servant of Carew’s.  So Grange went on, unconscious of offense:  “Now, if you were a young woman,” he chuckled, “and as good-looking as you are as a lad, there would be none more welcome than yourself up at the big house.  Pretty gals, bless ye, need no introduction yonder; and yet one would have thought that Squire would know better than to meddle with the mischievous hussies—­he took his lesson early enough, at all events.  Why, he married before he was your age, and not half so much of a man to look at, neither.  You have heard talk of that, I dare say, however, in London?”