Sweet Mace: A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times. Fenn George Manville

inexpressible sweetness, and it leads up to the grand chorus, the great song of praise from thousands of birds’ throats, beneath which seems to sigh like the murmur of the deepest pedal-pipes of an organ the low buzz of insect life, blending, supporting, and adding grandeur to that which is already great.

      It is the great spring chorus of the year, when every bird seems to sing his best, and vie with his fellow in the effort to produce the sweetest sounds. Once heard never forgotten, it is a something that the greatest traveller will tell you cannot be surpassed, while there are millions year by year, who from neglect or compulsion fail to hear, though the concert is free to every one who will trouble himself to get a place and fill his heart with joy that is without a care.

      When is this concert? Perhaps in April, perhaps in May. It is when the east wind ceases to dry, and the balmy south breathes sweetness over the awakened earth. It is indeed a “sensation” matchless in itself and particular to our land, though some such harmony must have greeted the senses of the first man when he opened his eyes to the flowers of the new-made earth, and drank in its sweets and joys.

      “My hands are hot,” said Gil Carr, the Adam of the little Eden of a wilderness, as he thought upon his Eve; and returning to the stream once more, he dipped the bunch of forget-me-nots beneath the gurgling current, afterwards wrapping the stems round with the broad leaf of a dock, and walked away trying to imitate the piping of the nightingale, and wondering how long it would be before the glow-worms would begin to light their lamps in the soft warm evenings; while he smiled as he thought of the signals they had made upon the sloping bank that stretched up to the hedge of hawthorn fronting Mace’s casement, where the pale white roses grew.

      How the King’s Messenger Sought Roehurst Pool in July, and what he saw

      “Sir Thomas, and if I did not feel bound to carry out my royal master’s commands, I’d go no further, but sit down here on this shady bank, and bask in the sunshine of your daughter’s eyes. Once more I say, is there any ending to this winding lane?”

      “Patience, Sir Mark; pray have patience,” said portly Sir Thomas Beckley, baronet and justice of the peace, as he took off his sugar-loaf hat with its plume of cock’s feathers, and wiped the great beads of perspiration from his pink brow. “Patience; and pray do not stuff my daughter’s head with courtly phrases, or you will make her vain.”

      “Patience? Why, Sir Thomas, it is for her sake I am speaking. This lane has gone up and down, and in and out, and backwards and forwards, till my heart aches more than my legs to see her pretty little feet getting wedged between stones, and her face flushed with toil.”

      “Well, yes,” said Sir Thomas, “the roads are rather bad down here in Sussex.”

      “Bad, man? Why, they are abominable. They are as if cursed by witches. In winter they must be sloughs and pits for unwary feet.”

      “This is but a by-road, Sir Mark,” said the baronet, pompously.

      “By-road, indeed! Mistress Anne, why did you not have the carriage?”

      “This lane was never meant for carriages, Sir Mark,” cried Sir Thomas, hastily. “The last time I had it brought down here, my two stout horses dragged the fore wheels from the body.”

      “The ruts are ready to drag my legs from my body, Sir Thomas; and, fiends and torture, what blocks! Why, what rock is that?”

      “Refuse or cinder from the iron forges, Sir Mark,” replied the baronet, with the air of a guide. “In this district, sir, the finest iron is found in abundance just below the surface.”

      “And you own a goodly portion of the land, Sir Thomas?” said Sir Mark, with an involuntary glance at the lady.

      “Well, yes,” replied the baronet with a round look of satisfaction; “I have a fair number of acres and some wide-spread forest land for timber and charcoal-burning should I care to smelt.”

      “Happy man,” said Sir Mark. “’Tis a pleasant life down here in these woods. But Mistress Anne, is it not dull in winter?”

      “Oh, yes, Sir Mark, so dull; and we are shut in at times for weeks.”

      “No wonder with such roads as these. Sir Thomas, have you no pity for your daughter’s state?”

      “The weather has come in hot,” said Sir Thomas, carefully taking off his plumed hat. “But we are just there now; shall we rest awhile?”

      “Ay, that we will. Mistress Anne, here is a fallen tree with waving bracken and the shining leaves of the beech to shelter you from the sun. There, am I right – is that oak – are those bracken fronds?”

      “Quite right,” said the lady addressed, as, either from the action of her heart or the warmth of the sun, she blushed deeply, the red glow spreading up to the deep auburn, fuzzy hair that gathered over her freckled forehead. Then carefully spreading her skirts she seated herself upon the fallen trunk of a huge oak that had been felled the previous winter, judging by the state of the chips that still lay around, the branches having been lopped, cut into short lengths, and piled into a long low stack.

      “Ah, that is restful,” said Sir Mark, smiling down at the lady, while the baronet glanced from one to the other, dabbed his face, and then pressed down the feather-stuffed breeches that puffed out his hips; also his best, put on in honour of his visitor from town, but evidently unpleasant wear in the hot and airless lane.

      “May I sit by thee, sweet – or at your feet?” whispered Sir Mark, with a glance at the angular oak-chips blackened by the action of the iron-impregnated water that sometimes rushed down the lane.

      For answer Mistress Anne uttered a shriek, rose quickly, and half threw herself in the young man’s arms.

      “A snake – a viper – an adder,” she cried, as, raising its head and uttering a low hiss, a reptile some two feet or so long glided from beneath the tree and disappeared amidst the rustling ferns.

      Sir Mark Leslie, a rather handsome, imperious-looking young man, with somewhat effeminate features, showily dressed in russet velvet, with a short stiff frill around his neck, started back a step, and clapping his hand on his sword half drew it from its sheath; but, as a hearty, hoarse roar of laughter fell upon his ear, he flushed angrily, and thrust it back to turn upon the man who had dared to laugh at him, while the reptile made its way into a shallow rabbit-burrow in the steep overhanging bank. For the rugged little path, ill-made with dark-hued, furnace-cinder, ran here deep down between two water-worn banks that looked as if the earth had cracked asunder, leaving twin sides mottled with rugged stone and yellow sandbeds, upon whose shelving slopes ferns and brambles luxuriated, and trees flourished with roots half-aerial, half-buried in the soil. The sea-breeze might be sweeping the hills above, but down here there would be hardly a breath of air, while Nature’s train held revel far and near. Freshly-turned sandy earth showed where the rabbits burrowed, high up in the soft bank the sandmartins had a colony, while night and morn the woodland was musical with the notes of blackbird and thrush, though the concert Gil Carr had listened to a month before was more subdued, and the nightingale kept his sweet lays till another year.

      Just beyond where the little party had halted, the high bank displayed another rift, through which a faint track ran at right angles to the one they had pursued, apparently deep through the overhanging wood, for the way was darkened by the trees to a dim green-hued twilight, dashed and splashed and streaked with silver sunshine, which played like dazzling cobwebs amidst the sprays and twigs of hazel, dogwood, and hornbeam, or lay in glittering patches upon the clover-leaved woodsorrel, which carpeted the soil with velvet-green.

      It was from the corner of the bank which formed this side-track that the hoarse laughter came, and, turning sharply, Sir Mark gazed fiercely upon a rugged-looking mahogany-faced man, who seemed to have faced storm and sunshine where these slaves of Nature work their worst. His scanty hair was grizzled, his beard rusty, half-grey, and unkempt; his hands were knotted and gnarled, and, saving his eyes, everything about him betokened wear and tear. They alone flashed, and brightly, from beneath his shaggy brows, as, leaning against the corner, he stood with crossed legs, one hand holding a little thick-stemmed, very small-bowled clay pipe, which he leisurely smoked, resting his elbow