[Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley]@TWC D-Link bookWestward Ho! CHAPTER XIV 17/37
Tie this gentleman's hands behind his back, get the horses out, and we'll right away up into Dartmoor, find a good high tor, stand our ground there till morning, and then carry him into Okehampton to the nearest justice.
If he chooses to delay me in my journey, it is fair that I should make him pay for it." Whereon Parsons gave in, and being fast tied by his arm to Amyas's saddle, trudged alongside his horse for several weary miles, while Yeo walked by his side, like a friar by a condemned criminal; and in order to keep up his spirits, told him the woful end of Nicholas Saunders the Legate, and how he was found starved to death in a bog. "And if you wish, sir, to follow in his blessed steps, which I heartily hope you will do, you have only to go over that big cow-backed hill there on your right hand, and down again the other side to Crawmere pool, and there you'll find as pretty a bog to die in as ever Jesuit needed; and your ghost may sit there on a grass tummock, and tell your beads without any one asking for you till the day of judgment; and much good may it do you!" At which imagination Yeo was actually heard, for the first and last time in this history, to laugh most heartily. His ho-ho's had scarcely died away when they saw shining under the moon the old tower of Lydford castle. "Cast the fellow off now," said Amyas. "Ay, ay, sir!" and Yeo and Simon Evans stopped behind, and did not come up for ten minutes after. "What have you been about so long ?" "Why, sir," said Evans, "you see the man had a very fair pair of hose on, and a bran-new kersey doublet, very warm-lined; and so, thinking it a pity good clothes should be wasted on such noxious trade, we've just brought them along with us." "Spoiling the Egyptians," said Yeo as comment. "And what have you done with the man ?" "Hove him over the bank, sir; he pitched into a big furze-bush, and for aught I know, there he'll bide." "You rascal, have you killed him? "Never fear, sir," said Yeo, in his cool fashion.
"A Jesuit has as many lives as a cat, and, I believe, rides broomsticks post, like a witch.
He would be at Lydford now before us, if his master Satan had any business for him there." Leaving on their left Lydford and its ill-omened castle (which, a century after, was one of the principal scenes of Judge Jeffreys's cruelty), Amyas and his party trudged on through the mire toward Okehampton till sunrise; and ere the vapors had lifted from the mountain tops, they were descending the long slopes from Sourton down, while Yestor and Amicombe slept steep and black beneath their misty pall; and roaring far below unseen, "Ockment leapt from crag and cloud Down her cataracts, laughing loud." The voice of the stream recalled these words to Amyas's mind.
The nymph of Torridge had spoken them upon the day of his triumph.
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