BRAMBLETYE HOUSE. CHAPTER I. "Out of my door, you witch! you hag, you baggage! you polecat, you runnion!” SHAKSPEARE. It was on a dark and gusty night of autumn, during the latter years of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, that a black covered cart, drawn by two horses of the same sable hue, emerged from the umbrageous recesses of Ashdown forest, which, at that period, nearly extended to the northern extremity of Sussex. It was attended by two armed men, one of whom kept close to the horses' heads, while his companion, who was about a hundred paces in advance, and was provided with a dark lantern, occasionally directed its narrow stream of light upon the tufts of scattered trees and underwood into which the outskirts of the forest were broken up, earnestly fixed his eye upon them for a minute, and then exclaiming, "all safe!" instantly concealed his light and walked on, when the vehicle advanced to the position which he had quitted. From the darkness of its hue, and its rolling silently over the soft grass, it could neither be seen nor heard, unless by any person who should happen to be in its immediate course, a circumstance little likely in that unfrequented tract of country, and at the hour of midnight. Such, however, was the hazardous nature of their enterprise, that its conductors did not for a moment relax in their precautions, not only peering around them in all directions, as far as their timid light could steal into the darkness, but frequently stopping to listen. Nothing, however, was to be seen but the trunks of the trees, which, as they caught the faint glare of the lantern, seemed to be stepping forward out of the dense gloom that enshrouded them; and nothing was to be heard but the hoarse rustling of the wind, as it came by fits to agitate the boughs above them, and died away into a distant moaning as it swept the forest behind. Winning their way in this slow and suspicious manner, without a syllable being uttered except the occasional "all safe!" of the leader, they had reached the last glade that bordered upon the open country, when a low whistle was heard ahead of them, and the foremost of the two men halting, and brandishing the weapon with which he was provided, exclaimed in a loud whisper"Who's there?""A friend !" was the reply."What's the word ?" continued the first speak"Boscobel!" answered the second, and at the same moment a man disclosing himself from er. a clump of underwood, exclaimed,—“ You are late, Whittaker. I have been whistling a duet with the wind this half hour, when I might have heard the popping of corks, and have emptied a flagon or two of Gascoigne wine. Who is that with the cart-Nat. Culpepper?" "Ay, ay, Sir John; that 's Nat. Culpepper, sure enough, and a steady old file he is. You advance with the cart, Nat.; it's only Sir may John. And as to our being late, I am an old soldier, and after so many night alarms as we have had, while engaged in this ticklish service, you would hardly wish me to hurry forward, when it was your own orders that I should be careful in acting the scout." 66 Right, old Truepenny!" cried Sir John; "don't I know you for a sly fox in an ambush, and a fearless dasher in an onset? But you have had no alarms to-night, my doughty serjeant; the black ghost has not again crossed |