CHAPTER L.

CHRISTMAS DAY.

In the midst of the festivities of Christmas, when the various out-door rustic frolics, such as breaking the stoutest stick, sliding the farthest on a piece of ice, snowballing, tracking the hider, and building up the snow man to be shot at, had passed away, and the song and the dance within the mansion were beginning to soften all hearts, a beggar was announced by the porter, as desirous of partaking of the crumbs of the lord's table.

'Make way for the traveller!' was the immediate order of De Freston; 'let the weary-footed man walk in. Go, several of you, and assist him hither. We shall enjoy ourselves the more, the more free the hospitality we offer.'

An old man, with grey, straight, silken locks, came in, supported by others, almost perished from cold; and with shivering limbs and weeping eyes, he was placed near the crackling fire. He sat down, or was rather assisted to be seated, when, opening his eyes, the first thing he fixed them upon was the now animated face of De Freston's bloodhound.

That animal had become on a sudden wide awake, and his full, piercing, lion-like eye, was no longer dull, heavy, and torpid. The dog's whole frame became animated, and he growled with a most discontented grumble at the attention shown to the beggar.

The man was, as most well-initiated beggars are, well versed in words, both of complaint, entreaty, thankfulness, and murmuring, and knew how to adapt his speech to the company he was in. The very instant, however, that he spoke in such a plaintive interceding way, Saracen, the bloodhound, gave such a deep-toned, dissatisfied bark, that, had a lion roared in the hall, the people could not have been more effectually startled.

It had the effect of turning all eyes upon the beggar, who assuredly was more disturbed at the confronting stare of the bloodhound, than at the scrutiny of any of the company before him. His was no dissembled terror at the dog, for he evidently betrayed such a fear of him, both in word and deed, that the Lord De Freston was compelled either to remove the beggar from the dog, or the dog from the beggar.

The latter appeared the most hospitable step, and the one most satisfactory to the beggar, who smiled when he saw his dreaded enemy led off to his kennel. That enemy, however, could not be taken away without giving such an indication of his displeasure as, but for the interference of De Freston, would probably have been of the most serious consequence; for, as the two keepers came to lead him away, before they had fairly secured them, he flew at the beggar, and rolled him off his seat in a moment, and then looked at his master as if for instructions to destroy him.

De Freston struck the dog, who gave such a piteous howl, as pierced the very extreme recesses of the castle, and so touched the heart of Ellen that she flew to soothe her favorite, and succeeded. She, in fact, led him away from the victim of his rage.

There were many in that hall who looked upon the circumstance as ominous of calamity, though the Lord De Freston, despising all such old wives' fables, was above any superstitions of the kind.

The fool, however, though not superstitious, saw something abhorrent in the beggar, and resolved to keep his eye upon him; for he said to himself: 'There are many strangers here to-night; why did not the bloodhound tackle them?'

But the festivities went on; the drum, and flute, and bagpipe did their parts, and groups of merry dancers whirled their partners through the strange hop of the age, much resembling the dance of sailors on board a man-of-war. The more stately set dance of the nobility was not imitated by the people, and in these Christmas frolics no mask was allowed.

As the dance went on, the old beggar revived from his warmth, and fixed his eyes upon Abdil Foley, and somehow contrived to let him see that he claimed his attention. He thought he was unobserved, but the watchful fool had kept him in his eye, and now felt convinced that there was more than one demon in the room. Abdil contrived gradually to draw up to the fire-place, and the beggar dropped his staff.

'Pick it up, young man,' said he; and as he gave it him he said--

'Father Duncan is here.'

The guilty Abdil looked at the beggar narrowly, and saw in a moment, beneath the disguise, the ever watchful priest of St. John the Baptist, Father Confessor to Alice De Clinton, and the craftiest Jesuit who ever set foot into the diocese of Norwich.

'Go and join in the dance, Abdil; shake off thy melancholy; I will set thee free.'

Abdil went; he suddenly shook off his melancholy--for he was bid to do so, and by a priest--so that he became, if not in reality, yet apparently, an altered man.

The fool observed it, and kept his watch the more closely upon him, as his altered behaviour seemed to him entirely owing to the beggar's speech.

Lord De Freston, in his attentions to his people, had for a time forgotten the attack upon the beggar by his bloodhound, and now, seeing the old man interested in the dance, he walked towards his seat, and entered into conversation with him.

'I hope thou hast recovered from the terror which my savage hound occasioned.'

'Thanks to thee, I feel myself better. He is a faithful dog.'

'He is, indeed; and singular in him, he never attempts to attack any one who is not a stranger--quite a stranger to this country. He has never smelt thy foot before.'

'I am a stranger from Lancashire, and poor enough; but I have a vow upon me to visit Latimer's Tower on the Christmas Day after Cardinal Wolsey's death.'

'Ha! how knewest thou that the Tower was ever Latimer's Tower.'

'That is easily explained. Though I am a beggar, a pilgrim, a wanderer from a far country, yet I was a monk at York, who had to do penance for my sin, and the penance laid upon me was that, from the moment that the death of Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York, should take place, be it whensoever it might, or I be wheresoever I might be, I should start barefoot for the birth-place of Wolsey, and there remain until Christmas Day next succeeding, and that upon that day I should visit a certain tower, designated, by the Cardinal himself, Latimer's Tower, and affix in the window of the fifth story this illuminated cross.

'That I was to ask permission of thyself so to do the one hour before midnight. I have scarcely had time to walk the distance, as you see me, noble lord; but humbly crave it, as the completion of my vow, to perform the task.'

'Folly though I think all such vows to be, both in those who exact and those who perform them, I cannot forget that the time was when I myself, like thee, thought it part of a good Catholic's devotion to impose such vain works of penance upon myself.

'I pity thee sincerely, stranger, but will aid thee effectually in thy task, though I wish most heartily that thou mayest be enlightened to see thine error.' The pilgrim crossed himself devoutly.