The summer passed away, and the bleak fall came. Myles had longsince accepted his position as one set apart from the others ofhis kind, and had resigned himself to the evident fact that hewas never to serve in the household in waiting upon the Earl. Icannot say that it never troubled him, but in time there came acompensation of which I shall have presently to speak.
And then he had so much the more time to himself. The other ladswere sometimes occupied by their household duties when sportswere afoot in which they would liked to have taken part. Myleswas always free to enter into any matter of the kind after hisdaily exercise had been performed at the pels, the butts, or thetilting-court.
But even though he was never called to do service in "my Lord'shouse," he was not long in gaining a sort of second-handknowledge of all the family. My Lady, a thin, sallow, faded dame,not yet past middle age, but looking ten years older. The LadyAnne, the daughter of the house; a tall, thin, dark-eyed,dark-haired, handsome young dame of twenty or twenty-one years ofage, hawk-nosed like her father, and silent, proud, and haughty,Myles heard the squires say. Lady Alice, the Earl of Mackworth'sniece and ward, a great heiress in her own right, a strikinglypretty black-eyed girl of fourteen or fifteen.
These composed the Earl's personal family; but besides them wasLord George Beaumont, his Earl's brother, and him Myles soon cameto know better than any of the chief people of the castleexcepting Sir James Lee.
For since Myles's great battle in the armory, Lord George hadtaken a laughing sort of liking to the lad, encouraging him attimes to talk of his adventures, and of his hopes andaspirations.
Perhaps the Earl's younger brother--who was himself somewhat asoldier of fortune, having fought in Spain, France, andGermany--felt a certain kinship in spirit with the adventurousyoungster who had his unfriended way to make in the world.
However that might have been, Lord George was very kind andfriendly to the lad, and the willing service that Myles renderedhim reconciled him not a little to the Earl's obvious neglect.
Besides these of the more immediate family of the Earl were anumber of knights, ladies, and gentlemen, some of them cadets,some of them retainers, of the house of Beaumont, for theprincely nobles of those days lived in state little less royalthan royalty itself.
Most of the knights and gentlemen Myles soon came to know bysight, meeting them in Lord George's apartments in the south wingof the great house, and some of them, following the lead of LordGeorge, singled him out for friendly notice, giving him a nod ora word in passing.
Every season has its pleasures for boys, and the constant changethat they bring is one of the greatest delights of boyhood'sdays.
All of us, as we grow older, have in our memory pictures ofby-gone times that are somehow more than usually vivid, thecolors of some not blurring by time as others do. One of which,in remembering, always filled Myles's heart in after-years withan indefinable pleasure, was the recollection of standing withothers of his fellow squires in the crisp brown autumn grass ofthe paddock, and shooting with the long-bow at wildfowl, which,when the east wind was straining, flew low overhead to pitch tothe lake in the forbidden precincts of the deer park beyond thebrow of the hill. More than once a brace or two of thesewildfowl, shot in their southward flight by the lads and cookedby fat, good-natured Mother Joan, graced the rude mess-table ofthe squires in the long hall, and even the toughest and fishiestdrake, so the fruit of their skill, had a savor that, somehow orother, the daintiest fare lacked in after-years.
Then fall passed and winter came, bleak, cold, and dreary--notwinter as we know it nowadays, with warm fires and bright lightsto make the long nights sweet and cheerful with comfort, butwinter with all its grimness and sternness. In the great coldstone-walled castles of those days the only fire and almost theonly light were those from the huge blazing logs that roared andcrackled in the great open stone fireplace, around which thefolks gathered, sheltering their faces as best they could fromthe scorching heat, and cloaking their shoulders from the bitingcold, for at the farther end of the room, where giant shadowsswayed and bowed and danced huge and black against the highwalls, the white frost glistened in the moonlight on the stonepavements, and the breath went up like smoke.
In those days were no books to read, but at the best only rudestories and jests, recited by some strolling mummer or minstrelto the listening circle, gathered around the blaze and welcomingthe coarse, gross jests, and coarser, grosser songs with roars ofboisterous laughter.
Yet bleak and dreary as was the winter in those days, and coldand biting as was the frost in the cheerless, windy halls andcorridors of the castle, it was not without its joys to the younglads; for then, as now, boys could find pleasure even in slushyweather, when the sodden snow is fit for nothing but to makesnowballs of.
Thrice that bitter winter the moat was frozen over, and the lads,making themselves skates of marrow-bones, which they bought fromthe hall cook at a groat a pair, went skimming over the smoothsurface, red-checked and shouting, while the crows and thejackdaws looked down at them from the top of the bleak graywalls.
Then at Yule-tide, which was somewhat of a rude semblance to theMerry Christmas season of our day, a great feast was held in thehall, and all the castle folk were fed in the presence of theEarl and the Countess. Oxen and sheep were roasted whole; hugesuet puddings, made of barley meal sweetened with honey andstuffed with plums, were boiled in great caldrons in the opencourtyard; whole barrels of ale and malmsey were broached, andall the folk, gentle and simple, were bidden to the feast.
