With this apostrophe, we took a last look at the glinting gables and sparkling spires of Stratford, disappearing over the hill, our steps and faces turned to London town, that seething whirlpool of human woe and pleasure.
The air was cold and the country roads were rutty and muddy, but the autumn landscape was beautiful, in its gray and purple garb, while the notes of flitting wild birds chirped and sang from bush, hedge, field and forest, in a mournful monotone to the fading glory of the year.
The various birds chattered in clumps along the highway, and then would rise over our heads in flitting flocks, steering their course to the south and seemingly accompanying us on our wandering way to the great metropolis.
In our zigzag course we passed through the towns of Ettington, Oxhill, Wroxton, Woodstock, Eversham and Oxford.
It was near sunset when the lofty towers and steeples of ancient Oxford, the great site of classic lore, met our view. In our haste to enter the city before dark, we jumped a hedge fence, and stone wall, making a short cross-cut over the lordly domain of the Earl of Norfolk, and just as we were again emerging into the great road, a gamekeeper was seen approaching with a huge mastiff, who rushed upon us like a lion.
We were near a rough wall, and it appeared to both of us that unless we stood for immediate fight the dog would tear us to pieces.
The gamekeeper urged the dog in his barking, mad career, but just as he made a grand leap at William's throat, his blackthorn cudgel came down with a whirl and broke the forelegs of the mastiff, sending him to earth with a growl and roar that could be heard over the castle walls that loomed up in the evening gray. The gamekeeper aimed a blunderbuss at the Bard, but ere he could fire the deadly weapon, I jumped on the petty tyrant whelp, and cudgeled his face into a macerated beefsteak.
We then leaped the garden wall and rushed into the city crowd where the curtains of night screened us from dogs and licentious lords.
We found our way to the Crown Tavern, kept by Richard Devanant and his buxom black-eyed wife.
The old Boniface was jolly, but was in his physical and spiritual dotage, yet "Nell," his second wife, was the life of the place, being immensely popular with the Oxford students, who circled about the "Crown" in midnight hours, with hilarious independence, that defied the raids of beadles, watchmen and armed constabulary.