"Now what a poor fool is that!" soliloquized the young painter, contemptuously, as the door closed upon his late companion. "To think that I should risk my life against a poacher's on even terms! Of course, if they suffice, I shall only treat him to my knuckles; but if not--if he be a giant, or there be more than one of them--then here is a better ally than mere bone and sinew." Yorke took out of a drawer a life-preserver, made of lead and whalebone, struck with it once, to test its weight and elasticity, then slipped it into his shooting-jacket pocket. "That will enlarge their organs of locality," said he, grimly; "they will not forget the Decoy Pond in a hurry whose heads knock against this."
He made a better supper than was usual with him that night; filled his pocket-flask with brandy, and his pouch with tobacco; and then making sure that the whistle Grange had given him, and which he had hung round his neck, was within easy reach of his fingers, sallied out, well wrapped up as to his throat, and with his hands in his pockets. If Richard Yorke was doomed not to have life made easy for him, he made it as easy as he could. He never omitted a precaution, unless it gave him trouble to take it out of proportion to the advantage it conferred; he was never imprudent, unless the passion of the moment was too strong for him; but sometimes, unfortunately, his mere whims were in their intensity passions, and his passions, while they lasted, fits of madness. He was a landscape-painter, partly because he had some taste that way, but chiefly because he hated regular work of any sort. He had no real love for his art, and not the least touch of poetic feeling. He knew an oak from a beech-tree, and the sort of touch that should be used in delineating the foliage of each; a yellow primrose was to him a yellow primrose, and he could mix the colors deftly enough which made up its hue. His education had been by no means neglected, but it had been of a strange sort; every thing he had learned was, as it were, for immediate use, and of a superficial but attractive character. The advocates of a classical curriculum would have shaken their heads at what Richard Yorke did know, almost as severely as at his lack of knowledge. He had read a good deal of all kinds of literature, including much garbage; he could play a little on the piano, and speak French with an excellent accent. In a word, he had learned every thing that had pleased him, as well as a little Latin and some mathematics, which had not. He knew English history far better than most young Englishmen; but the sight of tomb or ruin had never made his heart pulse faster with an evoked idea by a single beat. Historical associations had no charm for him. This mighty oak, for example, under the shadow of which he now stands sentry, and which he had transferred so deftly to his portfolio, has no longer any interest for him. He has "done it," and its use and pleasure are therefore departed in his eyes. He knows quite well that though it is called the Squire's, in token, probably, of some wholesale slaughter of wild-ducks effected by Carew from its convenient cover, that this tree is hundreds of years old--the oldest in all the chase. He has read the "Talking Oak," for indeed he can quote Tennyson by the yard, and in dulcet voice; and it would have been natural enough, one would think, in such a time and place, that some thoughts of what this venerable monarch of the forest must have witnessed would perforce come into his mind. The same moonlight that now shines down between its knotted naked branches must have doubtless lit on many a pair of lovers, for it was ever a favorite place for tryst in by-gone years. The young monk, perhaps, may here (when Crompton was an abbey) have given double absolution, to himself and to the girl who confessed to him her love. Roundhead maiden and Cavalier gallant must many a time have forgotten their political differences beneath this oak, as yet a tree not sacred to royalty; nay, perhaps even those of. York and Lancaster may here have been compounded for, in one red rose of a blush. Bluff Harry had haply hunted beneath its once wide-spreading arms, and certainly the martyr king had done so, with a score of generations of men of all sorts, dead and gone, God alone knows whither. Though no more the bugle sounded, nor the twanging bow was heard, there was surely an echo of their far-away music in the young painter's ear! No, there was none.