Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 24

Oxford, July.

Dear George:--

We are all pleased with the trip you are making.

We have been to lots of curious places,--dust heaps of old kings and queens and _we have heard a lark sing_.

At Nottingham I bought a bow and arrows, and went hunting. Like you, I wanted to see the country.

I saw it.

They are very inquisitive people around Nottingham. They seem to want to know your business before you are introduced.

A little way out of the city I came to a fine old tract of country. A gate opened into some large, hilly fields, and there was a path through the fields that seemed to lead to the wood.

I opened the gate and was going towards the wood, when I heard a voice from the road,--

"Boy!"

I looked around, and made no answer.

"Where are yer going, _yer honor_?"

"I am going hunting," said I; and I walked on very fast.

I came to a wooded hill, and the scenery all around was delightful, just like a picture. Below the hill was a long pasture, and through it ran a stream of water overhung with old trees. Under the trees were some cattle.

I was going down towards the pasture when I heard a very distressing noise,--

O-o-o-o-o!

"This is an English landscape," said I to myself. "How much more lovely it is than castles, abbeys, and tombs!"

and I was trying to think of some poetry, such as Frank would have quoted, when I heard that alarming sound again,--

O-o-o-o-o!

I noticed that one of the fine animals had separated himself from the rest of the herd by the shady brook, and was coming out to meet me, looking very important.

Presently he put down his head, gave the earth a sc.r.a.pe with his foot, and then came jumping towards me, bounding and plunging over the hillocks, like a ship on a heavy sea.

I turned right around, just as I did when I saw the bear, and I remembered that Master Lewis might not like to have me venture too far in my first hunting expedition.

I ran! didn't I run? I soon heard the same deep sound again, "nearer, clearer, deadlier than before," as the reading book says.

I had almost regained the top of the hill, when the animal bellowed almost right behind me. There was a tree close by, and I went _up_. It was just as easy for me to climb it as though it had been a ladder.

The animal bounded up the hill, and stood under the tree, pawing the earth and making the same hollow noise.

I drew my bow, and let fly an arrow at him.

"Boy, come down!"

There was a thick, fat man, with a great stomach, coming up the hill. He appeared greatly excited, and quite out of breath. He presently arrived at the foot of the tree.

"Boy, bring me that bow and arrow."

I came down the tree more scared at the man than I was at the animal. I handed him the bow, and what do you think he did with it?

He gave me a dreadful cut across my back, and said,--

"Where'd yer come from? Take _that_ and That, and THAT, and don't yer ever trespa.s.s on my grounds again."

I promised him I never would.

I walked just as fast as I could towards the gate, and when I came to the road I was so fl.u.s.trated that I went the wrong way, and wandered about in the heat for hours before I could get rightly directed towards Nottingham.

I wish you were with us at Oxford; it seems to me the most beautiful place in all the world.

It was here we heard the skylark sing.

Tommy.

The next journey of the Club was indeed _en zigzag_.

"I have allowed you to visit," said Master Lewis to the boys, "the places to which your reading has led your curiosity, most of which places I have visited before. I now wish to take you to a ruin that I have never seen, and of which you may have never heard. It is the place where, according to tradition, Christianity was first established in Great Britain; where St. Patrick is said to have preached, and where he was buried. It is the place which poetry a.s.sociates with the mission and miracles of Joseph of Arimathaea; here his staff, in the shape of the white thorn, is said to blossom every Christmas."

"Glas...o...b..ry Abbey," said Ernest Wynn. "Of course there can be no truth in the tradition of Joseph of Arimathaea and the White Thorn?"

"The story of Joseph's mission to England, his burial here, and his blooming staff," said Master Lewis, "is undoubtedly a fiction, like the legend which claims that the stone in the old Scottish Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey is the one on which Jacob rested when he saw the vision of angels. But Glas...o...b..ry Abbey was possibly the first Church in England. Here were the monuments of King Arthur, King Edmund, and King Edgar; and even old King Coel, St. David, and St.

Dunstan are said to have been buried here."

"What! the St. Dunstan that the devil tried to tempt?" asked Tommy.

"The St. Dunstan that the devil did tempt, I fear," said Master Lewis.

"I would like to hear the story of his temptations," said Tommy, "as we are going to Glas...o...b..ry."

THE STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN'S TEMPTATION.

"St. Dunstan," said Master Lewis, "was Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey, and was a very ambitious man.

"He caused a cell to be made in which he could neither stand erect nor lie down with comfort. He retired to this cell and there spent his time in working as a smith, and--so the report went--in devotion.

"Then the people said, 'How humble and penitent Dunstan is! He has the back-ache all day, and the legs-ache all night, and he suffers all for the cause of purity and truth.'

"Then Dunstan told the people that the devil came to tempt him, which, with his aches for the good cause, made his situation very trying.

"The devil, he said, wanted him to lead a life of selfish gratification, but he would not be tempted to do a thing like that; he never thought of himself. O no, good soul, not he!