The thieves have bound the true men—   Now, could thou and I rob the thieves, and go
   merrily to London.
                    Henry IV., Part I.
The sun was high upon the of Enfield Chase, and the deer, with which it then , were seen sporting in groups among the ancient oaks of the forest, when a cavalier and a lady, on foot, although in riding apparel, sauntered slowly up one of the long which were cut through the park for the convenience of the hunters. Their only attendant was a page, who, riding a Spanish jennet, which seemed to bear a heavy cloak-bag, followed them at a respectful distance. The female, in all the fantastic finery of the period, with more than the usual quantity of , flounces, and trimmings, and holding her fan of feathers in one hand, and her riding-mask of black in the other, seemed anxious, by all the little coquetry practised on such occasions, to secure the notice of her companion, who sometimes heard her without seeming to attend to it, and at other times interrupted his train of graver reflections, to reply to her.
 
“, but, my lord—my lord, you walk so fast, you will leave me behind you.—Nay, I will have hold of your arm, but how to manage with my mask and my fan? Why would you not let me bring my waiting-gentlewoman to follow us, and hold my things? But see, I will put my fan in my girdle, soh!—and now that I have a hand to hold you with, you shall not run away from me.”
 
“Come on, then,” answered the , “and let us walk apace, since you would not be persuaded to stay with your gentlewoman, as you call her, and with the rest of the baggage.—You may perhaps see that, though, you will not like to see.”
 
She took hold of his arm accordingly; but as he continued to walk at the same pace, she shortly let go her hold, exclaiming that he had hurt her hand. The cavalier stopped, and looked at the pretty hand and arm which she showed him, with against his cruelty. “I dare say,” she said, baring her wrist and a part of her arm, “it is all black and blue to the very elbow.”
 
“I dare say you are a silly little fool,” said the cavalier, carelessly kissing the arm; “it is only a pretty which sets off the blue .”
 
“Nay, my lord, now it is you are silly,” answered the ; “but I am glad I can make you speak and laugh on any terms this morning. I am sure, if I did insist on following you into the forest, it was all for the sake of diverting you. I am better company than your page, I trow.—And now, tell me, these pretty things with horns, be they not deer?”
 
“Even such they be, Nelly,” answered her neglectful attendant.
 
“And what can the great folk do with so many of them, forsooth?”
 
“They send them to the city, Nell, where wise men make venison pasties of their flesh, and wear their horns for trophies,” answered Lord Dalgarno, whom our reader has already recognised.
 
“Nay, now you laugh at me, my lord,” answered his companion; “but I know all about venison, whatever you may think. I always tasted it once a year when we dined with Mr. Deputy,” she continued, sadly, as a sense of her stole across a mind bewildered with vanity and , “though he would not speak to me now, if we met together in the narrowest lane in the !”
 
“I warrant he would not,” said Lord Dalgarno, “because thou, Nell, wouldst dash him with a single look; for I trust thou hast more spirit than to throw away words on such a fellow as he?”
 
“Who, I!” said Dame Nelly. “Nay, I scorn the proud princox too much for that. Do you know, he made all the folk in the Ward stand cap in hand to him, my poor old John Christie and all?” Here her recollection began to at her eyes.
 
“A plague on your whimpering,” said Dalgarno, somewhat harshly,—“Nay, never look pale for the matter, Nell. I am not angry with you, you simple fool. But what would you have me think, when you are eternally looking back upon your yonder by the river, which of pitch and old cheese worse than a Welshman does of onions, and all this when I am taking you down to a castle as fine as is in Fairy Land!”
 
“Shall we be there to-night, my lord?” said Nelly, drying her tears.
 
“To-night, Nelly?—no, nor this night fortnight.”
 
“Now, the Lord be with us, and keep us!—But shall we not go by sea, my lord?—I thought everybody came from Scotland by sea. I am sure Lord Glenvarloch and Richie Moniplies came up by sea.”
 
“There is a wide difference between coming up and going down, Nelly,” answered Lord Dalgarno.
 
“And so there is, for certain,” said his simple companion. “But yet I think I heard people speaking of going down to Scotland by sea, as well as coming up. Are you well avised of the way?—Do you think it possible we can go by land, my sweet lord?”
 
“It is but trying, my sweet lady,” said Lord Dalgarno. “Men say England and Scotland are in the same island, so one would hope there may be some road betwixt them by land.”
 
“I shall never be able to ride so far,” said the lady.
 
“We will have your saddle stuffed softer,” said the lord. “I tell you that you shall mew your city , and change from the of a lane into the butterfly of a prince's garden. You shall have as many tires as there are hours in the day—as many handmaidens as there are days in the week—as many menials as there are weeks in the year—and you shall ride a hunting and with a lord, instead of waiting upon an old ship-chandler, who could do nothing but and spit.”
 
“Ay, but will you make me your lady?” said Dame Nelly.
 
“Ay, surely—what else?” replied the lord—“My lady-love.”
 
“Ay, but I mean your lady-wife,” said Nelly.
 
“Truly, Nell, in that I cannot promise to oblige you. A lady-wife,” continued Dalgarno, “is a very different thing from a lady-love.”
 
“I heard from Mrs. Suddlechop, whom you me with since I left poor old John Christie, that Lord Glenvarloch is to marry David Ramsay the clockmaker's daughter?”
 
“There is much betwixt the cup and the lip, Nelly. I wear something about me may break the bans of that hopeful alliance, before the day is much older,” answered Lord Dalgarno.
 
“Well, but my father was as good a man as old Davy Ramsay, and as well to pass in the world, my lord; and, therefore, why should you not marry me? You have done me harm enough, I trow—wherefore should you not do me this justice?”
 
“For two good reasons, Nelly. Fate put a husband on you, and the king passed a wife upon me,” answered Lord Dalgarno.
 
“Ay, my lord,” said Nelly, “but they remain in England, and we go to Scotland.”
 
“Thy argument is better than thou art aware of,” said Lord Dalgarno. “I have heard Scottish lawyers say the matrimonial tie may be unclasped in our happy country by the gentle hand of the ordinary course of law, whereas in England it can only be burst by an act of Parliament. Well, Nelly, we will look into that matter; and whether we get married again or no, we will at least do our best to get unmarried.”
 
“Shall we indeed, my honey-sweet lord? and then I will think less about John Christie, for he will marry again, I warrant you, for he is well to pass; and I would be glad to think he had somebody to take care of him, as I used to do, poor loving old man! He was a kind man, though he was a score of years older than I; and I hope and pray he will never let a young lord cross his honest threshold again!”
 
Here the dame was once more much inclined to give way to a passion of tears; but Lord Dalgarno down the emotion, by saying with some asperity—“I am weary of these April passions, my pretty mistress, and I think you will do well to preserve your tears for some more pressing occasion. Who knows what turn of fortune may in a few minutes call for more of them than you can render?”
 
“Goodness, my lord! what mean you by such expressions? John Christie (the kind heart!) used to keep no secrets from me, and I hope your lordship will not hide your counsel from me?”
 
“Sit down beside me on this bank,” said the nobleman; “I am bound to remain here for a short space, and if you can be but silent, I should like to spend a part of it in considering how far I can, on the present occasion, follow the respectable example which you recommend to me.”
 
The place at which he stopped was at that time little more than a , partly surrounded by a ditch, from which it the name of Camlet Moat. A few hewn stones there were, which had escaped the fate of many others that had been used in building different in the forest for the royal keepers. These , just sufficient to show that “herein former times the hand of man had been,” marked the ruins of the of a once illustrious but long-forgotten family, the Mandevilles, Earls of Essex, to whom Enfield Chase and the extensive adjacent had belonged in elder days. A wild woodland led the eye at various points through broad and seemingly interminable alleys, which, meeting at this point as at a common centre, from each other as they , and had, therefore, been selected by Lord Dalgarno as the for the combat, which, through the medium of Richie Moniplies, he had offered to his injured friend, Lord Glenvarloch.
 
“He will surely come?” he said to himself; “cowardice was not to be his fault—at least he was bold enough in the Park.—Perhaps yonder may not have carried my message? But no—he is a sturdy knave—one of those would prize their master's honour above their life.—Look to the palfrey, Lutin, and see thou let him not loose, and cast thy glance down every avenue to mark if any one comes.—Buckingham has undergone my challenge, but the proud pleads the king's paltry commands for refusing to answer me. If I can baffle this Glenvarloch, or him—If I can spoil him of his honour or his life, I shall go down to Scotland with credit sufficient to over past mischances. I know my dear countrymen—they never quarrel with any one who brings them home either gold or glory, much more if he has both gold and .”
 
As he thus reflected, and called to mind the disgrace which he had suffered, as well as the causes he imagined for hating Lord Glenvarloch, his altered under the influence of his contending emotions, to the terror of Nelly, who, sitting unnoticed at his feet, and looking anxiously in his face, the cheek , the mouth become compressed, the eye , and the whole countenance express the desperate and deadly resolution of one who awaits an instant and decisive encounter with a mortal enemy. The loneliness of the place, the scenery so different from that to which alone she had been accustomed, the dark and sombre air which crept so suddenly over the countenance of her , his command silence upon her, and the apparent strangeness of his conduct in idling away so much time without any obvious cause, when a journey of such length lay before them, brought strange thoughts into her weak brain. She had read of women, from their matrimonial duties by sorcerers to the hellish powers, nay, by the Father of Evil himself, who, after conveying his victim into some desert remote from human kind, exchanged the............