He rode without stopping for two days and two nights in the direction of
Rotherwood, with such swiftness and disregard for refreshment, indeed,
that his men dropped one by one upon the road, and he arrived alone at
the lodge-gate of the park. The windows were smashed; the door stove
in; the lodge, a neat little Swiss cottage, with a garden where the
pinafores of Mrs. Gurth's children might have been seen hanging on the
gooseberry-bushes in more peaceful times, was now a ghastly heap
of smoking ruins: cottage, bushes, pinafores, children lay mangled
together, destroyed by the licentious soldiery of an infuriate monarch!
Far be it from me to excuse the disobedience of Athelstane and Rowena to
their sovereign; but surely, surely this cruelty might have been spared.
Gurth, who was lodge-keeper, was lying dreadfully wounded and expiring
at the flaming and violated threshold of his lately picturesque home. A
catapult and a couple of mangonels had done his business. The faithful
fellow, recognizing his master, who had put up his visor and forgotten
his wig and spectacles in the agitation of the moment, exclaimed, "Sir
Wilfrid! my dear master--praised be St. Waltheof--there may be yet
time--my beloved mistr--master Athelst . . ." He sank back, and never
spoke again.
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