JASPER ST. AUBYN. 301 



deemed to be the fitting time for labour and for pastime, and 

 night the appointed time for natural and healthful sleep, the 

 dawn was wont to brighten beheld by other eyes than those of 

 clowns and milkmaids, and the gay songs of the matutinal 

 birds were listened to by ears that could appreciate their 

 untaught melodies. 



" And now, just as the stable clock was striking four, the 

 great oaken door of the old Hall was thrown open with a 

 vigorous swing that made it rattle on its hinges, and Jasper 

 St. Aubyn came bounding out into the fresh morning air, with 

 a foot as elastic as that of the mountain roe, singing a snatch 

 of some quaint old ballad. 



" He was dressed simply in a close-fitting jacket and tight 

 hose of dark-green cloth, without any lace or embroidery, light 

 boots of untanned leather, and a broad-leafed hat, with a single 

 eagle's feather thrust carelessly through the band. He wore 

 neither cloak nor sword, though it was a period at which 

 gentlemen rarely went abroad without these, their distinctive 

 attributes ; but in the broad black belt which girt his rounded 

 waist he carried a stout wood- knife with a buckhorn hilt ; and 

 over his shoulder there swung from a leathern thong a large 

 wicker fishing-basket. 



" Nothing, indeed, could be simpler or less indicative of any 

 particular rank or station in society than young St. Aubyn's 

 garb, yet it would have been a very dull and unobservant eye 

 which should take him for aught less than a high-born and 

 high-bred gentleman. 



" His fine intellectual face, his bearing erect before heaven, 

 the graceful ease of his every motion, as he hurried down the 



