“It is not very likely I should be so poorly mounted,” said Julian, laughing, “if I had such a weight to carry. But lead on, sir. I see I must wait for your confidence, till you think proper to confer it; for you are already so well acquainted with my affairs, that I have nothing to offer you in exchange for it.”
“_Allons_, then,” said his companion; “give your horse the spur, and raise the curb rein, lest he measure the ground with his nose instead of his paces. We are not now more than a furlong or two from the place of entertainment.”
They mended their pace accordingly, and soon arrived at the small solitary inn which the traveller had mentioned. When its light began to twinkle before them, the stranger, as if recollecting something he had forgotten, “By the way, you must have a name to pass by; for it may be ill travelling under your own, as the fellow who keeps this house is an old Cromwellian. What will you call yourself?--My name is--for the present--Ganlesse.”
“There is no occasion to assume a name at all,” answered Julian. “I do not incline to use a borrowed one, especially as I may meet with some one who knows my own.”
“I will call you Julian, then,” said Master Ganlesse; “for Peveril will smell, in the nostrils of mine host, of idolatry, conspiracy, Smithfield faggots, fish on Fridays, the murder of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, and the fire of purgatory.”
As he spoke thus, they alighted under the great broad-branched oak tree, that served to canopy the ale-bench, which, at an earlier hour, had groaned under the weight of a frequent conclave of rustic politicians. Ganlesse, as he dismounted, whistled in a particularly shrill note, and was answered from within the house.
He was a fellow in a peasant’s garb; Yet one could censure you a woodcock’s carving. Like any courtier at the ordinary. --THE ORDINARY.
The person who appeared at the door of the little inn to receive Ganlesse, as we mentioned in our last chapter, sung, as he came forward, this scrap of an old ballad,--
“Good even to you, Diccon; And how have you sped; Bring you the bonny bride To banquet and bed?”
To which Ganlesse answered, in the same tone and tune,--
“Content thee, kind Robin; He need little care, Who brings home a fat buck Instead of a hare.”