of charcoal-burners, who lived a sort of half-savage life in the deep recesses of those woods. Gradually, however, owing to the increasing scarcity of fuel, the partial exhaustion of the iron sands, and the rapid development of the northern manufactories, with which they could no longer maintain a successful rivalry, the iron-masters of the South closed their business and abandoned their works to decay; yet not so long ago but that the present writer remembers spending some portion of a long summer's day of boyhood in exploring the mysteries of certain weird-like ruins and masses of brick and stone, which he was given to understand were the remains of iron furnaces and forges. Much of the machinery had been removed, but some still remained in large blasting engines, and the huge beams and water-wheels with which these engines had been connected; and the extent to which these manufactures had been carried was manifest in the dark hue of the roads, which for miles around had in those former times been made and repaired with the black scoriæ of the now abandoned ironworks. The men who wrought in these factories were, as may be supposed, picked out from the surrounding scanty population, for their superiority in bone and sinew; and thus originally powerful, the nature of their occupation tended to increase their strength, while it imparted a kind of savagery to their general appearance and demeanour. Conscious of this, and proud of the distinction it gave them, these men of iron were probably ready enough to assert their claims to consideration, and were more than sufficiently ready, when occasion offered, to make them good by force of arm. But these claims being yielded, the men dwelt at peace among their neighbours, with whom, indeed, they were more or less intimately connected, some by ties of consanguinity or marriage, and almost all by the freemasonry of a common interest and frequent adventures. Our preliminary sketch would not be complete if we omitted to state that the forests and commons of the district we have attempted to describe gave shelter, and means of livelihood too, to numerous hordes of gipsies, between whom and the peasantry at large was a tacit understanding, which may be said to have amounted to a league offensive and defensive against the common tyrants of mankind; namely, all magistrates, excisemen, ridingofficers, gamekeepers, and informers. These gipsies dwelt in the land, and wandered over its length and breadth, with more ease and undisturbed felicity than is enjoyed by their descendants, in these days of multiplied population and rural police. CHAPTER II. THE FORGE, THE FORGEMAN, AND THE BOAT. OUR story opens on the evening of an early September day in 17—; and we must introduce our readers to one of those hives of industry already mentioned. The building itself had nothing in its construction particularly worthy of notice. It was long and low, substantially framed of bricks, which, whatever their primitive colour, had become almost black, and thus assimilated in hue with everything around; for the ground was black; so were the stores of charcoal which were piled up into large hills, overtopping the roof of the forge, the fires of which they were destined to feed; black too were the mountains of dross which had been cast out from the neighbouring furnace; the foliage of the trees which struggled for life in that uncongenial atmosphere was scorched and blackened; and blackened were the Vulcans who, bare-bodied from the waist upwards, wielded with mighty prowess the sledge-hammers whose din might be heard, on a clear calm day, at the distance of more than a mile. A dozen or more of these men were then at work. Large bars of iron, heated to whiteness, and too dazzling to permit an unaccustomed gaze, were being raised by levers, and heaved upon broad anvils, while the forgemen let fall their hammers upon the incandescent masses with inusical time and cadence, and raising at every stroke a shower of sparks which spread a broad and glowing reflection upon the sheet of water on the shores of which the works were situated, and on whose bosom floated a small boat containing a solitary passenger, now resting on his oars. The forge was open in front, and thus, to the distant spectator in the boat, were displayed three large fires, kept at a glowing heat by the regular blast of bellows, whose motive power was to be traced through beam and wheel, to a considerable waterfall close by, the dashing and fretful roaring of which, combined with the noisy tumult within, would have drowned any voices, and deafened, for the time, any ears but those of the forgemen. Not theirs, however; for as their mighty hammers rose and fell, they accompanied the ding and clash thus made with a metrical chant, which ran somewhat as follows:- "In melancholy fancy, In the Vulcan dancy, Just like a fairy elf; Out o'er the tops of highest mountains skipping, Amidst the misty vapours, Fain would I know What doth cause the tapers: Why the clouds benight us And affright us While we travel here below. Fain would I know what makes the roaring thunder, Fain would I know the reason Why the little ant All the summer season Layeth up provision, On condition To know no winter's want; And how housewives that are so good and painful Fain I'd have it proved by one whom love hath wounded, And fully upon one his desire hath founded, Whom nothing else could prove, though the whole world were rounded. Hallo, my fancy, whither wilt thou go? Hallo, my fancy, hallo! Stay, stay at home with mc: I can thee no longer follow, For thou hast betrayed me, And bewrayed me. It is too much for thee, Stay, stay at home with me; leave off thy lofty soaring; Thou'rt welcome home, my fancy, welcome home to me." The chant died away in distant echoes, and the men, whose powerful voices had been thus raised above the din of its accompaniments, ceased from their labour. The masses of iron which they had been hammering into shape had declined from the first white heat into a dull and sullen red; and they were lifted from the anvils and replaced on the fires. Then the forgemen stood with folded arms and talked, "That's a good song of the captain's, anyway," said one; "pretty big and mighty; but that's the more like him that made it-poor fellow!" "He did not make it. He showed it me in a book that he said was a hundred years old and more, and there was a lot more verses besides what he copied out. But I wonder you have the heart to sing it, mates-I couldn't: it stuck in my throat." "I dunno why we shouldn't sing it, Tom Carey," said another of the men; "I reckon it is not going to do Captain Rivers any harm, though he has lost his lawsuit, and the old Chase has got into other hands." "Tom is allis soft-hearted about the cap'n," said a fourth speaker, "as if there warn't such another in England. Now, what I say is, that one master is as good as another, as long as he pays us our wages and lets us alone. It isn't much I have to thank Cap'n Rivers for, anyhow; and if he does not like his old songs to be sung, he shouldn't have put them into our mouths." "It will be long before Jason Brooke helps us to another, I expect," added one of the men who had previously spoken, "and somehow, that old song of the captain's chimes in natural Here he was interrupted by the deep tones of Tom Carey : |