her level, and indeed Lady Archfield, a notable matchmaker, had already hinted how suitable such a thing would be. However, the present school character of Master Sedley, as well as her own observations, by no means inclined Mrs. Woodford towards the boy, large limbed and comely faced, but with a bullying, scowling air that did not augur well for his wife or his parish.
Whether it were this lad’s threats, or more likely, the fact that all the Close was on the alert, Peregrine’s exploits were less frequent there, and began to extend to the outskirts of the city. There were some fine yew trees on the southern borders, towards the chalk down, with massive dark foliage upon stout ruddy branches, among which Peregrine, armed with a fishing-rod, line, and hook, sat perched, angling for what might be caught from unconscious passengers along a path which led beneath.
From a market-woman’s basket he abstracted thus a fowl! His “Ho! ho! ho!” startled her into looking up, and seeing it apparently resuscitated, and hovering aloft. Full of dismay, she hurried shrieking away to tell the story of the bewitched chick at the market-cross among her gossips.
His next capture was a chop from a butcher boy’s tray, but this involved more peril, for with a fierce oath that he would be revenged on the Whiggish imp, the lad darted at the tree, in vain, however, for Peregrine had dropped down on the other side, and crept unseen to another bush, where he lay perdu, under the thick green branches, rod and all, while the youth, swearing and growling, was shaking his former refuge.
As soon as the coast was clear he went back to his post, and presently was aware of three gentlemen advancing over the down, pointing, measuring, and surveying. One was small and slight, as simply dressed as a gentleman of the period could be; another was clad in a gay coat with a good deal of fluttering ribbon and rich lace; the third, a tall well-made man, had a plain walking suit, surmounted by a flowing periwig and plumed beaver. Coming close beneath Peregrine’s tree, and standing with their backs to it, they eagerly conversed. “Such a cascade will drown the honours of the Versailles fountains, if only the water can be raised to such a height. Are you sure of it, Wren?”
“As certain as hydraulics can make me, sir,” and the lesser man began drawing lines with his stick in the dust of the path in demonstration.
The opportunity was irresistible, and the hook from above deftly caught the band of the feathered hat of the taller man, slowly and steadily drawing it up, entirely unperceived by the owner, on whose wig it had rested, and who was bending over the dust-traced diagram in absorbed attention. Peregrine deferred his hobgoblin laughter, for success emboldened him farther. Detaching the hat from his hook, and depositing it safely in a fork of the tree, he next cautiously let down his line, and contrived to get a strong hold of one of the black locks on the top of the wig, just as the wearer was observing, “Oliver’s Battery, eh? A cupola with a light to be seen out at sea? Our sailors will make another St. Christopher of you! Ha! what’s this’”
For feeling as if a branch were touching the structure on his head, he had stepped forward, thus favouring Peregrine’s manœuvres so that the wig dangled in the air, suddenly disclosing the bare skull of a very dark man, with such marked features that it needed not the gentlemen’s outcry to show the boy who was the victim of his mischief.
“What imp is there?” cried the King, spying up into the tree, while his attendant drew his sword, “How now?” as Peregrine half climbed, half tumbled down, bringing hat and wig with him, and, whether by design or accident, fell at his feet. “Will nothing content you but royal game?” he continued laughing, as Sir Christopher Wren helped him to resume his wig. “Why, what a shrimp it is! a mere goblin sprite! What’s thy name, master wag?”
“Peregrine Oakshott, so please you,” the boy answered, raising himself with a face scared indeed, but retaining its queer impishness. “Sir, I never guessed—”
“Young rogue! have you our licence to waylay our loyal subjects?” demanded the King, with an affected fierceness. “Know you not ’tis rank treason to discrown our sacred Majesty, far more to dishevel or destroy our locks? Why! I might behead you on the spot.” To his great amazement the boy, with an eager face and clasped hands, exclaimed, “O sir! Oh, please your Majesty, do so.”
“Do so!” exclaimed the King astounded. “Didst hear what I said?”
“Yes, sir! You said it was a beheading matter, and I’m willing, sir.”
“Of all the petitions that ever were made to me, this is the strangest!” exclaimed Charles. “An urchin like this weary of life! What next? So,” with a wink to his companions, “Peregrine Oakshott, we condemn thee for high treason against our most sacred Majesty’s beaver and periwig, and sentence thee to die by having thine head severed from thy body. Kneel down, open thy collar, bare thy neck. Ay, so, lay thy neck across that bough. Killigrew, do thy duty.”
To the general surprise, the boy complied with all these directions, never flinching nor showing sign of fear, except that his lips were set and his cheek whitened. As he knelt, with closed eyes, the flat cold blade descended on his neck, the tension relaxed, and he sank!
“Hold!” cried the King. “It is gone too far! He has surely not carried out the jest by dying on our hands.”
“No, no, sir,” said Wren, after a moment’s alarm, “he has only swooned. Has any one here a flask of wine to revive him?”
Several gentlemen had come up, and as Peregrine stirred, some wine was held to his lips, and he presently asked in a faint voice, “Is this fairyland?”
“Not yet, my lad,” said Charles, “whatever it may be when Wren’s work is done.”
The boy opened his eyes, and as he beheld the same face, and the too familiar sky and trees, he sighed heavily, and said, “Then it is all the same! O sir, would you but have cut off my head in good earnest, I might be at home again!”
“Home! what means the elf?”
“An elf! That is what they say I am—changed in the cradle,” said Peregrine, incited to confidence by the good-natured eyes, “and I thought if I were close on death mine own people might take me home, and bring back the right one.”
“He really believes it!” exclaimed Charles much diverted. “Tell me, good Master Elf, who is thy father, I mean not my brother Oberon, but him of the right one, as thou sayst.”
“Mr. Robert Oakshott of Oakwood, sir,” said Peregrine.
“A sturdy squire of the country party,” said the King. “I am much minded to secure the lad for an elfin page,” he added aside to Killigrew. “There’s a fund of excellent humour and drollery in those queer eyes of his! So, Sir Hobgoblin, if you are proof against cold steel, I know not what is to be done with you. Get you back, and devise some other mode of finding your way home to fairyland.”
Peregrine said not a word of his adventure, so that the surprise of his family was the greater when overtures were made through Sir Christopher Wren for his appointment as a royal page.
“I would as soon send my son at once to be a page to Beelzebub,” returned Major Oakshott.
And though Sir Christopher did not return the answer exactly in those terms, he would not say that the Puritan Major did not judge rightly.
CHAPTER III
The Fairy King
“She’s turned her right and round about,
And thrice she
