so near together. But in point of splendour there could be no comparison between the two. The grand Elizabethan house, justly described in the red-bound county guide-book as ‘a magnificent place, now the seat of Sir Sykes Denzil, Bart.,’ far surpassed in size and in symmetry the smaller and older dwelling of Sir Sykes's noble neighbour. No one would have credited the sunburnt stranger with any great share of artistic taste or architectural interest, yet he stood still at an angle of the road whence he could command an uninterrupted view of Carbery Court, and shading his eyes with his broad hand, gazed at it with an intentness that was not a little remarkable. ‘A tidy crib!’ he muttered at last. ‘No wonder if a chap would run a bit of risk, and pitch overboard any ballast in the way of scruples, to be owner of such a place as that. And yet’ —
He snapped his fingers contemptuously as he spoke, but nevertheless broke off abruptly in his soliloquy, and drawing out from the breast-pocket of his rough coat a leathern tobacco-pouch and a short clay pipe, filled and lighted the latter, and leaning against the huge bole of an elm-tree, smoked for some time in silence. But if his outspoken self-communings had come to an end, it would seem that the train of thought which had suggested them had sustained no interruption, to judge by the stealthy glances which he cast now and again towards the grand mansion, flanked as it was by all the appliances of wealth – park and lake and gardens, home-farm and stabling, pheasantry, and paddocks where thoroughbred colts disported themselves during the brief period of liberty that precedes the education of such equine aristocrats.
A stray policeman passing by would probably have set down the swarthy stranger as an intending burglar taking a distant survey of the scene of his projected operations; but the mixture of emotions which the man's callous face expressed was of by far too complex a character to be summed up in so commonplace a fashion. There was covetousness to be sure, and perhaps a spice of malignity; but what appeared to predominate was a species of cynical enjoyment of the thinker's own cunning, not unusual with crafty but uneducated persons, who see themselves on the brink of success. Whatever might be the nature of the man's meditations, they were presently cut short by the sound of hoofs on the smooth road near him, as a gentleman riding slowly from the lodge-gates towards the house came in sight.
As the rider approached him, the man, who had been leaning against the tree, started, and with an impatient gesture, knocked the ashes out of his exhausted pipe; then jerking down his hat over his brows with the air of one whose instinct or purpose it is to shun observation, he strode off, striking into a side-road which led towards another gate of the park, by which entrance could be made from the northward. Some minutes of brisk walking brought him to the verge of the park, whence he emerged into a wild and broken district of imperfectly cultivated country lying at the foot of the Dartmoor uplands, that rolled away in front of him to the edge of the horizon.
For some half a mile beyond the park-wall, the well-tilled fields, the fences in good repair, and the trim aspect of the few dwellings that studded the country, differed in no respect from such fields and fences, such farms and cottages as lay between High Tor and Carbery. But when the pedestrian reached a guide-post the pointing finger of which was inscribed with the words, ‘To Nomansland, Dedman's Hollow, and Dartmoor,’ he began to see before him evidences that he had left behind him the carefully managed Carbery property, and had entered on a barren region skirting the Royal Forest, and inhabited by a race of squatters who wrested with difficulty a bare subsistence from the sterile soil.
Passing on amid the ragged hedges, the lean cattle, squalid children, and tumble-down hovels of this unattractive population, but acknowledging twice or thrice a half-sullen nod or growl of recognition on the part of some male member of the community who stood whistling or chewing a straw at gate or gap, the wayfarer at last reached a spot where, at the junction of four narrow lanes, stood a dilapidated house of entertainment, its thatched roof stained and broken, and with not a few of the panes in its unwashed windows rudely replaced by boards or sackcloth. An inscription in faded letters over the low-browed doorway had reference to a license to retail beer and spirits for consumption on the premises, and tobacco; while a board nailed to a dead tree hard by bore, in thin black characters, the name of The Traveller's Rest. And into The Traveller's Rest the stranger dived, with all the air of one who feels himself at home.
CURLING
When a black frost seals up the ground, and ice covers our ponds and lochs, among the amusements then open to those north of the Tweed there is none more healthful and exhilarating than the game of curling, the mode of playing at which we shall presently explain for the benefit of our non-initiated readers. This ‘manly Scottish exercise,’ as the old poet Pennycuick calls it, is, as we once before hinted, the worthiest rival of golf in Scotland. Alas, however, it fights this battle under immense disadvantages; the good old times seem to have passed away, when for weeks on end, and good ice might be confidently counted on for a long time. But being a pastime solely depending upon ice, and good ice, for its existence, this only makes the ardent votaries of the game the more eager to take every advantage of such fleeting chances as the variable winters of our day send them. Night has often been added to day, when the interest in a great match has been more intense than the frost, and the ice has shewn any signs of passing away.
O'er burn and loch the warlock Frost
A crystal brig would lay,
It is always a trial for a curler to see a sheet of ice unoccupied; and when, on a Sunday, the ‘crystal brig’ on some fine loch lies smooth and keen, who has not seen hopeful enthusiasts taking a glance at the virgin expanse, with expression of countenance impossible to misunderstand! The marvel is that the strong temptation is so universally resisted, and that no effect has followed the example set by that Bishop of Orkney two centuries ago, whose ‘process,’ says Baillie in his Letters, ‘came before us; he was a curler on the Sabbath-day.’
No game promotes sociality more than curling; none unites on one common platform the different classes of society better than it does.
The tenant and his jolly laird,
The pastor and his flock,
join in the game without patronage on one side or any loss of respect on the other. Harmony and friendly feeling prevail; and if, on the ice as elsewhere, all men are not equal, it is because a quick eye, a sound head, and a steady hand make now the shepherd, now the laird, ‘king o' a' the core.’
Though so eminently a Scottish game, evidence goes to prove that the pastime was brought to us from the continent not very long ago – three hundred years or so. Some ultra-patriotic curlers claim for it indeed a native origin, or at least one lost in the mists of antiquity, citing a passage in Ossian to prove that the Fingalian heroes beguiled their winters with the game, because in one passage it is said ‘Swaran bends at the stone of might;’ but this notwithstanding, it is quite clear that, as in the case of golf, we are indebted to outsiders for the first rough sketches of the ‘roaring game.’ The technical language of the game is all of Low Country origin, and it is supposed to have been introduced into this country by the Flemish emigrants who settled in Scotland about the end of the fifteenth century. No mention of it is made by any writer for long after this; but it must have been well known in 1607, for Camden, in his Britannia, published in that year, says that in the little island of Copinsha, near the Orkneys, ‘are to be found in great plenty excellent stones for the game called curling.’
At this time and for long after, the game appears to have been merely a rough kind of quoiting on ice; indeed for a great part of the last century its common name in this country was Kuting. The stones of that day, rough undressed blocks – so different from the polished missiles now used – had no handle, but merely a kind of hollow or niche for the finger and thumb, and were evidently intended to be thrown for at least part of the course. Since these days, great strides have been taken in the improvement of the game; now it is highly scientific, and with its many delicate strokes, its ‘wicks,’ calculations of angles, of force, and of bias, it may without presumption be called the billiards of ice. In some places, however, the old game with its primitive implements, usually flattish stones from the bed of the nearest stream, still holds its place under the name of ‘channelling.’
In the bead-roll of curling are no such mighty names as those