The beech had, in some violent gale, been half-uprooted, and had torn up

a considerable stretch of turf and it was under this that old Lawless had

dug out his forest hiding-place. The roots served him for rafters, the

turf was his thatch; for walls and floor he had his mother the earth.

Rude as it was, the hearth in one corner, blackened by fire, and the

presence in another of a large oaken chest well fortified with iron,

showed it at one glance to be the den of a man, and not the burrow of a

digging beast.

Though the snow had drifted at the mouth and sifted in upon the floor of

this earth cavern, yet was the air much warmer than without; and when

Lawless had struck a spark, and the dry furze bushes had begun to blaze

and crackle on the hearth, the place assumed, even to the eye, an air of

comfort and of home.

With a sigh of great contentment, Lawless spread his broad hands before

the fire, and seemed to breathe the smoke.

Here, then," he said, "is this old Lawless's rabbit-hole; pray Heaven

there come no terrier! Far I have rolled hither and thither, and here

and about, since that I was fourteen years of mine age and first ran away

from mine abbey, with the sacrist's gold chain and a mass-book that I

sold for four marks. I have been in England and France and Burgundy, and

in Spain, too, on a pilgrimage for my poor soul; and upon the sea, which

is no man's country. But here is my place, Master Shelton. This is my

native land, this burrow in the earth! Come rain or wind--and whether

The Black Arrow