So the brothers rode on amid the gorse and heather till they came to a broad-spreading oak tree, sheltering a farmhouse built in frames of heavy timber, filled up with bricks set in zigzag patterns, with a high-pitched roof and tall chimneys. Barns and stacks were near it, and fields reclaimed from the heath were waving with corn just tinged with the gold of harvest. Three or four cows, of the tawny hue that looked so home-like to the brothers, were being released from the stack-yard after being milked, and conducted to their field by a tall, white-haired man in a farmer’s smock with a little child perched on his shoulder, who gave a loud jubilant cry at the sight of the riders. Stephen, pushing on, began the question whether Master Randall dwelt there, but it broke off half way into a cry of recognition on either side, Harry’s an absolute shout. “The lads, the lads! Wife, wife! ’tis our own lads!” And as Perronel, more buxom and rosy than London had ever made her, came forth from her dairy, and there was a mêlée of greetings, and Stephen would have asked what homeless little one the pair had adopted, he was cut short by an exulting laugh. “No more adopted than thy Giles there, Stephen. ’Tis our own boy, Thomas Randall! Yea, and if he have come late, he is the better loved, though I trow Perronel there will ever look on Ambrose as her eldest son.” “And by my troth, he needs good country diet and air!” cried Perronel. “Thou hast had none to take care of thee, Ambrose. They have let thee pine and dwine over thy books. I must take thee in hand.” “’Tis what I brought him to thee for, good aunt,” said Stephen, smiling. Great was the interchange of news over the homely hearty meal. It was plain that no one could be happier, or more prosperous in a humble way, than the ex-jester and his wife; and if anything could restore Ambrose it would surely be the homely plenty and motherly care he found there. Stephen heard another tale of his half-brother. His wife had soon been disgusted by the loneliness of the verdurer’s lodge, and was always finding excuses for going to Southampton, where she and her daughter had both caught the plague, imported in some Eastern merchandise, and had died. The only son had turned out wild and wicked, and had been killed in a broil which he had provoked: and John, a broken-down man, with no one to enjoy the wealth he had accumulated, had given up his office as verdurer, and retired to an estate which he had purchased on the skirts of the Forest. Stephen rode thither to see him, and found him a dying man, tyrannised over and neglected by his servants, and having often bitterly regretted his hardness towards his young brothers. All that Stephen did for him he received as tokens of pardon, and it was not possible to leave him until, after a fortnight’s watching, he died in his brother’s arms. He had made no will, and Ambrose thus inherited a property which made his future maintenance no longer an anxiety to his brother.