Great Britain -- History -- Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
“His name?—it escapes me every hour, it is so hard a one,” said
Albert—“Kerneguy is his name—Louis Kerneguy; his father was Lord
Killstewers, of Kincardineshire.”
“Kerneguy, and Killstewers, and Kin—what d’ye call it?—Truly,” said the
knight, “these northern men’s names and titles smack of their
origin—they sound like a north-west wind, rumbling and roaring among
heather and rocks.”
“It is but the asperities of the Celtic and Saxon dialects,” said Dr.
Rochecliffe, “which, according to Verstegan, still linger in those
northern parts of the island.—But peace—here comes supper, and Master
Louis Kerneguy.”
Supper entered accordingly, borne in by Joceline and Phœbe, and after
it, leaning on a huge knotty stick, and having his nose in the air like
a questing hound—for his attention was apparently more fixed on the
good provisions that went before him, than any thing else—came Master
Kerneguy, and seated himself, without much ceremony, at the lower end
of the table.
He was a tall, rawboned lad, with a shock head of hair, fiery red, like
many of his country, while the harshness of his national features was
increased by the contrast of his complexion, turned almost black by the
exposure to all sorts of weather, which, in that skulking and rambling
mode of life, the fugitive royalists had been obliged to encounter. His
address was by no means prepossessing, being a mixture of awkwardness
and forwardness, and showing in a remarkable degree, how a want of easy
address may be consistent with an admirable stock of assurance. His
face intimated having received some recent scratches, and the care of
Dr. Rochecliffe had decorated it with a number of patches, which even
enhanced its natural plainness. Yet the eyes were brilliant and
expressive, and, amid his ugliness—for it amounted to that degree of
irregularity—the face was not deficient in some lines which expressed
both sagacity and resolution.
The dress of Albert himself was far beneath his quality, as the son of
Sir Henry Lee, and commander of a regiment in the royal service; but
that of his page was still more dilapidated. A disastrous green jerkin,
which had been changed to a hundred hues by sun and rain, so that the
original could scarce be discovered, huge clouterly shoes, leathern
breeches—such as were worn by hedgers—coarse grey worsted stockings,
were the attire of the honourable youth, whose limping gait, while it
added to the ungainliness of his manner, showed, at the same time, the
extent of his sufferings. His appearance bordered so much upon what is
vulgarly called the queer, that even with Alice it would have excited
some sense of ridicule, had not compassion been predominant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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