y mounted his mule one morning, and, accompanied by
Patch and another attendant, rode towards the forest.

It was a bright and beautiful morning, and preoccupied as he was, the
plotting cardinal could not be wholly insensible to the loveliness of
the scene around him. Crossing Spring Hill, he paused at the head of a
long glade, skirted on the right by noble beech-trees whose silver stems
sparkled in the sun shine, and extending down to the thicket now called
Cooke's Hill Wood. From this point, as from every other eminence on
the northern side of the forest, a magnificent view of the castle was
obtained.

The sight of the kingly pile, towering above its vassal woods, kindled
high and ambitious thoughts in his breast.

"The lord of that proud structure has been for years swayed by me,"
he mused, "and shall the royal puppet be at last wrested from me by a
woman's hand? Not if I can hold my own."

Roused by the reflection, he quickened his pace, and shaping his course
towards Black Nest, reached in a short time the borders of a wide swamp
lying between the great lake and another pool of water of less extent
situated in the heart of the forest. This wild and dreary marsh,
the haunt of the bittern and the plover, contrasted forcibly and
disagreeably with the rich sylvan district he had just quitted.

"I should not like to cross this swamp at night," he observed to Patch,
who rode close behind him.

"Nor I, your grace," replied the buffoon. "We might chance to be led by
a will-o'-the-wisp to a watery grave."

"Such treacherous fires are not confined to these regions, knave,"
rejoined Wolsey. "Mankind are often lured, by delusive gleams of glory
and power, into quagmires deep and pitfalls. Holy Virgin; what have we
here?"

The exclamation was occasioned by a figure that suddenly emerged from
the ground at a little distance on the right. Wolsey's mule swerved so
much as almost to endanger his seat, and he called out in a loud angry
tone to the author of the annoyance--"Who are you, knave? and what do
you here?"

I am a keeper of the forest, an't please your grace, replied the
other, doffing his cap, and disclosing harsh features which by no means
recommended him to the cardinal, "and am named Morgan Fenwolf. I
was crouching among the reeds to get a shot at a fat buck, when your
approach called me to my feet."

"By St. Jude! this is the very fellow, your grace, who shot the
hart-royal the other day," cried Patch.