A party, consisting of ten or twelve persons, at Queenborough, had
gathered round the trunk of a withered and hollow oak, growing in front
of a public-house, that displayed the head of the Lord Protector--a
political lure, that was certain to attract all Commonwealth people to
the receipt of custom. The noble tree had been one of magnificent
growth, but age or accident had severed the trunk, and within its heart
decay had long been revelling. It was now perfectly hollow, and afforded
a free passage; two enormous props had been found necessary, to prevent
its making a last resting-place of the earth it had for ages
triumphantly protected. The cavity that time had created was
sufficiently extensive to afford shelter during a storm to three or
four persons; and it was not unfrequently resorted to by the people of
the inn, as a storehouse for fuel, or farming utensils, when a plentiful
harvest rewarded the toil of the husbandman. Its branches, which had so
often sheltered the wayfarer alike from the tempest and the hot summer's
sun, had been hewn away, to serve the purposes of strife in the shape of
spear-handles, or to the doom of the winter fire; one solitary arm of
the blighted tree alone remained, extending its scraggy and shattered
remnants to a considerable distance over the greensward which had been,
from time immemorial, trodden by the merry morrice dancers, and broken
by the curvetting of the hobby-horse and the Dragon of Wantley, sports
it was now deemed sinful but to name. From a fragment of this
dilapidated branch, hung the sign of mine host of the Oliver's Head; and
right glad would he have been, if rumour had lied with each returning
morn, so that the lie could but fill his dwelling with so many
profitable guests. Thrice had the party, by whom had been appropriated
the seat beneath the oak, emptied the black jack of its double-dub ale;
and the call for a fourth replenishing was speedily answered, as the sun
was setting over the ocean, and tinging the sails and masts of the
distant vessels with hues that might have shamed the ruby and the
sapphire.
"To have our day go for nothing, after a trudge of some twenty miles, to
this out-of-the-way place,--Adad, sirs, it's no joke!" exclaimed a
sturdy, bluff-looking man, to our friend little Robin Hays, who sat upon
the corner of the bench, one leg tucked under (doubtless for the purpose
of enabling him to sit higher than nature had intended,) while the other
swung methodically backward and forward: "Adad, sir, it's no joke!" he
repeated.