Chapter 1
There are few things more full of delight and splendour, than to travel during the heat of a refulgent summer in the green district of some ancient forest.
In one of our midland counties there is a region of this character, to which, during a season of peculiar lustre, we would introduce the reader.
It was a fragment of one of those vast sylvan tracts wherein Norman kings once hunted, and Saxon outlaws plundered; and although the plough had for centuries successfully invaded brake and bower, the relics retained all their original character of wildness and seclusion. Sometimes the green earth was thickly studded with groves of huge and vigorous oaks, intersected with those smooth and sunny glades, that seem as if they must be cut for dames and knights to saunter on. Then again
