The story goes that Roger caught the ass, mounted, and again resumed the
trail of the unconscious horseman, which feat may have been possible to a
nautical young fellow, though one can hardly understand how a sailor
would ride such an animal without bridle or saddle, and strange to his
hands, unless the creature were extraordinarily docile. This question,
however, is immaterial. Suffice it to say that at dawn the following
morning Roger beheld his sister's lover or husband entering the gates of
a large and well-timbered park on the south-western verge of the White
Hart Forest (as it was then called), now known to everybody as the Vale
of Blackmoor. Thereupon the sailor discarded his steed, and finding for
himself an obscurer entrance to the same park a little further on, he
crossed the grass to reconnoitre.
He presently perceived amid the trees before him a mansion which, new to
himself, was one of the best known in the county at that time. Of this
fine manorial residence hardly a trace now remains; but a manuscript
dated some years later than the events we are regarding describes it in
terms from which the imagination may construct a singularly clear and
vivid picture. This record presents it as consisting of 'a faire yellow
freestone building, partly two and partly three storeys; a faire halle
and parlour, both waynscotted; a faire dyning roome and withdrawing
roome, and many good lodgings; a kitchen adjoyninge backwarde to one end
of the dwelling-house, with a faire passage from it into the halle,
parlour, and dyninge roome, and sellars adjoyninge.
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