"Yes. You've allus treated me lik a dog, and laughed at my writing and all I wanted to do. Then chaps came along as didn't laugh, and promised me all sorts o' things if I'd write fur them."
That spring the news flew round from inn to inn and farm to farm that Realf of Grandturzel had bought a shire stallion, and meant to start horse-breeding. This was a terrible shock to Reuben, for not only was horse-breeding extremely profitable to those who could afford it, but it conferred immeasurable honour. It seemed now as if Odiam were seriously threatened. If Realf[Pg 196] prospered at his business he could afford to fight Reuben for Boarzell.However, everyone viewed with dislike and suspicion his covetous eye cast on the Fair-place. He might have the rest of Boarzell and welcome, for no other man had any use for flints, but the Fair was sacred to them through the generations, and they gauged his sacrilegious desire to rob them of it for his own ends. He might have the Grandturzel inclosure, though all the village sympathised with the beaten Realfbeaten, they said, because he hadn't it in him to be as hard-hearted as the old Gorilla, and sacrifice his wife and children to his farmbut they would far rather see Grandturzel swallowed up than Boarzell Fair.
FORE:The party then dismounting, secured their horses to the hedge; and, concealing their faces by masks of parchment, smeared over with paint, proceeded to the end of the lane: but a sudden exclamation from the galleyman, who was a little in advance, arrested the steps of all.
Suddenly the baby stiffened on her lap. The limbs became rigid, the face black. Then something rasped in its throat.Sobs were still thick in Rose's throat, when they came to Handshut's cottage, a little tumble-down place, shaped like a rabbit's head. She stopped."All the more reason"Reuben did not go to the Fair that autumnthere being no reason why he should and several why he shouldn't. He went instead to see Richard, who was down for a week's rest after a tiring case. Reuben thought a dignified aloofness the best attitude to maintain towards his sonthere was no need for them to be on bad terms, but he did not want anyone to imagine that he approved of Richard or thought his success worth while. Richard, for his part, felt kindly disposed towards his father, and a little sorry for him in his isolation. He invited him to dinner once or twice, and, realising his picturesqueness, was not ashamed to show him to his friends."And she asked us particular to say as she'd never regretted the day she left Odiam, or wished herself back there, nuther."Neither of them slept that night. Albert was half delirious, and obsessed by the thought of hell. The room looked out on Boarzell, and he became convinced that the swart, tufted mass outlined against the sprinkled stars was hell, the country of the lost. He pictured himself wandering over and over it in torment. He said he saw fire on it, scaring the superstitious Pete out of his life.
