"Thanks, f?ather, but if you offered to give us to-day every penny you've got, I'd let you have no child of mine. Maybe we'll be poor and miserable and have to work hard, but he w?an't be one-half so wretched wud us as he'd be wud you. D'you think I disremember my own childhood and the way you m?ade us suffer? You're an old man, but you're heartyyou might live to a hundredand I'd justabout die of sorrow if I[Pg 442] thought any child of mine wur living wud you and being m?ade as miserable as you m?ade us. I'd rather see my boy dead than at Odiam.""YesBenjamin went round. But he ?un't there.""Does he? Does he dare think to evade justice thusthis subterfuge shall not avail!" exclaimed Skipwith with vehemence, and then musing an instant, he continued: "No, this subterfuge shall not availI will constitute the cell of the criminal a court of justice for this occasion. Officers of the Court proceed. I go to pronounce a just sentence:" and then, rising from the bench, and preceded by his officers, he departed to adopt the unprecedented course of passing sentence in a prison.
ONE:Margaret bent her head forward and covered her face with her hands, but made no reply. In vain the monk reiterated his request. In vain he exhorted herin vain he assured her that no evil should befal her husband from whatever disclosure she might make. Margaret still hid her face and remained silent. Her silence discomposed the monk. He continued to gaze upon her with a troubled countenance. Anger for the cruelty that could premeditatedly deprive a mother of her offspring, and alarm for the consequences that might result to Holgrave, could have been read in his contracted brow and anxious glance. His sister's unwillingness to speak confirmed his suspicions, and he felt as fully convinced that the child that lay before him was the baron's son as if he himself had witnessed the theft."Do you like pictures?" asked Alice, thumping dough.
ONE:As for Reuben, he worked as hard as ever, but never spoke of it to his wife. He seemed to enjoy her society at meals, and now and then would take her out for a stroll along the lanes, or sit with her in the evening by the kitchen fire. Once more he liked to have her read him the papers; and though she understood no more than she had ever done, her voice had ceased to be dull and fretful. Then at night he would go up to his attic and drink in the smell of gorse at the window, till he grew drowsy and shut himself in with the smell of apples.His return had been complete. All that she had ever had and lost of empire had re-established itself during that hour at Cheat Land. He wanted her as he had wanted her before he met Rose, but with a renewed intensity, for he was no longer mystified by his desire. He no longer asked himself how he could possibly love "a liddle stick of a woman like her," for he saw how utterly love-worthy she was and had always been. For the first time he saw as his, if only he would take it, a great woman's faithful love. This love of Alice Jury's had nothing akin to Naomi's poor little fluttering passion, or to Rose's fascination, half appetite, half[Pg 327] game. Someone loved him truly, strongly, purely, deeply, with a fire that could be extinguished only by death orhe realised in a dim wayher own will. The question was, should he pay the price this love demanded, take it to himself at the cost of the ambitions that had fed his life for forty years?
TWO:"There you are mistaken, squire. I am just as sober as I ought to be to come to this place: but I can't see why we couldn't have talked as well any where else as here!"
THREE:"D?an't tell me," said Coalbran in the bar, "as it wurn't his fault. Foot-and-mouth can't just drop from heaven. He must have bought some furriners, and they've carried it wud 'em, surelye."
TWO:Stephen stood at the door of his hut, looking with an air of derision on the vain efforts of the people to extinguish the flames; and Margaret wept as she saw the flames rising, and brightening, and consuming the house, which she still loved to look upon even now that it was for ever lost to her. The roof at length fell in, and myriads of burning particles sparkling like diamonds, showered for a moment in glittering beauty.
"Have you many books?""My land," murmured old Reuben, drinking in the breeze of it. "My landmore to me than Alice." Then with a sudden fierceness:"No," interrupted Calverley, in an assumed gruffness of tone, and with something more than his usual authoritativeness, "my journey is ended now. The king has recalled that writ of prohibition you were to deliver to the judge. You are to return the writ to me, and proceed with your other dispatches."
