"From your lovingBut it was for other reasons that Reuben most wished that Harry would die. Harry was a false note, a discord in his now harmonious scheme. He was a continual reminder of the power of Boarzell, and would occasionally sweep Reuben's thoughts away from those fat corn-fields licking at the crest to that earliest little patch down by Totease, where the Moor had drunk up its first blood. He called himself a fool, but he could not help seeing something sinister and fateful in Harry, scraping tunelessly at his fiddle, or repeating over and over again some wandering echo from the outside world which had managed to reach his dungeoned brain. Reuben wished he would die, and so did the farm-boy who slept with him, and the dairy-woman who fed him at meals.
While she was listening and wondering at the lateness of the hour, the hall door was suddenly thrown open, and a blaze of light, and a strain of melody, burst simultaneously upon her senses. A dozen minstrels gaily attired with timbrels, cornets, sackbuts, and other instruments, preceded by as many youths, carrying large wax tapers or torch-lights, formed into a double rank in the hall; in the middle of which passed the city pageant. The lord mayor was at its head, habited as an emperor, in a tunic of cloth of gold, tastefully embroidered with black eagles, and the sleeves, which hung full, confined at the wrist and just below the elbow, by bands of black velvet, on which eagles were represented by small pearls. A mantle of black velvet lined with minever, or powdered ermine, floated from his shoulder. On his right hand was a citizen attired as the pope. Then followed the twenty-four aldermen in the dress of cardinals; then forty-eight in the gowns of say and red cloaks of esquires;others in the purple robe, lined with fur, peculiar to the knight: while some, still more ambitious, wore the emblazoned surcoat of a baron."Better now?" asked Pete.None of them saw or heard Reuben's entrance, and at that moment they all burst into a hymn:"It wur a pr?aper fight," he declared. "You want to manage them feet of yourn a bit slicker, f?atherbut you wur justabout smart wud your fists."Reuben thought that he had efficiently broken his son's rebellion. All the next day Robert seemed utterly cowed. He was worn out by the misery of the last few hours, and by the blows which in the end had dulled all the sore activities of mind and soul into one huge physical ache. Reuben left him alone most of the day, smiling grimly to himself when he saw him. Robert spent several hours lying on the hay in the Oast barn, his mind as inert and bruised as his body. He had ceased to contrive or conjecture, even to dread.
