"By whom? Calverley?""Aye, aye, master Turner," replied Merritt (impatient of a long speech, yet knowing the smith's irascible temper too well to interrupt him,) "I don't know what will come next! Here were you, who paid scot and lot, and cared for no onesee how you were treated! And now here is the holy father (with whom, though he got into disgrace at the Abbey, one would have thought, for the sake of their own souls, they wouldn't meddle,) dragged off like a common thief; and if we do not go to the rescue, the saints preserve us! who can tell if he will ever come out again? for there is none but poor Stephen akin to him."
ONE:"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.
"How dare you speak to me like this?"He could not tell exactly what it was that had invigorated him, and jerked him out of his despair. It would seem as if Alice's presence alone had tonic qualities. Perhaps the secret lay in her unchangeableness. He had gone back to her after an absence of five years, and found her just the same, still loving him, still fighting him, the old Alice. Everything else had changedhis farm which in the former days had been the thriving envy of the countryside was now little better than a ruin, his home life had been turned inside out, but in the woman over at Cheat Land nothing had altered, love and strength and faithfulness still flourished in her. It was as if a man stumbling in darkness should suddenly hear a loved, familiar voice say "Here I am." The situation summed itself up in three wordsShe was there; and his heart added"for me to take if I choose.""Lady," said Ball, who, in a low voice, had exchanged a few words with Wells, "here thou art no longer safe. Conduct this lady, my friend, to the abbey of Westminster," addressing Wells, "and encounter not those who might, unchecked by me, commit further outrage. Take a boat from the water-sidethat way is yet open. Farewell, lady, I must hence;for even Simon Sudbury, who made John Ball what he is now, may be in peril, and it is for the Lord alone to smite.I seek not the brand to right me!"
