"Yes, ma'am.""Conscience!" replied the foreman: "who ever heard a galleyman talk of conscience before? By the green wax! you forgot you had a conscience the day I first saw you. You recollect the court of pi-poudr, my conscientious dusty-foot, don't you?"The member, the colonel of the volunteers, and others present, pointed out to Reuben afterwards that the situation was military, not agricultural; but it was characteristic of him to see all situations from the agricultural point of view. His old ideas of an agricultural combine, which had fallen miserably to pieces in '65, now revived in all their strength. He saw East Sussex as a country of organised corn-growing, Odiam at the head. His rather eclectic newspaper reading had impressed him with the idea that England was on the verge of war with one or two European Powers, notably the French, whose ribald gloatings over British disasters stirred up all the fury of the man who had been born within range of the Napoleonic wars and bred on tales of Boney and his atrocities.
For MacDonald's the man for the people!"But it would have been better for Giles to have left his wife to the mercy of uncharitable whisperers than have adopted this mode of justification. The first intimation of his indiscretion was signified by an order from the parish priest instantly to separate, and by public penance to merit absolution from the church. A month was allowed them. The four weeks elapsed, and the incorrigible pair were still living beneath the same roof; and, on the fifth Sunday, at St. Peter's, the parish church of Winchcombe, the congregation were assembled; the tapers lighted, and the missal opened. Some words were then said, acquainting the people with the crime of Giles and Jane, and cautioning them against holding any communication with such obdurate sinners. The bell was next rungthe book closedthe tapers were extinguished, and the incestuous pair pronounced accursed of God and man. This ceremony was performed thrice, and when the unfortunate Jane was seized with the pangs of child-birth, Gray, after having the doors of fifty houses shut in his face, as he implored assistance for his wife, was compelled to go to Campden, a distance of thirteen miles, to try what the force of nature might effect. There his application was not rejected; the aged mother, although her heart was breaking at the lost and degraded state of her youngest child, yet consented to accompany Gray; and disguising herself, that none might recognize her, hastened to Winchcombe.The year '71 was on the whole a bad one. The summer was parched, the autumn sodden, and the winter frozen. Reuben's oats after some excellent promises failed him abruptly, as was the way with crops on Boarzell. His wheat was better in quality but poor in quantity, his mangolds had the rot, and his hops, except for the old field by the lane, were brown and ragged with blight.
