ONE:
ONE:Oakley stepped back from the window, and stood an instant apparently irresolute. "Plague on this Holgrave!" he muttered"I wish I had sent Harvey; he could have managed it as well as I; but one don't like giving these fellows half the profit, besides making them as wise as one's self;but what is the knave to me?" And then, as if his slight scruples were dissipated by the consideration of the little sympathy that ought to exist between one circumstanced like Holgrave and himself, he drew his hat more over his brow, and folding his cloak closer around him, approached, although, it must be admitted, with rather an indecisive step, the door of the cottage, and gave a slight tap. "I will go to the door, Stephen," he heard Margaret say, with a quickness which seemed to imply that the simple circumstance of a summons to the door at a somewhat late hour was sufficient to awaken her fears."I tell you, steward," said the smith who had before spoken, and stepping so near Calverley that he involuntarily drew back, "if you prize your life, you will call no man here a bondman. I am freethat man is free" pointing to Holgrave, "and we are all freeall sworn brothers; and no one shall dare," raising his voice, "to brand, with such a name, a mother's son among us! You have received fair warning, and leave to go: retire nowinstantly, if you are wise! Clear a passage there for my Lord de Boteler's steward! There is now room for you to passyour retainers are waiting withoutand now take the man you call a bondman, and away with you all. What! you will not lay hold of him? Take him, I say!" elevating his voice"seize the villein, and drag him back to his bondage! What! not a finger, after all the trouble you have taken?then, away with you alone!away!" And Calverley, from the mere instinct of obedience to a superior power, moved towards the door. "And if ever," continued the smith, "you are found hunting in this forest again for bondmen, as you call them, we may chance to give you a lodging where you will have little reason to complain that the sun shines too brightly!"
ONE:He kept his body motionless, but in his heart strange things were moving. That hatred which had run through him like a knife just before he lost consciousness in the battle of Boarzell, suddenly revived and stabbed him again. It was no longer without focus, and it was no longer without purpose. Boarzell ... the name seemed to dance before him in letters of fire and blood. He was suffering for Boarzellhis father had not been robbed, for his father did not care, but he, Reuben, had been robbedand he had fought for Boarzell on Boarzell, and now he was bearing shame and pain for Boarzell. Somehow he had never till this day, till this moment, been so irrevocably bound to the land he had played on as a child, on which he had driven his father's cattle, which had broken with its crest the sky he gazed on from his little bed. Boarzell was his, and at the same time he hated Boarzell. For some strange reason he hated it as much as those who had taken it from him and as those who were punishing him because of it. He wanted to tame it, as a man tames a bull, with a ring in its nose."By my faith, the knave is bold to thwart me thus."
