ONE:CHAPTER VIII.Things had been getting worse and worse ever since. No labourer would work for themno neighbour would purchase from, or sell them, any necessaries, and all the produce of Gray's individual industry was carried to Gloucester; for at the populous market of that city, he sold and bought without it being known that the ban of excommunication cut him off from all social intercourse with his kind.
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ONE:Passing through Winchcombe, he arrived at a small neat dwelling, in a little sequestered valley, about a quarter of a mile from the townthe tenant of which lowly abode is of no small consequence to our story.Evidently he had pleased the multitude, for there was now a thick crowd in the central space, and already dancing had begun. Farm-hands in clean smocks, with bright-coloured handkerchiefs round their necks, gambolled uncouthly with farm-girls in spotted and striped muslins. Young farmers' wives, stiff with the sedateness of their bridehead, were drawn into reluctant capers. Despairing virgins renewed their hope, and tried wives their liveliness in unaccustomed arms. Even the elders danced, stumping together on the outskirts of the whirl as long as their breath allowed them.
