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THREE:At last they dropped their arms and stood apart. The dusk was full of rustlings, flittings, scuttlings, kisses....Rose was definitely frightened, and broke free with some violence.

THREE:Pete made an able and keen lieutenant, but the other boys were still disappointing. It is true that Benjamin worked well and was often smart enough, but he had a roving disposition, which was more dangerous than Albert's, since it led him invariably down to the muddy Rother banks at Rye, where the great ships stood in the water, filling the air with good smells of fish and tar. Jemmy would loaf for hours round the capstans and building-stocks, and the piles of muddy rope that smelled of ooze, and he would talk to the sailormen and fishermen about voyages to the Azores and the Cape or to the wild seas south of the Horn, and would come home prating of sails and smoke-stacks, charts and logs,[Pg 148] and other vain things that had nothing to do with Odiam. Reuben remembered that the boy's mother came of a family of ship-builders and sailormen, and he would tremble for Jemmy's allegiance, and punish his truancies twice as severely as Albert's."Thank you, steward," replied Oakley, smiling, "but I would rather wait a few minutes. To be sure, it is a hard thing to be fasting from drink for two whole days! but then it is better than being a prisoner. We will be good friends, master Calverley, but we will not put too much faith in one another. And, as for taking your life—an idea which did occur to me just now—by the green wax! I don't think I could do it. To be sure, sometimes an odd fit comes upon me, but I believe, after all, the pen suits my hand better than the sword; nevertheless, to come to the point, steward, I must have money. I am going to turn an honest man; to gain the bondman his freedom, and the free man justice. You need not smile, for I have sworn to be a leader of the people."

THREE:Although Wells took little interest in these details, yet he loved to listen to the sweet tones of a remembered voice; and, as the evening had begun to close in, and Lucy talked of returning home, he resolved to put faith in the good feelings and discretion of the maiden. In an instant he had leaped down the ladder and stood at her side.He knew now that Alice was lost. The whole of Boarzell lay between them. He had thought that she would be always there, but now he saw that between him and her lay the dividing wilderness of his success. She was the offering and the reward of failure—and he had triumphed over failure as over everything else.

THREE:All without the cottage, as well as within, was darkness and gloom. Perhaps, if the beauty of moonlight had met his view, he might have turned sickening away to the sadness of his own abode; but as it was, the dreariness of the scene accorded with the feelings, which seemed bursting his heart, and he rushed on in the darkness heedless of the path he took. As if led by some instinct, he found himself upon the black ruins of his once happy home. No hand had touched the scattered, half-consumed materials, which had composed the dwelling; the black but substantial beams still lay as they had fallen. Perhaps, his was the first foot that pressed the spot since the night it blazed forth, a brilliant beacon, to warn the base-hearted what an injured man might dare. The fire had scathed the tree that had sheltered the cottage, but the seat he had raised beneath it yet remained entire. He sat down on the bench, and raised his eyes to the heavens; the wind came in sudden gusts, drifting the thick clouds across the sky; for a moment a solitary star would beam in the dark concave, and then another cloud would pass on, and the twinkling radiance would be lost. He gazed a few minutes on the clouded sky, and thought on all he had suffered and all he had lost: his last fond hope was now snatched away; and he cursed De Boteler, as at once the degrader of the father and destroyer of the child. But a strange feeling arose in his mind as a long hollow-sounding gust swept past him; it came from the ruin beside him—from the spot he had made desolate; and, as he looked wistfully round, he felt a sudden throbbing of his heart, and a quickened respiration. In a few minutes his indefinite terror became sufficiently powerful to neutralize every other sensation. He arose—he could not remain another instant; he could scarcely have passed the night there under the influence of his present feelings, had it even been the price of his freedom. He hurried down the path that led from the place where he had stood, and at every step his heart felt relieved; and, as the distance increased, his superstitious fears died away, and gradually gloom and sorrow possessed him as before.

THREE: