ONE:"Well, I shall have to think it over."
TWO:At Flightshot the Squire viewed Odiam's recovery with some uneasiness. It would be a good thing for him if he could sell more land to old Backfield, but at the same time his conscience was restless about it. Backfield was a rapacious old hound, who forced the last ounce of work out of his labourers, and the last ounce of money out of his tenants. He was a hard master and a hard landlord, and ought not to be encouraged. All the same, Bardon did not see how he was to avoid encouraging him. If Backfield applied for the land it would be suicidal folly to refuse to sell it. He was in desperate straits for money. He had appealed to Anne, who had money of her own, but Anne's reply had been frigid. She wrote:Ever since the day of the Fair a strange feeling had possessed her, sometimes just for fitful moments, sometimes for long days of panicthe feeling of being pursued. She felt herself being hunted, slowly, but inevitably, by one a dozen times more strong, more knowing, more stealthy than herself. She heard his footsteps in the night, creeping after her down long labyrinths of thought, sometimes his shadow sped before her with her own. And she knew that one day he would seize herthough she struggled, wept and fled, she knew that one day she would be his at last, and of her own surrender. The awful part of that seizing would be that it would be a matter of her will as well as his....
