TWO:Chapter 8The day had slipped by, and twilight was settling down on the Fair. The stalls flared up, a red glow streamed into the sky, and patched the shagginess of Boarzell's firs with crimson shreds. The dancing had become more disorderly, the decent folk had retired, and left the madder element to its revels. The mass of the dancers was blurred, confused in the grey smeeth. It seemed to invite Joe and Caro, for now in the thick of it one could give and take surreptitious kisses; some of the kisses were not even surreptitiousthe love-making was becoming nearly as open as in the days when Reuben and Naomi had danced together. Caro was no longer shocked at the "goings-on," which had used to scandalise her in earlier years when she knew them scarcely more than by hearsay. Her very innocence had made her easier to corrupt, and she now joined in the revel with a delight scarcely less abandoned, if more na?ve, than that of the cottage wantons who bumped round her. It was all so new, and yet so natural, this kicking and capering to a jigging tune. Who would have imagined that the lonely bitter Caro, enviously watching the fun in earlier years, should now have both a partner and a lover? She laughed like a child at the thought.
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TWO:Simon Sudbury, the mitred abbot, was a man of a fair and florid complexion, with large, expressive eyes, that even at the age of fifty were of a deep and clear blue. He was tall, and just sufficiently corpulent to give an air of dignity to his figure; but even had his person been insignificant, there sat on his brow, and glanced in his eye, that pride and conscious superiority which, even from an equal, would have extorted respect.
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TWO:"Do you not?I think I speak plain languagehowever, if you forget the appearance of the night when the buck was shot, perhaps you can tell me on what day of the week your man, Sam, managed to get into Holgrave's cottage, and steal the shafts from the quiver over the fire-place?""Ah, Tom Merritt!" said the smith, raising his head and recognizing, in the dusk, a stout, active, young man, a mason, who resided at Winchcombe.
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condimentum nibh, ut fermentum massa justo sit amet.