Chapter 9About an hour later Reuben was down again at[Pg 320] Handshut's cottage, but this time a change had worked itself. The door hung wide openand the place was empty. He went through the two miserable little rooms, but there was no one, and nowhere for anybody to hide. The remains of a meal of bread and tea were on the table, and a fire of sticks was dying on the hearth. The lovers had flownto laugh at him from a safe distance.
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"F?ather!" cried Pete, "you can't turn him out lik this.""Nay, Isabella," said the pale interesting lady of Sir Robert Knowles, "it is not strange that my Lord de Boteler should know the faces of those who were born on his land; and this young woman's skill could not fail to have procured her notice. But the handiness of her fingers has not made her vain. You know I am fond of reading faces, and I would answer that she is as modest and good as she is fair.""Bondman!" exclaimed Holgrave, raising his clenched hand, but he did not strike"lying craven!""No; he received his freedom from my father when a boy for some juvenile serviceI hardly remember what. Yet I shall never forget the look of the varletas if it mattered to such as he whether they were free or not! He stared for an instant at my fatherthe tears trembling in his eyes, and all the blood in his body, I verily believe, reddening his face, and he looked as if he would have said something; but my father and I did not care to listen, and we turned away. As for the land he has now received, I promised it him on the field of battle, and I could not retract my word."