ONE:Rose was intensely relieved. She felt that at last and for ever the tormenting mystery would have gone from her life. Once Handshut was away, she told herself, she would slip back into the old groovea little soberer and softer perhaps, but definitely free of that Reality which had been so terribly different from its toy-counterfeit.Sam obeyed; but whether owing to his trepidation or the slippery surface of the earth, he lost his footing and disappeared, uttering a cry of terror. Byles stood for an instant, irresolute whether to advance to the succour of his servitor, or leave him behind, for he apprehended that the cry would arouse the guardians of the Chase. Recollecting, however, that it would be as dangerous to abandon him as to attempt his extrication, he rushed forward to the spot where Sam had disappeared. The man had, in his fall, grasped the root of a tree from which the late heavy rains had washed the earth, and he lay suspended midway down. Byles hastily threw him a rope, with which he had intended to bind the animal on the barrow, and, with some difficulty, succeeded in dragging him up.
TWO:"Mine!" he repeated almost fiercely."I can't wait any longer," he said to Naomi, "something's kept him."
