ONE:"I love her," faltered Robert. TWO:Reuben's oats were a dismal failure. All the warm thrilling hopes which he had put into the ground with the seed and the rape cake, all the watching and expectation which had imparted as many delights as Naomi to the first weeks of his married life��all had ended in a few rows of scraggy, scabrous murrainous little shoots, most of which wilted as if with shame directly they appeared above the ground, while the others, after showing him and a derisive neighbourhood all that oats could do in the way of tulip-roots, sedge-leaves, and dropsical husk, shed their seeds in the first summer gale, and started July as stubble.Then misery turned to rage. It was Reuben who had brought her to this, who had stolen her from Harry, forced her into marrying him, and exposed her to this anguish. She hated Reuben. She hated him. With all the fierceness of her conquered soul and yielded body she hated him. She would have nothing more to do with him, she would be revenged on him, punish him ... a little hoarse scream of rage burst from her lips, and she turned suddenly and ran out of that dreadful room.

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ONE:Reuben's hopes of the Fair-place now revived, and he at once approached the new Squire with a view to purchase; but Sir Eustace turned out to be quite as wrong-headed as Sir Ralph on the matter of popular rights.He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods. TWO:Calverley's specious arguments availed no longer, and, muttering curses upon the jailor, whose officiousness had prevented the possibility of that consummation he so devoutly wished, he received the command to set Holgrave at liberty.

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ONE:Tilly was more frightened than ever. She had never heard anything about the great Gate controversy, and could not understand why Reuben was so angry with Albert. The verses seemed to her quite harmless, they[Pg 187] were not even about love. However, she could not disobey her father, so she ran and fetched Albert out of the corn-chamber, begging him to be careful what he said, "fur f?ather's unaccountable vrothered to-night about something." TWO:

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ONE:"I tell you, steward," said the smith who had before spoken, and stepping so near Calverley that he involuntarily drew back, "if you prize your life, you will call no man here a bondman. I am free��that man is free��" pointing to Holgrave, "and we are all free��all sworn brothers; and no one shall dare," raising his voice, "to brand, with such a name, a mother's son among us! You have received fair warning, and leave to go: retire now��instantly, if you are wise! Clear a passage there for my Lord de Boteler's steward! There is now room for you to pass��your retainers are waiting without��and now take the man you call a bondman, and away with you all. What! you will not lay hold of him? Take him, I say!" elevating his voice��"seize the villein, and drag him back to his bondage! What! not a finger, after all the trouble you have taken?��then, away with you alone!��away!" And Calverley, from the mere instinct of obedience to a superior power, moved towards the door. "And if ever," continued the smith, "you are found hunting in this forest again for bondmen, as you call them, we may chance to give you a lodging where you will have little reason to complain that the sun shines too brightly!" TWO:"Stephen Holgrave!" eagerly interrupted Calverley. "Have you heard or seen any thing of him?"

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