THREE:There are no two such things for sharpening human wits as fullness of love and shortness of cash. Robert's brain was essentially placid and lumbering, but under this double spur it began to work wonders. After much pondering he thought of a plan. It was part of his duties to snare rabbits on Boarzell. Every evening he went round and inspected the traps, killed any little squealing prisoners that were in them, and sold them on market days at Rye. It was after all an easy thing to report and hand over the money for ten rabbits a[Pg 149] week, while keeping the price of, say, three more, and any other man would have thought of it sooner. FORE:One evening, as the rumour went, a female figure, enveloped in a mantle of some dark colour, and holding an infant in her arms, was observed, seated on one of the stones of the quarry, with her feet resting on a fragment beneath. Her face was turned towards Sudley, and as the atmosphere was clear, and her position elevated, the castle could well be distinguished. Wild shrieks were heard by some during that night, and the morning sun revealed blood on fragments of the stone, and on the earth beneath; and at a little distance it was perceived that the grass had been recently dug up, and trodden down with a heavy foot. The peasants crossed themselves at the sight, but no enquiries were made, and from that day the cliff was sacred to superstition, for no inhabitant of the district would have touched a stone of the quarry, or have dared to pass it after nightfall for the world."Others?"

THREE:"I'm sorry," he said sheepishly. FORE:

THREE:So the fight raged on, the Battle of Boarzell. Unfortunately it did not rage on Boarzell itself, but on its fruitful fringe, where the great ploughfields lapped up to the base of the Moor, taking the sunset on their wet brown ridges. Poor Ginner's winter wheat was all pulped and churned to ruin, and the same doom fell on Ditch's roots. Sometimes it seemed as if the Squire's men would attain their object, for the fence��very tottery and uncertain, it must be confessed��had wound a bit of the way past Totease towards Odiam. Dusk had fallen, but the men still worked, for their blood was up. FORE:"Wot if I tell f?ather?"