That gave the crowd its freedomhitherto the conflict had been squeezed into two representatives, leaving some hundred men merely limp spectators; but with the collapse of his proxy, each man felt the rage in him boil up.
The whole of Boarzell now belonged to Odiam, except the Fair-place at the top. Reuben would stare covetously at the fir and gorse clump which still defied him;[Pg 424] but he had reached that point in a successful man's development when he comes to believe in his own success; bit by bit he had wrested Boarzell from the forces that held it, and he could not think that one patch would withstand him to the end.
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Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farmthe yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance.For the first time she began definitely to reproach herself for her treatment of Harry. Though she could never have married him, she could at least have been faithful to him."Avast there! Master Tyler," said Wells, shaking off the grip of the smith; "I know no more of Lancaster than yourself: I told you this morning he was on the bordersand so, how, in the name of all the saints, could he be here?but I tell ye, there are some here who would rather lay hand upon John of Gaunt's gold than upon John of Gaunt's body!""My lord," answered the monk, still mildly, though in a firmer tone than he had before spoken,
