THREE:Handshut still leaned on the sill, and she realised that if his words were decorous, his attitude was not. Surely he had something better to do than hang in at her window. Half his face was in shadow, half was reddened by the smouldering sky��it was the face of a young gipsy, brown, sullen, and mocking. She suddenly pulled herself into a sitting posture.His farm itself was at length forfeited, and Holgrave took shelter for the moment at old Hartwell's. The hut his father had reared when he married his mother, was still standing; the roof had fallen in, the ivy had grown over its walls; but even yet it sometimes sheltered the wandering mendicant, and often would the blaze of a large wood fire look cheerily through the shattered casement and the broken door, and shed an air almost of comfort over the bare walls. Holgrave remembered the ruin, as he was considering where he could abide until Margaret, who was far advanced in the family way, should be enabled to travel farther. His resolution was instantly formed; and refusing the assistance offered by Hartwell, and some other neighbours, and as decidedly rejecting the idea they proposed, of striving to regain possession of his house, he requested Lucy Hartwell to look to Margaret for a day or two, while he sought out a place to shelter them; and then, without mentioning his purpose, quitted the house.

THREE:Harry was no more his mother's favourite son. She was not the type of woman to whom a maimed child is dearer than half a dozen healthy ones. On the contrary he filled her with a vague terror and repulsion. She spoke to him gently, tended him carefully, even[Pg 102] sometimes forced herself to caress him��but for the most part she avoided him, feeling as she did so a vague shame and regret.It was about half a mile to the church��over the hanger of Tidebarn Hill. The morning was full of soft loamy smells, quickening under the February sun, which is so pale and errant, but sometimes seems to have the power to make the earth turn in its sleep and dream of spring. Peasmarsh church-tower, squab like a toadstool, looked at itself in the little spread of water at the foot of the churchyard. Beside this pool, darkened with winter sedges, stood Parson Barnaby, the Curate-in-Charge of Peasmarsh, Beckley, and Iden. His boots under his surplice were muddy and spurred, for he had just galloped over from a wedding at Iden, and his sweat dropped on the book as he read "I know that my[Pg 28] Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth."

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