THREE:She arrived in the swale. A tender grey mist was in the air, smeething Boarzell, mingling with the smoke of Odiam chimneys, that curled out wood-scented into the dark. As Naomi climbed from the carrier's cart which had brought her, she smelled the daffodils each side of the garden path. The evening was full of pale perfumes, of ghostly yellows, massing faintly amidst the grey.There was much discontent among the bondmen as they withdrew from the castle, conversing on the arbitrary decision just pronounced, and on the probability that, before the expiration of three months, that decision would be enforced in consequence of Holgrave's flight; for they could not conceive the idea of the self-sacrifice of a generous spirit, which would rather endure, than that the oppressed should suffer further oppression. Certainly, according to the letter of the law of villeinage, the bondmen of Sudley had no just cause for discontent; but then, because it was unusual, at least on that manor, to exercise the prerogative to its fullest extent, they almost forgot that this threatened appropriation of their effects was nothing more than the assertion of a right. But there was one novel feature in the announcement of which they had some colour for complaining;their being considered responsible for one of their own class. However, as in all similar cases where power gives the law to weakness, though there might be a little useless murmuring, there was no alternative but to submit.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams
