TWO:"Please you, my lord," said Wells, "I have only to say again, that John Oakley did not find this writing in the castle, and that he is a traitorous liar, and that I here challenge him to mortal combat."Meantime affairs at Grandturzel were going from bad to worse. Reuben did not speak much about Grandturzel, but he watched it all the same, and as time wore on a look of quiet satisfaction would overspread his face when it was mentioned at the Cocks. He watched the tiles drip gradually off its barn roofs, he watched the thatch of its haggards peel and moult, he watched the oasts lose their black coats of tar, while the wind battered off their caps, and the skeleton poles stuck up forlornly from their turrets. Holes wore in the neat house-front, windows were broken and not mended, torn curtains waved signals of distress. It was only a question of waiting. THREE:"No, and I shouldn't like him to. You are funny, Caro. Don't watch me if you're shocked��you can know nothing about it, and then you won't be to blame. But I'm going to have my lark in spite of you." THREE:Richard began to take a new interest in his flock��hitherto they had merely struck him as grotesque. Their pale silly eyes, their rough, tic-ridden fleeces, their scared repulsiveness after the dipping, their bewildered nakedness after the shearing, had filled him either with amusement or disgust; but now, when he saw them weakly lick the backs of their new-born lambs, while the lambs' little tails quivered, and tiny, entreating sounds came from their mouths, he found in them a new beauty, which he had found nowhere else in his short, hard life��the beauty of an utterly loving, tender, and helpless thing.