"Now you're not to go quarrelling wud him, Harry.[Pg 33] I'd sooner have peace than anything whatsumdever. I ?un't used to being set ag?unst people. Besides, it w?an't be fur long."
"Master Calverley, I will tell you truly," answered Mary, in a voice scarcely audible from its tremor. "You have been our best friend, and you would not see me hung? It was all a mistakeI am sure I wouldn't hurt a hair of the dear creature's head." And here the feelings of woman so far prevailed, that she shed some disinterested tears.When it came within ten yards of the fences, it doubted itself suddenly after the manner of crowds. It stopped, surged back, and mumbled. "Down with the fences!" shouted someone"Long live the Squire!" shouted someone else. Then there was a pause, almost a silence.
ONE:She stood at the gate and could see him as a blot on the Moor. He was coming towards Odiam, and she[Pg 340] watched him as he plunged through the heather, singing at the pitch of his lungs:
THREE:They stood on the hillside and looked down at Reuben. He had felled five trees, and was now getting his axe into the sixth. They watched him in silence, and Naomi found herself remembering the way he had looked at her at dinner.Then he saw Orion hanging over him, very low in the windy sky, shaking with frost. His eyes fixed themselves on the constellation, then gradually he became aware of the sides of a cart, of the smell of straw, of the movement of other bodies that sighed and stirred beside him. The physical experience was now complete, and soon the emotional had shaped itself. Memory came, rather sick. He remembered the fight, his terror, the flaming straw, the crowd that constricted and crushed him like a snake. His rage and hate rekindled, but this time without focushe hated just everyone and everything. He hated the wheels which jolted him, his body because it was bruised, the other bodies round him, the stars that danced above him, those unknown footsteps that tramped beside him on the road.
