"Ugh!" said Rose"no fire!""I can't help thatthe sun's near down, and I must have everything pr?aper by dark."
ONE:The Tories were a little disconcertedthe toll-gate did not fit into their campaign. Tolls had always been unpopular in the neighbourhood, even though [Pg 180]Government-owned, and it was catastrophic that the enemy should suddenly have swooped down on the Colonel's private venture and rhymed it so effectively.Chapter 14
ONE:"Better than any mitred priest of Ammon, for I shall not vex the sinner's soul with dead works, but wash it in the crimson fountain. You trust your sick man to me, young fellerI'll wash him in blood, I'll clothe him in righteousness, I'll feed him with salvation."Besides, Reuben had now a respectable herd of cattlenot quite so numerous or valuable as the earlier lot which had been sacrificed, but none the less respectable, and bringing him in good returns. He had made some sound profit out of his service-bull, and his sheep were paying better than they had paid for years. He no longer "kept" other people's cattle. Odiam, whether in stock or cash, was now inviolate.
That night was a period of strong excitement within and without the Tower. Without, the moonlight displayed an immense mass of dark bodies stretched on the ground, and slumbering in the open air; while others, of more active minds, moved to and fro, like evil spirits in the night. Beyond, in the adjacent streets, occasionally rose the drunken shouts of rioters, or the shrieks of some unhappy foreigner, who was slaughtered by the ignorant and ferocious multitude for the crime of being unable to speak English. Within the Tower there was as little of repose; there were the fears of many noble hearts, lest the renegade leader might not be as influential as he vaunted, concealed beneath the semblance of contemptuous pride or affected defiance;then there were the sanguine hopes of the youthful Richard;the maternal fears of his mother;the anxious feelings of the baroness;the troubled thoughts and misgivings of John Ball;and the strange whisperings among the men at arms and archers, who all "did quail in stomach," we may suppose, at the novel combination of a prophet in prison, and an armed populace besieging the fortress.BOOK I THE BEGINNING OF THE FIGHT Chapter 1All that night they hunted for George on Boarzell. It was pitch dark. Soon great layers of cloud were sagging over the stars, and Boarzell's firs were lost in the blackness behind them. Reuben, his sons, Beatup, Piper, Handshut, Boorman, fought the dark with lanterns as one might fight Behemoth with pin-pricks. They scattered over the Moor, searching the thorn-clumps and gorse-thickets. It was pretty certain that he was not on the new ground by Flightshot. Richard said openly that he did not believe in the fit and that George had run away, andless openlythat it was a good job too. The other boys, however, did not think that he had enough sense to run away, and agreed that his condition all day had foretold an attack.Rose could not read his mood; one day she would feel her husband had been alienated from her by his sorrow, another that his need of her was greater than ever. She herself carried a heavy heart, and in her mind a picture of the man who was "only looking in at the window." She seemed to see him standing there, with the moon[Pg 300] rising over his shoulder, while from behind him something in the garden, in the night, called ... and called."Nonsenseyou're coming wud me."
