Evidently he had pleased the multitude, for there was now a thick crowd in the central space, and already dancing had begun. Farm-hands in clean smocks, with bright-coloured handkerchiefs round their necks, gambolled uncouthly with farm-girls in spotted and striped muslins. Young farmers' wives, stiff with the sedateness of their bridehead, were drawn into reluctant capers. Despairing virgins renewed their hope, and tried wives their liveliness in unaccustomed arms. Even the elders danced, stumping together on the outskirts of the whirl as long as their breath allowed them.It was David who drew William's attention to the woman sitting at the other end of their seat. David piqued himself on his knowledge of the world."I did, my lord."
ONE:"Why, what mishap has befallen you?" inquired Holgrave, in surprise.
ONE:The next morning the monk was summoned before the abbot; and with the same calm and dignified demeanor that generally characterized him, he obeyed the summons. The two brethren who had conducted him from Gray's cottage, stood at the table, and the abbot proceeded to say, that upon the oath of a respectable witness, he had been observed conversing with an excommunicated woman, and accompanying her to her house, and that those two brethren (pointing to the officers) were ready to avow they had beheld him leave it. "Now," continued Sudbury, "what have you to say? Did you converse with the woman?"
THREE:The stranger instantly divested himself of his wet apparel, and attired himself in Holgrave's yeoman's garb; and then, with the natural regret of one accustomed to traffic, he drew from a secret pocket of his wet doublet, a bag of coin, the wreck of his merchandize, and with a sigh for all he had lost, placed it in his bosom. His dagger was also stuck in his doublet, so that if necessity came, he might use it; and then attentively listening to Holgrave's directions, he threw himself upon a heap of rushes in a corner, and soon after his host had withdrawn to throw the tell-tale garments into the Isborne, he fell into the short, light slumbers of a seaman.
"Yes, I dare say.""Master Calverly, you will find no man to act more faithfully by you than John Byles. You have been a good friend to me, and I would do any thing to serve you, butyou see a man can't stifle conscience all at once."Caro and Tilly did not rebel. Somehow or other their young backs did not break under the load of household toil, nor, more strangely, did their young hearts, in the loneliness of their hard, uncared-for lives."I'm glad he's found something to amuse him, poor son," said Mrs. Backfield, coming in to see if Reuben had waked.
