"Bring a light!" called someone. A boy dashed up with a handful of flaming strawit blew out of his hand and flared away over the roof, scattering showers of sparks. A man yelled out that his shirt was burning. "Bring a light!" someone called again. Then someone else shouted"The constables from Rye!""They lie, Master Neville! Bring them here, and I will maintain, in combat against them both, that they have sworn falsely."
Director
The next morning Holgrave received a peremptory order to attend at the castle in the afternoon; and the henchman of the baron, who was the bearer of the message, refused to give any information why he had been so summoned. Edith, with her natural penetration, saw, by the hesitation of the servitor, and by the tone in which the mandate was conveyed, that something of more than ordinary moment was about to be transacted, and, with an undefined feeling of alarm, she resolved to accompany her son."Off!where?""I am afraid not,many thanks to you; John Byles is not thought enough of in this baronyno, it is more likely Holgrave's wife, if she has any children, will have the nursing."The next few days were like a horrible jumbled nightmare, something malignant, preposterous, outside experience. Three men came over from the slaughterhouse at Rye, and plied their dreadful work till evening. The grey and dun-coloured Jerseys with their mild, protruding eyes, the sturdy Welsh with their little lumpy horns, the Sussex all coloured like a home-county landscape in reds and greys and brownsbowed their meek heads under the ox-killer, and became mere masses of meat and horn and hide. Profitless masses, too, for all the carcases were ordered to be burned.Realf had never been a practical manperhaps it was to that he owed his downfall. Good luck and ambition had made him soar for a while, but he lacked the dogged qualities which had enabled Reuben to play[Pg 435] for years a losing game. Besides, he had to a certain extent lost interest in land which was no longer his own. He worked for a wage, for his daily bread, and the labour of his hands and head which had once been an adventure and a glory, was now nothing but the lost labour of those who rise up early and late take rest.