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THREE:"Let his wife follow him!" repeated Calverley, looking at Oakley with unaffected astonishment; but instantly recollecting himself, he added��"I don't know;" and again, after pausing a moment, continued��"You, of course, do not mean to keep faith with that seditious monk?" looking with a scrutinizing glance at Oakley.

THREE:"I will not answer till I am answered: but this I may say, be ye who ye will, that there is not a man I would befriend sooner than Stephen Holgrave."Then suddenly his sons' voices floated up to him in his dream.

THREE:This was what his forty years of struggle had brought him to. He saw himself in the midst of a huge [Pg 328]ambitious ruin. He had failed, his hopes were blighted��what could he expect to pull out of this wreck. It would be far better and wiser if he gave up the dreary uncertain battle, and took the sure rest at hand. If he sold some of the more fruitful part of his land he would be able to divorce Rose, then he could marry Alice and live with her a quiet, shorn, unambitious life. No one would buy the new ground on Boarzell, but he could easily sell the low fields by the Glotten brook; that would leave him with twenty or thirty acres of fairly good land round the farm, and all his useless encroachments on Boarzell which he would allow to relapse into their former state. He would have enough to live upon, to support his children and his delicate wife��he would be able to take no risks and make no ventures, but he would be comfortable.

THREE:The tenth evening after this exploit closed in heavily, and the wind blew chill and gusty, loaded with drizzling rain. Oakley felt little inconvenience from the night as, wrapped in a large cloak, and with an unusually broad-brimmed hat, he cautiously approached the low-roofed dwelling of Holgrave, in the forest of Dean. He had little difficulty in distinguishing it, Harvey having a few days previously, though without the least intimation of the reason, watched Holgrave from the foundry to his home. The blaze of a bright wood fire was streaming through the casement. Black Jack stept near enough to obtain a view of the interior, in order to assure himself that he was not mistaken, although, from the description he had received, he had little doubt; and a single glance convinced him it was the dwelling he sought. Holgrave was lying along a bench in the opposite chimney corner, his right elbow resting on the form, and his right cheek reposing on the upraised palm. He was looking with a smile at Margaret, who was sitting with her back to the window, and, by the motion of her right hand, was apparently engaged in sewing. The gazer conjectured that Holgrave had been asking her to sing, for, as he stood, she commenced a strain of such sweet and touching melody, that even Oakley (who, spite of his being so admirably "fit for treason," had "music in his soul,") listened with such breathless attention that one would have been tempted to conclude he might "be trusted." The ballad concluded, and Oakley still looked on, until Holgrave, after a few moments of apparently cheerful conversation, arose from the bench, in all probability with the intention of preparing for rest.