"Do you know, blacksmith," interrupted the baron, still endeavouring to appear unruffled, "that you are not talking to one of your own class, but to one who has the willaye, and the powerto compel a satisfactory reply? And I insist," he added, raising his voice, "that you tell me where the bondman abides!"Handshut still leaned on the sill, and she realised that if his words were decorous, his attitude was not. Surely he had something better to do than hang in at her window. Half his face was in shadow, half was reddened by the smouldering skyit was the face of a young gipsy, brown, sullen, and mocking. She suddenly pulled herself into a sitting posture.Reuben was now alone at Odiamfor the first time. Of course Harry was with him still, but Harry did not count. There was an extraordinary vitality in him, none the less; it was as if the energies unused by his brain were diverted to keep together his crumbled body. He grew more shrivelled, more ape-like every day, and yet he persisted in life. He still scraped at his fiddle, and would often sit for hours at a time mumbling"Only a poor old mana poor old manold manold man," over and over again, sometimes with a[Pg 413] sudden shrill cry of "Salvation's got me!" or "Another wedding!we're always having weddings in this house." His brother avoided him, and did his best to ignore himhe was the scar of an old wound.
ONE:"He's sensible enoughbut he's unaccountable hard to live with.""My liege, I am leader of fifty thousand men."
So a polite if rather cold letter was written accepting Odiam's conditions, and Tilly thanked heaven that she had sacrificed herself and gone to plead with her father."Yes. You've allus treated me lik a dog, and laughed at my writing and all I wanted to do. Then chaps came along as didn't laugh, and promised me all sorts o' things if I'd write fur them."Chapter 9"F?ather!" cried Tilly.