FORE:"His abominable farmhe gets every bit of work out of us he can, till we're justabout desperate"She offered him a chair, and he sat down. Her coldness seemed to drive back the tides that had suddenly flooded his lips, and slowly too they began to ebb from his heart. Whom had he come to see?the only woman he had ever loved, whose love he had hoped to catch again in these his latter days, and hold transmuted into tender friendship, till he went back to his earth? Not so, it seemedbut an old woman who had once been a girl, with whom he had nothing in common, and from whom he had travelled so far that they could scarcely hear each other's voices across the country that divided them. Alice broke the silence by offering him some tea.
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FORE:
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FORE:
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FORE:So time passed till within a week of polling day. The feeling in the district grew more and more tenseno prominent member of either party could appear in Rye streets without being insulted by somebody on the opposite side. Meetings were orgies of abuse and violence, but whereas the Radical meetings were invariably broken up in disorder by their opponents, interruptions at Tory meetings resulted only in the interrupters themselves being kicked out. For the first time it looked as if a Conservative would be returned for Rye, and the Colonel knew he owed his success to Backfield's agricultural party.
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FORE:
FORE:"I was right, Margaret," said he, "it was Calverley that set the usurer upon taking the land. He gave the miser something handsome, and John Byles is to have it upon an easy rent!""Either you fetch him here or I send fur the police."
FORE: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.So when Reuben came to his territory the next [Pg 44]afternoon he found a small crowd assembledDitch, Ginner, Realf of Grandturzel, Coalbran of Doozes, Pilcher of Birdseye, with a sprinkling of their wives, families, and farm-hands. He himself had brought Naomi, and Harry was to join them when he came back from an errand to Moor's Cottage. Reuben felt a trifle important and in need of spectators. This was to be the crowning act of conquest. When those roots were shattered away there would be nothing but time and manure between him and the best oat-crop in Peasmarsh.
FORE:
FORE:"Wot's worth while?"His farm itself was at length forfeited, and Holgrave took shelter for the moment at old Hartwell's. The hut his father had reared when he married his mother, was still standing; the roof had fallen in, the ivy had grown over its walls; but even yet it sometimes sheltered the wandering mendicant, and often would the blaze of a large wood fire look cheerily through the shattered casement and the broken door, and shed an air almost of comfort over the bare walls. Holgrave remembered the ruin, as he was considering where he could abide until Margaret, who was far advanced in the family way, should be enabled to travel farther. His resolution was instantly formed; and refusing the assistance offered by Hartwell, and some other neighbours, and as decidedly rejecting the idea they proposed, of striving to regain possession of his house, he requested Lucy Hartwell to look to Margaret for a day or two, while he sought out a place to shelter them; and then, without mentioning his purpose, quitted the house.
