THREE:Reuben had sold Alfriston King for two hundred pounds, and this new capital made possible another enterprisehe bought twenty head of sheep. For some time he had considered the advantages of keeping sheep. It was quite likely that his new land on Boarzell would be mostly pasture, at all events for some time to come, and sheep, properly managed, ought to be a good source of revenue as well as a hall-mark of progress. He did not want Odiam to be a farm of one idea; his father had kept it ambitionlessly to grass, but Reuben saw grain-growing, dairy-keeping, cattle-breeding, sheep-rearing, hops, and fruit, and poultry as branches of its greatness.In the motley crowd, of nearly sixty thousand men, the most conspicuous figure was, perhaps, John Leicester himself, cased in a complete suit of steel armour, (taken as lawful spoil from some castle in the route) waving in the sun a bright Damascus scimitar, while he gave directions, in an authoritative tone, to a peasant who was unloosing the trappings of a large black horse, from which Leicester had just alighted. Standing at a short distance from him, John Oakley, otherwise Jack Straw, formed an adjunct little less important in the picturesque of the scene. Unwilling to incumber himself with armour, his portly person was defended by a leathern jack, covered over with a thick quilting of crimson silk, dagger proof; and in this guise, he contrasted well with the monk clad in dark woollen, with whom he was engaged in conversationalthough turning every now and then, his large blue eyes towards a tempting display of eatables and wine profusely spread under the shade of a tree. A cluster of formidable-looking men in tough leathern jacks, were laying aside their hand-bills and swords and dividing the contents of a large satchel. There was a group variously armed and accoutred, some wearing the shirt of mail with the yew-tree bow in their hands and quivers of arrows at their backs; and others in doublets of leather or freize, with swords, some rusty and some bright, or staves, or sharp-pointed clubs, or reaping hooks, or wood-knives.
THREE:"Can't I induce you to spare them? There are only too few of those ancient landmarks left in Sussex.""What!" said Black Jack, laughing, "think you squire Calverley would busy himself about the dead! Come, come, tell out the silver, and replenish the flagon: we are yours for this adventureand, by the green wax! a strange one it is."
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