FORE:A hundred yards off a Totease barn-door gaped, and the workmen sprinted for it. In the darkness they were able to reach it without losing more than one of their number, who fell down and had the wit to pretend to be dead. The crowd seethed after them, but the door was shut, and the heavy bolts rattled behind it.Then suddenly the unexpected happened. At the end of one of Reuben's most successful meetings in Iden Schoolhouse, a mild sandy-haired person, whom nobody knew, rose up and asked meekly whether it was true that the Scott's Float toll-gate was on Colonel [Pg 179]MacDonald's estate, and if so, what use did he make of the tolls? He was answered by being flung into the street, but afterwards the Conservative tenant of Loose Farm on the Marsh remarked to Reuben that it was "a hemmed ark'ard question."
THREE:That visit was the first of several others. Starvecrow took the place of Cheat Landindeed, he seldom went near Cheat Land now. Rose gave him all the refuge he wanted from the vexings and thwartings of his daily life. She was not, like Alice, a counter-irritant, but a sweet drowse of tenderness and beauty in which he forgot his disappointment, thinking of nothing but the lovely woman he caressed.
THREE:It might be Rio de Janeiro."