"I didn't know. This is the first I've heard of it. Anyhow, you surely don't mean to say you married me for my money.""I d?an't feel oldat least not often. I still feel young enough to have a whack at the Fair-pl?ace."The other boys were much younger than Reuben, who thumped their heads to let off some of his uncomfortable feelings. Indeed, there was talk of putting him with the grown-up prisoners, till the magistrate realised that juveniles were more easily disposed of. The scene at the court-house was so hurried that he scarcely knew he had been tried till the constable took him by the collar and threw him out of the dock. Then came some dreary moments of waiting in a little stuffy, whitewashed room, while the Town Crier dealt with the victims separately.
Holgrave raised himself erect as the men departed. Wild thoughts, such as he had never known before, rushed through his heart. It is dangerous to snatch from any man, even the lowest of the species, that which he values above every other thing. Be the thing what it maybe it grand or mean, base or beautiful, still the soul has clung to it, has treasured it up, has worshipped before it; and none but the bereaved can comprehend the desolation which the bereavement causes. Holgrave's idol was his freedom; it was the thing he had prized above all things else; it was the thing he had been taught to revere, even as the religion he professed. It must, therefore, have had a strong hold upon his feelings; it must have grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength: and this it is necessary to understand before a perfect idea can be formed of the hatred which he now felt towards the man who had wrested from him his treasure. It is true he might have rejected his terms, at the sacrifice of a thing of less valuehis life; but there was then love and hope to contend against himthe hope of a man and a father. But he had now no longer hope; it had fled with the spirit of his little babe; its last faint breath had dissipated all the illusions of far-off happiness; and he now looked forward to a life of degradation, and a death of dishonour."Unhappy woman!" said the monk, in a tone that seemed to encourage her to proceed"what would you of me?"He drove through Peasmarsh and turned into the Totease lane. The fields on both sides of it were his now. He sniffed delightedly the savour of their sun-baked earth, of the crumpling leaves in their hedges,[Pg 448] of the roots, round and portly, that they nourished in their soiland the west wind brought him the scent of the gorse on Boarzell, very faintly, for now only the thickets of the top were left."Mmm.""Where's Agnes?" asked David with laboured carelessness a day or two later.
