TWO:"No," replied Margaret: "he would have found some means of getting to the forest; but they hold the villeins bound for himif he flies, all they possess of crops or cattle will be seized. But here is Stephen. I was just going over the hill to meet him, when I saw you."But Naomi insisted on putting Fanny into the basin. She held her up in it for a moment. Then suddenly let her drop, and fell forward, wailing.
THREE:The next few days were like a horrible jumbled nightmare, something malignant, preposterous, outside experience. Three men came over from the slaughterhouse at Rye, and plied their dreadful work till evening. The grey and dun-coloured Jerseys with their mild, protruding eyes, the sturdy Welsh with their little lumpy horns, the Sussex all coloured like a home-county landscape in reds and greys and brownsbowed their meek heads under the ox-killer, and became mere masses of meat and horn and hide. Profitless masses, too, for all the carcases were ordered to be burned.
THREE:Then two days before the end he came. As she was[Pg 304] standing by the barn door he appeared at the horse-pond, and crossed over to her at once. He had seen that she was waiting for himperhaps he had seen it on half a dozen other occasions when she had not seen him.
