FORE:There was nothing remarkable about the trial, and nothing to be said against the sentence from the point of either justice or humanity. Ten years ago the boy would have been transported to Van Diemen's Land. The Bardons took it upon themselves to be outrageously sorry, and were rather mystified by Reuben's contemptuous attitude towards them and their regrets.Alice saw her blunder. She saw that she had insulted his ambition; and yet, though she now understood the ferocities of that ambition, it filled her with a definite hostility which made her want to fight and fight and fight it with all the strength she had. At the same time, as his surprise collapsed, his own antagonism rose up. He felt a sudden hatred, not for the girl, but for the forces which somehow he knew she was bringing to oppose him. They faced each other, their eyes bright with challenge, their breasts heaving with a stormier, earthlier emotionand the white flame of antagonism which divided them seemed at the same time to fuse them, melt them into each other.
FORE:"He'll do fur himself," he said to Tilly, as he watched her bath the baby before the fire, "and where'll his old farm be then?""Yes," cried Holgrave, starting up eagerly, "if the court-rolls are burned, who can claim the bondman?"
FORE:But Reuben did it because he was not going to be beaten in any respect by his land. He was not going to accept defeat in the slightest instance. So he blew up[Pg 51] the stumps, tidied the ground, and spread manureand more manureand yet more manure.
FORE:Reuben's constant visits to Cheat Land were soon noticed at Odiam, and every advantage was taken of them. A period of licence set in. Richard read Anne Bardon's Homer quite openly by the kitchen fire, Caro dropped tears over East Lynne in the dairy, and Jemmy spent long tarry hours at Rye, coming home with a rank chew in his mouth, and sailors' oaths to salt his work on the farm.
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