So he came, dressed in his best, as usual, with corduroy breeches, leggings, wide soft hat, and the flowered waistcoat and tail-coat he had refused to discard. He was no longer the centre of a group of farmers discussing crops and weather and the latest improvements in machineryhe stood and walked alone, inspecting the booths and side-shows with a contemptuous eye, while the crowd stared at him furtively and whispered when he passed ... "There he goes" ... "old Ben Backfield up at Odiam." Reuben wondered if this was fame.
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ONE:Isabella was sitting in an apartment with the fair Joan of Kent, expatiating upon the insolence of the common people, and detailing a solitary instance of the evil that the family of a bondman might work to his lord, when the door was thrown open and Richard, with his beautiful countenance flushed with excitement, and followed by the archbishop of Canterbury, abruptly entered.
The smith was as great an enthusiast for the freedom of the bond as the monk himself; but his mode of obtaining it did not coincide with the peaceful bent of the father. Tyler's plan was bold and sanguinary,the monk's, intimidation without violence; and energetic and accustomed as was the smith to act on his own impulses, yet, even in his fiercest moods, he willingly yielded obedience to the monk's suggestions. Indeed, he had long been accustomed to pay that deference which father John's mildness had, as it were, extorted; and the circumstance of their first connection, from the liberation of Ball from the dungeon of Sudley to the present period, had so increased his affection and veneration, that now, deprived of this pillar of support, he felt a loneliness and dejection which nothing around could dispel.His meditations were soon disturbed by a confused distant noisethen men's voices and the tread of feet, and instantly the latch of the door was raised, the slight fastening gave way, and the intruders rushed into the room beneath.At last he wandered desperately away, treading the furrows of his new ground on Boarzell, reckless that he trod the young seed harrowed into them. In that black moment even his winter crops were nothing to him. He saw, thought of, realised only one thingand that was Rose, the false, the gay, the wanton, and the beautifuloh the beautiful!laughing at him from another man's arms. He could see her laughing, see just how her lips parted, just how her teeth shonethose little teeth, so regular except for the pointed caninesjust how the dimples came at the corners of her mouth, those dear little hollows which he had dug with his kisses...."He'll go far, that young feller," said Realf of Grandturzel.