Audrey had once
been betrothed to her, yet that she had released and sent him herself to
Rheims, and all to end like this. And yet she could bear to come and see
him again; and, it was said, would be present somewhere in the crowd
even at his death.
Finally, the tale of how the priest had been taken by his own
father--old Mr. Audrey of Matstead--him that was now lying sick in Mr.
Columbell's house--this put the crown on all the rest. A hundred rumours
flew this way and that: one said that the old man had known nothing of
his son's presence in the country, but had thought him to be still in
foreign parts. Another, that he knew him to be in England, but not that
he was in the county; a third, that he knew very well who it was in the
house he went to search, and had searched it and taken him on purpose to
set his own loyalty beyond question. Opinions differed as to the
propriety of such an action....
* * * * *
So then the great crowd of heads--men from all the countryside, from
farms and far-off cottages and the wild hills, mingling with the
townsfolk--this crowd, broken up into levels and patches by river and
houses and lanes, moved to and fro in the October sunshine, and sent up,
with the column of smoke that eddied out from beneath the bubbling
tar-cauldron by the gallows, a continual murmur of talking, like the
sound of slow-moving wheels of great carts.
He felt dazed and blind, yet with a kind of lightness too as he came
out of the gaol-gate into that packed mass of faces, held back by guards
from the open space where the horse and the hurdle waited.
Pages:
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493