They moved together toward the stable and the house. “Great Meadow,” said the thatcher, “is hard on new doctrines until somehow it drinks them down—and then it thinks the spring was always on its land! I’ve seen Great Meadow Bishop and King—and I’ve seen it Presbytery and Parliament—and now it’s Independent and Oliver and the new Commons. But it always cries ‘Poison!’ at first.... Keep your mouth shut till you see which way the creature’ll jump! That always seemed wisdom to me until I heard George Fox.”
“And then?”
“I’m not so sure,” said the thatcher. “Of course if you’re marching, and the thirst and heat are bad, and some one knows of a spring of water he ought to tell.... But your doctrine, now, isn’t religious.”
“Isn’t it?” asked Osmund. “I wonder.... I think that it is religious.”
“Scorn and laughter are hard things to bear,” said the thatcher. “How did you strike out what you did?”
“The fire was in the flint for who had eyes to see,” said Osmund. “Also I was born of a woman.”
Within the house Margery the thatcher’s wife put bread and ale upon a table. Osmund sat down and ate and drank. When he had done this he took a book from his pocket and began to read. That was for rest after deep pondering, and to steady nerve and brain before he should rise and walk forth, deep into Great Meadow. A small, latticed window gave upon a small garden and a climbing hill. In the garden were sprinkled, as by a giant’s hand, clumps of red and gold and blue, gillyflower and larkspur and marigold. A woman, passing the window, looked for a moment into the room, then presently entered at the door. She crossed to a stair and mounting this disappeared. Osmund looked up from his book. She was a young woman, of a darkness mixed with rose. Almost immediately she was in the room again, upon her head the wide straw hat of the country women. She crossed to the door, vanished into the world without.
Osmund, falling to his book again, read a little farther in its pages, then marked the place and shut the volume. He sat on in the clean, still room, elbows resting upon the table, his forehead in his hands. He sat very quiet, collecting the inner forces. At last he rose, and left the room and the cottage. He found the thatcher yet busy with the shed. “Are you going now into Great Meadow? That is my cousin going ahead of you there. Wait till she is gone. I said naught to her about you.”
Osmund leaned against the shed and looked at a bird soaring above the stream and the trees. The thatcher spoke on. “As I said, there’ll be a many about in the town to-day—well-off and poor and old and young. And market days aren’t always the most peaceable! You know your own business best, but Great Meadow’ll be a quieter place to-morrow.”
“But not so many people together. If you’ve a message,” said Osmund, “that you want to give to the whole country—”