The crowd raised its voice against her. “Who is it?—It is Miriam Donne, Diccon the thatcher’s gypsy cousin!”
Her look, her raised arm held them. “What will you do to this man? Why do you beat him down? Because he cries to you, ‘Slaver, cease to enslave!’ You men, I cry the same! And you women, unstirring—watching harm done and unstirring! Never were souls enslaved, but those souls enslaved themselves—”
Great Meadow, out there upon the edge of Great Meadow, burst into a roar: “A lewd man and a lewd woman! A wizard and a witch!” But one of the women—there were not many women—cried shame upon the mob, and to let the two alone, and to let them go. But the mob began to throw stones and to lash itself into a more reckless rage. A woman lifted a shrill voice: “She is a strange woman—a witch! None of us could make her out! She came to Great Meadow just a week ago. Be sure they have been together!” A man midway the crowd cried, “Fornicators!” Voices rushed together into a roar, “Fornicators! Wizard! Witch!” Led by the young man who had been too often to the Green Wreath the wave broke in fury upon Osmund and Miriam.
The constable, quite within the town bounds, but with his head over his shoulder, found that he must return with his helpers. He threatened sending for Justice Thorne.... When it would, the rabble desisted. It did not want to kill, it only wanted to make life sore and afraid. It thought that it must have accomplished that.
The sun was beginning to go down, the air growing darker and cooler. The day and all its adventures was over.... Let them go!
The village mob, more silent than it had been, began to withdraw into Great Meadow. Its lust for fighting with hands against an idea was glutted; it thought that the idea was dead. The crowd drifted fast away. Amber light was upon the ragged field and the westward-flowing road.
The man and woman, who had been sore beaten, rose from earth to their knees, to their feet. Torn and bruised, stained with dust and blood, they leaned against a trampled bank, they drew breath, with their hands they pressed the mist from their eyes. The red sun was half down, the copse by the stream was shaking and sighing. “If you can walk, you had better be gone!” advised the constable. “Ten miles to Greenfield!” He looked aslant at the dark woman. “Diccon the thatcher used to be in good repute enough, but ’tisn’t so now! He’s took to going to Foxite meetings. If you’d win to his house again, you’d better go by the field and the water and the backside o’ town. But I don’t mind telling you that it’s my belief that trouble for you in Great Meadow is just begun!”
Miriam Donne drew her loosened long hair over her shoulder and began to braid it with swift fingers. Her eyes and Osmund’s met in a long look. “Richard Osmund and I will walk together. Here we will find life and here we will find death, here we will find grace and here we will find bitter herbs, for that is the way the world is strewn!... But, Master Constable, I would have you wit that my Cousin Diccon knows little of me and my ways, seeing that I came to his house but a week ago. Do not touch him for ways of mine. And now, farewell, Great Meadow!”
She stood straight, her hair braided, her eyes clear. Osmund put out his hand. She laid hers in it. They moved across the trampled place; as the red sun vanished, they took the high road. Behind them a lingering edge of Great Meadow shouted and gibed. A stone that was flung went by, stirring the dust before them. They walked on, following the sun.
The road crossed the stream. When they had gone over the bridge, the copse and the twilight somewhat hid from them Great Meadow. Sound died away, the village left the circle of consciousness. A plain lay before them pierced by the road going toward the yet lighted sky. The evening wind breathed around them, the rich dusk gained, the evening star shone out.... Desert spaces—far clumps of trees like palm trees.