As soon as he struck the highroad leading to the village, he met some laborers going to their work. They hesitated a moment, and then ran toward him.
“Is it that you have come back to your own, sir?” they cried, crowding around him.
“No,” said Roger. “Our King, King James, has had his heritage filched from him,—why should I complain? But mark, all you men who till the fields of Egremont, that I shall yet come into my own. And I shall take no vengeance on any of you who eat the bread of my bastard brother,—you are poor men, laboring for your daily wage,—but I shall take vengeance on him.”
The rustics looked at each other with meaning in their dull faces. One of them, an old man who had taught Roger the lore of birds and rabbits and hares and other wild things, spoke up, respectfully but freely.
“Hodge, the shoemaker, sir, and myself, we have often talked of that thing; and Hodge, who can read like a clerk, says no good ever came to a man from taking his father’s or his mother’s or his own bastard under his roof.”
“Hodge is a philosopher,” replied Roger, with a wan smile. “Which of you has a good horse to sell?”
There was a silence, until a young ploughman in a smock frock spoke up.
“None of us, master Roger, have a horse to sell you, but I have a good one for your worship to ride. He has not been always at the plough tail, and so is fitter than the others.”
“Thank you,” said Roger, showing some money. “After having robbed me of Egremont, the Dutchman gave me fifty pounds. The horse is worth three pounds.”
“Nay, sir,” replied the young ploughman, “I would rather have it that you took Merrylegs, and would give me the lease on the barn field when you come back. The lease is more to me than the horse.”