"You can now go to the loft, and lie down again," said Holgrave; "but do not sleep too soundly; for if any one comes in to look for you, you must go to your old hiding-place. You see, stranger, that mine is not the best place you could have chosen; there is ill blood between me and the castle folks, and they will not let any chance slip to let me know that even this hut, poor as it is, is not my own, but must be entered and searched as they would the kennel of a dog. You know me, stranger, though I know nothing of you, except your voice. You called me by my name, and you addressed me as a yeoman—think you that I am a yeoman?"
"Yes," said the galleyman; "I knew you were a freeman, and I heard you were a yeoman."
"Yes, I was a freeman, and I was a yeoman; but I am now a—villein! Ay, stare—stare! I live through it all. It was but the space of a moment—the drawing of a breath, that changed me from a man who dared look the heavens in the face, and close his door, if he listed, on even the baron himself, to a poor worm, that must crawl upon the earth, and has not even this (taking up a log of wood) that he can call his own. True, it was not my birthright, but I earned it, in sweat, in hunger, and cold, and I fought for it amidst swords and lances—and I sold it, like a traitor, for—her!" And he pointed, with a look of bitter reproach, to his wife.
The galleyman, for the first time, fixed his eyes upon Margaret, who was sitting, nursing her little charge within the recess of the chimney. She had latterly been accustomed to unkind language from her husband; but the bitterness with which he had now alluded to her before a stranger, brightened the delicacy of her complexion with a passing glow, and caused a sudden tear to tremble in her eye.
"And, by the good cargo I lost even now at Winchcombe," said the galleyman, after looking at her for a moment, "you could not have sold it to better advantage. Such a wife would make any man think little of her price. If you have made yourself a villein, is the world so small that there is no place but the manor of Sudley to live in? Come, come, let us talk like friends—we are not such strangers as you suppose."
"No," said Holgrave; "but I cannot think where we have met."
"Never mind that. As for me, I am not quite foundered, although I have left a cargo behind at Winchcombe that would have bought a dozen bondmen's freedom. Come with me to London: I have part of a galley of my own there, and you may either stow away in some hole of the city, or slip your cable, and be off for Genoa, where I'll promise you as snug a birth as a man could wish for. Besides, there is your child—is it a boy?"
Margaret nodded assent.
"Yes, there is your boy—would you let him grow up a bondman?"
"No," said Holgrave. "Now you speak of the boy, I will not leave this place. Let him live and toil, and suffer, and——"