“Get off with you and begone!” cried the factor, rapping out another volley.
“Is it Hollowbank you call this place?” said Ralph, looking the fellow in the face. “Hellbank would be a fitter name.”
The man answered nothing, but his eyes glared angrily as Ralph put spur to his horse and rode on.
“God in heaven!” cried Ralph when Sim had come up by his side, “to think that work like this goes on in God's sight!”
“Yet you say the best happens,” said Sim.
“It does; it does; God knows it does, for all that,” insisted Ralph. “But to think of these poor souls thrown out into the road like cattle. Cattle? To cattle they would be merciful!—thrown out into the road to lie and die and rot!”
“Have they been outlawed—these men?” said Sim.
“Damnation!” cried Ralph, as though at Sim's ignorant word a new and terrible thought had flashed upon his mind and wounded him like a dagger.
Then they rode long in silence.
Away they went, mile after mile, without rest and without pause, through dales and over uplands, past meres and across rivers, and still with the gathering blackness overhead.