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Updated: June 17, 2025
Danesford gravely; 'I know how hardly you have been dealt with, my boy. Tell me truly, is your religion strong enough to enable you to forgive Mr. Wyley indeed? Is it possible that you can forgive him from your heart? Stephen was silent, looking down at the heath upon which his feet were pressed, but seeing none of its purple blossoms.
One afternoon Martha saw him and the master walking towards Fern's Hollow, where the fencing-in of the green and of the coppice behind the hut were being finished rapidly; and she crept with stealthy steps under the hedge of the garden, until she came within earshot of them; but they were just moving on, and all she heard of the conversation were these words, from the lord of the manor: 'You shall have it at any rate you fix, Wyley at a peppercorn rent, if you please; but I will not sell a square yard of my land out and out. How Martha and Stephen did talk about those words over and over again, and could never come to any conclusion about them.
"I ask myself" he hesitated, and with a great cry, "I ask you, did I play the coward on that night I was captured two years ago?" "The coward?" exclaimed Shackleton in bewilderment. Wyley, for all his sympathy, could not refrain from a triumphant glance at Scrope. "Here is the instance you needed," he said. "Yes, did I play the coward?"
Wyley would have been better satisfied if the whole family could have been driven out of the neighbourhood; but there was no knowing what ugly rumours and inquiries might be set afloat, if the boy went telling his tale to nobody knows whom. Upon the whole, Martha did not very much regret her change of dwelling, though she made a great virtue of her patience in submitting quietly to it.
'Now, just listen to me, young Fern, said Thomas Wyley; 'you'll be compelled to give up Fern's Hollow in right of the lord of the manor; and then if you come to the House for relief, mark my words, I'll send your grandfather off to Bristol, for that's his parish, and you'll never see him again; and I'll give orders for you never to see little Nan; and I'll apprentice you and your other sister in different places.
I could not have hoped for so complete an example," said Wyley. Captain Tessin whistled; Major Shackleton bounced on to his feet. "Then Knightley knows nothing," cried Tessin in a gust of excitement. "And never will know," cried the Major. "Except by hearsay," sharply interposed Scrope. "Gentlemen, you go too fast, Except by hearsay. That, Mr. Wyley, was the phrase, I think.
"In the morning," continued Wyley, "Ensign Knightley takes part in a skirmish, and is clubbed on the head so fiercely that Major Shackleton thought his skull must be broken in. At what hour was he struck?" Again he put the question quickly. "'Twixt seven and eight of the morning," replied the Major. "Quite so," said Wyley. "The incidents fit to a nicety.
It angered me that he had not." Wyley leaned back in his chair. "Really, really," he said, and laughed a little to himself. "On the night of January 6th Ensign Knightley discovers the lamentable truth. At what hour?" he asked suddenly. Scrope looked to the Major. "About midnight," he suggested. "A little later, I should think," corrected Major Shackleton.
For if the tune was the tune of that song, why, then Knightley must know the truth, since he remembered that song. Was Scrope right after all? Was Knightley playing with him? Wyley glanced at Knightley in the keenest excitement.
Wyley is too ill to see me. By the way, I told Miss Anne I was coming up the hills after you. She wants to see you, Stephen, as soon as possible after your work is done. Mr. Danesford rode on over the hills, and Stephen walked some way beside him, to put him into the nearest path for Danesford.
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