And that I believed, for poor Ben’s face was pinched and pale, and the merry look that was always in his eyes even when he was in his doleful moods was now gone, so that I saw the honest fellow had suffered more for me that I was aware of.
“Have patience, Ben,” I said, trying to cheer them all; “they will rob me no more, for the Castle is once more in the hands of the King’s friends, and these Roundhead knaves will not come cattle-lifting hereabouts yet awhile. Levying distress in satisfaction of my fine, did they say? Marry, the fine was but two hundred pounds, and they must have taken the value of that a dozen times over. However, we will see if there be not some justice left in England yet, for I will have redress, if I have to fight for it.”
“Ay,” said Jacob approvingly, “justice is a good word; but I fear me there is little of that same justice abroad at present, for ’tis these soldiers that administer everything nowadays. However, we will fight a whole body of Roundhead troopers an they come here again reaving and racking. Oh, an thou couldst have seen the young bullocks I had fed for market last winter twelvemonth! A plague on fines and levies, say I!”
But what was done was done, and we had to content ourselves for that time, being powerless to do anything. Yet it made my heart sad to go round my granaries, and barns, and stables, in which I had always taken such pride, and to find them empty and lifeless. Still, it was no use to sit down and lament, and we accordingly set to work to restock the farm and get things into order again. Only I was a much poorer man when all was done than I had ever looked to be.
So now matters were very different from what they had been, and there was such gloom and sadness in our house as I had never known before. For wherever I went and whatever I did I missed my dear mother’s presence, and often started to think I heard her voice calling me as in the old days. Nay, indeed, I could not at first believe that I should never see her again nor hear her speak, and only realized my great loss when I went in at nights from the fields and saw her chair empty. As for her parlour, we left it just as it had been when she was last in it, her book lying on the table, with a sprig of faded lilac marking the place where she had last read in it, and by its side the knitting which she had put down never to take up again. And into that room none of us went save when we wished to be alone with our own memories of her. Sometimes Parson Drumbleforth would come along the highway and go into the little room and sit there by himself, thinking, as he told us, of the days when he had sat there with my father and mother, and he would afterwards come out with a great look of calm and peace upon his face and bless us solemnly, and go his way homewards. And sometimes Jacob Trusty would go to the little window and peer over his horn spectacles at the book and the knitting still lying on the little table, and then go back to his work as if he had seen some holy sight. And, indeed, I believe he saw more than we did, for he once told me that it seemed to him that when he thus visited the little parlour he could see his old mistress still sitting in her elbow chair reading her book, while the bright needles clicked against each other as they went in and out through the wool.
“Yes,” he would often say to Rose and Lucy, “ye see, lasses, what a holy and a blessed thing it is to have been a good woman. As for us men, we are rude, and fierce, and stern, and need a good woman to set us an example. Yea, and see what store is set by her, so that her good deeds work after her death.”
Now, I was very busily engaged during the rest of that summer of in repairing so far as I could the damage done by the depredations of the Roundheads, who had so basely robbed me. Then came the corn harvest, and we made haste to gather and garner our crops, being firmly resolved that when they were once housed nothing but force should despoil us of them. All this time the last siege of Pontefract Castle had been in progress, for the Royalists under Colonel Morrice, having seized the Castle and released us who were confined there, were holding out against the Parliamentarian troops once more. This third siege continued during the remainder of the summer and into the autumn, by the middle of which season it was rumoured that General Cromwell himself was coming to aid in forcing a capitulation. When I heard this news I resolved that I would now endeavour to gain some redress for the wrongs put upon me. I had already been to my old friend Lawyer Hook, and had told him all that
