, and yet all can puzzle their neighbours. So the
Devonshire men, having beans to sow (which they ought to have done on
Good Friday) went home; and our Somerset friends only stayed for two
days more to backbite them.

To me the whole thing was purely grievous; not from any sense of defeat
(though that was bad enough) but from the pain and anguish caused by
death, and wounds, and mourning. "Surely we have woes enough," I used to
think of an evening, when the poor fellows could not sleep or rest, or
let others rest around them; "surely all this smell of wounds is not
incense men should pay to the God who made them. Death, when it comes
and is done with, may be a bliss to any one; but the doubt of life or
death, when a man lies, as it were, like a trunk upon a sawpit and a
grisly head looks up at him, and the groans of pain are cleaving him,
this would be beyond all bearing--but for Nature's sap--sweet hope."

Jeremy Stickles lay and tossed, and thrust up his feet in agony, and
bit with his lipless mouth the clothes, and was proud to see blood upon
them. He looked at us ever so many times, as much as to say, "Fools, let
me die, then I shall have some comfort"; but we nodded at him sagely,
especially the women, trying to convey to him, on no account to die yet.
And then we talked to one another (on purpose for him to hear us), how
brave he was, and not the man to knock under in a hurry, and how he
should have the victory yet; and how well he looked, considering.

These things cheered him a little now, and a little more next time; and
every time we went on so, he took it with less impatience. Then once
when he had been very quiet, and not even tried to frown at us, Annie
leaned over, and kissed his forehead, and spread the pillows and sheet,
with a curve as delicate as his own white ears; and then he feebly
lifted hands, and prayed to God to bless her. And after that he came
round gently; though never to the man he had been, and never to speak
loud again.

For a time (as I may have implied before) Master Stickles's authority,
and manner of levying duties, had not been taken kindly by the people
round our neighbourhood. The manors of East Lynn and West Lynn, and even
that of Woolhanger--although just then all three were at issue about
some rights of wreck, and the hanging of a sheep-stealer (a man of no
great eminence, yet claimed by each for the sake of his clothes)--these
three, having their rights impugned, or even supe