back."

"We pay for our garden and our mill," said Oliver. "We wrong nobody,
and we work for our living, and you are a very cruel man."

"You pay the king: and the parliament does not choose that the king
should have any more money to spend against them. Mind you that, boy!
And--"

"I am sure I don't know anything about the king and the parliament, or
any such quarrels," said Oliver. "It is very hard to punish us for
them, it is very cruel."

"You shall have reason to call me cruel twenty times over, if you don't
get away out of our carr," said Stephen. "Manure your garden, indeed!
Not I! And you shall not manure another yard in these Levels. Come
here, Roger."

They went out again into the yard, and Oliver, now quite overcome, laid
down his head on his arms, and cried bitterly.

"Here's your cup, however," said Ailwin, now released by Roger's being
employed elsewhere. "This bit of plaster is the only thing they have
laid hands on that they have not ruined." Oliver started up, and hid
his work and tools in a bundle of straw, in the corner of the kitchen.

"What Mildred will say, I don't know," said Ailwin. "That boy has wrung
the neck of her white hen."

Oliver was desperate on hearing this. He ran out to see whether he
could not, by any means, get into the mill, to set the sails agoing: but
there were Stephen and Roger, carrying water, which they threw over all
the gypsum that was ground,--floating away as much as they could of it,
and utterly spoiling the rest, by turning it into a plaster.

"Did you ever see the like?" cried Ailwin. "And there is nothing master
is so particular about as keeping that stuff dry. See the woman, too!
How I'd like to tug the hair off her head! She looks badly, poor
creature, too."

Stephen's wife had, indeed, come up to enjoy the sport, when she found
that no man was on the premises, and that there was no danger. There
she stood, leaning against a post of the mill, her black, untidy hair
hanging about her pale, hollow cheeks, and her lean arms crossed upon
her bosom.

"There were such ague-struck folk to be seen at every turn," said
Ailwin, "before the foreigners came to live in the carr. I suppose they
brought some healing with them; for one does not often see now such a
poor creature as that. She might be ashamed of herself,--that woman;
she laughs all her poor sides can, at every pailful Roger pours out.--
Eh! But she's not laughing now! Eh! What's the