utter desertion of his newly-adopted principles, he scorned as
presumptuous that exercise of her own judgment on the part of
Dorothy which had led to their separation, bitterly resenting the
change in his playmate, who, now an angry woman, had decreed his
degradation from the commonest privileges of friendship, until such
time as he should abjure his convictions, become a renegade to the
truth, and abandon the hope of resulting freedom which the strife of
parties held out--an act of tyranny the reflection upon which raised
such a swelling in his throat as he had never felt but once before,
when a favourite foal got staked in trying to clear a fence. Having
neither friend nor sister to whom to confess that he was in
trouble--have confided it he could not in any case, seeing it
involved blame of the woman his love for whom now first, when on the
point of losing her for ever, threatened to overmaster him--he
wandered to the stables, which he found empty of men and nearly so
of horses, half-involuntarily sought the stall of the mare his
father had given him on his last birthday, laid his head on the neck
bent round to greet him, and sighed a sore response to her soft,
low, tremulous whinny.

As he stood thus, overcome by the bitter sense of wrong from the one
he loved best in the world, something darkened the stable-door, and
a voice he knew reached his ear. Mistaking the head she saw across
an empty stall for that of one of the farm-servants, Goody Rees was
calling aloud to know if he wanted a charm for the toothache.

Richard looked up.

'And what may your charm be, mistress Rees?' he asked.