A HARE IN THE SNOW 



that were upon them. For, indeed, Thomas Goodwin 

 was very helpless, and that from no possible fault of 

 his own. The peasant of King Harry the Eighth's 

 day was in some respects a better and a happier man 

 than his predecessor ; villeinage was a thing of the 

 past ; yet he was still little else than a serf, and a 

 serf too often in the hands of a hard and grudging 

 aristocracy. 



Thomas Goodwin, strong of thews, a giant in stature, 

 and a willing worker, was just now, by no fault of his 

 own, in hard case. He had wrought for the neigh- 

 bouring priory until the dissolution of the monasteries, 

 and since that vast upheaval he had been field-labourer 

 to a small yeoman. But the constant growth of the 

 wool industry and the spread of sheep throughout 

 England had ruined the yeoman as it had ruined many 

 of his kind. At Michaelmas he had given up the 

 struggle, and his small patrimony had been acquired 

 by the neighbouring lord of the manor, Sir Edmund 

 Wing, knight of the shire. 



Now, Sir Edmund was one who jumped alertly with 

 the spirit of the times. He was a zealous — nay, a 

 searching Protestant ; and Thomas Goodwin had fallen 

 under his displeasure for that, in his slow Saxon way, 

 he had not turned his cloak of religion over-quickly. 

 For three months had Thomas fought a losing battle 

 with fortune. He had picked up odd work here and 

 there, thanks mainly to the kindness of the humbler 

 among his neighbours ; but now he knew not where to 

 turn for food. His meal would be out in a fortnight or 

 less ; flesh he had none save for the scrap of fat bacon ; 

 his wife ailed, and was growing weak for lack of 

 nourishing food, and with her ailed also her babe. 

 Thus Thomas Goodwin's thoughts this dark, freezing 

 morning were bitter enough as he struggled into his 



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