Go you down into them, and get your chattels—that I will let you do, but nothing more—and waste no time about it for we are about to clear the entrance and take all the old work there may be there back with us. These are the orders we have had. But I see very well that you have robbed us of all that there was good in it. You look aghast, and you are dumb.'
She was so; she was like the poor hare on the moor who could not understand why she was grudged her form of grass, that caused no loss to any living thing, yet was the whole world to her.
'I have stolen nothing,' she said once more. 'I found these sepulchres. They are not your lord's nor mine, but belong to the dead. I have done no hurt there. It is all I have of home.'
'She is but an impudent jade living thus, in the bowels of the soil, and with a paramour I make no doubt,' said the angry steward. 'Men, get you to work to clear these shrubs away and find the door; we can waste no more time. If there be sculptures we are to hew them off, and that is a long business. Get to work and look for this vixen's earth.'
