Mrs. Hollidew dead. Undisturbed in the film of
dust that overlaid the table stood a pink celluloid
thimble... Lettice had placed it there...

His thoughts turned to Alexander Crandall and
his wife, to the extended sheep-cots, and the
"light" which they now saw. He recalled the former's
assertion that the land was all right, but that
the blood-money men made life arduous in Greenstream.
He remembered Edgar Crandall's arraignment
of the County as "the littlest, meanest place
on earth," a place where a man who wanted his own,
his chance, was helpless to survive the avarice of a
few individuals, the avarice for gold. He had
asked him, Gordon Makimmon, to give him that
chance. But, obviously, it was impossible... absurd.

His memory drifted back to the evening in the
store when Valentine Simmons had abruptly demanded
payment of his neglected account, to the
hopeless rage that had possessed him at the realization
of his impotence, of Clare's illness. That
scene, that bitter realization of ruin, had been repeated
across the breadth of Greenstream. As a
boy he had heard men in shaking tones curse Pompey
Hollidew; only last week the red-headed Crandall
had sworn he would let his ground rot rather
than slave for the breed of Cannon. It was, apparently,
a perpetual evil, an endless burden for the

[[305]]

p304 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p305w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p306

v?