Power had changed hands.
The protector had become the protected, and the whole fabric of
the feudal system was tottering to a fall. Hence the fierce
mutterings of the lower classes and the constant discontent,
breaking out into local tumult and outrage, and culminating some
years later in the great rising of Tyler. What Alleyne saw and
wondered at in Hampshire would have appealed equally to the
traveller in any other English county from the Channel to the
marches of Scotland.
He was following the track, his misgivings increasing with every
step which took him nearer to that home which he had never seen,
when of a sudden the trees began to thin and the sward to spread
out onto a broad, green lawn, where five cows lay in the sunshine
and droves of black swine wandered unchecked. A brown forest
stream swirled down the centre of this clearing, with a rude
bridge flung across it, and on the other side was a second field
sloping up to a long, low-lying wooden house, with thatched roof
and open squares for windows. Alleyne gazed across at it with
flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes--for this, he knew, must be the
home of his fathers.
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