Then you come." Mark made no sign of either satisfaction or anger, but stood thinking for a minute or so, before turning again to where Ralph lay gazing straight up to the sky, waiting for whatever fate might be his, and setting his teeth hard in the firm determination to die sooner than ask for mercy from the cruel young savage who stood before him with what seemed to be a malicious grin upon his face.
And as he lay, Ralph thought of his school life, and all that had passed there, and how strange it was that in the wild part of Midland England there, amongst the mountains of the Peak, people could still be so savage as to be able to follow their own wills to as great an extent as did the barons and feudal chiefs of a couple of hundred years before.
Such thoughts as these had never come to him till after he had left home for school, to find his level.

Earlier in his boyhood his father had appeared to him to be chief or king of the district, with a neighbour who was a rival chief or king.

He knew that King James ruled the land; but that was England, away from the Peak.

There, Sir Morton Darley, knight, was head of all, and the laws of England did not seem to apply anywhere there.

Then he had gradually grown more enlightened, and never more so than at the present moment, as he lay bound on the mossy stones, feeling that unless his father came with a strong enough force to rescue him, his fate might even be death.