gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice,
leaving their own crop to destruction by the threatened
storm; they had to let him plant fruit trees in their
fields, and then keep their indignation to themselves
when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain
around the trees; they had to smother their anger when
his hunting parties galloped through their fields laying
waste the result of their patient toil; they were not
allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms
from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops they
must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful
would the penalty be; when the harvest was at last
gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy
their blackmail upon it: first the Church carted off its
fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twen-