As he passed through its
center---small shops, a public house, plain, two story homes joined at
the shoulder---he found himself looking down and straight ahead,
subconsciously drawing his shoulders together as if to fade into every
shadow, afraid of every eye. James Talbert's phrase, "skulking
thieves," came back to him. At the same moment he passed a sturdy lad
of fifteen or thereabouts, who looked up at him with a fearless eye,
almost mocking.
And all at once his fugitive life became intolerable. For in the boy
he had seen himself, half a lifetime before.
With sudden resolution he checked his horse, and sat up straight and
proud in the saddle. Shading his eyes he looked out to the sea, and
beyond. Somewhere, across the unfathomable waters, there had to be a
better life: a new land, where he could start again.
He would never submit to Imperial rule; this he knew with absolute
certainty. And he would not live like this. What had begun in his mind
as a means of short-term escape---fleeing the Castle by sea---now
branched out into thoughts of a new home, a new world, where the skies
were freer and a man could still dream.
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