im only served to increase his bitterness and
hostility until it seemed that there would never be an end to that
strife. This at length so incensed his powerful overlord that he was
forcibly deprived of his possessions and driven out beggared from his
home. But no punishment, however severe, could change his nature; it
only roused him to greater fury, a more fixed determination to have his
revenge, so that outcast as he was his enmity was still to be feared and
he was a danger to the ruler and the community in general. Then, at
last, the great earl said he would suffer this state of things no
longer, and he ordered his men to go out and seek and take him captive
and bring him up for a final judgment. This was done, and the ruler then
said he would not have him put to death as he was advised to do, so as
to be rid of him once for all, but would inflict a greater punishment on
him. He then made them put heavy irons on his ankles, riveted so that
they should never be removed, and condemned him to slavery and to labour
every day in his fields and pleasure-grounds for the rest of his life.
To see his hated enemy reduced to that condition would, he said, be a
satisfaction to him whenever he walked in his gardens.

These stern commands were obeyed, and when the miserable man refused to
do his task and cried out in a rage that he would rather die, he was
scourged until the blood ran from the wounds made by the lash; and at
last, to escape from this torture, he was compelled to obey, and from
morning to night he laboured on the land, planting and digging and doing
whatever there was to do, always watched by his overseer, his food
thrown to him as to a dog; laughed and jeered at by the meanest of the
servants.

After a certain time, when his body grew hardened so that he could
labour all day without pain, and, being fatigued, sleep all night
without waking, though he had nothing but straw on a stone floor to lie
upon; and when he was no longer mocked or punished or threatened with
the lash, he began to reflect more and more on his condition, and to
think that it would be possible to him to make it more endurable. When
brooding on it, when he repined and cursed, it then seemed to him worse
than death; but when, occupied with his task, he forgot that he was the
slave of his enemy, who had overcome and broken him, then it no longer
seemed so heavy. The sun still shone for him as for others; the earth
was as green, the sky as blue,