She sat proudly erect in her saddle, while the village hobbledehoys who had instinctively gathered round her, like steel shavings round a magnet, fairly gasped for breath. Oliver Leach dismissed! Oliver Leach, the petty tyrant, the carping, snarling jack-in-office, cast out like a handful of bad rubbish! It was like a thunderbolt fallen from heaven and riving the earth on which they stood! Bainton heard, and could scarcely keep back a chuckle of satisfaction. He longed to make Spruce understand what was going on, but that unfortunate individual was slightly stunned by Leach's heavy blow, and sitting on the grass with his head between his two hands, was gazing, in a kind of stupefaction at the 'new Missis'; so that any 'bellowing' into his ear was scarcely possible.
Leach himself stared blankly and incredulously,--his face crimsoned with a sudden rush of enraged blood and then paled again, and changing his former insolent tone for one both fawning and propitiatory, he stammered out: "I am very sorry--I--I beg your pardon, Madam!--if you will give yourself a little time to consider, you will see I have done my duty on this property all the time I have been connected with it. I hope you will not dismiss me for the first fault!--I--I--admit I should not have struck Spruce,--but--I--I was taken by surprise--I--I know my business,--and I am not accustomed to be interfered with--" Here his pent-up anger got the better of him and he again began to bluster. "I have done my duty--no man better!" he said in fierce accents. "There's not an acre of woodland here that isn't in a better condition than it was ten years ago--Ah!--and bringing in more money too!--and now I am to be turned off for a parcel of village idiots who hardly know a beech from an elm! I'll make a case of it! Sir Morton Pippitt knows me--I'll speak to Sir Morton Pippitt--"
"Sir Morton Pippitt!" echoed Maryllia disdainfully; "What has he to do with me or my property?" Here she suddenly spied Walden, who, in his eagerness to hear every word that passed had, unconsciously to himself, moved well out of the sheltering shadow of the trees--"Are YOU Sir Morton Pippitt?"
A broad grin, deepening into a scarcely suppressed titter, Went the round of the gaping young rustics. Walden himself smiled,--and recognising that the time had now come to declare himself, he advanced a step or two and lifted his hat.
"I have not that pleasure! I am the minister of this parish, and my name is John Walden. I'm afraid I am rather a trespasser here!--but I have loved these old trees for many years, and I came up this morning,--having heard what your orders were from my gardener Bainton,--to see that those orders were properly carried out,--and also to save possible disturbance--"