Mr. Preston was now installed in his new house at Hollingford; Mr.
Sheepshanks having entered into dignified idleness at the house of
his married daughter, who lived in the county town. His successor
had plunged with energy into all manner of improvements; and
among others, he fell to draining a piece of outlying waste and
unreclaimed land of Lord Cumnor's, which was close to Squire Hamley's
property--that very piece for which he had had the Government grant,
but which now lay neglected, and only half drained, with stacks of
mossy tiles, and lines of upturned furrows telling of abortive plans.
It was not often that the Squire rode in this direction now-a-days;
but the cottage of a man who had been the squire's gamekeeper
in those more prosperous days when the Hamleys could afford to
"preserve," was close to the rush-grown ground. This old servant and
tenant was ill, and had sent a message up to the Hall, asking to see
the Squire: not to reveal any secret, or to say anything particular,
but only from the feudal loyalty, which made it seem to the dying man
as if it would be a comfort to shake the hand, and look once more
into the eyes of the lord and master whom he had served, and whose
ancestors his own forbears had served for so many generations. And
the Squire was as fully alive as old Silas to the claims of the tie
that existed between them. Though he hated the thought, and still
more, should hate the sight of the piece of land, on the side of
which Silas's cottage stood, the Squire ordered his horse, and rode
off within half-an-hour of receiving the message. As he drew near
the spot he thought he heard the sound of tools, and the hum of
many voices, just as he used to hear them a year or two before. He
listened with surprise. Yes! Instead of the still solitude he had
expected, there was the clink of iron, the heavy gradual thud of the
fall of barrows-ful of soil--the cry and shout of labourers. But not
on his land--better worth expense and trouble by far than the reedy
clay common on which the men were, in fact, employed. He knew it was
Lord Cumnor's property; and he knew Lord Cumnor and his family had
gone up in the world ("the Whig rascals!"), both in wealth and in
station, as the Hamleys had gone down. But all the same--in spite
of long known facts, and in spite of reason--the Squire's ready
anger rose high at the sight of his neighbour doing what he had been
unable to do, and he a Whig, and his family only in the county since
Queen Anne's time. He went so far as to wonder whether they might
not--the labourers he meant--avail themselves of his tiles, lying so
conveniently close to hand. All these thoughts, regrets, and wonders
were in his mind as he rode up to the cottage he was bound to, and
gave his horse in charge to a little lad, who had hitherto found his
morning's business and amusement in playing at "houses" with a still
younger sister, with some of the Squire's neglected tiles. But he
was old Silas's grandson, and he might have battered the rude red
earthenware to pieces--a whole stack--one by one, and the Squire
would have said little or nothing. It was only that he would not
spare one to a labourer of Lord Cumnor's. No! not one.