The burning of hayricks on the Abbey Farm at the time of Egremont’s visit showed that the torch of the incendiary had been introduced and that a beacon had been kindled in the agitated neighbourhood.  For misery lurked in the wretched tenements of the town of Marney, and fever was rife.  The miserable hovels of the people had neither windows nor doors, and were unpaved, and looked as if they could scarcely hold together.  There were few districts in the kingdom where the rate of wages was more depressed.

“What do you think of this fire?” said Egremont to a labourer at the Abbey Farm.

“I think ’tis hard times for the poor, sir,” was the reply, given with a shake of the head.

II.—­The Old Tradition

“Why was England not the same land as in the days of his light-hearted youth?” Charles Egremont mused, as he wandered among the ruins of the ancient abbey.  “Why were these hard times for the poor?” Brooding over these questions, he observed two men hard by in the old cloister garden, one of lofty stature, nearer forty than fifty years of age, the other younger and shorter, with a pale face redeemed from ugliness by its intellectual brow.  Egremont joined the strangers, and talked.

“Our queen reigns over two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy—­the rich and the poor,” said the younger stranger.

As he spoke, from the lady chapel rose the evening hymn to the Virgin in tones of almost supernatural tenderness.

The melody ceased; and Egremont beheld a female form, a countenance youthful, and of a beauty as rare as it was choice.

The two men joined the beautiful maiden; and the three quitted the abbey grounds together without another word, and pursued their way to the railway station.

“I have seen the tomb of the last abbot of Marney, and I marked your name on the stone, my father,” said the maiden.  “You must regain our lands for us, Stephen,” she added to the younger man.

“I can’t understand why you lost sight of those papers, Walter,” said Stephen Morley.

“You see, friend, they were never in my possession; they were not mine when I saw them.  They were my father’s.  He was a small yeoman, well-to-do in the world, but always hankering after the old tradition that the lands were ours.  This Hatton got hold of him; he did his work well, I have heard.  It is twenty-five years since my father brought his writ of right, and though baffled, he was not beaten.  Then he died; his affairs were in great confusion; he had mortgaged his land for his writ.  There were debts that could not be paid.  I had no capital.  I would not sink to be a labourer.  I had heard much of the high wages of this new industry; I left the land.”

“And the papers?”

“I never thought of them, or thought of them with disgust, as the cause of my ruin.  Of Hatton, I have not heard since my father’s death.  He had quitted Mowbray, and none could give me tidings of him.  When you came and showed me in a book that the last abbot of Marney was a Walter Gerard, the old feeling stirred again, and though I am but the overlooker at Mr. Trafford’s mill, I could not help telling you that my fathers fought at Agincourt.”