back, and his eyes upon the ground, he would plod across the field, perfectly unconscious that any one was following him.  He carried on the old rotation of cropping in the piece of arable land belonging to the farm, but in total oblivion of any advantage to be obtained by local change of treatment.  He could plan nothing out for next year.  He spent nothing, or next to nothing, on improved implements; but, on the other hand, he saved nothing, from a lack of resource and contrivance.

As the years went by he fell out of the social life of the times; that is, out of the social life of his own circle.  He regularly fed the pigs; but when he heard that the neighbours, were all going in to the town to attend some important agricultural meeting, or to start some useful movement, he put his hands behind his back and said that he should not go; he did not understand anything about it.  There never used to be anything of that sort.  So he went in to luncheon on bread and cheese and small ale.  Such a course could only bring him into the contempt of his fellow-men.  He became a nonentity.  No one had any respect for or confidence in him.  Otherwise, possibly, he might have obtained powerful help, for the memory of what his family had been had not yet died out.

Men saw that he lived and worked as a labourer; they gave him no credit for the work, but they despised him for the meanness and churlishness of his life.  There was neither a piano nor a decanter of sherry in his house.  He was utterly out of accord with the times.  By degrees, after many years, it became apparent to all that he was going downhill.  The stock upon the farm was not so large nor of so good a character as had been the case.  The manner of men visibly changed towards him.  The small dealers, even the very carriers along the road, the higglers, and other persons who call at a farm on petty business, gave him clearly to know in their own coarse way that they despised him.  They flatly contradicted him, and bore him down with loud tongues.  He stood it all meekly, without showing any spirit; but, on the other hand, without resentment, for he never said ill of any man behind his back.

It was put about now that he drank, because some busybody had seen a jar of spirits carried into the house from the wine merchant’s cart.  A jar of spirits had been delivered at the house at intervals for years and years, far back into his father’s time, and every one of those who now expressed their disgust at his supposed drinking habits had sipped their tumblers in that house without stint.  He did not drink—­he did not take one-half at home what his neighbours imbibed without injury at markets and auctions every week of their lives.  But he was growing poor, and they called to mind that brief spell of extravagance years ago, and pointed out to their acquaintances how the sin of the Prodigal was coming home to him.