No man drinks the bitter cup of poverty to the dregs like the declining farmer.  The descent is so slow; there is time to drain every drop, and to linger over the flavour.  It may be eight, or ten, or fifteen years about.  He cannot, like the bankrupt tradesman, even when the fatal notice comes, put up his shutters at once and retire from view.  Even at the end, after the notice, six months at least elapse before all is over—­before the farm is surrendered, and the sale of household furniture and effects takes place.  He is full in public view all that time.  So far as his neighbours are concerned he is in public view for years previously.  He has to rise in the morning and meet them in the fields.  He sees them in the road; he passes through groups of them in the market-place.  As he goes by they look after him, and perhaps audibly wonder how long he will last.  These people all knew him from a lad, and can trace every inch of his descent.  The labourers in the field know it, and by their manner show that they know it.

His wife—­his wife who worked so hard for so many, many years—­is made to know it too.  She is conspicuously omitted from the social gatherings that occur from time to time.  The neighbours’ wives do not call; their well-dressed daughters, as they rattle by to the town in basket-carriage or dog-cart, look askance at the shabby figure walking slowly on the path beside the road.  They criticise the shabby shawl; they sneer at the slow step which is the inevitable result of hard work, the cares of maternity, and of age.  So they flaunt past with an odour of perfume, and leave the ‘old lady’ to plod unrecognised.

The end came at last.  All this blind work of his was of no avail against the ocean steamer and her cargo of wheat and meat from the teeming regions of the West.  Nor was it of avail against the fall of prices, and the decreased yield consequent upon a succession of bad seasons.  The general lack of confidence pressed heavily upon a man who did not even attempt to take his natural place among his fellow-men.  The loan from the bank had gradually grown from five to seven or eight hundred by thirties, and forties, and fifties added to it by degrees; and the bank—­informed, perhaps, by the same busybodies who had discovered that he drank—­declined further assistance, and notified that part, at least, of the principal must be repaid.  The landlord had long been well aware of the state of affairs, but refrained from action out of a feeling for the old family.  But the land, from the farmer’s utter lack of capital, was now going from bad to worse.  The bank having declined to advance further, the rent began to fall into arrear.  The landlord caused it to be conveyed to his tenant that if he would quit the farm, which was a large one, he could go into a smaller, and his affairs might perhaps be arranged.