Mr. George finds he pays a very high rent for his grass land—­some 50_s_. per acre—­and upon reckoning up the figures in his account-books heaves a sigh.  His neighbours perchance may be making fortunes, though they tell quite a different tale, but he feels that he is not growing rich.  The work is hard, or rather it is continuous.  No one has to attend to his duties so regularly all the year round as the man who looks after cows.  They cannot be left a single day from the 1st of January to the 31st of December.  Nor is the social state of things altogether pleasant to reflect on.  His sons and daughters have all left home; not one would stay and take to the dairy work.  They have gone into the towns, and found more congenial employment there.  He is himself growing in years.  His wife, having once left off making cheese when the milk selling commenced, and having tasted the sweets of rest, is unwilling to return to that hard labour.  When it is done he must pay some one to do it.

In every way ready money is going out of the house.  Cash to pay the haymakers idling about in the sheds out of the rain; cash to pay the men who manage the milk; cash to pay the woman who makes the cheese out of the surplus milk; cash to pay the blacksmith for continually re-shoeing the milk cart nags and for mending machines; cash to pay the brewer and the butcher and the baker, neither of whom took a sovereign here when he was a lad, for his father ate his own bacon, brewed his own beer, and baked his own bread; cash to pay for the education of the cottagers’ children; cash, a great deal of cash, to pay the landlord.

Mr. George, having had enough of his accounts, rises and goes to the window.  A rain cloud sweeping along the distant hills has hidden them from sight, and the rack hurries overhead driven before the stormy wind.  There comes a knock at the door.  It is the collector calling the second time for the poor rates, which have grown heavier of late.

But, however delayed, the haymaking is finished at last, and by-and-by, when the leaves have fallen and the hunting commences, a good run drives away for the time at least the memory of so unpropitious a season.  Then Mr. George some mild morning forms one of a little group of well-mounted farmers waiting at a quiet corner while the hounds draw a great wood.  Two of them are men long past middle age, whose once tawny beards are grizzled, but who are still game, perhaps more so than the rising generation.  The rest have followed them here, aware that these old hands know every inch of the country, and are certain to be in the right place.  The spot is not far from the park wall, where the wood runs up into a wedge-shaped point, and ends in a low mound and hedge.  Most of the company at the meet in the park have naturally cantered across the level sward, scattering the sheep as they go, and are now assembled along the side of the wood, near where a green ‘drive’ goes through it, and apparently gives direct access to the fields beyond.  From thence they can see the huntsman in the wood occasionally, and trace the exact course the hounds are taking in their search.