The keepers were checked by figures at every turn, finding it impossible to elude the businesslike arrangements that were made.  In revenue the result was highly successful.  The mansion with the first-class shooting, hunting, and lovely woodlands—­every modern convenience and comfort in the midst of the most rural scenery—­let at a high price to good tenants.  There was an income from what had previously been profitless.  Under this shrewd management the estate was fast recovering.

At the same time the whole parish groaned in spirit.  The farmers grumbled at the moral pressure which forced them to progress in spite of themselves.  They grumbled at the strange people who took up their residence in their midst and suddenly claimed all the loyalty which was the due of the old family.  These people hunted over their fields, jumped over the hedges, glanced at them superciliously, and seemed astonished if every hat was not raised when they came in sight.  The farmers felt that they were regarded as ignorant barbarians, and resented the town-bred insolence of people who aped the country gentleman.

They grumbled about the over-preservation of game, and they grumbled about the rabbits.  The hunt had its grumble too because some of the finest coverts were closed to the hounds, and because they wanted to know what became of the foxes that formerly lived in those coverts.  Here was a beautiful place—­a place that one might dream life away in—­filled with all manner of discontent.

Everything was done with the best intention.  But the keystone was wanting—­the landlord, the master, who had grown up in the traditions of the spot, and between whom and the people there would have been, even despite of grievances, a certain amount of sympathy.  So true is it that in England, under the existing system of land tenure, an estate cannot be worked like the machinery of a factory.

At first, when the pheasant-preserving began to reach such a height, there was a great deal of poaching by the resident labourers.  The temptation was thrust so closely before their faces they could not resist it.  When pheasants came wandering into the cottage gardens, and could even be enticed into the sheds and so secured by simply shutting the door, men who would not have gone out of their way to poach were led to commit themselves.

There followed a succession of prosecutions and fines, till the place began to get a reputation for that sort of thing.  It was at last intimated to the steward by certain gentlemen that this course of prosecution was extremely injudicious.  For it is a fact—­a fact carefully ignored sometimes—­that resident gentlemen object to prosecutions, and, so far from being anxious to fine or imprison poachers, would very much rather not.  The steward took the hint, and instead increased his watchers.  But by this time the novelty of pheasants roaming about like fowls had begun to wear off, and their services were hardly needed.  Men went by pheasants with as much indifference as they would pass a tame duck by the roadside.