An elderly man had just entered the cottage after his day’s work.  He was evidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a table which held tea things and some bread and butter.  His wife could be heard moving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room.

The man sat motionless, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bent.  He seemed to be watching the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlight that had found its way into the darkened room.  For the western sun was blazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was like an oven.  The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden, unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the open fell.  It was a labourer’s cottage, but the furniture of the living-room was superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of the neighbourhood.  A piano was crowded into one corner, and a sideboard, too large for the room, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace.

The man sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer.  His brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit as Messrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to their farmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal.  The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and on the drooped brow shone beads of sweat.  John Brand was not much over fifty, but he was tired out in mind and body; and his soul was bitter within him.

A year before this date he had been still the nominal owner of a small freehold farm between Pengarth and Carlisle, bordering on the Threlfall property.  But he was then within an ace of ruin, and irreparable calamity had since overtaken him.

How it was that he had fallen into such a plight was still more or less mysterious to a dull brain.  Up to the age of forty-seven, he had been employed on his father’s land, with little more than the wages of a labourer, possessing but small authority over the men working on the farm, and no liberty but such as the will of a tyrannical master allowed him.  Then suddenly the father died, and Brand succeeded to the farm.  All his long-checked manhood asserted itself.  There was a brief period of drinking, betting, and high living.  The old man had left a small sum of ready money in the bank, which to the son, who had always been denied the handling of money, seemed riches.  It was soon spent, and then unexpected burdens and claims disclosed themselves.  There was a debt to the bank, which there were no means of paying.  And he discovered to his dismay that a spinster cousin of his mother’s had lent money to his father within the preceding five years, on the security of his stock and furniture.  Where the borrowed money had gone no one knew, but the spinster cousin, alarmed perhaps by exaggerated accounts of the new man’s drinking habits, pressed for repayment.