to pull the cottages down, and the people stay in them at their own peril.  The local authority can do nothing; the people say they have nowhere to go, and cling like limpets to the rock.  Melrose could put those sixteen cottages in order for a couple of thousand pounds, which would be about as much to him as half-a-crown to me.  It is all insane pride and obstinacy—­he won’t be dictated to—­and the rest.  I shall be a land-nationalizer if I hear much more of Melrose.

“Meanwhile, Faversham will soon come in for his master’s hideous unpopularity, if he can’t manage him better.  He is looking white and harassed, and seems to avoid persons like myself who might attack him.  But I gather that he has been trying to come round Melrose by attempting some reforms behind his back, and probably with his own money.  Something, for instance, was begun at Mainstairs, while Melrose was away in Holland, after the fresh diphtheria cases broke out.  There was an attempt made to get at the pollutions infecting the water supply, and repairs were begun on the worst cottage.

“But in the middle Melrose came home, and was, I believe, immediately informed of what was going on by that low scoundrel Nash who used to be his factotum, and has shown great jealousy of Faversham since his appointment.  What happened exactly I can’t say, but from something old Dixon said to me the other day—­I have been attending him for rheumatism—­I imagine there was a big row between the two men.  Why Faversham didn’t throw up there and then, I can’t understand.  However there he is still, immersed they tell me in the business of the estate, but incessantly watched and hampered by Melrose himself, an extraordinary development in so short a time; and able, apparently, even if he is willing, which I assume—­to do little or nothing to meet the worst complaints of the tenants.  They are beginning to turn against him furiously.

“Last week the sight of Mainstairs and the horrible suffering there got on my nerves.  I sat down and wrote to Melrose peremptorily demanding a proper supply of antitoxin at once, at his expense.  A post-card from him arrived, refusing, and bidding me apply to a Socialist government.  That night, however, on arriving at my surgery, I found a splendid supply of antitoxin, labelled ‘for Mainstairs,’ without another word.  I have reason to think Faversham had been in Carlisle himself that day to get it; he must have cleared out the place.

“Next day I saw him in the village.  He specially haunts a cottage where there is a poor girl of eighteen, paralyzed after an attack of diphtheria last year, and not, I think, long for this world.  The new epidemic has now attacked her younger sister, a pretty child of eight.  I doubt whether we shall save her.  Miss Penfold has always been very kind in coming to visit them.  She will be dreadfully sorry.

“Faversham, I believe, has tried to move the whole family.  But where are they to go?  The grandfather is a shepherd on a farm near—­too old for a new place.  There isn’t a vacant cottage in the whole neighbourhood—­as you know; and scores that ought to be built.