“Why, my lads, how’s this?” he began, taking as usual to brief phrases, which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to peep above the water.  “How came you to make such a mistake as this?  Somebody has been telling you lies.  You thought those men up there wanted to do mischief.”

“Aw!” was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his degree of unreadiness.

“Nonsense!  No such thing!  They’re looking out to see which way the railroad is to take.  Now, my lads, you can’t hinder the railroad:  it will be made whether you like it or not.  And if you go fighting against it, you’ll get yourselves into trouble.  The law gives those men leave to come here on the land.  The owner has nothing to say against it, and if you meddle with them you’ll have to do with the constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch jail.  And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you.”

Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

“But come, you didn’t mean any harm.  Somebody told you the railroad was a bad thing.  That was a lie.  It may do a bit of harm here and there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven.  But the railway’s a good thing.”

“Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on,” said old Timothy Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been gone on their spree;—­“I’n seen lots o’ things turn up sin’ I war a young un—­the war an’ the peace, and the canells, an’ the oald King George, an’ the Regen’, an’ the new King George, an’ the new un as has got a new ne-ame—­an’ it’s been all aloike to the poor mon.  What’s the canells been t’ him?  They’n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor wage to lay by, if he didn’t save it wi’ clemmin’ his own inside.  Times ha’ got wusser for him sin’ I war a young un.  An’ so it’ll be wi’ the railroads.  They’ll on’y leave the poor mon furder behind.  But them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here.  This is the big folks’s world, this is.  But yo’re for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo are.”

Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times—­ who had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.  Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant’s club on your neatly carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel.  Caleb had no cant at command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing his “business” faithfully.  He answered—­