’Well, what do you think we had better do with these fellows?  Do you think they will take the twenty per cent.?’

‘’Tis impossible to say.  Gad! the Lague is gittin’ stronger ivery day, Barton.  But they ought to take it; twenty per cent. will bring it very nearly to Griffith’s.’

‘But if they don’t take it?’

’Well, I don’t know what we will do, for notices it is impossible to serve.  Gad!  I’ll never forgit how we were pelted the other day—­such firing of stones, such blawing of horns!  I think you’ll have to give them the thirty; but we’ll thry them at twinty-foive.’

‘And if they won’t take it—?’

’What! the thirty?  They’ll take that and jumping, you needn’t fear.  Here they come.’

Turning, the two men watched the twenty or thirty peasants who, with heads set against the gusts, advanced steadily up the avenue, making way for a horseman; and from the drawing-room window Mrs. Barton recognized the square-set shoulders of Captain Hibbert.  After shaking hands and speaking a few words with Mr. Barton, he trotted round to the stables; and when he walked back and entered the house, in all the clean-cut elegance of military boots and trousers, the peasants lifted their hats, and the interview began.

‘Now, boys,’ said Mr. Barton, who thought that a little familiarity would not be inappropriate, ’I’ve asked you to meet me so that we might come to some agreement about the rents.  We’ve known each other a long time, and my family has been on this estate I don’t know for how many generations.  Therefore—­why, of course, I should be very sorry if we had any falling out.  I don’t know much about farming, but I hear everyone say that this has been a capital year, and . . .  I think I cannot do better than to make you again the same offer as I made you before—­that is to say, of twenty per cent, abatement all round; that will bring your rents down to Griffith’s valuation.’

Mr. Barton had intended to be very impressive, but, feeling that words were betraying him, he stopped short, and waited anxiously to hear what answer the peasant who had stepped forward would make.  The old man began by removing a battered tall-hat, out of which fell a red handkerchief.  The handkerchief was quickly thrown back into the crown, and, at an intimation from Mr. Barton, hat and handkerchief were replaced upon the white head.  He then commenced: 

’Now, yer honour, the rints is too high; we cannot pay the present rint, at least without a reduction.  I have been a tinent on the property, and my fathers before me, for the past fifty years.  And it was in forty-three that the rints was ruz—­in the time of your father, the Lord have mercy on his soul!—­but he had an agent who was a hard man, and he ruz the rints, and since then we have been in poverty, livin’ on yaller mail and praties, and praties that is watery; there is no diet in them, yer honour.  And if yer honour will come down and walk the lands yerself, yer wi’ see I am spaking the truth.  We ask nothing better than yer should walk the lands yerself.  There is two acres of my land, yer honour, flooded for three months of the year, and for that land I am paying twenty-five shillings an acre.  I have my receipts, paid down to the last gale-day.’