“I’m going back there as soon as I can,” he said with a sudden impatience.  “There’s room to turn round in Canada without hitting up against a notice board and trespassing on the preserves of some landed proprietor.  I’d never have come home if it hadn’t been for the old people.  They thought chauffering for Mr. Jervaise would be a chance for me!  Anyhow my father did.  He’s got the feeling of being dependent.  It’s in his bones like it is with, all of ’em—­on the estate.  It’s a tradition.  Lord, the old man would be horrified, if he knew!  The Jervaises are a sort of superior creation to him.  We’ve been their tenants for God knows how many hundred years.  And serfs before that, I suppose.  I get the feeling myself, sometimes.  It’s infectious.  When you see every one kow-towing to old Jervaise as if he were the angel Gabriel, you begin to feel as if there must be something in it.”

The full day had come, and the cold draught of air that had preceded the sunrise came now from behind me as if the spirits of the air had discovered that their panic-stricken flight had been a mistake and were tentatively returning to inquire into the new conditions.  The birds were fully awake now, and there was a tremendous gossiping and chattering going on, that made me think of massed school-children in a railway station, twittering with the excitement of their coming excursion.  In the North-East the gray wall of mist was losing the hardness of its edge, and behind the cloud the sky was bleaching to an ever paler blue.

“And yet,” I said, as my companion paused, “the Jervaises aren’t anything particular as a family.  They haven’t done anything, even in the usual way, to earn ennoblement or fame.”

“They’ve squatted,” Banks said, “that’s what they’ve done.  Set themselves down here in the reign of Henry II., and sat tight ever since—­grabbing commons and so on, now and again, in the usual way, of course.  The village is called after them, Thorp-Jervaise, and the woods and the hills, and half the labourers in the neighbourhood have got names like Jarvey and Jarvis.  What I mean is that the Jervaises mayn’t be of any account in London, or even in the county, alongside of families like Lord Garthorne’s; but just round here they’re the owners and always have been since there have been any private owners.  Their word’s law.  If you don’t like it, you can get out, and that’s all there is about it.”  He gazed thoughtfully in front of him and thrust out his lower lip.  “I’ve got to get out,” he added, “unless...”

I hesitated to prompt him, fearing the possibly inquisitive sound of the most indirect question, and after what I felt was a very pregnant silence, he continued rather in the manner of one allusively submitting a case.

“But you get to a point where you feel as if no game’s worth winning if you can’t play it fair and open.”

“So long as the other side play fair with you,” I commented.