It was a most unhappy summer.  Evils, like weeds, grow apace.  There was scarcely any interval between some long-honored custom and its disappearance.  To-day it was observed as it had been for a lifetime; the next week it had passed away, and appeared to be forgotten.  “Such times I never saw,” said Ann.  “I have been at Sandal twenty-two years come Martinmas, but I’m going to Beverley next feast.”

“You’ll not do it, Ann.  It’s but talk.”

“Nay, but I’m set on it.  I have taken the ‘fastening penny,’ and I’m bound to make that good.  Things are that trying here now, that I can’t abide them longer.”

All summer servants were going and coming at Seat-Sandal; the very foundations of its domestic life were broken up, and Charlotte’s bright face had a constant wrinkle of worry and annoyance.  Sophia was careful to point out the fact.  “She has no housekeeping ability.  Every thing is in a mess.  If I only durst take hold of things.  But Charlotte is such a spitfire, one does not like to offer help.  I would be only too glad to put things right, but I should give offence,” etc.  “The poison of asps under the tongue,” and a very little of it, can paralyze and irritate a whole household.

Mowing-time and shearing-time and reaping-time came and went, but the gay pastoral festivals brought none of their old-time pleasure.  The men in the fields did not like Julius in the squire’s place, and they took no pains to hide the fact.  Then he came home with complaints.  “They were idle.  They were disrespectful.  The crops had fallen short.”  He could not understand it; and when he had expressed some dissatisfaction on the matter, the head man had told him, to take his grumbling to God Almighty.  “An insolent race, these statesmen and Dale shepherds,” he added; “if one of them owns ten acres, he thinks himself as good as if he owns a thousand.”

“All well-born men, Julius, all of them; are they not, Charlotte?  Eh?  What?”

“So well born,” answered Charlotte warmly, “that King James the First set up a claim to all these small estates, on the plea that their owners had never served a feudal lord, and were, therefore, tenants of the crown.  But the large statesmen went with the small ones.  They led them in a body to a heath between Kendal and Stavely, and there over two thousand men swore, ’that as they had their lands by the sword, they would keep them by the same.’  So you see, Julius, they were gentlemen before the feudal system existed; they never put a finger under its authority, and they have long survived its fall.”

“Well, for all that, they make poor servants.”

“There’s men that want Indian ryots or negro slaves to do their turn.  I want free men at Sandal-Side as long as I am squire of that name.”

“They missed you sorely in the fields, father.  It was not shearing-time, nor hay-time, nor harvest-time to any one in Sandal this year.  But you will stand in your meadows again—­God grant it!—­next summer.  And then how the men will work!  And what shouting there will be at the sight of you!  And what a harvest-home we shall have!”