Once every year the Squire met the whole of his tenants.  As Michaelmas came round he drew his rents, and then the dandy agent, the solid farmers, and the poor cottiers sat down at one table for the rent dinner.  The strict discipline of ordinary life was relaxed, and the Squire allowed even the fishermen to make jokes in his presence.  When the company broke up in the evening it often happened that various members were obliged to lie down in the hedge-sides, and once the Squire had to ride his cob right over his own head mason.  The mason happened to be thinking about nautical affairs when the grey cob swept down upon him, and just as the Squire cleared him he cried “Ship ahoy.”  This occurrence supplied the Squire with a joke which lasted nearly forty years.

All the sayings which the Squire dropped at the rent dinner were carefully treasured, and formed the subject of occasional conversation on the benches until the year went round again.

The good man did not like newspapers.  When he began his life as a landlord, at the end of the last century, the folk who lived on the estate managed perfectly well without journals, and he did not see why a change should be made.  He never could understand why a man could not be content with his own life, and his own sensations, instead of wanting to know what other people in other parts of the world were saying and doing.

About the time of the Reform agitation of 1867 he rode round to the masons’ shed.  The men were having their eleven o’clock meal, and as they ate their bread and cheese, Fat Jack, the stone-cutter, read to them one of Mr. John Bright’s speeches.  The Squire did not exactly know, or care to know, who Mr. John Bright might be, but he gathered enough from Fat Jack’s guttural elocution to cause uneasiness.  He declared that if ever the postman brought such a thing into the village again he would never allow a letter to be delivered on his estate.  But with all this bluster, the common people knew that their landlord wished them well, and they were ready to do anything for him.

One night, while he was dragging his trout stream, he fell into the ugliest part of the water.  He had hardly had time to come to the surface when six men were in after him, and he had to thank each one of the six in the same formal terms before any of them would consent to resign the whole credit of the rescue.

His eldest son was killed in battle.  Before departing for the fatal campaign, the young officer had dragged the burn, and placed all the brown trout that he caught in a great tarn that lay amongst the low hills on the moor.  The fish increased and multiplied until the little lake was swarming.  Big fat trout used to roll easily round on summer evenings, and make lazy lunges at the flies.  It would have been easy to have taken twenty dozen out of the lake in a day; but the Squire said he did not want the pond fished because his boy had stocked it.  So no native ever cast a line there, although the temptation was almost unbearable.