“The penuriousness of rich men is a constant surprise to me,” said Mr. Forbes.  “Dunghill cottages are not so frequent as they were, but there are still a vast number too many.  When old Gifford made a solitude round him, Blagg built those reed-thatched hovels at Morte which contribute more poor rogues to the quarter sessions than all the surrounding parishes.  That strip of debatable land is the seedbed of crime and misery:  the laborers take refuge in the hamlet, and herd together as animals left to their own choice never do herd; but their walk to and from their work is shortened by one half, and they have their excuse.  We should probably do the same ourselves.”

“The cottages of the small proprietors are always the worst,” remarked Mr. Chiverton.

“If you and Gifford would combine to rebuild the houses you have allowed to decay or have pulled down, Morte would soon be left to the owls and the bats,” said the clergyman.  “By far the larger majority of the men are employed on your farms, and it is no longer for your advantage that their strength should be spent in walking miles to work—­if ever it was.  You will have to do it.  While Jack was left in brute ignorance, it was possible to satisfy him with brute comforts and control him with brute discipline; but teach Jack the alphabet, and he becomes as shrewd as his master.  He begins to consider what he is worth, and to readjust the proportion between his work and his wages—­to reflect that the larger share of the profit is, perhaps, due to himself, seeing that he reaps by his own toil and sweat, and his master reaps by the toil and sweat of a score.”

Mr. Chiverton had manifested signs of impatience and irritability during Mr. Forbes’s address, and he now said, with his peculiar snarl for which he was famous, “Once upon a time there was a great redistribution of land in Egypt, and the fifth part of the increase was given to Pharaoh, and the other four parts were left to be food to the sowers.  If Providence would graciously send us a universal famine, we might all begin again on a new foundation.”

“Oh, we cannot wait for that—­we must do something meanwhile,” said Sir Edward Lucas, understanding him literally.  “I expect we shall have to manage our land less exclusively with an eye to our own revenue from it.”

Mr. Chiverton testily interrupted the young man’s words of wisdom:  “The fact is, Jack wants to be master himself.  Strikes in the manufacturing towns are not unnatural—­we know how those mercantile people grind their hands—­but since it has come to strikes amongst colliers and miners, I tremble at the prospect for the country.  The spirit of insubordination will spread and spread until the very plough-boys in the field are infected.”

“A good thing, too, and the sooner the better,” said Mr. Oliver Smith.

“No, no!” cried Mr. Fairfax, but Mr. Forbes said that was what they were coming to.  Sir Edward Lucas listened hard.  He was fresh from Oxford, where boating and athletic exercises had been his chief study.  His father was lately dead, and the administration of a great estate had devolved upon him.  His desire was to do his duty by it, and he had to learn how, that prospect not having been prepared for in his education, further than by initiation in the field-sports followed by gentlemen.