“There is really no reason why I should disturb you,” Jane said, turning back upon the threshold.  “A letter from Mr. Segerson will do.”

Crockford, however, had pulled himself together.  A premonition of his impending fate had already produced a certain sullenness.

“Pettigrew,” he directed, “you get out and have another look at the cow.  If you’ve any business word to say to me, your ladyship, I’m here.”

Jane looked once more around the squalid room, watched the unsteady figure of Pettigrew departing and looked back at her tenant.

“Your lease is up on March the twenty-fifth, Crockford,” she reminded him.  “I have come to tell you that I shall not be prepared to renew it.”

The man simply blinked at her.  His fuddled brain was not equal to grappling with such a catastrophe.

“Your farm is favourably situated,” she continued, “and, although small, has great possibilities.  I find you are dropping behind your neighbours and your crops are poorer each season.  Have you saved any money, Crockford?”

“Saved any money,” the man blustered, “with shepherd’s wages alone at two pounds a week, and a week’s rain starting in the day I began hay-making.  Why, my barley—­”

“You started your hay-making ten days too late,” Segerson interrupted sternly.  “You had plenty of warning.  And as for your barley, you sold it in the King’s Arms at Barnstaple, when you’d had too much to drink, at thirty per cent, below its value.”

Jane turned towards the door.

“I need not stay any longer,” she said.  “I wanted to look at your farm for myself, Mr. Crockford, and I thought it only right that you should have early notice of my intention to ask you to vacate the place.”

The cold truth was finding its way into the man’s consciousness.  It had a wonderfully sobering effect.

“Look here, ma’am,” he demanded, “is it true that you lent Farmer Holroyd four hundred pounds to buy his own farm and the Crocombe brothers two hundred each?”

“Quite true,” Jane replied coldly.  “What of it?”

“What of it?” the man repeated.  “You lend them youngsters money and then you come to me, a man who’s been on this land for twenty-two years, and you’ve nothing to say but ‘get out!’ Where am I to find another farm at my time of life?  Just answer me that, will you?”

“It is not my concern,” Jane declared.  “I only know that I decline to have any tenants on my property who do not do justice to the land.  When I see that they do justice to it, then it is my wish that they should possess it.  It is true that I have lent money to some of the farmers round here, but the greater part of what they have put down for the purchase of their holdings is savings,—­money they had saved and earned by working early and late, by careful farming and husbandry, by putting money in the bank every quarter.  You’ve had the same opportunity.  You have preferred to waste your time and waste your money.  You’ve had more than one warning you know, Crockford.”