“Aye, more than a dozen,” Segerson muttered.

The man looked at them both and there was a dull hate gathering in his eyes.

“It’s easy to talk about saving money and working hard, you that have got everything you want in life and no work to do,” he protested “It’s enough to make a man turn Socialist to listen to un.”

“Mr. Crockford,” Jane said, “I am a Socialist and if you take the trouble to understand even the rudiments of socialism, you will learn that the drones have as small a part in that scheme of life as in any other.  You have a right to what you produce.  It is one of the pleasures of my life to help the deserving to enjoy what they produce.  It is also one of the duties, when I find a non-productive person filling a position to which his daily life and character do not entitle him, to pull him up like a weed.  That is my idea of socialism, Mr. Crockford.  You will leave on March 25th.”

They rode homeward into a gathering storm.  A mass of black clouds was rolling up from the north, and an unexpected wind came bellowing down the coombs, bending the stunted oaks and dark pines and filling the air with sonorous but ominous music.  The hills around soon became invisible, blotted out by fragments of the gathering mists.  The cold sleet stung their faces.  Out on the moors was no sound but time tinkling of distant sheep bells.

“There’s snow coming,” Segerson muttered, as he turned up his coat collar.

“It won’t do any harm,” she answered.  “The earth lies warm under it.”

The lights of Parracombe, precipitous and unexpected, were like flecks in the sky, wiped out by a sudden driving storm of sleet.  A little while later they cantered up the avenue to Woolhanger and Jane slipped from her horse with a little sigh of relief.

“You’d better stay and have some tea, Mr. Segerson,” she invited.  “John will take your horse and give him a rubdown.”

She changed her habit and, forgetting her guest, indulged in the luxury of a hot bath.  She descended some time later to find him sitting in front of the tea tray in the hall.  A more than usually gracious smile soon drove the frown from his forehead.

“I really am frightfully sorry,” she apologised, as she handed him his tea.  “I had no idea I was so wet.  You’ll have rather a bad ride home.”

“Oh, I’m used to it,” he answered.  “I’m afraid they’ll lose a good many sheep on the higher farms, though, if the storm turns out as bad as it threatens.  Hear that!”

A tornado of wind seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet.  Jane shivered.

“I suppose,” she reflected, “that man Crockford thought I was very cruel to-day.”

“I will tell you Crockford’s point of view,” Segerson replied.  “He doesn’t exactly understand what your aims are, and wherever he goes he hears nothing but praise of the way you have treated your tenants and the way you have tried to turn them into small landowners.  He isn’t intelligent enough to realise that there is a principle behind all this.  He has simply come to feel that he has a lenient landlord and that he has only to sit still and the plums will drop into his mouth, too.  Crockford is one of the weak spots in your system, Lady Jane.  There is no place for him or his kind in a self-supporting world.”