hoes, and their shamefaced greetings, passed before him.  Yes!  It was all that fellow Freeland’s family!  The men had been put up to it—­put up to it!  The very wording of their demand showed that!  Very bitterly he thought of the unneighborly conduct of that woman and her cubs.  It was impossible to keep it from his wife!  And so he told her.  Rather to his surprise, she had no scruples about the strike-breakers.  Of course, the hay must be saved!  And the laborers be taught a lesson!  All the unpleasantness he and she had gone through over Tryst and that Gaunt girl must not go for nothing!  It must never be said or thought that the Freeland woman and her children had scored over them!  If the lesson were once driven home, they would have no further trouble.

He admired her firmness, though with a certain impatience.  Women never quite looked ahead; never quite realized all the consequences of anything.  And he thought:  ’By George!  I’d no idea she was so hard!  But, then, she always felt more strongly about Tryst and that Gaunt girl than I did.’

In the hall the glass was still going down.  He caught the 9.15, wiring to his agent to meet him at the station, and to the impresario of the strike-breakers to hold up their departure until he telegraphed.  The three-mile drive up from the station, fully half of which was through his own land, put him in possession of all the agent had to tell:  Nasty spirit abroad—­men dumb as fishes—­the farmers, puzzled and angry, had begun cutting as best they could.  Not a man had budged.  He had seen young Mr. and Miss Freeland going about.  The thing had been worked very cleverly.  He had suspected nothing—­utterly unlike the laborers as he knew them.  They had no real grievance, either!  Yes, they were going on with all their other work—­milking, horses, and that; it was only the hay they wouldn’t touch.  Their demand was certainly a very funny one—­very funny—­had never heard of anything like it.  Amounted almost to security of tenure.  The Tryst affair no doubt had done it!  Malloring cut him short: 

“Till they’ve withdrawn this demand, Simmons, I can’t discuss that or anything.”

The agent coughed behind his hand.

Naturally!  Only perhaps there might be a way of wording it that would satisfy them.  Never do to really let them have such decisions in their hands, of course!

They were just passing Tod’s.  The cottage wore its usual air of embowered peace.  And for the life of him Malloring could not restrain a gesture of annoyance.

On reaching home he sent gardeners and grooms in all directions with word that he would be glad to meet the men at four o’clock at the home farm.  Much thought, and interviews with several of the farmers, who all but one—­a shaky fellow at best—­were for giving the laborers a sharp lesson, occupied the interval.  Though he had refused to admit the notion that the men could be chicaned, as his agent had implied, he certainly did wonder a little whether a certain measure of security might not in some way be guaranteed, which would still leave him and the farmers a free hand.  But the more he meditated on the whole episode, the more he perceived how intimately it interfered with the fundamental policy of all good landowners—­of knowing what was good for their people better than those people knew themselves.