“Who has struck Spruce?”

Bainton hesitated.  It was an exceedingly awkward position.  He looked appealingly, as was his wont, up into the air and among the highest branches of the ‘Five Sisters’ for ‘Passon Walden,’ but naturally could not discover him at that elevation.

“Come, come!” said Maryllia, imperatively—­“You are not all deaf, I hope!  Give me a straight answer, one of you!  Who struck Spruce?”

“Mister Leach did!” said the big-boned lad who had constituted himself Spruce’s defender.  “We ’eerd down in the village as ’ow you’d come ’ome, Miss, and as ’ow you’d give your orders that the Five Sisters was to be left stannin’, and we coomed up wi’ Spruce to see ’ow Leach ‘ud take it, an’ ’fore we could say a wurrd Leach he up wi’ his whip and cut Spruce across the for’ead as ye see—­”

Maryllia raised her hand and silenced him with a gesture.  “Thank you!  That will do.  I understand!” She turned towards Leach; “What have you to say for yourself?” “I take no orders from a servant,” replied Leach, insolently; “I have managed this estate for ten years, and I give in my statements and receive my instructions from the firm of solicitors who have it in charge.  I am not called upon to accept any different arrangement without proper notice.”

Maryllia heard him out with coldly attentive patience.

“You will accept a different arrangement without any further notice at all,” she said; “You will leave the premises and resign all management of my property from this day henceforward.  I dismiss you, for disobedience and insolence, and for assaulting my servant, Spruce, in the execution of his duty.  And as for these trees, if any man touches a bough of one of them without my permission, I will have him prosecuted!  Now you know my mind!”.

She sat proudly erect in her saddle, while the village hobbledehoys who had instinctively gathered round her, like steel shavings round a magnet, fairly gasped for breath.  Oliver Leach dismissed!  Oliver Leach, the petty tyrant, the carping, snarling jack-in-office, cast out like a handful of bad rubbish!  It was like a thunderbolt fallen from heaven and riving the earth on which they stood!  Bainton heard, and could scarcely keep back a chuckle of satisfaction.  He longed to make Spruce understand what was going on, but that unfortunate individual was slightly stunned by Leach’s heavy blow, and sitting on the grass with his head between his two hands, was gazing, in a kind of stupefaction at the ‘new Missis’; so that any ‘bellowing’ into his ear was scarcely possible.

Leach himself stared blankly and incredulously,—­his face crimsoned with a sudden rush of enraged blood and then paled again, and changing his former insolent tone for one both fawning and propitiatory, he stammered out: