“Favours!” said Arthur, passionately; “no; how can you suppose I meant that?  But the Poysers—­Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean to leave the place where they have lived so many years—­for generations.  Don’t you see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome the feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in the end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who know them?”

“That’s true,” said Adam coldly.  “But then, sir, folks’s feelings are not so easily overcome.  It’ll be hard for Martin Poyser to go to a strange place, among strange faces, when he’s been bred up on the Hall Farm, and his father before him; but then it ’ud be harder for a man with his feelings to stay.  I don’t see how the thing’s to be made any other than hard.  There’s a sort o’ damage, sir, that can’t be made up for.”

Arthur was silent some moments.  In spite of other feelings dominant in him this evening, his pride winced under Adam’s mode of treating him.  Wasn’t he himself suffering?  Was not he too obliged to renounce his most cherished hopes?  It was now as it had been eight months ago—­Adam was forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing.  He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the most irritating to Arthur’s eager ardent nature.  But his anger was subdued by the same influence that had subdued Adam’s when they first confronted each other—­by the marks of suffering in a long familiar face.  The momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a great deal from Adam, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so much; but there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as he said, “But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct—­by giving way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of thinking what will be the effect in the future.

“If I were going to stay here and act as landlord,” he added presently, with still more eagerness—­“if I were careless about what I’ve done—­what I’ve been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Adam, for going away and encouraging others to go.  You would have some excuse then for trying to make the evil worse.  But when I tell you I’m going away for years—­when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every plan of happiness I’ve ever formed—­it is impossible for a sensible man like you to believe that there is any real ground for the Poysers refusing to remain.  I know their feeling about disgrace—­Mr. Irwine has told me all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of this idea that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours, and that they can’t remain on my estate, if you would join him in his efforts—­if you would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods.”

Arthur paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, “You know that’s a good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner.  And you don’t know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you will like to work for.  If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the estate and take my name.  He is a good fellow.”