His quick eyes ran over the old man's broken frame with a world of
indignant meaning in them.

'Ay, ay, sir,' said Milsom, unmoved. 'But if it isn't fevers, it's
summat else. I can make a shilling or two where I be, speshally in the
first part of the year, in the basket work, and my wife she goes
charring up at Mr. Carter's farm, and Mr. Dodson, him at the farther
farm, he do give us a bit sometimes. Ef you git us turned away it will
be a bad day's work for all on us, sir, you may take my word on it.'

'And my wife so ill, Mr. Elsmere,' said Sharland, 'and all those
childer! I can't walk three miles farther to my work, Mr. Elsmere, I
can't nohow. I haven't got the legs for it. Let un be, sir. We'll rub
along.'

Robert tried to argue the matter.

If they would but stand by him he would fight the matter through, and
they should not suffer, if he had to get up a public subscription, or
support them out of his own pocket all the winter. A bold front, and
Mr. Henslowe must give way. The law was on their side, and every
labourer in Surrey would be the better off for their refusal to be
housed like pigs and poisoned like vermin.

In vain. There is an inexhaustible store of cautious endurance in the
poor against which the keenest reformer constantly throws himself in
vain. Elsmere was beaten. The two men got his word, and shuffled off
back to their pestilential hovels, a pathetic content beaming on each
face.

Catherine and Robert went back into the study. Rose heard her
brother-in-law's passionate sigh as the door swung behind them.

'Defeated!' she said to herself with a curious accent. 'Well, everybody
must have his turn. Robert has been too successful in his life, I
think.--You wretch!' she added, after a minute, laying her bright head
down on the book before her.

Next morning his wife found Elsmere after breakfast busily packing a
case of books in the study. They were books from the Hall library, which
so far had been for months the inseparable companions of his historical
work.

Catherine stood and watched him sadly.

'Must you, Robert?'

'I won't be beholden to that man for anything an hour longer than I can
help,' he answered her.

When the packing was nearly finished he came up to where she stood in
the open window.

'Things won't be as easy for us in the future, darling,' he said to her.
'A rector with both squire and agent against him is rather heavily
handicapped. We must make up our minds to t