ic on
the estate.

Monday came. The men went to their work as usual, leaving their wives to
deal with the matter. Behold them assembled with their meat, kept for
the occasion in spite of its state, before the shop of Peckaby. But of
redress they could get none; Peckaby was deaf; and Lionel arrived to
find hostilities commenced. Such was the summary of the story.

"You are acting very wrongly," were Lionel's first words to them in
answer. "You should blame the meat, not Peckaby. Is this weather for
keeping meat?"

"The weather didn't get to this heat till yesterday in the afternoon,"
said they--and Lionel could not deny the fact. Mrs. Dawson took up the
word.

"_Our_ meat warn't bought at Peckaby's; our meat were got at Clark's,
and it were sweet as a nut. 'Twere veal, too, and that's the worst meat
for keeping. Roy 'ud kill us if he could; but he can't force _us_ on to
Peckaby's rubbish. We defy him to't."

In point of defying Roy, the Dawsons had done that long ago. There was
open warfare between them, and skirmishes took place occasionally. The
first act of Roy, after it was known that Lionel was disinherited, had
been to discharge old Dawson and his sons from work. How they had
managed to live since was a mystery; funds did not seem to run low with
them; tales of their night-poaching went about, and the sons got an odd
job at legitimate work now and then.

"It's an awful shame," cried a civil, quiet woman, Sarah Grind, one of a
very numerous family, commonly called "Grind's lot," "that we should be
beat down to have our victuals and other things at such a place as
Peckaby's! Sometimes, sir, I'm almost inclined to ask, is it Christians
as rules over us?"

Lionel felt the shaft levelled at his family, though not personally at
himself.

"You are not beaten down to it," he said. "Why do you deal at Peckaby's?
Stay a bit! I know what you would urge: that by going elsewhere you
would displease Roy. It seems to me that if you would all go elsewhere,
Roy _could_ not prevent it. Should one of you attempt to go, he might;
but he could not prevent it if you all go with one accord. If Peckaby's
things are bad--as I believe they are--why do you buy them?"

"There ain't a single thing as is good in his place," spoke up a woman,
half-crying. "Sir, it's truth. His flour is half bone-dust, and his
'taturs is watery. His sugar is sand, and his tea is leaves dried over
again, while his eggs is rotten, and his coals is flint