tter. _I_ have no objection to speak of them, Roy; but, if I do,
you will hear some home truths that may not be palatable. You can have
work if you wish for it; and good pay."

"As one of the men, sir?" asked Roy, a shade of grumbling in his tone.

"As one of the superior men!"

Roy hesitated. The blow had fallen; but it was only what he feared.
"Might I ask as you'd give me a day to consider it over, sir?" he
presently said.

"A dozen days if you choose. The work is always to be had; it will not
run away; if you prefer to spend time deliberating upon the point, it is
your affair, not mine."

"Thank ye, sir. Then I'll think it over. It'll be hard lines, coming
down to be a workman, where I've been, as may be said, a sort of
master."

"Roy."

Roy turned back. He had been moving away. "Yes, sir."

"I shall expect you to pay rent for your cottage now, if you remain in
it. Mr. Verner, I believe, threw it into your post; made it part of your
perquisites. Mrs. Verner has, no doubt, done the same. But that is at an
end. I can show no more favour to you than I do to others."

"I'll think it over, sir," concluded Roy, his tone as sullen a one as he
dared let appear. And he departed.

Before the week was out, he came again to Verner's Pride, and said he
would accept the work, and pay rent for the cottage; but he hoped Mr.
Verner would name a fair rent.

"I should not name an unfair one, Roy," was the reply of Lionel. "You
will pay the same that others pay, whose dwellings are the same size as
yours. Mr Verner's scale of rents is not high, but low, as you know; I
shall not alter it."

And so Roy continued on the estate.

CHAPTER XXXII.

"IT'S APPLEPLEXY."

A short period elapsed. One night Jan Verner, upon getting into bed,
found he need not have taken the trouble, for the night-bell rang, and
Jan had to get up again. He opened his window and called out to know who
was there. A boy came round from the surgery door into view, and Jan
recognised him for the youngest son of his brother's gamekeeper, a youth
of twelve. He said his mother was ill.

"What's the matter with her?" asked Jan.

"Please, sir, she's took bad in the stomach. She's a-groaning awful.
Father thinks she'll die."

Jan dressed himself and started off, carrying with him a dose of
tincture of opium. When he arrived, however, he found the woman so
violently sick and ill, that he suspected it did not arise simply from
natural causes. "Wh