ood--feel it who can! I am illiberal, if you like, but in the
presence of those fellows I feel that I am facing enemies. It seems to
me that I have nothing in common with them but the animal functions.
Absurd? Yes, of course, it is absurd; but I speak of how intercourse
with them affects me. They are our enemies, yours as well as mine; they
are the enemies of every man who speaks the pure English tongue and does
not earn a living with his hands. When they face me I understand what
revolution means; some of them look at me as they would if they had
muskets in their hands.'

'You are not conciliating,' remarked the vicar.

'I am not, and cannot be. They stir the worst feelings in me; I grow
arrogant, autocratic. As long as I have no private dealings with them I
can consider their hardships and judge their characters dispassionately;
but I must not come to close quarters.'

'You have special causes of prejudice.'

'True. If I were a philosopher I should overcome all that. However, my
prejudice is good in one way; it enables me thoroughly to understand the
detestation with which they regard me and the like of me. If I had been
born one of them I should be the most savage anarchist. The moral is,
that I must hold apart. Perhaps I shall grow cooler in time.'

The special causes of prejudice were quite as strong on the side of the
workmen; Hubert might have been far less aristocratic in bearing, they
would have disliked him as cordially. Most of them took it as a wanton
outrage that they should be driven from the homes in which they had
believed themselves settled for life. The man Redgrave--he of the six
feet two who had presented the address to Mutimer--was a powerful agent
of ill-feeling; during the first few days he was constantly gathering
impromptu meetings in New Wanley and haranguing them violently on
the principles of Socialism. But in less than a week he had taken his
departure, and the main trouble seemed at an end.

Mrs. Eldon was so impatient to return to the Manor that a room was
prepared for her as soon as possible, and she came from her house at
Agworth before Mutimer had been gone a week. Through the summer her
strength had failed rapidly; it was her own conviction that she could
live but a short time longer. The extreme agitation caused by the
discovery of the will had visibly enfeebled her; it was her one desire
to find herself once more in her old home, and there to breathe her
last. The journey from