Towards November, again, the congregation in the old church one Sunday
morning find subject for speculation concerning a stranger who enters a
certain well-appointed pew appropriated to The Chestnuts. He is clearly
the new tenant who has taken it for the hunting season. The Chestnuts is a
mansion built in modern style for a former landowner. As it is outside the
great hunting centres it is let at a low rental compared with its
accommodation. The labourers are glad to see that the place is let again,
for although the half-pay officer--the new occupant--who has retired,
wounded and decorated, from the service of a grateful country, has
probably not a third the income of the tradesman, and five times the
social appearance to maintain, still there will be profit to be got from
him.

What chance has such a gentleman in bargaining with the cottagers? How
should he know the village value of a cabbage? How should he understand
the farmyard value of a fowl? It may possibly strike him as odd that
vegetables should be so dear when, as he rides about, he sees whole fields
green with them. He sees plenty of fowls, and geese, and turkeys, gobbling
and cackling about the farmyards, and can perhaps after awhile faintly
perceive that they are the perquisites of the ladies of the tenants'
households, who drive him a very hard bargain. He, too, has cast aside
suits, shoes, hats, and so forth, really but little worn, to give away to
the poor. If married, his family require some help from the cottage women;
and there are odd jobs, well paid for, on the place for the men. Thus the
cottagers are glad of the arrival of their new masters, the one in the
summer, the other in the winter months.

The 'chapel-folk' of the place have so increased in numbers and affluence
that they have erected a large and commodious building in the village.
Besides the cottagers, many farmers go to the chapel, driving in from the
ends of the parish. It is a curious circumstance that many of the largest
dealers in agricultural produce, such as cheese, bacon, and corn, and the
owners of the busiest wharves where coal and timber, slate, and similar
materials are stored, belong to the Dissenting community. There are some
agricultural districts where this class of business is quite absorbed by
Dissenters--almost as much as money-changing and banking business is said
to be the exclusive property of Jews in some Continental countries. Such
dealers are often substantial