said Smilash, touching the mug with his lips.

"The roof and south wall is browed right away," continued the man,
after pausing for a moment to puzzle over Smilash's meaning. "I doubt if
there's a stone of it standing by this."

"But Sir John will build it for you again. You are one of his herds, are
you not?"

"I am, Miss. But not he; he'll be glad it's down. He don't like people
livin' on the land. I have told him time and again that the place was
ready to fall; but he said I couldn't expect him to lay out money on a
house that he got no rent for. You see, Miss, I didn't pay any rent. I
took low wages; and the bit of a hut was a sort of set-off again' what I
was paid short of the other men. I couldn't afford to have it repaired,
though I did what I could to patch and prop it. And now most like I
shall be blamed for letting it be blew down, and shall have to live in
half a room in the town and pay two or three shillin's a week, besides
walkin' three miles to and from my work every day. A gentleman like Sir
John don't hardly know what the value of a penny is to us laborin' folk,
nor how cruel hard his estate rules and the like comes on us."

"Sir John's health!" said Smilash, touching the mug as before. The man
drank a mouthful humbly, and Smilash continued, "Here's to the glorious
landed gentry of old England: bless 'em!"

"Master Smilash is only jokin'," said the man apologetically. "It's his
way."

"You should not bring a family into the world if you are so poor," said
Miss Wilson severely. "Can you not see that you impoverish yourself by
doing so--to put the matter on no higher grounds."

"Reverend Mr. Malthus's health!" remarked Smilash, repeating his
pantomime.

"Some say it's the children, and some say it's the drink, Miss," said
the man submissively. "But from what I see, family or no family, drunk
or sober, the poor gets poorer and the rich richer every day."

"Ain't it disgustin' to hear a man so ignorant of the improvement in the
condition of his class?" said Smilash, appealing to Miss Wilson.

"If you intend to take this man home with you," she said, turning
sharply on him, "you had better do it at once."

"I take it kind on your part that you ask me to do anythink, after your
up and telling Mr. Wickens that I am the last person in Lyvern you would
trust with a job."

"So you are--the very last. Why don't you drink your beer?"

"Not in scorn of your brewing, lady; but because, bein' a common