ng with it--a scene was
passing in a bare cottage beside the Ulls-water road, whence in due time
one of those events was to arise which we call sudden or startling only
because we are ignorant of the slow [Greek: ananke ] which has produced
them.

An elderly man had just entered the cottage after his day's work. He was
evidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a table
which held tea things and some bread and butter. His wife could be heard
moving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room.

The man sat motionless, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bent.
He seemed to be watching the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlight
that had found its way into the darkened room. For the western sun was
blazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was like
an oven. The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden,
unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the open
fell. It was a labourer's cottage, but the furniture of the living-room
was superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of the
neighbourhood. A piano was crowded into one corner, and a sideboard, too
large for the room, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace.

The man sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer.
His brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit as
Messrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to their
farmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal.
The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and on
the drooped brow shone beads of sweat. John Brand was not much over
fifty, but he was tired out in mind and body; and his soul was bitter
within him.

A year before this date he had been still the nominal owner of a small
freehold farm between Pengarth and Carlisle, bordering on the Threlfall
property. But he was then within an ace of ruin, and irreparable calamity
had since overtaken him.

How it was that he had fallen into such a plight was still more or less
mysterious to a dull brain. Up to the age of forty-seven, he had been
employed on his father's land, with little more than the wages of a
labourer, possessing but small authority over the men working on the
farm, and no liberty but such as the will of a tyrannical master allowed
him. Then suddenly the father died, and Brand succeeded to the farm. All
his long-checked manhood asserted itself. There was