n fragments of dialogue she had overheard in the winter, where
she had chanced to find herself alone in a railway carriage full of
a group of disaffected workmen returning from a strike meeting at
Leicester. 'If there are many like these, is the country worth
saving?' she was saying to herself all the time, in a dumb passion.

Yet, after all, those men had done months and years of labour for
the country. Saying 'I will not go!' they had yet gone. Without a
spark of high feeling or conscious self-sacrifice to ease their
toil, they had yet, week by week, made the guns and the shells which
had saved the armies of England. When this temporary outbreak was
over they would go back and make them again. And they were tired
men--sallow-faced, and bowed before their time.

But what had this whimsical, accomplished man before her ever done
for his country that he should rail like this? It was difficult
after a tiring day to keep scorn and dissent concealed. They
probably showed in her expression, for the Squire turned upon her as
she made her remark about the submarines, examining her with a pair
of keen eyes.

'Oh, I know very well what you and that fellow Chicksands think
about persons like me who endeavour to see things _as they
are_!'--he smote a chair before him--'and not as you and our
war-party _wish_ them to be. Well, well--now then to business. Who
wants to cut my woods--and what do they offer for them?'

Elizabeth put the papers in front of him. He turned them over.

'H'm--they want the Cross Wood--one of the most beautiful woods in
England. I have spent days there when I was young drawing the trees.
And who's the idiot'--he pointed to some marginal notes--'who is
always carping and girding? "Good forestry" would have done this and
not done that. "Mismanagement"--"neglect"! Upon my word, who made
this man a judge over me?'

And flushed with wrath, the Squire looked angrily at his secretary.
'Heavens!'--thought Elizabeth--'why didn't I edit the papers before
I showed them?' But aloud she said with her good-tempered smile--

'I am afraid I took all those remarks as applying to Mr. Hull. He
was responsible for the woods, wasn't he? He told me he was.'

'Nothing of the kind! In the end the owner is responsible. This
fellow is attacking _me_!'

Elizabeth said nothing. She could only wait in hope to see how the
large sums mentioned in the contract might work.

'"Maximum price"! What's this?--"Had Mr. Mannering been