were built on a
swamp originally, are falling into ruin; the roofs, the drains, the
accommodation per head, are all about equally scandalous. The place
is harried with illness; since I came there has been both fever and
diphtheria there. They are all crippled with rheumatism, but _that_ they
think nothing of; the English laborer takes rheumatism as quite in the
day's bargain! And as to _vice_--the vice that comes of mere endless
persecuting opportunity--I can tell you one's ideas of personal
responsibility get a good deal shaken up by a place like this! And I
can do nothing. I brought over Henslowe to see the place, and he behaved
like a brute. He scoffed at all my complaints, said that no landlord
would be such a fool as to build fresh cottages on such a site, that the
old ones must just be allowed to go to ruin; that the people might live
in them if they chose, or turn out of them if they chose. Nobody forced
them to do either; it was their own look-out.'

'That was true,' said Langham, 'wasn't it?'

Robert turned upon him fiercely.

'Ah! you think it so easy for these poor creatures to leave their homes
their working places! Some of them have been there thirty years. They
are close to the two or three farms that employ them, close to the osier
beds which give them extra earnings in the spring. If they were turned
out, there is nothing nearer than Murewell, and not a single cottage
to be found there. I don't say it is a landlord's duty to provide more
cottages than are wanted; but if the labor is wanted, the laborer should
be decently housed. He is worthy of his hire, and woe to the man who
neglects or ill-treats him!'

Langham could not help smiling, partly at the vehemence of the speech,
partly at the lack of adjustment between his friend's mood and his
own. He braced himself to take the matter more seriously, but meanwhile
Robert had caught the smile, and his angry eyes melted at once into
laughter.

'There I am, ranting as usual,' he said penitently, 'Took you for
Henslowe, I suppose! Ah, well, never mind. I hear the Provost has
another book on the stocks?'

So they diverged into other things, talking politics and new books,
public men and what not, till at the end of a long and gradual descent
through wooded ground, some two miles to the northwest of the park, they
emerged from the trees beneath which they had been walking, and found
themselves on a bridge, a gray sluggish stream flowing beneath them, and