bed that night a ruined man.

CHAPTER II

THE SQUIRE.

The next morning the poor old farmer came down to the plentiful
breakfast prepared by Dorothy Burrow looking ten years older than when
he had left the kitchen the night before. He refused all food, and sat
in the settle by the fire, holding his thin hands over the smouldering
embers, and shuddering every now and then and moaning to himself.

'You ain't cold now, father?' Dorothy bawled in his ear. 'It is hot enow
in the fields, even now, I can tell you. Do you want a bigger fire--eh?'

The old man shook his head.

'What _do_ you want then? Don't sit there as if you was crazy--sighing
and muttering.'

'Here, grandfather,' Betty said, approaching the settle and sitting down
by her grandfather's side, 'here. I've put a drop of rum in the new
milk, now take a draught of it, do, and you will feel quite spry and
lively. Come!'

Betty always took a common sense view of things, and she added,--

'You can't feel well if you don't break your fast.'

She succeeded in making the old man swallow half the contents of the
thick-lipped mug. Then she put another faggot on the fire, not heeding
Dorothy's remark that they should all be smothered with heat, and sat
down on the bench at the table, by Bryda's side, to discuss her own
breakfast with a keen appetite.

Bryda, who was thinking over the loud, angry voices she had heard on the
previous night, connected her grandfather's appearance with some
mysterious visitor, who had evidently left the house in anger. So she
did not do justice to the particular griddle cake, done to a turn, which
Betty had put on her plate.

'Something is wrong,' she whispered to Betty. 'I know there is. I wish
we knew what it is.'

They were not left long in doubt. As soon as the scraping of the heavy
boots of the farm servants was heard on the brick floor of the back
kitchen, where they took their meals, and the benches pushed back by the
general servant of the farm, Mr Palmer spoke, jerking his thumb in the
direction of the open door.

'Shut yonder door,' he said, 'and come here all of you.'

The girls obeyed, Bryda and Betty seating themselves on either side of
their grandfather, while Dorothy Burrow stood before him, her stout red
arms uncovered, her elbows stuck on either side of her thick waist, and
the frills of her big calico cap blown back from her stolid face.

'Well,' she said, 'what's up, father?'

The old man shook