asy to find out by only a
glance at the face of Ursula. Soon she rose and went after him. I
followed her.

We saw, close by the hay-rick, a group of men, angrily talking. The
gossiping mothers were just joining them. Far off, in the field, the
younger folk were still dancing merrily down their long line of
"Thread-the-needle."

As we approached, we heard sobbing from one or two women, and loud
curses from the men.

"What's amiss?" said Mr. Halifax, as he came in the midst--and both
curses and sobbings were silenced. All began a confused tale of
wrongs. "Stop, Jacob--I can't make it out."

"This lad ha' seen it all. And he bean't a liar in big things--speak
up, Billy."

Somehow or other, we extracted the news brought by ragged Billy, who on
this day had been left in charge of the five dwellings rented of Lord
Luxmore. During the owners' absence there had been a distraint for
rent; every bit of the furniture was carried off; two or three aged and
sick folk were left lying on the bare floor--and the poor families here
would have to go home to nothing but their four walls.

Again, at repetition of the story, the women wept and the men swore.

"Be quiet," said Mr. Halifax again. But I saw that his honest English
blood was boiling within him. "Jem"--and Jem Watkins started, so
unusually sharp and commanding was his master's tone--"Saddle the
mare--quick. I shall ride to Kingswell, and thence to the sheriff's."

"God bless 'ee, sir!" sobbed Jacob Baines' widowed daughter-in-law, who
had left, as I overheard her telling Mrs. Halifax, a sick child to-day
at home.

Jacob Baines took up a heavy knobbed stick which happened to be leaning
against the hay-rick, and eyed it with savage meaning.

"Who be they as has done this, master?"

"Put that bludgeon down, Jacob."

The man hesitated--met his master's determined eye--and obeyed him,
meek as a lamb.

"But what is us to do, sir?"

"Nothing. Stay here till I return--you shall come to no harm. You
will trust me, my men?"

They gathered round him--those big, fierce-looking fellows, in whom was
brute force enough to attack or resist anything--yet he made them
listen to reason. He explained as much as he could of the injustice
which had apparently been done them--injustice which had overstepped
the law, and could only be met by keeping absolutely within the law.

"It is partly my fault, that I did not pay the rent to-day--I will do
so at once. I will g