Worsted Scotton spoiled it. It was true that he could not
think of any use to which to put the Common, but he felt deeply that it
was pure dog-in-the-mangerism of the cottagers, and this he could not
stand. Not one beast in two years had fattened on its barrenness. Three
old donkeys alone eked out the remnants of their days. A bundle of
firewood or old bracken, a few peat sods from one especial corner,
were all the selfish peasants gathered. But the cottagers were no great
matter--he could soon have settled them; it was that fellow Peacock whom
he could not settle, just because he happened to abut on the Common, and
his fathers had been nasty before him. Mr. Pendyce rode round looking
at the fence his father had put up, until he came to the portion that
Peacock's father had pulled down; and here, by a strange fatality--such
as will happen even in printed records--he came on Peacock himself
standing in the gap, as though he had foreseen this visit of the
Squire's. The mare stopped of her own accord, the spaniel John at a
measured distance lay down to think, and all those yards away he could
be heard doing it, and now and then swallowing his tongue.

Peacock stood with his hands in his breeches' pockets. An old straw hat
was on his head, his little eyes were turned towards the ground; and
his cob, which he had tied to what his father had left standing of the
fence, had his eyes, too, turned towards the ground, for he was eating
grass. Mr. Pendyce's fight with his burning stable had stuck in the
farmer's "gizzard" ever since. He felt that he was forgetting it day
by day--would soon forget it altogether. He felt the old sacred doubts
inherited from his fathers rising every hour within him. And so he
had come up to see what looking at the gap would do for his sense of
gratitude. At sight of the Squire his little eyes turned here and there,
as a pig's eyes turn when it receives a blow behind. That Mr. Pendyce
should have chosen this moment to come up was as though Providence, that
knoweth all things, knew the natural thing for Mr. Pendyce to do.

"Afternoon, Squire. Dry weather; rain's badly wanted. I'll get no feed
if this goes on."

Mr. Pendyce answered:

"Afternoon, Peacock. Why, your fields are first-rate for grass."

They hastily turned their eyes away, for at that moment they could not
bear to see each other.

There was a silence; then Peacock said:

"What about those gates of mine, Squire?" and his voice quavere