each of them was fixed by a formal engagement. The married men were
paid fifteen shillings a week, but on coming to a young man, the Squire
said, "Now I am going to give you a shilling a week less than the others
because you live with your mother." This sounds like the speech of a
very stingy person; but in spite of the apparent hardness of the great
landlord, poverty was never known on his estate. The hinds had to eat
barley bread, and beef and mutton were not plentiful, for the butcher's
visit only came once in the week. Yet nevertheless the men were healthy
and powerful, and the women and children were neatly and decently
dressed.

Once every year the Squire met the whole of his tenants. As Michaelmas
came round he drew his rents, and then the dandy agent, the solid
farmers, and the poor cottiers sat down at one table for the rent
dinner. The strict discipline of ordinary life was relaxed, and the
Squire allowed even the fishermen to make jokes in his presence. When
the company broke up in the evening it often happened that various
members were obliged to lie down in the hedge-sides, and once the Squire
had to ride his cob right over his own head mason. The mason happened to
be thinking about nautical affairs when the grey cob swept down upon
him, and just as the Squire cleared him he cried "Ship ahoy." This
occurrence supplied the Squire with a joke which lasted nearly forty
years.

All the sayings which the Squire dropped at the rent dinner were
carefully treasured, and formed the subject of occasional conversation
on the benches until the year went round again.

The good man did not like newspapers. When he began his life as a
landlord, at the end of the last century, the folk who lived on the
estate managed perfectly well without journals, and he did not see why a
change should be made. He never could understand why a man could not be
content with his own life, and his own sensations, instead of wanting to
know what other people in other parts of the world were saying and
doing.

About the time of the Reform agitation of 1867 he rode round to the
masons' shed. The men were having their eleven o'clock meal, and as they
ate their bread and cheese, Fat Jack, the stone-cutter, read to them one
of Mr. John Bright's speeches. The Squire did not exactly know, or care
to know, who Mr. John Bright might be, but he gathered enough from Fat
Jack's guttural elocution to cause uneasiness. He declared that if ever
the p