“Gentlemen, I congratulate you on the firmness with which you have this day asserted the rights of the people of this place to the use of one of the few scraps of mother earth of which they have not been despoiled.”

“Gentlemen,” shouted an excited member of the procession, “three cheers for the resumption of the land of England by the people of England!  Hip, hip, hurrah!”

The cheers were given with much spirit, Sir Charles’s cheeks becoming redder at each repetition.  He looked angrily at the clergyman, now distracted by the charms of Lady Brandon, whose scorn, as she surveyed the crowd, expressed itself by a pout which became her pretty lips extremely.

Then a middle-aged laborer stepped from the road into the field, hat in hand, ducked respectfully, and said:  “Look ’e here, Sir Charles.  Don’t ’e mind them fellers.  There ain’t a man belonging to this neighborhood among ’em; not one in your employ or on your land.  Our dooty to you and your ladyship, and we will trust to you to do what is fair by us.  We want no interlopers from Lunnon to get us into trouble with your honor, and—­”

“You unmitigated cur,” exclaimed Trefusis fiercely, “what right have you to give away to his unborn children the liberty of your own?”

“They’re not unborn,” said Lady Brandon indignantly.  “That just shows how little you know about it.”

“No, nor mine either,” said the man, emboldened by her ladyship’s support.  “And who are you that call me a cur?”

“Who am I!  I am a rich man—­one of your masters, and privileged to call you what I please.  You are a grovelling famine-broken slave.  Now go and seek redress against me from the law.  I can buy law enough to ruin you for less money than it would cost me to shoot deer in Scotland or vermin here.  How do you like that state of things?  Eh?”

The man was taken aback.  “Sir Charles will stand by me,” he said, after a pause, with assumed confidence, but with an anxious glance at the baronet.

“If he does, after witnessing the return you have made me for standing by you, he is a greater fool than I take him to be.”

“Gently, gently,” said the clergyman.  “There is much excuse to be made for the poor fellow.”

“As gently as you please with any man that is a free man at heart,” said Trefusis; “but slaves must be driven, and this fellow is a slave to the marrow.”

“Still, we must be patient.  He does not know—­”

“He knows a great deal better than you do,” said Lady Brandon, interrupting.  “And the more shame for you, because you ought to know best.  I suppose you were educated somewhere.  You will not be satisfied with yourself when your bishop hears of this.  Yes,” she added, turning to Trefusis with an infantile air of wanting to cry and being forced to laugh against her will, “you may laugh as much as you please—­don’t trouble to pretend it’s only coughing—­but we will write to his bishop, as he shall find to his cost.”