"Ah," he said, when Bob had departed, "usual way. Even the misfortune of they pigs have cost 'e a coin more'n there was any call to pay."
CHAPTER IV
"THE MARROW OF THE FARM"
The grievance uttered by Lovey Lee against those who settled upon Dartmoor and appropriated to particular uses that ancient domain, was widespread a hundred years ago, and is alive to-day. Aforetime some five-and-thirty ancient Forest Tenements were held as customary freeholds, or copyholds, from the Manor of Lydford independent of the Duchy, and these venerable homesteads shall be found scattered in the most secluded and salubrious regions of the Moor. Of these, however, the Duchy has now secured more than half, and it will probably acquire the remainder in process of time. But a different sort of farm sprang up on every side a century since; "newtake" tenements appeared; and Maurice Malherb now proposed to create another such in the virgin valley of Fox Tor. These constant enclosures have been a source of discontent upon Dartmoor for many generations, and the peasants protest with reason, for theirs is the unalienable right to this great waste, and every acre fenced off against their sheep and cattle is a defiance of ancient charters and a robbery of the poor. The cry was old before Tudor times, and you shall read in Henry VI. (Part 2) how the Second Peter, representing his fellow-townsmen, petitions "against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford."
And so it happened that Malherb's advent made him more enemies than friends in the border villages and among the scattered homesteads of the Moor.
A little knot of grumblers were met together at the "Saracen's Head," near Prince Town—a modest tavern long since superseded by the present famous hostelry at Two Bridges. This party now aired its wrongs, and albeit no man amongst them had ever set eyes upon Malherb, all spoke an evil word against him, and each man could report some sinister story gleaned from another. It appeared certain upon these rumours that the new "squatter" was a hard and rapacious rascal.
"The place will be finished home to the roof next year," said a thin, straight man with a long beard and a face so hidden in hair that little more than his nose and eyes protruded from it. "Fox Tor Farm 'twill be named, an' Lovey Lee, up to Siward's Cross, have said as she'll bewitch him from the day he enters the house."
"Somebody did ought to tell the Prince Regent," murmured a very old man who sat by the fire. "He don't know about these here goings on, an' how Duchy fills his pockets with gold stolen from our pockets. This place was given to us in the early ages of the earth, an' if the Prince knowed the rights of it, he wouldn't take the money."
"What be Duchy, Uncle Smallridge?" inquired a weak-eyed youth with flaxen hair and fluffy, corn-coloured down about his cheeks and chin. "For my part I can't grasp hold of it. Be it a live thing as you might say?"
The old man addressed as Uncle Smallridge laughed and spat into the fire.