"Only a little, perhaps, but the world is made up of little things. Now tell me about Jack," he said.
"His horse threw him while he was out hunting," said Margery. "Poor Jack! he and Lady Audrey were here only the day before, and they seemed so happy together."
"Poor Jack! he has paid with his life for the new way of managing the land," exclaimed Miles.
"What do you mean?—he was out hunting," said Margery.
"Yes, but what was he hunting?—the poor creatures who had been driven out of their homes in the village, and had taken refuge in the woods close at hand. Two or three sheep had been stolen, and Jack said they should not stay in the woods any longer—he would hunt them down—and it was while he was doing this that his horse stumbled and threw him over its head, and broke his neck. That is the story I have heard, and when I asked Father Francis about it yesterday he said he believed it was true, and that our father knew it, but did not wish us to hear of it. Now, Margery, I want to know who has bewitched my father like this. I have honoured him as a kind and just man, merciful and tender to man and beast—and—"
But poor Margery was too much overcome to hear more just now. She had loved her elder brother, and his young wife too, and she did not like to blame them, or her father either. Another thing, she could scarcely believe all that Miles told her now, for she knew nothing of the labourers being turned out of their homes and the village almost depopulated, for the servants had been warned not to tell their young mistress of all this, and so she simply knew that Rankin and one or two other farmers had given up their land and gone away, and that her father expected to make a good deal more money by keeping sheep and selling wool than he could by the renting of the land to the farmers. She had been glad of it for Jack's sake, for he could not have married the Lady Audrey unless he could provide her with a separate home, for her mother objected to her making her home with them at Paton Hall, although the house was quite large enough for two or three families, and her mother would have been glad to welcome the young bride, and would have given her her due place in the household. But if Lady Audrey herself would have been agreeable to such an arrangement her parents were not, and Jack pressed his father to follow the example of other landlords and turn off the old tenants unless they agreed to pay a much higher rent; and this had been done, and Jack had married and died; but wool was increasing in value, and brought a better price every year, and Sir Thomas Paton did not think he could do better than increase his wealth, even though he had to turn other tenants adrift to do it, and depopulate the village on the other side of the estate as well as that near the Haugh.
Miles might well ask whether something like witchcraft had not been at work to bring about such a change as this, but it was the witchcraft of greed, the desire to heap up riches, that could but bring the rust and moth of discontent and misery, rendering all such gains worthless. But how he was to prevent a further extension of this wrong was the problem the lad had set himself to solve, and the solution was nearer than he thought when he had his talk with Margery.
[CHAPTER III.]
FATHER AND SON.
IT is possible that if Miles had been able to go to his brother's funeral feast, and take his part in the business and bustle he was sent for to undertake, the changes that he had noticed in the village, and heard of since, would not have made so deep an impression upon his mind. But, as it was, he could only lie in bed for some weeks and think over all he had heard and seen, varied with reading his precious Greek Testament, until at last he began to make comparison between the teaching of Christ in its pages and the practice of the world as exhibited by his father in the disposal of the land.