"I can only say how very sorry I am," she returned, distressed as well as terrified. "I wish I could help you, and put you into better cottages tomorrow! But I am as powerless as you are."
"Will you tell the master to do it? We be coming up to ask him. Will you tell him to come out and face us, and look at the ruins he have made, and look at our wives and little ones a-shivering there in the cold?"
Selina seemed to be shivering as much as they were. "It is Pinnett who has done it," she said, "not Mr. Dalrymple. You should lay the blame on him."
"Pinnett!" roared Dyke, throwing his arm before the other men, now surrounding them, to silence their murmurings, for he thought his own eloquence the best. "Would Pinnett have dared to do this without the master's orders? Pinnett's a tool in his hands. Say to him, ma'am, please, that we're not going to stand Pinnett's doings and be quiet; we'll drownd him first, let us once catch hold on him; and we be coming up to the Grange ourselves to say so to the master."
Finding she was to be no further detained, Selina sped on to the Grange. Oscar was in the oak-parlour. She threw herself into a chair, and burst into tears.
"Oscar, I have been so terrified. As I came by the common with Reuben, the men were there, and——"
"What men?" interrupted Mr. Dalrymple.
"Those who have been ejected from the cottages. They stopped me, and began to speak about their wrongs."
"Their—wrongs—did they say?"
"Yes, and I must say it also," she firmly answered, induced by fright and excitement to remonstrate against the injustice she had hitherto not liked to interfere with. "Cruel wrongs. Oscar, if you go on like this, oppressing all on the estate, you will be murdered as sure as you are living. They are threatening to drown Pinnett, if they can get hold of him; and they do not lay the blame on Pinnett, except as your agent, but on you."