'"But you'll die in a ditch some day, Ben," I say to him.

'"Like as not, master," he replies, quite good-humouredly; "and no great matter. A man must die when his turn comes. But you'll have the hay spoiling, master, if you keeps a-talkin' to your hands 'stead of drivin' 'em at their work."'

'How it must ruin their constitution!' groaned the clergyman. 'They can't have a healthy pulse or movement.'

'Even that is not borne out by fact,' said the squatter. 'Have up this old private in the industrial army, and what do you find? His eye is clear, his cheek is healthy and brown. Let either of us, fairly strong men—taller and broader too—stand alongside of him at a hard day's work, and see where we shall be! Every muscle and sinew, strained and tested since childhood, is like wire compared to cord. The country-bred Englishman is certainly the best working animal in the world, and I cannot conscientiously say that this man's bodily or mental powers have suffered for the life he has led.'

'Is there no hope, then?' said the young preacher despondingly. 'Must the best and bravest of the race be doomed to this hopeless degradation? The preacher's warning is useless, the kindly master's advice, the teaching of experience, the voice of God. What are we to look to in the future?'

'To the spread of education and the development of intelligence. I see no other safeguard. Ben can neither read nor write. Hundreds like him can do so with difficulty—which amounts to nearly the same thing. A certain reaction sets in after continuous labour. What change or recreation have these barren intelligences so complete, so transforming as the madness of intoxication? With culture—national and universal—will come additional means of recreation a hundredfold multiplied. With the refinement inseparable from education will come the distaste for unbridled debauchery, for the coarse and degrading enjoyments of mere sensuality, for a practice which will have become unfashionable with every grade and every class of society.'

'Then you trust in the millennium of universal education—secular or otherwise—not fearing the communistic and atheistic principles which may be involved by mere mental culture unregulated by religious teaching.'

'So long as the race preserves the attributes which have always distinguished it, so long as the passions disturb the reasoning powers, so long as the body preserves its present relation to the spirit, men will drink to heighten pleasure or to dull pain. But in proportion as the mental powers are developed and refined by culture, so will the vice which we call drunkenness diminish, perhaps disappear. With other results of the tillage of that rich and boundless estate, the nation's mind, so long fallow, so negligently worked, I shall not at present concern myself. I have my own opinion.'

'You will not take anything?' said Atherstone, lighting his pipe as the two men sat over the wide fireplace upon their return from the wool-shed. 'Light wine or spirits you will find on the tray; the aerated water is yonder.'

'I think it better for me to practise what I preach in the matter of intoxicating liquors,' said Mr. Courtenay, filling a large tumbler with the aerated water. 'This is very refreshing—though I do not feel called upon to denounce the moderate use of what was doubtless ordained for wise purposes.'