"We must hope for the best," Ralph said, without raising his head.
"The parson's boy is the last 'life,'" David went on, as though he had not heard what Ralph had said. "The last life. Just a thread, a feeble little thread. One little touch, and then——"
"Well, and what then?" Ralph questioned.
"If the boy dies, this little farm is no longer ours. Though I have reclaimed it from the waste, and spent on it all my savings, and toiled from dawn to dark for twelve long years, and built the house and the barn and the cowsheds, and gone into debt to stock it; if that boy dies it all goes."
"You mean that the squire will take possession?"
"I mean that Sir John will claim it as his."
Ralph did not speak again for several moments, but he felt his blood tingling to his finger-tips.
"It's a wicked, burning shame," he jerked out at length.
"It is the law, my boy," David said sadly, "and you see there's no going against the law."
Ralph hung his head, and began hoeing vigorously his row.