“Why, new leases,” replied the other, “upon reasonable terms, of course.”
“Well, then,” said Travers, “I beg to inform you that you shall not have them, with only one exception. You shall have a lease of sixty-nine acres attached to the Grange, being the quantity of land you actually farm.”
“Pray, why not of all the property?” asked Dick.
“My good friend,” replied the agent, nearly in his own words to the Pedlar; “the fact is, that we are about to introduce a new system altogether upon our property. We are determined to manage it upon a perfectly new principle. It has been too much sublet under us, and we have resolved, Mr. Henderson, to rectify this evil. That is my answer. With the exception of the Grange farm, you get no leases. We shall turn over a new leaf, and see that a better order of things be established upon the property. As for you, Skinadre, settle this matter of your hundred pounds with Mr. Henderson as best you may. That was a private transaction between yourselves; between yourselves, then, does the settlement of it lie.”
He once more touched the bell, and desired Cornelius Dalton and the Pedlar to be sent in.
“Mr. Henderson,” he proceeded, “I will bid you good morning; you certainly look ill. Skinadre, you may go. I have sent for Mr. Dalton, Mr. Henderson, to let him know that he shall be reinstated in his farm, and every reasonable allowance made him for the oppression and injustice which he and his respectable family have suffered at—I will not say whose hands.”
“Travers,” replied Henderson, “your conduct is harsh—and—however, I cannot now think of leases—I am every moment getting worse—I am very ill—good-morning.”
He then went.
“An' am I to lose my hundre pounds, your honor, of my hard earned money, that I squeezed—”
“Out of the blood and marrow and life of the struggling people, you heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy shops of a private country village, are each a scorpion curse to the people. Your very existence is a libel upon the laws by which the rights of civil society are protected.”