A twelvemonth passed. A malevolent pleasure had filled the heart of the miller when he had heard that Crooke's stack was consumed, and he somewhat ostentatiously gave half a sovereign to the brief. He was angry and offended when the half-sovereign was returned him. Richard Crooke declined to receive his contribution. During the year Pike's character deteriorated; he went more frequently to the public-house, he neglected his work, and what he did was done badly. Then one morning--on opening his eyes in bed, they fell on a little recess in the wall, high up beyond most people's reach, a place where he had been wont to put away things he valued and did not desire should be meddled with. A sudden thought, a suspicion, flashed across his mind. He started from bed, put his hand into the recess, and drew forth his money bag, opened it and counted out twenty-five pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence. On returning home, the night of his accident, he had taken the bag out of his torn and sullied overcoat pocket, had put it in this hiding-place, and forgotten all about it. He hastily dressed himself--he would eat no breakfast, but drank brandy, several glasses full--went out, and when next seen was a corpse, dragged out of his mill-pond, hugging his money bag. Not till then were mouths unlocked, and men said that Pike, angered at his loss, believing that Crooke had robbed him, had fired the stack; and that when he found out his mistake, in shame and remorse, and uncertain how he could remedy the wrong done--he had destroyed himself. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE FARMHOUSE] CHAPTER IX. As the sun to the planets so stands the manor-house to the farms on the manor; that is to say, so far as the relations of dignity and dependence go. But the sun gives to its satellites and receives nothing, whereas from the lord of the manor come the loan of land, of house, and of farm-buildings, for which loan the tenant pays a rent, that is to say, so much interest on so much capital placed at his disposal. An old English farmhouse that has not been meddled with is a very interesting study. It represents to us the type of our manor-houses before the reign of the Tudors. Owing to the prosperity which England enjoyed at the cessation of the Wars of the Roses our gentry rebuilt their houses, and rebuilt yet again, as fashions changed, so that we have very few of the manor-houses left that were erected before Tudor times. The old farmhouse in England is in plan very much what the old _manoir_ was in France. I will take a plan and give a drawing of that of Anseremme on the Meuse near Dinant. This has the parish church attached to it, as it not infrequently was to the manor-house in England. The dwelling-house forms one side of the courtyard. The other sides are occupied by farm-buildings, stables, cart-sheds, granaries, etc.