Newspapers never found their way to St. Bride’s, save to the castle; but Saul had formed the acquaintance of a cobbler in Pentreath, who was an ardent politician in his own way, and, with the natural and unexplained bias of his class, was a red-hot Radical to boot, and loved nothing so well as to inveigh with untrained and perfervid eloquence against the evils of the day--the oppression and misery of the poor, the tyranny and licentiousness, the cruelty and selfishness, of the rich. He prognosticated a day when there should be a general upheaval and turning of the tables, when every man should have his “rights,” and the tyrants of the earth should quake and tremble before their outraged slaves, as had been the case in France but a generation ago--the fearful story of which was well known to him, and over which he gloated with eager delight, even in its most ghastly details. With this man we have no concern in these pages. He was one of that class of demagogues and agitators which was arising in England, and has flourished there to a greater or less extent ever since. Hundreds and thousands of these men were too obscure and too ignorant ever to make a name in the world, but they acted on the ignorant people about them as the leaven in the pan, and did much to bring about the state of general discontent and revolt which preceded the era of reform. All through the month of January, when Saul would not spend his Sundays at the farm, on account of the visits of young Farmer Hewett, who was his especial aversion, he walked over to Pentreath and passed several hours with the cobbler, whose acquaintance he had made some time previously. At first the man’s talk had small interest for him, but he had a natural thirst for information; and great enthusiasm is like to kindle sparks in the minds of others, even when at first there seems small sympathy between them. Almost in spite of himself, Saul began to feel interested in the monologues and diatribes of the bright-eyed little artisan, and whether or no he agreed in his conclusions, he did come to have some notion of the state of the country at this time, the abuses which reigned there in many quarters, and the general sense amongst the people that something had got to be done to remedy this state of affairs--or they would know the reason why! Thus it came about that when Saul first came into contact with Eustace Marchmont, he was not in that state of blank ignorance which was the usual attribute of the rustic of those parts, but had been instructed, although in a one-sided and imperfect way, upon the grievances of his class, and had, at least, been aroused to a sense that the world was all wrong, whether or not he was to have a hand in the setting of it to rights.