“Right out, I say. You’ve been with him all your life. You’ve never knowed no other and you’re getting old, and Calamity, he be old too, and may put up with it. But I don’t starve for no Squire, and I’m for more wage. I was in Aldersbury Saturday and wages is up and more work than men! While here I’m a-toiling for what you got twenty year ago. But not me! I bin to Manchester. And so I’m going to tell Squire.” The bailiff grinned. “Mebbe he’ll take a stick same as before.” “He’d best not!” Thomas said, with an ugly look. “He’d best take care, or——” “Whist! Whist! lad. You be playing for trouble. Here be Squire.” The Squire glared at them, but he did not stop. He stalked into the house and, passing through it, went out by the front door. He intended to turn right-handed, and enter the high-terraced garden facing south, in which he was wont to take, even in winter, a few turns of a morning. But something caught his eye, and he paused. “Who’s this?” he muttered, and shading his eyes made out a moment later that the stranger was Ovington. A visit from him was rare enough to be a portent, and the figure of his bank balance passed through the Squire’s mind. Had he been rash? Ovington’s was a new concern; was anything wrong? Then another idea, hardly more welcome, occurred to him: had the banker come on his nephew’s account? If so—however, he would soon know, for the visitor was by this time half-way up the winding drive, sunk between high banks, which, leaving the road a third of a mile from the house, presently forked, the left branch swerving through a grove of beech trees to the front entrance, the right making straight for the stables. The Squire met his visitor at the gate and, raising his voice, shouted for Thomas. “I am sorry to trespass on you so early,” Ovington said as he dismounted. “A little matter of business, Mr. Griffin, if I may trouble you.” The old man did not say that it was no trespass, but he stood aside punctiliously for the other to precede him through the gate. Then, “You’ll stay to eat something after your ride?” he said. “No, I thank you. I must be in town by noon.” “A glass of Madeira?” “Nothing, Squire, I thank you. My business will not take long.” By this time they stood in the room in which the Squire lived and did his business. He pointed courteously to a chair. He was shabby, in well-worn homespun and gaiters, and the room was shabby, walled with bound Quarterlies and old farm books, and littered with spurs and dog leashes—its main window looked into the stable yard. But there was about the man a dignity implied rather than expressed, which the spruce banker in his shining Hessians owned and envied. The Squire could look at men so that they grew uneasy under his eye, and for a moment, owning his domination, the visitor doubted of success. But then again the room was so shabby. He took heart of grace.