It was in truth to be so. The Vicar did not live long after, but his was not the next burial. Before he went--months before--old Squire Wiseman died and was buried in the family vault, with the pomp and circumstance that became his station. No one sorrowed at his death, but the lack of grief was hidden by the abundance of display. All the army of underlings were put in mourning at the new squire's expense. Cecil was now lord of the Grange, and one of his first steps was to make it too hot a place for his mother, by filling it with debased men and women--titled fledglings and their harpies, horsey men, and sharpers. The wealthy marriage his mother had sought for him never came off. An Irish peer, needy as Wiseman, but with a more marketable commodity in the shape of his title, had swooped down and carried off the prize. The carpet or "turf" soldier consequently came to his inheritance buried in debt, but that seemed to make him only the more extravagant. His true place was the gutter, but the land was entailed, tenants were squeezable, and though hard up, the new squire floundered on, cursing and a curse. His debts should have ruined him, but they merely ruined his tenants, impoverished the land, and made those driven to depend on him as beggarly as their master. The weight of this rottenness lay heaviest of all on the labouring poor, who stood undermost in the social scale. Poor farmers meant less labour, badly tilled soil, reduced wages, and the hinds became a picture of misery. All Ashbrook parish suffered for the sins of this sprig of the aristocracy. What of that! Are the sacred, priest-sanctioned, bishop-blessed rights of property to be interfered with because the people want bread? That would be contrary to all law and order, as established by these delicate perverters of the Hebrew Scriptures. No; better far let the people starve; let the mortgages squeeze those who do not own; make the fair earth bestowed on man--to be cultivated, tended, and rendered fruitful--a waste howling desert, peopled by wild animals, for whose shooting, wealthy pelf-rakers from the centres of trade are ready to pay high rents. Next to our heaven-bestowed Poor Law, the Law of Entail, which binds the land to a name or a family, has been the greatest factor for evil in the national life of England. It has preserved our "institutions;" gives continuity to our history, men assert. Perish the people then, but hold fast to this sheet anchor. "It preserves scoundrels from justice, and the fate they have earned," by reformers. What of that? These men have the right to be abominable--you and I, the workers and the sweaters, the privilege only to bear their abominations.