The vicar's new fad, as it was called, did not excite the same amount of hostility amongst the squirearchy of the neighbourhood as his effort at education, but the farmers liked it as ill. Squire Wiseman was indeed opposed to the experiment, and had there been no other landed proprietor of influence in the parish, the vicar's fuss would have left no results. But fortunately, in some respects, for the labourers, nearly all Ashbrook village, and a good deal of the rolling meadow land to the south of it, and that lay between wooded knolls, belonged to an eccentric old fellow, named Hawthorn. The people called him Captain Hawthorn, perhaps to distinguish him from the Squire, but he had never known more of military life than three months' service as a subaltern in a militia regiment. This Hawthorn was an oddity. A dry, withered, rather small man, of between 50 and 60, slovenly in dress, and full of a sardonic humour, he was constantly to be met walking in the country lanes, and as often as not conversing with waggoners, poachers, and such country people as came in his way. He was therefore distrusted by the other big people of his neighbourhood; but the common people loved him. The new vicar had hardly been a week in the parish ere he was warned by the gentry to beware of this old man. Old Polewhele of Middlebury roundly declared that Hawthorn was an infidel; and the Dowager-Countess of Leigholm, Lady Harriet Wiseman's mother, felt sure that he was in league with the Evil One, for he was always muttering to himself, or else talking to a one-eyed, mangy, tailless cur, that followed him everywhere, and which had more than once snarled at her in a very vicious manner. Her ladyship, however, had a private grudge against him, in that he had on several occasions been wicked enough to win money from her at cards, and take it too--a crime she was never known to forgive. Whatever his relationship with, or belief in, the unseen powers, Hawthorn alone of the landed gentry furthered Codling's latest project, and made it a success in spite of the fact that the fitful zealot was at the point of throwing the whole thing at his heels in disgust. Codling felt that he had a right to be disheartened when his projects were not adopted forthwith, and moreover, he was getting under weigh as a lover, and that made other occupations irksome. He had done all he could, he said to himself, and yet nobody was converted. Wiseman laughed at him good humouredly as usual, and the farmers sent old Sprigg of Knebesley, as their spokesman, to tell him that in their opinion "'lotments would be the ruin of all honest labour. Gi'e the labourers land," he said, "and they'll skulk at home instead of doin' an honest day's work for us. They're the laziest vagabonds in creation, and the only thing you can do is to keep them dependent on the rates, and when ye want 'em to work, stop supplies. Hunger's the only prod for cattle o' that kidney."