"You need not say, 'Oh, indeed.' You can see it as clearly as I do. I've made the farm. I reclaimed it from the waste. I've fenced it and manured it, and built houses upon it. And what twelve years ago was a furzy down is now a smiling homestead, and you have not spent a penny piece on it, and yet you say it is yours." "Of course it is mine." "Well, I say it isn't yours. It's mine by every claim of equity and justice." "I'm not talking about the claims of equity and justice," the squire said, colouring violently. "I take my stand on the law of the country; that's good enough for me. And what's good enough for me ought to be good enough for you," he added, with a snort. "That don't by any means follow," David answered quietly. "The laws of the land were made by the rich in the interests of the rich. That they're good for you there is no denying; but for me they're cruel and oppressive." "I don't see it," the squire said, with an impatient shrug of his shoulders. "You live in a free country, and have all the advantages of our great institutions." "I suppose you call the leasehold system one of our great institutions?" David questioned. "Well, and what then?" "I don't see much advantage in living under it," was the reply. "You might have something a great deal worse," the squire said angrily. "The high-and-mighty airs some of you people take on are simply outrageous." "We don't ask for any favours," David said meekly. "But we've a right to live as well as other people." "Nobody denies your right, that I know of." "But what am I to do now that my little farm is gone? All the savings of a lifetime, and all the toil of the last dozen years, fall into your pocket." "I grant that the luck has been against you in this matter. But we have no right to complain of the ways of Providence. The luck might just as easily have gone against me as against you." "I don't believe in mixing luck and Providence up in that way," David answered, with averted eyes. "But, as far as I can see, what you call luck couldn't possibly have gone against you." "Why not?" "Because you laid down the conditions, and however the thing turned out you would stand to win." "I don't see it." "You don't?" And David gave a loud sniff. "Why, if all the 'lives' had lived till they were eighty, I and mine would not have got our own back." "Stuff and nonsense!" the squire said angrily. "Besides, you agreed to the conditions." "I know it," David answered sadly. "You would grant me no better, and I was hopeful and ignorant, and looked at things through rose-coloured glasses." "I'm sure the farm has turned out very well," the squire replied, with a hurried glance round him. "It's just beginning to yield some little return," David said, looking off to the distant fields. "For years it's done little more than pay the ground rent. But this year it seems to have turned the corner. It ought to be a good little farm in the future." And David sighed.