Things had all come together. Here was 'Muster' Hill, the farmer he had worked for these seventeen years, dying of a sudden, with a carbuncle on the neck, and the farm to be given up at Michaelmas. He--John Bolderfield--had been working on for the widow; but, in his opinion, she was 'nobbut a caselty sort of body,' and the sooner she and her children were taken off to Barnet, where they were to live with her mother, the less she'd cost them as had the looking after her. As for the crops, they wouldn't pay the debts; not they. And there was no one after the farm--'nary one'--and didn't seem like to be. That would make another farm on Muster Forrest's hands. Well, and a good job. Landlords must be 'took down'; and there was plenty of work going on the railway just now for those that were turned off. [Illustration: _The Village of Aldbury_] He was too old for the railway, though, and he might have found it hard to get fresh work if he had been staying at Clinton. But he was not staying. Poor Eliza wouldn't last more than a few days; a week or two at most, and he was not going to keep on the cottage after he'd buried her. Aye, poor Eliza! She was his sister-in-law, the widow of his second brother. He had been his brother's lodger during the greater part of his working life, and since Tom's death he had stayed on with Eliza. She and he suited each other, and the 'worritin childer' had all gone away years since and left them in peace. He didn't believe Eliza knew where any of them were, except Mary, 'married over to Luton'--and Jim, and Jim's Louisa. And a good riddance too. There was not one of them knew how to keep a shilling when they'd got one. Still, it was a bit lonesome for Eliza now, with no one but Jim's Louisa to look after her.