Highberrow, it appeared, had been built on what was then a common moorland, by the men who lived in it, laboriously, stone by stone. Their right to these fruits of their labour had never been called into question, and the whole spirit of the village had been happy and prosperous, as well it might, seeing that it owed nothing to the care of any outsider and could pay its way. And during those prosperous times its liberties seemed secure from danger. But when the decay of the grouvier’s industry led to unemployment and poverty, and the younger men of the Highberrow families began to look for their living overseas, the little community became so weak that the owner of the manor-house saw his opportunity. As Lord of the Manor he disputed the “squatters’ right” of the Highberrow villagers, and through his agents demanded a rent that would have made living impossible for most of them, for the cottages that they or their forefathers had built. If they refused to pay the rent, he said, they would be evicted, not in order that other people might be introduced who would pay, but merely to satisfy the landlord’s convictions of the rightness of his principle. That was the way in which he put it. Merely out of spite would be a more accurate description of his motives. Highberrow was in a bad way. The villagers were either very old or very young, and in either case their feebleness made the whole organism unfit to resist the inroads of the parasite. What is more, they were very poor, and the very nature of the Mendip mining industry had made them so far individualist that the idea of combined resistance did not occur to them. The landlord wisely started his operations with an old woman whose cottage lay nearest to the woods in which his pheasants were bred. Almost incredibly poor, she had lived on the products of her garden and her poultry. To pay rent was out of the question. Sheer age and inertia made it impossible for her to move, and in the course of time she was evicted with her miserable belongings, and went to die at the home of a married daughter. Emerging from this easy contest, the landlord, or perhaps his agent, moved on to the next. It was unfortunate for him, and fortunate for the villagers, that he now pitched on the cottage of Thomas Ingleby, the dowser, Edwin’s grandfather. The old man had this in his favour: that he was a man of two trades, that even when the mining had failed him he could make a living with the divining rod, and the consciousness of this power no doubt stiffened his resistance. Another eviction was decreed, but this time things did not go so easily. When the landlord’s men arrived from the manor to empty the house, another party appeared from the Cold Harbour mines, and as soon as the furniture was dragged out at the front door it was seized and taken in again at the back.