He caught at the words, turning eagerly, triumphantly on the executors. "There—I knaw she did." "In everything else," pursued Mrs. Tom steadily, "besides Wastralls." "Besides Wastralls?" he stammered. "But that," and there was a note in her voice, a note of mingled grief and satisfaction which only Tom understood, "that, she said, you would never ’av." Byron threw up his-hands in a wild gesture. "My good God! She must ’av been maäze or she wouldn’t ’av done it. Surely you bain’t goin’ to let ’er fulish fancies take it away from me?" Working adjacent farms, Sabina’s cousins could not be blind to the fact that she and her husband had been at odds as to the management of Wastralls. They were, too, as averse to the changes he would have introduced as she could be. She had appointed them her executors. They would see her wishes were carried out. The disappointment to Byron, the crumbling of his hope, of something more intimate than hope, did not weigh with men intent on a plain duty. Realizing that his appeal had as much effect on them as wind beating on a boulder, the other shifted his ground. As reasonable beings they must see he could be of use to them. "I’m here and I knaw every hitch and stitch of the place. Who’ll take it on and work it for Gray? For certain she can’t. She don’t know a mangold from a turmit. She can’t manage it by ’erself and ’er father can’t do it. ’E got ’is own work to do." The shadows had been encroaching and already it was growing difficult to distinguish one pale disk among the many faces from another. As Byron paused there was a movement among the young people and Jim Rosevear, bearing himself modestly, stepped up to the table. "I reckon," he said, and the claim was put forward quietly and in a matter-of-fact voice, "I reckon I got the right now to work the land!" Turning from the executors, Byron stared, speechlessly and in bewilderment, at the young man. To him, Jim was a hind whom he had lately dismissed and that he could be in any way concerned with Wastralls was impossible. Byron felt much as if a strange dog had found its way in at the door. "You?" he said. "What right ’av you to be ’ere? Didn’t I tell yer, other day, to never put foot inside this ’ouse again?" "Now then, now then!" interposed Constantine, big and authoritative as a London policeman. Those present felt he had the right to impose his will on them, that the ownership of Wastralls had passed from the one man to the other, that never more would Byron be in the position to drive out even a dog. "We’ll ’av none of this, no quarrellin’ ’ere." Byron felt it, too, and his spirit revolted in a last frenzy of protest. He cursed Jim with a bitter concentrated curse but there was acceptance of his lot, of the calamity which had overtaken him, in the final, sullen, "Let’n clear out of this."