The sensation which this shocking event, as it was called, created in the whole circle of this squirearchy was visible at the meetings of these men of the earth, earthy, at their dinner-parties at each other’s houses, and at their meetings at the justice-rooms, and their morning rides to one another’s houses. A feeling of strange inveteracy was entertained against Simon Degge. If any of them met him on the highway as they rode to or from Castleborough, they scowled at him as though he had been a most suspicious character. More than once, when two of them were together, he had heard them remark to one another—for it was done loud enough for him to hear it—“That is that upstart pauper, Degge.” If any labourer of his could be caught on any pretence, and brought before them, as magistrates, he was sure to be handled with the utmost severity and the least possible modicum of justice; and when Mr. Degge went forward to speak a word in his defence, he was sure to be treated with a marked contempt, and even incivility. This proceeding did not tend on Mr. Degge’s part to excite any pleasant feelings in his bosom towards these lords of the soil; but he maintained a demeanour of true gentlemanliness and self-respect. At the same time that he certainly felt a great satisfaction in the idea of the sweeping devastation of the game which he and his friends would make in the autumn, and which he was sure no precautions could prevent making its way to his fields so long as there was a better pasture there, or whilst he scattered a quantity of barley on his stubbles, after the corn naturally shed on them had been gathered off by the pheasants. Such was the state of feelings all round Simon Degge’s new farm. So far as he himself was concerned, it seemed only to amuse him and his town friends, but to the whole squiral group, including Sir Roger Rockville, it was an acute, and promised to become a chronic condition of gall and wormwood. Mr. Degge brought his mother to live at the house belonging to the farm, for she delighted in the country;—not at the farm-house, for there he had a bailiff, but in a large old house at the village of Hillmartin itself, with a fine old-fashioned garden; and there himself and Mrs. Degge spent a great deal of the fine summer weather. Simon Degge had also removed William Watson from his cottage by the farm meadow, and from his trade, and he was now acting as a sort of orderly at Mr. Degge’s chief manufactory. He occupied the lodge, and walked about, and saw that all was safe, and moving as it should do.