Illustrations of taxation

Chapter I.

PERAMBULATION.

Widow Lambert liked to be told, a very few years ago, that the Abbey Farm was as great an ornament to her native district as the abbey itself could ever have been in the days of its splendour. She recalled the tales with which she had been struck in her childhood, before her sober father forbade her climbing old apple-trees, and her strict mother ordained the adoption of the quaker cap, and the handkerchief she had worn ever since;—tales of the former grandeur of this religious house, with its eighty monks and its hundred and ten servants: and it gratified her maternal pride to be assured that her two comely sons and their labourers kept the estate in as flourishing a condition as their predecessors,—the ecclesiastics and their lay brethren who were subordinate to them.

This abbey was believed to have held a distinguished rank among the religious houses which existed before there was any division of land into parishes, or when a parish meant the same as a diocese does now: when every man paid his ecclesiastical dues to any church he thought fit, provided he paid them to some; and when these dues were delivered into the hands of the bishop, to be divided among the four objects to which they must be appropriated,—the ease of the bishop, the aid of the church, the relief of the poor, and the support of the administering clergyman. Nor was it afterwards in less repute, when the dignitaries of the church were otherwise amply provided for, and the tithes were appropriated to three objects instead of four. The monks were of opinion that a very small sum was sufficient for the maintenance of the officiating priest; and they were active in gathering in their dues on the plea of the wants of the poor, while their train of servants was lengthened, the beauty of their abbey improved, and their fields and gardens were made to abound in the means of luxurious living. By a liberal expenditure of their peculiar purchase-money, masses and obits, and sometimes by a sacrifice of solid gold, they obtained all the advowsons within their reach, and became patrons of a great many benefices. It was made worth while to royalty to grant its license for such appropriation; and the consent of the bishop was regularly granted in return for the promise that the service of the church should be duly cared for. The brethren, therefore, were enriched from year to year with tithe and glebe; while, instead of presenting any clerk, they themselves contributed as much as they chose to the spiritual aid of the flocks they had thus gathered into their own ample fold. This process of appropriation went on very smoothly, (to the brethren, however it might be to the people under their charge) till this spiritual corporation was dissolved by Henry VIII; his bluff majesty constituting himself parson in their stead. There was little wonder that he busied himself about the Faith when he became at once parson of more than one-third of the parishes of England. However zealous he might be in his office, it was too burdensome for any man. The work of appointing vicars to so many benefices was more than the king could undertake. He sold the appropriations,—not always to holy men, (for he had himself deprived the holy of the power of bidding high for the property he had to sell,) but to laymen who transmitted them to their children, or disposed of them to other laymen, without any scruple as to thus alienating the pious contributions of believers to the church. This alienation was made the more extensive by a statute of the same monarch which ordained that the church lands purchased by laymen should remain exempt from tithes, as if they still belonged to the ecclesiastics. In this respect alone did the Abbey Farm of Mrs. Lambert’s time resemble the abbey domain of the day of Henry VIII. Instead of the cowled company whose members issued in state from the splendid building, to mount their sleek steeds to go forth and counsel the punctual payment of their dues, there was now Sir William Hood, the impropriator of the parish, marking with quick eye, from the rectory window, the luxuriance of the abbey fields, and calculating the loss to himself from their being tithe-free. Instead of the shaven priest who went down when required to perform some spiritual service, there was the gowned student muttering Hebrew in the little vicarage garden, or allowing himself to be talked to by his daughter Alice, when she tempted him abroad among his people. Instead of travellers of high and low degree craving hospitality at the portal of the monastery, there was the staid widow Lambert moving quietly between the poultry yard and the dairy, while her sons were training their fruit-trees against the grey unroofed walls which had once echoed back the prayers of the devout and the jests of the convivial. All these things were changed; but the neighbouring soil still yielded its produce, as formerly, unquestioned as to the amount of its tenths.

Very unlike indeed was any thing that passed in these grounds in monkish times to the preparation now made by the Lamberts for the reception of the minister, the churchwardens and the parishioners on occasion of their annual perambulation of the parish. The widow, more neat, if possible, than usual, in her plaited cap, silk mittens and muslin handkerchief, consulted with her son Charles as to the sufficiency of the beer and buns provided for the host of visiters they were expecting: while Joseph gave another brush to his broad brim before he went to station himself at the gate by which the crowd must enter. The intercourse between the vicar and this family was not very frequent, and of a somewhat strange character. He could not help admiring Mrs. Lambert’s kindliness of spirit as much as he marvelled at her thrift; while she, distinguished above all things for good sense, was no less astonished at the manner in which he passed his time, and the mode in which he brought up his little daughter. She was at the same time drawn towards him by the simplicity of his manners and the evidence which his whole demeanour bore to his piety. On Sundays, he woke out of a reverie on his way to the church, when Mrs. Lambert passed him and bowed her head with a cheerful “Good morning to thee;” and on week days, the young men, however busy, were always ready to listen to the vicar’s suggestions in any affair which concerned the interests of their neighbours. Charles was his favourite of the two, when he had once learned to distinguish them; for Charles listened without distraction to what was said. Joseph wished to do the same; but he could not conquer his confusion when Alice looked likely to laugh at his calling her father Mark Hellyer. He was apt to twist his sentences, and be thinking how he should avoid Quaker peculiarities of speech, when Mr. Hellyer wanted his whole attention; and Charles was therefore pronounced by the vicar the more promising young man, and the most like his mother.

Joseph, however, was the first at his post this morning. When, standing at the gate, he heard the shouts from a distance, and could distinguish the tips of the white wands carried by the churchwardens, he took one more survey of his well-brushed suit, smoothed once more his sleek beaver, and was ready with a broad smile to welcome the crowd. The vicar was in the midst, smiling as broadly as any one, and as heartily amused as he had ever been by the choicest Greek epigram. The men and boys about him were equally diverted by the fulfilment of their prophecy that the vicar would not know the bounds of the parish any better this year than any preceding year. All possible pains had been taken, from his first entrance upon the vicarage, to instruct him in the localities which he had a direct interest in understanding; but he looked as much astonished as ever when informed that he must not go along this path, or through that gate, but must lead the way in traversing this fallow, and climbing the gap in that hedge. Mr. Peterson, a neighbour, who took a kind interest in his affairs, was now on one side of him, and Byrne, a labourer of the Lamberts, on the other; and all the little boys in the parish were at their heels, watching for his reverence’s mistakes, and daring each other to offer him cowslips from every field they passed. While in full progress towards Joseph, Mr. Hellyer was carried off to the right, to make an unwilling circuit before he could reach his young friend; and while he was performing this task, Joseph learned something of the events of the morning;—how there was no difficulty to-day about their crossing the rectory garden, Sir William Hood not being there to murmur at the ground lying half in one parish and half in another, and his lessee not having arrived: how Miss Alice had earnestly wished to be one of the perambulating party, and had been pacified under the impossibility only by being permitted to view the ceremony from the cottage of her nurse,—Byrne’s wife, who had married from the vicarage. The young lady had amused herself with the annual joke of throwing water upon the perambulators; and it was thought that her own father had not escaped a sprinkling. No such greeting had awaited the party as they passed Miss Fox’s school, where not a window was opened, and nothing could be seen but the sudden apparition of a dozen curled heads above the blinds, and their equally sudden disappearance. The poor young ladies there were kept in better order than Miss Alice. Mr. Parker had been more surly than ever, this morning, about the churchwardens crossing his hop ground; though the boys had been sent round by the lane, and not half a dozen hop poles thrown down. The vicar’s spirit had been roused, and it was thought he had made Mr. Parker ashamed of himself. He might take a lesson from old Mrs. Beverley. The gentlemen were very sorry that her house stood on the boundary, so that they had to pass through her little hall and out at her back gate; but the poor old lady made light of the disturbance, and desired her maid to let every body through that wished to pass, and always had her glass of gooseberry wine ready for the vicar and the churchwardens, even when (as was the case this year), she was too feeble to be brought down stairs to bid them welcome. She had said nothing about having lost one of her bantams last year. It would not have been known, but that the maid was observed to look very anxiously after the fowls this morning. The gentlemen were duly concerned, and had alarmed the maid with promises of such reparation as she feared would bring her mistress’s anger upon her for having betrayed the circumstance. The narrator concluded with an opinion that Mr. Parker might also take a lesson from Charles and Joseph Lambert, who always threw open their gates cheerfully on these occasions.

“My mother hopes thou wilt rest at the farm,” said Joseph to the vicar, justifying the compliment which he had just received, “and any of thy friends will be welcome also. My brother is expecting the whole company at the farm.”

The whole company poured into the field, appearing fully disposed to accept the invitation.

“If thou hast no objection,” he presently added, “I will step to John Byrne’s for thy daughter, and bring her to our summer house on the hill. We conceive that the finding the boundary this year, among the new enclosures, will be amusing; and I could conduct thy daughter and Jane Byrne to the summer house, while our friends here are refreshing themselves at the farm. Have I thy permission?”

“Alice? Yes; it is a pity Alice should not be here. You are very good. I think it is a pity Alice should not be here.”

The obliging Joseph only waited to see his guest under his brother’s charge, and then set off for Byrne’s cottage. He knew how fond the little girl was of this summer house on the hill, when the dog was silenced and chained up, and she was at liberty either to gather the wall-flowers which grew around as profusely as common grass, or to look abroad over the vast prospect which was spread out below the high hill from which this building projected. As two fields and an extent of down had to be traversed before the hill could be climbed, no time was to be lost; and Joseph made all speed: and though Alice overheated herself with running, and left Mrs. Byrne to clamber up the ascent as she best could, she was only just in time to see the crowd leave the Abbey Farm house. When she had taken courage to rush past the chained dog, and was at length leaning out of the middle window, she said amidst her panting,

“What a little way they have to go now! It will be all over presently. I wish I had come here at first.”

Joseph pointed out to her that the extent of the landscape had led her into a mistake. The church, the vicarage, and Mr. Parker’s hop-ground were as far apart as usual, though from this height they appeared to lie close together.

“And all this farm of yours looks like a bit of a garden,” observed Alice; “and there is the farm house where uncle Jerom lives, and his little church. They seem to belong to us,—they lie so near.”

“Dost thou see thy uncle Jerom himself?” asked Joseph.

Alice looked every where, she thought, and could not see him;—down the steep white path which descended from the summer house, past the sheep-fold to the stile, but no one was there but Mrs. Byrne, mounting step by step;—along the grey abbey wall,—but nothing cast a shadow there in this fine May sunshine, but a ladder placed against the wall among the fruit-trees:—into the farm yard,—but if uncle Jerom was one of the moving group there, she could not distinguish him. Mrs. Lambert, with her white cap, and the churchwardens with their wands were alone recognizable. Somebody was stealing about in the churchyard, but so feebly, that he must be thirty years older than uncle Jerom. She saw, finally, a black dot or two on the green meadow which stretched far away to the right; but whether these were horses, cows, or men, she could defy Joseph to pronounce. She had not looked every where yet. Mrs. Byrne had by this time entered; but she was too breathless and dizzy to supply any effective eyesight. Alice must try again, assisted by a broad hint from Joseph. “O, I see, I see! but who would have thought of looking there?—in that bare field,—all in confusion with new banks and ditches. That is uncle Jerom, however; I know by his leaning backwards upon his stick, with both his hands behind him. What is he standing there for, as if he was looking for the stars to come out?”

“I dare say he is waiting for our friends,—perhaps to shake hands with thee across the boundary. The boundary passes along those new enclosures, as we shall see presently.”

“There, Jane,” said Alice to her nurse; “you are the only person, I do believe, that would not let me go the rounds. I am sure papa would have let me go, if you had said nothing about it; and there is uncle Jerom waiting for me now. I will go, after all,” she declared, jumping down from the chair on which she was lolling.

Mrs. Byrne believed uncle Jerom would be as much surprised to see his niece under such circumstances, as to behold the stars come out which Alice supposed him to be looking for through the sunshine. Joseph declared that the whole ceremony would be over before Alice could reach the new enclosures.

“Thoud’st better stay, and see what thou canst from this place, if I may advise,” said he. “It is my opinion that they are going to leave our farm yard now.”

“There they go! how slowly they seem to move!” cried Alice. “Those boys with the green boughs are certainly running as fast as they can go; but they scarcely get on at all. Though you say I must not go, there is Mrs. Lambert following them, you see. Look, Jane! why should not we be walking there as well as Mrs. Lambert?—O dear! she is turning back. She only went to see that the gate was shut,—that those staring calves might not take it into their heads to go too, I suppose.—No. They had rather stay with her. Do look how they rest their heads on her shoulders!”

Mrs. Byrne was now rested; and she came to see what was the reason of the shout which seemed to be prodigious, however faint it was made by distance. Joseph believed that there had been some jealousy between this parish and the next about the tithes being unequal, or something being wrong about the provision for the clergyman. He did not well understand the matter, as he paid no tithes, and did not interfere in disputes which arose out of them: but he hoped all jealousies were to be buried in these new enclosures, and that this must be what the people were shouting for.

“Then, if you do not pay tithes,” said Alice,“But you will have quantities of hay, I am sure; and you see you have calves. Why do not you pay like other people?”

Joseph and Mrs. Byrne answered at the same moment. “My brother and I do not think it right to pay tithes. The Friends never pay tithes.”

“No body that rents the Abbey Farm pays tithes.”

“Well: if you do not pay tithes, I suppose there will be no hay-making for me to do in your meadows. I am to help to make papa’s haycock in the rectory field.”

“Has the vicar any claim upon the rectory field?”

“Yes; because papa says he is a specially endowed vicar.”

“Dost thou know what that means?”

“No: I only know that we have had three dear little chickens from Sir William Hood’s broods; and papa says we are to make a haycock, and to have some turnips by and bye, from the glebe.”

“And he has some glebe land too, has not he?”

“Yes to be sure: you know our field very well. I have not forgotten what a race you once gave me there, when you made me run over the young beans.—How they do shake hands!—papa and uncle Jerom. Uncle Jerom is going home with papa to tea, I think. He steps over the new bank into the field, you see. I wish I might gather some wall-flowers to carry home for them.”

Mrs. Byrne begged Joseph to be Alice’s guardian, as he knew best how to silence the dog which would certainly bark, and frighten Alice. He must be particularly careful not to let her go too near the edge of the projection on which the summer-house was built, and where the very finest of the wall-flowers grew. She, meanwhile, would watch from the window, and call them if any thing more was to be seen.—It was not long before she gave notice that the boys had thrown their green boughs into a corner of the churchyard, and that the ceremony seemed to be finished, as many were dispersing to their homes. As soon, therefore, as Alice had gathered more wall-flowers than she could conveniently carry, she was ready to proceed towards the vicarage, provided her companions could settle whether she was to rest on the way at the Abbey Farm, or at Mrs. Byrne’s cottage. It was certainly the Lamberts’ turn, as she had been at her nurse’s already to-day: but Mrs. Byrne had a little cream-cheese in readiness for the vicarage table, and she must go home with Alice, for the sake of carrying this cheese and a bunch of radishes for the gentlemen’s supper, as they were to sup together to-night. So Joseph had no more to do than to see his charge safe down the hill, before he hastened home to refresh himself with a draught of the ale that might be left, and to tell his mother that cream-cheeses were liked at the vicarage.

Chapter II.
 
INTERLOCUTORY DECREES.

Alice did not reach home before she was wanted. She found her father making tea;—the single domestic accomplishment in which the most abstracted student is seldom deficient. Mr. Hellyer knew his way to the tea-caddy, however he might lose himself in any other destination; and the tea made by him was never to be complained of, however much might be spilled by the way. His brother seemed to have intuitions equally bright respecting bread and butter. He could cut up a loaf with as much speed as he could demolish a bad argument; and the provision of the tea-table had half disappeared before Alice entered. A look from her uncle towards the radishes seemed to ask whether it was necessary that they should be left for supper. The fact was, that uncle Jerom had been on one of his literary excursions this day;—that is, that he had dined on a crust of bread which he had put in his pocket in the morning, to be eaten while looking over some books in the bookseller’s shop at Y, where he had liberty to go, from time to time, to keep himself on a level with the age, without buying any thing. Uncle Jerom rarely bought any thing; for the sufficient reason that he had scarcely any money to spend. When he had paid the low sum required for his board and lodging in a farm-house, he had just enough left to purchase a coat every two years, and new shirts when the old ones would hold together no longer. Hats were obliged to take their chance; and a poor chance it was, as any one might see who happened to meet him in the lanes with the brown, crooked-brimmed covering which hung down almost over his eyes. When his engagements allowed him to sit down to the common farm-house diet, his heart was strengthened with solid fat bacon, or bread and milk: but when he chanced to be elsewhere at meal times, he was sure to repair before night to his brother, with desponding views of the prospects of the church, and of the interests of mankind in general.—Thus it was to-day; and while the vicar gave half his mind to investigating whether the water boiled, Jerom required of the other half to prove that the spirit of innovation which was spreading over the land was not threatening to uproot the very foundations of religion, as incorporated with the church of England. His spirits were not cheered by the apparition of Alice, ornamented with the hat he had left in the hall,—the very brownest and most misshapen of all that he had ever exhibited.

“Papa, what a pity uncle Jerom’s hat did not lie in the way when you spilled all that ink, this morning! I am sure it is browner than the carpet you spoiled.”

The vicar believed that he and his brother ought both to be thinking about new hats. It had occurred to him several times lately.

“Then you must let me have your old one, uncle. You cannot want it any more when you have a new one; and I want one for a scare-crow, for my radish bed. I shall never get another so ugly. Let me put it on you. Do be my scare-crow for a minute?”

Jerom put the little girl away, bidding her pour out his tea, and occupy herself with her own. He could not spare the hat. The clergy were fallen on evil days, and had not need give away any thing till something was done for them, instead of the little they had being taken away.

“I have reason to complain of the last,” observed the vicar; “but can you exactly say that nothing is done for the church? I suppose you mean, new measures. But this Bounty is something to you, is not it? You were very eager for it, I remember.”

“It is Queen Anne that we must thank, if we must thank any body. But this bounty ought not to be so called. It is a mere restoration of the property of the church, which had been usurped. It is folly to call it a gift.”

“Still, it is something done for the church, to take these first fruits and tenths from the rich clergy and give them to the poorer. It is something done for you, Jerom.”

“My first consideration is the church at large: and in that view, what is this bounty, after all? Its operation is slow and inconsiderable. Let it be managed as well as you will, it will be between two and three centuries before all the livings already certified will exceed 50l. a year. In the meantime, I must come back out of my grave, if I am ever to have 50l. a year from my living.”

“But it will be a great thing to see you settled in a parsonage house. It will be but a small one that can be built for 200l.: but I confess I am concerned for the dignity of the church; and I agree with you so far as to desire to see every living with the parsonage house and glebe land to which it is entitled by common right. I shall look with pleasure on the building of your little parsonage, and thank Queen Anne.”

“You will see no such building in my time, brother. What am I to do with a parsonage, when I have not the means of living in it? As soon as I heard that the lot had fallen upon me, I requested that the 200l. might be applied in some better way than building me a house that I could not afford to live in.”

“Do you mean to exchange it for tithes, or to let it be invested in lands? I hope, as you have objected to the house, that you will accept the amount in land.”

“Why? The rules allow me to exchange the bounty for an equal or greater amount of tithes, as well as for a different portion of land.”

“True: but I cannot make up my mind,—I have been long trying to make up my mind,—as to how far any traffic in tithes is agreeable to the divine law. I am sure, also, that you will be wise to keep clear of all unnecessary dealings with so uncertain and vexatious an article as tithes are now made. This last is only a secondary consideration; but——”

“I am not sure of that,” replied Jerom.

“The dignity of the church must be first consulted, Jerom: and I have a certain repugnance to any thing like speculation in so sacred a property as tithes. In my opinion, the worst omen for the church is this peculiar revenue being in the hands of any laymen: and I much question whether the royal act of allowing lay impropriations be not the cause of the present adversity of the establishment.”

Alice looked up from her cup of tea, on hearing that tithe property was sacred. She asked, with a look of mortification,

“May not I play with the tithe lamb Mr. Parker sent this morning, papa? And he sent some eggs, too; and I bade Susan make a custard with them. Must not we eat any custard?”

“To be sure, my dear child. Why not?”

“I thought you said that what was tithe was sacred, papa.”

“Well, my dear, that does not prevent its being used. Do you forget what your Latin lesson was about, this morning?”

“About the bullocks that were offered to Jupiter. People did eat them, to be sure; and they were sacred. But those people were not Christians.”

“Which only shows, my dear child, that there are some things which are inherently sacred,—shown to be so by the light of reason and nature: and among these are tithes. You will find, hereafter, that the Phenicians paid tithes. So did the Egyptians and the Hindoos, as well as the Greeks and Romans: all which seems to prove that these nations must have been under one common guidance as to this institution. This is confirmed by a reference to the attributes of some of the heathen deities. Thus Apollo——”

“O, Apollo! The author of light——”

“Exactly so. Now mark what is conjoined with his being the source of light. He was emphatically called the ‘tithe-crowned,’ the ‘taker of tithes,’ and so on.”

“Then, papa, I will put some of Mrs. Parker’s mint and sage and parsley upon your head, and then you will be like Apollo.”

“As the Jews paid tithe in consequence of a divine revelation,” observed Jerom, “I should be disposed to doubt whether the tithe system arose from the light of nature.”

“Whether we so consider it, or conclude that it arose from some unrecorded revelation made to Adam,” returned the vicar, “my doubts remain as to whether this kind of property may be made the material of speculation, like any other kind of property.”

“But, papa, who took Adam’s tithes? Did he pay them to Eve, or to the angels? or, perhaps, to himself? Only, there would not be much use in that. If every body did so, I don’t know what would become of us.”

“I do not speak as from knowledge, child. I only mention what seems to me the most probable solution.—But, brother, there is further evidence, from its wide extension, of this being an institution of the highest origin, whether natural or revealed;—evidence which has not yet been duly improved. Governments have been supported in a vast majority of countries, by contributions analogous to our tithes;—contributions from the produce, not from the rent, of land.”

“Ancient Egypt, for instance. There the sovereign appropriated the fifth part, I believe, did not he?”

“A fifth, I believe: and the same was the case under the Mahomedan government in Bengal. In China, they take our exact proportion, one-tenth, which is a remarkable coincidence. Not that they are able to raise one-tenth——”

“Any more than ourselves.”

“Any more than ourselves; which extends the coincidence. In some provinces, a thirtieth is the utmost that can be levied.”

“Then I hope the coincidence will extend no further.”

“Indeed I don’t know,” sighing: “but my proportion becomes less every year. Those Asiatic governments have a power which we English clergy have not. They can help to improve the country from which they levy their tenths, while we can only claim the tithe, without having any title or power to aid its production. There is no inducement to a vicar, like myself, to plan a road, for instance, to some new market for produce, though my tithe might be much increased in value thereby. If I were a prince, on the other hand, I should do this directly, and profit by it.”

“And the land also; which seems to point out that this method of raising funds is better for a state than for a church, whose ministers can never have the same power of promoting improvement with those of a government.”

“But, papa, does the emperor of China take his fortune in hay or fruit, like you and Apollo, not in money? I should think it would be very easy to cheat him: and what a quantity of things he must have to stow away! And so must a clergyman in a very large parish.”

“Yes,” replied Jerom; “and that is the reason that tithes are generally paid in money, in large parishes. The tax would be so in China, too, I dare say, but that the mandarins like to have the collecting of it.”

“I think papa had better get a mandarin to collect his for him, if he finds that people cheat him, and do not pay him so much as they ought. Papa, I wish you would make me your mandarin I should like to go about gathering eggs, and apples, and all the things that people pay you.”

“The mandarins have a different reason for liking to make these collections. They can cheat as well as the people under them. But yet, collecting under my own eye, as I do, mine is a hard case;—it is hard that I cannot get my tenths of the articles which are as much the property of the church as of the farmer who refuses me my due.”

“Mrs. Byrne says, however, that her husband’s is a hard case. He has all the trouble of planting and rearing, she says; and ever so much goes to those who have had none of the toil and the cost.”

“Mrs. Byrne shall have a rebuke from me, my child, if she talks so to you. So long as she has lived in this house, she must have heard me say, that the whole of what grows out of the ground is no more the property of the grower, than the parsonage is the property of the brick-layer that builds it. Mr. Parker’s hops never were all his; and it is quite wrong in him to murmur about any of them being taken away. He has a partner. Sir William Hood is his partner; and yet Mr. Parker repines at every payment, as if he were obliged to give something that belonged to himself.”

“I would give something to Sir William Hood to persuade him to leave off being a partner,” Alice observed: “for it must be very provoking to have so much trouble about another person’s share of hops.”

“Our first duty is, child, to maintain the claims of the church; and now that discontent is spreading, every good minister of the church will assert his right rather than suit his convenience.—And, besides, I doubt whether any clergyman or other tithe-holder, has a right to make any arrangement which would be objected to by those who will come after him. The property is that of the church, not of the individual; and he must keep it inviolate, for his successor: not even planning any disposal of it which the church may not approve a thousand years hence.”

“That was precisely the argument used by our predecessors,” observed Jerom, “when they scrupled about paying their first fruits and tenths to any but the Pope. They feared not only excommunication, but what the church might say five hundred years afterwards. But we hear little now of excommunication, and nobody wishes to pay to the Pope. Seeing, therefore, how little can be known of what is to come after, and that nothing is at present done for the relief and aid of the church, I should be disposed to make such agreement as should yield advantage in our own day, leaving it to Heaven to protect its own gospel in time to come.”

“Would you really, then, advise my letting my tithes to Peterson, as he desires? Is that what you would say?”

Jerom knew nothing of Peterson’s desire to be the lessee of the vicar’s tithes. He was thinking now of his own affair,—the application of the share of Queen Anne’s Bounty which had fallen to him. He had the power of getting it invested in the land now in course of enclosure in his parish. An inducement to such an arrangement was added in the wish of the landlord of the Abbey Farm to give Jerom a slice off his new fields, in lieu of tithe for the remainder. The Lamberts were taking in these new fields, and were evidently watching, with some anxiety, what would be done about the tithe. Being quakers, they would not countenance this claim of the church; and it was natural that they should be desirous of the matter being settled in a way which should save the necessity of resistance hereafter on their part, and aggression on that of the neighbouring clergyman. The matter remained in Jerom’s choice,—whether he should seek the consent of the patron and ordinary to his accepting, for the period of his incumbency, an addition to his allotment in lieu of tithe on the Lamberts’ new fields, or levy tithe upon his quaker neighbours. This was the argument which his spirit was revolving when Alice saw him from the summer-house, and thought he was watching for the stars to come out, while the sun was yet high.

The vicar looked full of consternation when he asked his brother whether he really meant to turn farmer. He knew the present law allowed the clergy to cultivate their allotments; but, in these evil days, when the holiness of the profession had suffered in the eyes of the people, no true church minister would run the risk of offence, by giving his attention to secular cares.

Very true, Jerom thought, if the church were duly protected: but, till its humblest ministers were sufficiently provided for, they must use the means that God put before them, to obtain bread. The employment of tilling the ground was a remarkably innocent and a primitive one, and there was less disgrace to the church in pursuing it, than in appearing in such a garb——in such——

“O, yes, your hat is very shabby indeed, uncle,” observed Alice. “But you would not object to uncle’s fishing, papa: would you?”

“Fish, my dear, do not yield tithe of common right, though, in some places, they are titheable by custom. Where tithed, it is only a personal tithe, and must be paid to the church where the payer attends divine service and receives the sacraments; and in your uncle’s parish, or mine, where there is neither sea nor a river where fish is taken for profit, there is no such tithe due. We have only ponds near, where fish are kept for pleasure; and it is agreed, as the law is uncertain on the point of such preserves of fish, that no claim for tithe shall be preferred. I have reason to know——”

“But I did not mean all this, papa. I asked you whether you would object to uncle Jerom’s fishing. I suppose farming is no worse than fishing, and some of the Apostles were fishermen.—And you are often busy about other things besides your preaching, papa, or your books either. Remember the battle you had with Mr. Byrne, about the turkey, in the winter. Mrs. Byrne could scarcely help laughing, though you and Mr. Byrne seemed likely to pull the poor thing to pieces between you. O, uncle, you should have heard the noise, when papa was talking very loud about the church, and Mr. Byrne was in a great passion, and the turkey gobbled as loud as either of them.”

“Why, brother,” said Jerom, “did not you know that it was decided in the case of Houghton and Prince, that turkies are to be ranked among the things that are feræ natureæ; and consequently not titheable?”

“On the other hand, it was affirmed in the case of Carleton and Brightwell, that it does not appear but that turkies are birds as tame as hens, or other poultry, and must therefore pay tithes; and this was in the face of the plea that turkies were not brought from beyond sea before the time of Queen Elizabeth. My distinction is between their being sold and spent in the house. However, I am willing to acknowledge that it would satisfy me well to place this part of my duty in the hands of a lessee, if I could be thoroughly persuaded that I should not thereby betray my responsibility and the dignity of the church.”

Jerom thought that if turkies must be wrestled for, it was more for the dignity of the church that it should be done by Peterson than by the vicar. He was by no means bent on farming his own land. He was rather disposed to let it. If the vicar would also let his tithes, he believed that both might be easy in conscience as to the guardianship of their trust.

“Moreover,” observed the vicar, “it will be in some sort an advantage to the church that Peterson should have the collecting of its dues in this parish, inasmuch as, with all my endeavours, I am compelled to forego many claims which I know to be just; and for another reason which I will presently relate. As to foregoing my claims,—I am well assured that I do not recover more than two-thirds of that to which I have a just claim; and I thus become guilty under the article of the ecclesiastical constitution which declares that those who, from the fear of man, shall not demand their whole tithe with effect, shall be liable to pay a fine to the archdeacon for disobedience.”

“If that article were put in force, how many of our brethren would be proved liable! On the average, they are thought to forego forty, and some say fifty per cent. of their dues.”

“God knows I have laboured diligently to avoid this sin! No pastor has brought more actions for an equal amount: and I have written to the justices so often that they begin, I fear, to be weary of my informations. But what can I do else for the ease of my conscience? The distraint and sale of Stratten’s goods last year caused me to lie awake a whole night from concern for the recusant; and I believe I could not have gone through with the affair but for the fear of being myself disobedient to the law of the church.”

“I saw little Mary Stratten to-day, sitting at the workhouse gate as you went by,” observed Alice. “She is not nearly so puny now,—since they all went into the workhouse,—as she was when you brought her in to be warmed and have a bit of bread that day in the winter. But, papa, Mr. Peterson will not prevent my making your hay, will he? You know you promised that I might make up your haycock in the rectory-field: and I told Joseph Lambert so, this afternoon.”

“It will be Mr. Peterson’s haycock, my child: but he will allow you to make sport with the hay-makers, I do not doubt. And this reminds me, brother, of my other reason for allowing Peterson to become my lessee. I may thereby avoid all intercourse (unless on purely spiritual matters) with the person who is about to inhabit the rectory.”

“Ah! I heard that Sir William had let the rectory to a gentleman for two or three years; and I hoped he might be a prop to the church in this neighbourhood.”

“So far from it, that I must be incessantly vigilant lest he should poison the streams at which our flocks must drink.”

“Poison!” exclaimed Alice. “O, papa! is Mr. Mackintosh a bad man?”

“Go, my dear child, and occupy yourself in something pleasant till we send for you,” said the vicar.

“Papa, uncle Jerom has not done eating yet: and you know if you once send me away, you will forget to send for me again. You always do.”

The vicar, however, did not choose that his little daughter should have her mind contaminated by any ideas about infidelity, and uncle Jerom therefore resolutely pushed from him the last remains of the loaf, and Alice withdrew, full of curiosity about poisoning, and the dreadful thing, whatever it was, that was the matter with Mr. Mackintosh. She chose to employ herself in watering the flower-bed below the parlour window,—not for the purpose of overhearing, which was out of the question,—but that her father might, by seeing her, be reminded, in the midst of his affection for mother-church, that he had a daughter. She could not give up her privilege of being called ‘dear child,’ the last thing before she went to bed. She saw that papa and uncle had drawn their chairs close together, and that they looked very much like people talking secrets. And so they were.

“What! absolutely deistical? Well; such an open boast is better than concealed infidelity. Will have nothing to say to a clergyman? Then we are saved the trouble of declining his acquaintance. But how came Sir William to let his house to such a man? Living upon the church, as Sir William does, he might refrain from setting her interests at defiance by showing any countenance to such a man. You will begin a course on the Evidences directly, I suppose.”

“Immediately; though my custom has been to deliver them in the winter. But, Jerom;—your hat. It is not becoming that such a hat should be seen within the precincts of your church; and I would not give occasion of scandal to this unbeliever. I am afraid, Jerom, that you have no money.”

Jerom threw down two half-crowns,—the whole of his present wealth. The vicar shook his head, and drew out of an unlocked drawer his canvas money-bag. It was not very rich; but he concluded that it should furnish Jerom and himself with new hats, and that the supply of their further wants should be left to the evolution of circumstances.

“And now, about the purchase of them,” said the vicar. “One of us may as well put the vicarial office upon the other: for it is disagreeable to buy a hat; and no more awkward to buy two than one.”

“But our heads are not of the same size,” objected Jerom. “If it were not for the shabbiness of my own hat, I should propose that we should go together to the hatter’s, the next time I am called by the new literature to Y——. As it is, I propose that you should make the adventure first; and then I will borrow your hat for the occasion, and follow your example.”

It was finally settled thus; and that Jerom should accept an allotment in the new inclosures, to be cultivated by a tenant, while the vicar was to let his dues, consisting of his endowment of hay, and of his small tithes, to Peterson; it being kept a secret from his parishioners that Peterson had anything to do with the tithes but to collect them. The vicar feared lest the bargain being known should lessen the little respect there was among the people for the claims of the church. All this had long been settled, and the brothers were deeply engaged in an argument upon a point of ecclesiastical history, when Alice tapped at the window, and asked disconsolately if she might not come in, because she had left her doll’s right shoe under the parlour table, and she could find nothing more to do in the garden. Susan said she would drown the flowers if she went on watering them any longer. And, besides, it was almost time now for the cream cheese: they had been so long, Susan said, over their tea.—Leave granted.

Chapter III.

INTRUSION.

Mr. Mackintosh came and took possession of the rectory at Midsummer. He was a single gentleman, everybody was surprised to find. Nothing was heard of either mother or sister who might make his home comfortable; and why such a handsome gentleman, rich enough, it was supposed, and certainly not past middle age, should be still single, was more than could be comprehended by the people of the parish. His housekeeper was questioned; but the housekeeper knew nothing of the how and the why. She could only tell that her master was sometimes low-spirited, and apt to find fault with people; and that he was so fond of his books and of business that he did not seem to have time for the society of ladies. She had never heard anything of his being engaged to be married; and, for her own part, she could not believe that it was so at present; for her master seemed to be as anxious about matters within his little domain as if he had nothing to look to beyond.

It was indeed true that he looked into his business with a keen eye;—with the keen eye of one who wants occupation, and therefore vehemently takes up whatever comes before him. He was the owner of the Abbey Farm, and of another in the neighbourhood,—the Quarry Wood farm,—which was now out of lease; and there were no bounds to the diligence with which he walked over both, from day to day, in order to investigate the condition of every part in every conceivable respect. Both the Lamberts were sure to tell, every day at their early dinner, that they had met their landlord in two opposite directions, while their mother had nearly as often to mention the variety of questions she had been requested to answer, and the odd kind of chat she had had with friend Mackintosh. He was incessantly visiting the cottage at Quarry Wood, to know if any one had called to view the vacant farm; and his housekeeper believed he knew almost every blade of grass in the rectory garden, and was sorry he did not rent the glebe as well as the dwelling, as it would have afforded him something more to do. He was no favourite with the neighbours; for his manners were haughty and careless. Byrne was the only person known to take heartily to him: but Byrne seemed on such friendly terms with him that there must certainly be something kindly in him; for Byrne was not apt to attach himself easily. He had actually left his work at the Abbey Farm, several times, in order to serve Mr. Mackintosh. When tried by the common and best test of kindliness, Mr. Mackintosh, however, was found wanting. He was not always kind to children; as Alice could testify.

She ran in, one day, at her nurse’s, in tears,—in a passion of mingled anger and woe. She had been watching, this fortnight, for the symptoms of an intention to cut the grass at the rectory. She had looked through the garden paling, every day, and had seen the grass growing longer and longer on the lawn, till the wind waved it as if it had been ripening corn. Papa had promised for a whole year, that she should make his haycock; and Susan had given her a hay-rake, just tall enough for her, on her last birth-day. Mrs. Byrne herself had told her on Tuesday, that the grass was to be cut this day, if the weather should be fine. Alice had jumped out of bed an hour before Susan called her, to see how bright the sun was shining; and now, after all, Mr. Mackintosh would not admit her to make hay because she was the vicar’s daughter.

“My dear, that cannot be the reason. There has been no time yet for Mr. Mackintosh to quarrel with your papa. I dare say he does not like to have little girls running about his grass plat; though I see no great harm that you could do him and his grass.”

“But he said himself that it was because I was the vicar’s daughter; and that he would have nobody belonging to a clergyman go near him.”

“Well, that does agree with his saying that he would not let the Quarry Farm to any religious people; superstitious people, as he calls them.”

“I don’t think I am very religious. He might as well let me go in and make hay,” murmured Alice, relapsing into tears.

“Come and look at my bees,” said Mrs. Byrne. “You should see how they have got on with the comb since you were here. Since we laid out the bed for the thyme——Take care, my dear; you will upset the milk. There! there goes your hat into it! Dear! dear! how came you not to see the milk pail?”

While she plunged the straw bonnet in water, to get rid of the milk in which it had already been dipped, Alice asked how the milk pail happened to stand there, full in the sun, where the milk would be sure to turn sour before night. How could she help stumbling over it?

And she was about to remove it into a better place; but Mrs. Byrne stopped her. Byrne would be angry if it was moved. She had promised that it should stand in that place and nowhere else. If Alice’s bonnet should be quite spoiled, Byrne and Mr. Peterson must settle it between them which should buy her another, for Mrs. Byrne could not take upon herself to say which was answerable for the milk standing there. It did seem a sin and a shame that the milk should be turning sour there, when the neighbours she usually supplied were doing without.

“Then why do not you let them have it?”

“It is tithe milk. As we do not make cheese, Mr. Peterson will have us set by every tenth milking for your papa’s tithe. There is a dispute between him and my husband as to which ought to carry the milk. Mr. Peterson says that my husband is bound to carry it, either to the vicarage or to the church porch; and I would have taken it myself to the church porch, to save quarrelling, but my husband stopped me. He is sure that he has the law on his side in making the tithe-taker send his own pails for the milk; and so here it stands spoiling. I make the less stir about it that Mr. Peterson now collects the tithes instead of the vicar himself.”

Alice was immediately bent on going to tell Mr. Peterson that he had better send for the milk; or, perhaps, authorize her to carry it. This was exactly such an enterprise as suited Alice. She seized every opportunity of following a swarm of bees, or of driving pigs, or of helping to push sheep into the water before shearing. She had never recovered the prohibition to go the bounds of the parish; and had a secret plan to do it by herself some day, to show that she could. Mrs. Beverley would let her through her house, she was sure; and Joseph Lambert was too good-tempered to quarrel with her for climbing his hedge. Meantime, it would be good entertainment, in a small way, to haul a full milk-pail half through the parish, without spilling a drop; and she could sit down in the church porch to grow cool when the task was done.

Mrs. Byrne would not allow this; that was the worst of it. Alice grew cross. Nobody would let her do as she liked this day. She would not now look at the bees; nor gather herself a nosegay; nor try whether she could not find green peas enough ripe to make a little dish for her papa’s supper; nor dust Mrs. Byrne’s prized collection of shells and birds’ eggs. Nothing would she do but go down again to the rectory garden, and peep through the palings to watch the mowing, and the process of tedding the grass, the delicious process which she must not aid. Mrs. Byrne foresaw that the smell of the hay would be a provocative to melancholy, and sighed when she found all her blandishments in vain, and that the wilful girl would have her way.

She was still looking grave over the kneading of the dumpling for her husband’s dinner, when Alice came back, seeming much disposed to fly but for the care she was taking of something in her frock, which was turned up round her, and made the depôt of something very precious. The hay-making seemed all forgotten, with every other grief, and Alice was trembling with pleasure.

“The milk-pail! the milk-pail, my dear,” cried Mrs. Byrne. “Bless me! how nearly you were in again, you giddy thing! What can you have got in your lap? What a lot of eggs! Partridge’s eggs! What a number!”

“O, they will get cold, if you don’t make haste,” cried Alice. “I came as quick as ever I could without breaking them. Mr. Byrne says they will be hatched, if you put them near the fire before they have grown cold.”

“I did not think he would have ventured to take them from under the hen. I wonder what Mr. Mackintosh will say if he finds it out,” observed Mrs. Byrne, bustling about to seek a shallow basket, which, lined with a flannel petticoat, and placed near the fire, might serve as a warm nest for the fourteen eggs.

“The poor hen partridge is dead,” said Alice. “She was sitting on the eggs when Mr. Byrne cut off her head, poor thing, with his scythe. He saw me through the pales, and gave me the eggs, and bade me come to you with them; but before I left, the cock partridge came home; and there he is walking about, poor fellow, in the middle of the grass, just as if he was too unhappy to be afraid of any body. But when do you think these eggs will be hatched?”

Very soon, if at all, Mrs. Byrne thought. She advised Alice to stay here and watch, instead of going down to the rectory any more to-day. It was not likely that more partridges’ eggs would be found; and she had remembered since Alice left her—(she was sorry she had forgotten it before)—that she might make hay, after a manner, in this garden, though she did not pretend that it could compare with the rectory garden.

“You see, however, that it is very well I went,” said Alice, with a superior air. “Now I should like to stay and watch the eggs. Papa will not mind about my going home to dinner, just to-day.”

Mrs. Byrne forthwith made another dumpling, and Alice stood, growing hotter every moment, close by the fire, peeping in between the folds of the flannel, in the incessant expectation of seeing a tiny bird’s head pop up. Mrs. Byrne soon perceived that she would at this rate totally exhaust herself before anything could come to pass, and opened up again her proposition about hay-making in the garden. The grass borders were somewhat overgrown, and there was a little plat,—a very small one, to be sure,—behind the cottage, where Mrs. Byrne hung out the linen to dry. From this plat a good deal of grass might be cut with Byrne’s shears; if they could be found; and Alice could be called in the first moment that a bird was hatched. It would be a fine thing to show people that Alice could make hay in other places besides the rectory garden.

Alice looked at the borders, and thought it would be a prodigious condescension. The sight of the rusty shears, however, subdued her pride; and as soon as Mrs. Byrne’s coarsest blue apron could be tied over the young lady’s frock, she was down on her knees, clipping and hacking at the dry grass, and severing as much as a handful in a quarter of an hour. She actually forgot her new property of eggs till Byrne came home to dinner, and startled her with his gruff voice, while she was trying to clip a bunch which was too obstinate for her shears. She looked up, vexed at being interrupted, but sufficiently exhausted to be in need of her dinner; and no vexation could withstand the news that three little partridges were huddling together and tumbling over one another in the basket.

No vexation of hers could withstand this news. Byrne’s was too highly wrought to be conquered so easily. He came home in a most terrible temper indeed. His wife was aghast when she heard how he abused Peterson, the church, and even the vicar himself, before Alice. Peterson had come down to the rectory to demand tithe of the mown grass, which Mr. Mackintosh had contemptuously refused, on the ground of there being no claim. Mr. Mackintosh had said that while the church had taken care that every other party should pay to the church, it had also taken care of itself, and had decreed that the church should not pay to the church. The parson might not pay to the vicar, or the vicar to the parson. Much as he hated the church, therefore, he was now sheltered under its wings; and not a blade of rectory grass should the vicar touch.—Well; what answer did Peterson make? Why; it was the most provoking thing in the world; he had his law-book in his pocket, (as he seemed always to have,) and he showed that in the case of a vicar being specially endowed, (as Mr. Hellyer was,) small tithes, and even hay, might be levied upon the impropriator’s ground, as well as other people’s. Mr. Mackintosh said some very sound, good things, Byrne thought, when he found he really was liable. He said he thought it would be no more than fair to leave people to choose whether they would have a religion or not; and that they might as well demand from him his meat and drink to maintain Punch in a puppet-show——

Mrs. Byrne stopped her husband by throwing a bit of partridge’s egg-shell at him to make him look up, just when Alice’s eyes began to open wide with expectation of what it was that was to be likened to Punch in a puppet-show. It was grief enough to Mrs. Byrne that her husband should snatch up Mr. Mackintosh’s revolting sayings about religion; she would not have this child exposed to the evil under her roof; and so she had told her husband. He went on muttering, while he tore his dumpling to pieces, that he did not believe Mr. Mackintosh would allow the grass to be carried away; and, for his part, he hoped he would not. It was time somebody was beginning to resist encroachment, or there was no saying what pass the parish would come to. He had seen, and so had his father, how the burden of tithes grew and grew; but it was not till he told the facts to Mr. Mackintosh, and Mr. Mackintosh explained them, that Byrne knew the reason why the burden must always go on to increase, unless the church should——

Here he was again stopped. His wife wondered whether Mr. Mackintosh could explain why tithes were only half the amount in the next parish. If the soil was really equally good in the two parishes, it was very odd that wheat land should yield twelve shillings per acre of tithe here, and only six shillings in the next parish.

“I have known a worse case than that; where fourteen shillings were paid for an acre on one side a hedge, and five and sixpence for an acre on the other side, of precisely the same quality of soil. But, bad as it is to have to depend on parsons’ tempers, and such accidents, it is not so bad as seeing the tithe go on growing and growing, and knowing that it will never stop, unless such men as Mr. Mackintosh put a short stop to it. Ah! you look frightened; but you had better look frightened at the tithes than at any thing that I say about Mr. Mackintosh. In my father’s time and mine, I’ll tell you what has happened. Rent is higher, as you know only too well from every farmer you meet. The rise of tithe helps rent to rise; and the tithes have trebled while rent has risen one-fourth. Rent has risen fast enough; but tithes have risen twelve times as much.”

Mrs. Byrne thought this must be a mistake; because if matters went on at this rate, there must come an end of tithe, and tillage, and all.

“And so there will, if tithe goes on. Tithes are higher than the rent now, in some spots hereabouts, where hops and other expensive articles are grown. And the reason why it must be so is so plain, that Mr. Mackintosh does not believe but that those who made tithe foresaw all that is coming to pass. The tithe is part of the crop, which cost a vast deal of toil and expense to raise; and as the toil and expense of raising a crop increase, the tithe must become a larger and larger share of the profit. Don’t you see?”

“To be sure, the more it costs to grow a bushel of corn, the dearer the corn will be, and the more value there will be in the tenth part. But if the tithe makes corn and other things dearer, and their being dearer raises the value of the tithe again, there can be nothing but ruin before us.”

“Except to the church, which is to fatten on our starvation, Mr. Mackintosh says.”

“But this makes a fine profit for the Lamberts, and those who pay no tithe, and yet sell their corn as dear as other people.”

“To be sure it is; for every farmer, in Wales or Scotland, or wherever else in the kingdom he may be, that holds tithe-free land. Where some are obliged to sell dear, as the tithe-payers are, those few that could sell cheaper are sure to follow, as long as there is too little instead of too much of what they have to sell; and the tithe-free thus profit at the expense of those who buy bread and hay. However, we should not talk of the farmers profiting, except as far as they can get their burden of tithes lightened during their lease. The Lamberts pay a fine rent for the Abbey Farm, in consideration of its being tithe-free; and if tithes were to be done away by the time their lease is out, their rent would be lowered to meet the fall of prices that would take place. So it is their landlord that gains from their land being tithe-free, except for the convenience of having no mischief made in their field, and for the price of corn rising as tithe rises while their lease runs. Their rent will be raised again, Mr. Mackintosh says, if tithing goes on at the present rate in the parish.”

“I always think no people look so like prosperous folks as the Lamberts.”

“Ah! the old man was a thrifty one; and ’tis said there are no better farmers in the county than his sons. Sir William will make no difficulty of letting them keep the Abbey Farm in the family as long as he and they have to do with lands, as long as they keep on this side Sticks, as Mr. Mackintosh says; but I don’t know what he means exactly.”

“I do,” said Alice; “Styx is the river where dead people get across in a boat.”

“Well; do you believe that, now? I would as soon believe what your father preaches——”

“O, no, nobody believes about Styx now,” said Alice. “Mr. Mackintosh only talks as some people used to talk, hundreds of years ago, because he does not choose to talk as people talk now.”

Byrne shook his head. His opinion of Mr. Mackintosh was lowered. It was a pity Mr. Mackintosh did not speak of something that he really believed, instead of something that had been already disbelieved hundreds of years ago.

“How neat Mrs. Lambert looks now! and how quick she always walks!” said Alice, quitting her dinner. “I will call her in to see my birds and the eggs.”

There was no occasion to make haste to call Mrs. Lambert. She was coming to Byrne’s cottage. She had a smile for Alice, though she was evidently in haste to say something.

“I wish, friend,” said she to Byrne, “thatthat thou wouldst make haste down to the rectory. They want thee there; and thy dinner will keep, I dare say.”

“What’s the matter?” cried Byrne, seizing his hat. “Is that scoundrel Peterson kicking up a row?”

“I scarcely know,—being a little dull of apprehension, compared with thee, as to who is the scoundrel when people fall out, and whether there must be one. However, I can tell thee this;—that there is a great empty waggon, with five horses in it, at the rectory gate, and Peterson is making a show of it; and George Mackintosh stands at his garden pales, trying how provoking he can look, as it seems to me. The people are gathering, and the quarrel runs high. If thou canst bring either to a soft answer, thou wilt do a good deed. But, Byrne,” (calling after him,) “I assure thee they are ready enough with the word scoundrel already. Do not thou help them.”

Alice flew after Byrne. Mrs. Byrne thought it necessary to follow Alice; and Mrs. Lambert had been on her way to Mr. Mackintosh on business, when the gathering of the crowd made her turn back. She therefore walked down the road once more, hoping that her landlord would soon be able to listen to what she had to say.

All was in uproar at the rectory. The garden gate was laid by itself on a bank in the road. The heavy waggon was making deep ruts in the grass plat, which the feet of the five cart-horses had already torn up. The tithe of grass was being thrown in, amidst the laughter of the spectators, any one of whom could have carried it home in a well-packed wheelbarrow. The housekeeper was crying at one window, and her master was standing at another, with his hand in his bosom, no word on his tongue, but awful threatenings of the law on his brow. Byrne was evidently in a fury, though a sign from Mr. Mackintosh positively forbade his offering any opposition to Peterson and his team. He struck his toe into the cut turf, as a bull would have struck his horns; and like a bull, threw up clods into the air.

Peterson coolly expounded the law, the whole time, though none seemed disposed to take note of it, unless it was the horses, who certainly strained their muscles more zealously, and struck their hoofs deeper, and jingled their harness more emphatically, when he cracked his whip in the pauses of his lecture.