Greene Ferne Farm. Richard Jefferies

he said.

      “We know many there,” said Felix.

      “I thaut perhaps uncle Jabez had found me out and sent ee. Do you knaw uncle Jabez, as works at Greene Ferne?”

      “I recollect the shepherd,” said Geoffrey.

      “I wur under-shepherd thur till I took to factory work. Look at them lambs thur!”

      They looked out of the window. Beneath, the green fields came right up to the dead brick wall. Away, some fifty yards distant, stood an enormous pollard oak, its vast gnarled root coiled round just above the earth, forming a broad ledge about the trunk. Half a dozen lambs were chasing each other, frisking round and round the rim, glad in the summer sunshine.

      “Look at um,” said the whilom shepherd, “an’ I be choked for aair.”

      “Why not open the window?”

      “He wunt open.”

      They examined it; the sashes were shams, not made to open. Neither was there a fireplace; the man was poisoned with the exhalations from his own weak frame.

      “This is dreadful,” said Geoffrey. “Is there no law—”

      “Law enough,” said Felix, bitterly; “but who troubles to enforce it for the sake of—a navvy? Why are crowded places sinks of misery and crime? For want of a Master, like the colonel of a regiment. It makes me sigh for a despot.”

      “I’d a’ smashed un fast enough,” said the shepherd, “if I’d a-dared; but thaay ud ’a turned me out into the street, an’ I couldn’t abear the workuss. Is ould Fisher dead yet, zur?”

      St. Bees was busy with his penknife cutting away the putty, and did not for the moment answer. The pane came out speedily, and the breeze came in with a rush, and with it a bee that buzzed round and went forth again, and a scent of new-made hay, and the “Baa—maa” of the lambs, and behind it all the low roar of the railway and the factories.

      “What did you say about Fisher?” asked Felix, turning.

      “Be a’ dead yet, th’ cussed old varmint?”

      “Hush, hush! whom do you mean?”

      “I means ould Fisher of Warren Mill. He be my grandfeyther. Mebbe you minds Peggy Moulding, what married th’ bailie? Hur wur my granny. My feyther died in Australia. Th’ cussed ould varmint—a’ let us all starve; he got sacks a’ gold. I wants to hear as th’ devil have got un.”

      “You must not bear malice,” said Felix; but being a man as well as a clergyman, he halted there. The contrast was too great. He thought of the brutal miser on the hills.

      “I wants to get back to Greene Ferne,” said the invalid. “Do you knaw Mrs. Estcourt? Hur be a nice ooman; a’ wunder ef hur ud have me agen. Wull ee axe hur?”

      “I’ll ask her,” said Geoffrey. “I’m sure she will, though the men are on strike there now.”

      “Be um? Lord, what vools! I wants to get back to shepherding. Axe uncle Jabez ef I med come to his place and bide wi’ he a bit. I thenks I should get better among the trees. I could a’most drag a rake, bless ’ee, now ef I had some vittels.”

      “You shall have food,” said Felix, “and we will get you back to the hamlet.” This poor fellow, rude as he was—so pathetically ignorant as to suppose, as ignorant people do, that strangers understood his private affairs—was in a sense distantly related to his darling May, and thus had a more than common claim upon him.

      In the afternoon they went over to Greene Ferne, and Mrs. Estcourt at once sent a trap for the injured man. His uncle Jabez, the shepherd, was greatly concerned, and ready to receive him. Yet, with the curious apathy of the poor, he had made no inquiries about him previously.