tubbles by her husband's
side, with as light a tread and as blithe an eye as when, in the first
bridal year, she had enchanted the squire by her genial sympathy with
his sports.

So there now stands Harriet Hazeldean, one hand leaning on the squire's
broad shoulder, the other thrust into her apron, and trying her best to
share her husband's enthusiasm for his own public-spirited patriotism,
in the renovation of the parish stocks. A little behind, with two
fingers resting on the thin arm of Captain Barnabas, stood Miss Jemima,
the orphan daughter of the squire's uncle, by a runaway imprudent
marriage with a young lady who belonged to a family which had been at
war with the Hazeldeans since the reign of Charles the First respecting
a right of way to a small wood (or rather spring) of about an acre,
through a piece of furze land, which was let to a brickmaker at twelve
shillings a year. The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze land
to the Sticktorights (an old Saxon family, if ever there was one). Every
twelfth year, when the fagots and timber were felled, this feud broke
out afresh; for the Sticktorights refused to the Hazeldeans the right to
cart off the said fagots and timber through the only way by which a cart
could possibly pass. It is just to the Hazeldeans to say that they had
offered to buy the land at ten times its value. But the Sticktorights,
with equal magnanimity, had declared that they would not "alienate the
family property for the convenience of the best squire that ever stood
upon shoe leather." Therefore, every twelfth year, there was always
a great breach of the peace on the part of both Hazeldeans and
Sticktorights, magistrates and deputy-lieutenants though they were.
The question was fairly fought out by their respective dependants,
and followed by various actions for assault and trespass. As the legal
question of right was extremely obscure, it never had been properly
decided; and, indeed, neither party wished it to be decided, each at
heart having some doubt of the propriety of its own claim. A marriage
between a younger son of the Hazeldeans and a younger daughter of the
Sticktorights was viewed with equal indignation by both families;
and the consequence had been that the runaway couple, unblessed and
unforgiven, had scrambled through life as they could, upon the scanty
pay of the husband, who was in a marching regiment, and the interest
of L1000, which was the wife's fortune independent of