n had a while averted
or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though while Lenny was
present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him,
yet no sooner was he removed from the scene of trial than a universal
compassion for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is
called "the reaction of public opinion." Not that those who had mowed
and jeered repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in
the slightest degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the
rest of the villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to
be expected that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into
that place of ignominy, and not be sensible to the affront. And who, in
the whole village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were
to be tolerated in silence, and at the expense of the very best and
quietest lad the village had ever known? Thus, a few days after
the widow's departure, the stocks was again the object of midnight
desecration: it was bedaubed and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed,
it was scrawled over with pithy lamentations for Lenny, and laconic
execrations on tyrants. Night after night new inscriptions appeared,
testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the parish.
And perhaps the stocks was only spared from axe and bonfire by the
convenience it afforded to the malice of the disaffected: it became the
Pasquin of Hazeldean.

As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority,
so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had
been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors.
Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported
to his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with
ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and
stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards, gradually yielding to the
baleful influence of Stirn, the squire grumbled forth "that he did
not see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show
kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference
between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had
conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith
and kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character.
For some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy and vegetables from
the gardens were surlily suspend