over halfway up the stem, now trailed their broad leaves in the
bleak, black February sop.

Straight for Mr. Ball's the master of the Grange took his way. He
followed the narrow path which, skirting the Backwater, crosses a
field, and then drops over the high March dike into the road quite
close to the cottage of Mr. Bailiff Ball. It was almost dinner-time,
and with a word Mr. Stennis explained the situation. Mrs. Ball swept
all the too genial horde of children into the kitchen, and set herself
to serve a meal to the owner of the Grange and his bailiff.

The first plateful of Scots broth, with its stieve sustenance of peas,
broad beans, and carrots, together with curly greens and vegetables
almost without number, put some heart into Mr. Stennis--though his
anger against Jeremy for the insult offered to him in his own house did
not in the least cool.

"I always like broth that a man can eat conveniently with knife and
fork," said Mr. Ball, striving to be agreeable. "Let me give you
another plateful, sir."

But Mr. Stennis declined. The thought of Jeremy and his plate of orts
returned to his mind and he choked anew with anger.

"I will teach him!" he said aloud, frowning and pursing his mouth.

Mr. Ball was far too wise a man to ask a question. He kept his place,
worked the out-farms, deserved the confidence of his master, and
convinced all the world that he had nothing to do with the ill-doings
of the garrison at the "Big Hoose" by carefully guarding his speech.
As a matter of fact, he made it his business to know nothing except in
which field to sow turnips, and the probable price he would get for the
wintering sheep that ate them out of the furrows.

Never was a man better provided with deaf and blind sides than Mr.
Bailiff Ball. And, being a man with a family, he had need of them at
Deep Moat Grange.

So he did not inquire who it was that Mr. Hobby Stennis meant to teach,
nor yet what was the nature of the proposed lesson. If knowledge is
power, carefully cultivated ignorance sometimes does not lack a certain
power also.

Mr. Stennis ate of the boiled mutton which followed, and of the boiled
cabbage withal--of potatoes, mealy and white, such as became the
bailiff of several large unlet farms, and a man whose accounts had
never been called in question by so much as a farthing.

Mr. Stennis ate of pancakes with jam rolled inside, and of pancakes on
which the butter fairly danced upon the saffron and