at_ took. A knot of young men in a
corner rattled their sticks vigorously. The older men had begun at any
rate to look at the speaker. The boys on the back benches instinctively
stopped scuffling.

Then he threw himself into a sort of rapid question-and-answer. What
were their wages?--eleven shillings a week?

"Not they!" cried a man from the middle of the chapel. "Yer mus' reckon
it wet an' dry. I wor turned back two days las' week, an' two days this,
_fower_ shillin' lost each week--that's what I call skinnin' ov yer."

Wharton nodded at him approvingly. By now he knew the majority of the
men in each village by name, and never forgot a face or a biography.
"You're right there, Watkins. Eleven shillings, then, when it isn't
less, never more, and precious often less; and harvest money--the
people that are kind enough to come round and ask you to vote Tory for
them make a deal of that, don't they?--and a few odds and ends here and
there--precious few of them! There! that's about it for wages, isn't it?
Thirty pounds a year, somewhere about, to keep a wife and children
on--and for ten hours a day work, not counting meal times--that's it, I
think. Oh, you _are_ well off!--aren't you?"

He dropped his arms, folded, on the desk in front of him, and paused to
look at them, his bright kindling eye running over rank after rank. A
chuckle of rough laughter, bitter and jeering, ran through the benches.
Then they broke out and applauded him.

Well, and about their cottages?

His glance caught Marcella, passed to her mother sitting stiffly
motionless under her veil. He drew himself up, thought a moment, then
threw himself far forward again over the desk as though the better to
launch what he had to say, his voice taking a grinding determined note.

He had been in all parts of the division, he said; seen everything,
inquired into everything. No doubt, on the great properties there had
been a good deal done of late years--public opinion had effected
something, the landlords had been forced to disgorge some of the gains
wrested from labour, to pay for the decent housing of the labourer. But
did anybody suppose that _enough_ had been done? Why, he had seen
_dens_--aye, on the best properties--not fit for the pigs that the
farmers wouldn't let the labourers keep, lest they should steal their
straw for the littering of them!--where a man was bound to live the
life of a beast, and his children after him--

A tall thin man of abou