, to business."

"Well, then," continued Henderson, smiling, "if you have no objection,
I am willing that you should take Skinadre's affair and mine as a
precedent between you and me. Let us not be fools, Mr. Travers; it is
every one for himself in this world."

"What is it you expect, in the first place?" asked the agent.

"Why, new leases," replied the other, "upon reasonable terms, of
course."

"Well, then," said Travers, "I beg to inform you that you shall not
have them, with only one exception. You shall have a lease of sixty-nine
acres attached to the Grange, being the quantity of land you actually
farm."

"Pray, why not of all the property?" asked Dick.

"My good friend," replied the agent, nearly in his own words to the
Pedlar; "the fact is, that we are about to introduce a new system
altogether upon our property. We are determined to manage it upon a
perfectly new principle. It has been too much sublet under us, and we
have resolved, Mr. Henderson, to rectify this evil. That is my answer.
With the exception of the Grange farm, you get no leases. We shall turn
over a new leaf, and see that a better order of things be established
upon the property. As for you, Skinadre, settle this matter of your
hundred pounds with Mr. Henderson as best you may. That was a private
transaction between yourselves; between yourselves, then, does the
settlement of it lie."

He once more touched the bell, and desired Cornelius Dalton and the
Pedlar to be sent in.

"Mr. Henderson," he proceeded, "I will bid you good morning; you
certainly look ill. Skinadre, you may go. I have sent for Mr. Dalton,
Mr. Henderson, to let him know that he shall be reinstated in his farm,
and every reasonable allowance made him for the oppression and injustice
which he and his respectable family have suffered at--I will not say
whose hands."

"Travers," replied Henderson, "your conduct is harsh--and--however, I
cannot now think of leases--I am every moment getting worse--I am very
ill--good-morning."

He then went.

"An' am I to lose my hundre pounds, your honor, of my hard earned money,
that I squeezed--"

"Out of the blood and marrow and life of the struggling people, you
heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property
for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether
you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful
Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy sh