the cry of education brought to Thardover
House that set ajar some chord in her sensitive mind. Strident
voices checked her sympathies, and hard rule-and-line work like this
repelled her. Till then she had been the constant companion of the
Squire's walks; but while the school was being organized she would
not go with him. She walked where she could not see the plain
angular building; she said it set her teeth on edge.

When the strident voices had departed, when time had made the
school-house part and parcel of the place, like the cottages, Mary
changed her ways, and occasionally called there. She took a class
once a week of the elder girls, and taught them in her own fashion
at home--most unorthodox teaching it was--in which the works of the
best poets were the chief subjects, and portfolios of engravings
were found on the table. Long since father and daughter had resumed
their walks together.

It was in this way that James Thardover made his estate his own--he
held possession by right of labour. He was resident ten months out
of twelve, and after all these public and open works he did far more
in private. There was not an acre on the property which he had not
personally visited. The farm-houses and farm-buildings were all
known to him. He rode from tenancy to tenancy; he visited the men at
plough, and stood among the reapers. Neither the summer heat nor the
winds of March prevented him from seeing with his own eyes. The
latest movement was the silo system, the burying of grass under
pressure, instead of making it into hay. By these means the clouds
are to be defied, and a plentiful supply of fodder secured. Time
alone can show whether this, the latest invention, is any more
powerful than steam-plough or guano to uphold agriculture against
the shocks of fortune. But James Thardover would have tried any plan
that had been suggested to him. It was thus that he laid hold on his
lands with the strongest of titles--the work of his own hands. Yet
still the tenants were unable to pay the former rent. Some had
failed or left, and their farms were vacant; and nothing could be
more discouraging than the condition of affairs upon the property.

III.--A RING-FENCE: CONCLUSION

There were great elms in the Out-park, whose limbs or boughs, as
large as the trunk itself, came down almost to the ground. They
touched the tops of the white wild parsley; and when sheep were
lying beneath, the jackdaws stepped from the sheep's back