tful garden gave
the lie to the laziness and ignorance of man, who pretends that it
is not worth his while to cultivate the soil which God has given
him. 'Good heavens!' he thought, 'had our forefathers had no more
enterprise than modern landlords, where should we all have been at
this moment? Everywhere waste? Waste of manure, waste of land,
waste of muscle, waste of brain, waste of population--and we call
ourselves the workshop of the world!'

As they passed through the miserable hamlet-street of Ashy, they saw
a light burning in window. At the door below, a haggard woman was
looking anxiously down the village.

'What's the matter, Mistress Cooper?' asked Tregarva.

'Here's Mrs. Grane's poor girl lying sick of the fever--the Lord
help her! and the boy died of it last week. We sent for the doctor
this afternoon, and he's busy with a poor soul that's in her
trouble; and now we've sent down to the squire's, and the young
ladies, God bless them! sent answer they'd come themselves
straightway.'

'No wonder you have typhus here,' said Lancelot, 'with this filthy
open drain running right before the door. Why can't you clean it
out?'

'Why, what harm does that do?' answered the woman, peevishly.
'Besides, here's my master gets up to his work by five in the
morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then he ain't in
no humour to clean out gutters. And where's the water to come from
to keep a place clean? It costs many a one of us here a shilling a
week the summer through to pay fetching water up the hill. We've
work enough to fill our kettles. The muck must just lie in the
road, smell or none, till the rain carries it away.'

Lancelot sighed again.

'It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, if the weir-pool did,
some fine morning, run up to Ashy Down, as poor Harry Verney said on
his deathbed.'

'There won't be much of Ashy left by that time, sir, if the
landlords go on pulling down cottages at their present rate; driving
the people into the towns, to herd together there like hogs, and
walk out to their work four or five miles every morning.'

'Why,' said Lancelot, 'wherever one goes one sees commodious new
cottages springing up.'

'Wherever you go, sir; but what of wherever you don't go? Along the
roadsides, and round the gentlemen's parks, where the cottages are
in sight, it's all very smart; but just go into the outlying
hamlets--a whited sepulchre, sir,