"Have you heard what the tenants of Ravensnest aim at, in particular?"

"They want to get Hugh's lands, that's all; nothing more, I can assure
you."

"On what conditions, pray?" demanded I.

"As you 'light of chaps,' to use a saying of their own. Some even
profess a willingness to pay a fair price."

"But I do not wish to sell for even a fair price. I have no desire to
part with property that is endeared to me by family feeling and
association. I have an expensive house and establishment on my estate,
which obtains its principal value from the circumstance that it is so
placed that I can look after my interests with the least inconvenience
to myself. What can I do with the money but buy another estate? and I
prefer this that I have."

"Poh! boy, you can shave notes, you'll recollect," said uncle Ro, drily.
"The calling is decided to be honourable by the highest tribunal; and no
man should be above his business."

"You have no right, sir, in a free country," returned the caustic Jack
Dunning, "to prefer one estate to another, more especially when other
people want it. Your lands are leased to honest, hard-working tenants,
who can eat their dinners without silver forks, and whose ancestors----"

"Stop!" I cried, laughing; "I bar all ancestry. No man has a right to
ancestry in a free country, you'll remember!"

"That means landlord-ancestry; as for tenant-ancestry, one can have a
pedigree as long as the Maison de Levis. No, sir; every tenant you have
has every right to demand that his sentiment of family feeling should be
respected. His father planted that orchard, and he loves the apples
better than any other apples in the world----"

"And my father procured the grafts, and made him a present of them."

"His grandfather cleared that field, and converted its ashes into pots
and pearls----"

"And _my_ grandfather received that year ten shillings of rent, for land
off which his received two hundred and fifty dollars for his ashes."

"His great-grandfather, honest and excellent man--nay, super-honest and
confiding creature--first 'took up' the land when a wilderness, and with
his own hands felled the timber, and sowed the wheat."

"And got his pay twenty-fold for it all, or he would not have been fool
enough to do it. I had a great-grandfather, too; and I hope it will not
be considered aristocratic if I venture to hint as much. He--a
dishonest, pestilent knave, no doubt--leased that very lot for six years
wit