doubtless utterly wrong, but such is the Law
and the Prophets.

"I reckons there are troublous times ahead of us, sir," went on the old
man. "More troublous than any we are going through now--though them's
bad enough, in all conscience. Why, only the other evening, I was down
at the Fiddlers' Arms, for a glass of what they do call beer--'tis
dreadful stuff, sir, that there Government beer. . . ." Old John
sighed mournfully at the thought of what had been. "I was sitting in
there, as I says, when in comes some young feller from Grant's garage,
up the road. Dressed classy he was--trying to ape his betters--with a
yellow forefinger from smoking them damned stinking fags--and one of
them stuck behind his ear.

"'Hullo, gaffer,'" he says, 'how's the turnips?'

"'Looking worse in France than they do in England,' says I. 'Have you
been to see?'

"That hit him, sir, that did," chuckled old John. "He fair squirmed
for a moment, while the others laughed. 'Don't you know I'm on work of
national importance?' he says. 'I'm exempted.'

"'The only work of national importance you're ever likely to do, my
lad,' says I, 'won't be done till you're dead. And not then if you're
buried proper.'

"'What do you mean?' he asks.

"'You might help the turnips you're so anxious about,' says I, 'if they
used you as manure.'" Old John, completely overcome by the remembrance
of this shaft, laughed uproariously.

"You should have seen his face, sir," he went on when he had partially
recovered. "He got redder and redder, and then he suddenly says, 'e
says, 'Weren't you the lodge keeper up at Rumfold Hall?'

"'I was,' I answered quiet like, because I thought young Master
Impudence was getting on dangerous ground.

"'One of the poor wretched slaves,' he sneers, 'of a bloated
aristocrat. . . . We're going to alter all that,' he goes on, and then
for a few minutes I let him talk. He and his precious friends were
going to see that all that wretched oppression ceased, and then he
finished up by calling me a slave again, and sneering at his Lordship."

Old John spat reflectively. "Well, sir, I stopped him then. In my
presence no man may sneer at his Lordship--certainly not a callow pup
like him. His Lordship is a fine man and a good man, and I was his
servant." The old man spoke with a simple dignity that impressed Vane.
"I stopped him, sir," he continued, "and then I told him what I thought
of him. I said to him, I said, 'You