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Ralph made a bee-line across the fields, and was soon in the shelter of the little homestead. He found his father and mother and his sister Ruth still seated at the breakfast-table. Ruth pushed back her chair at the sound of his footsteps and rose to her feet.
"Why, Ralph," she said, "where have you been? Mother's been quite worried about you."
"If that's all she has to worry her, she needn't worry much," he said, with a laugh. "But has anything happened? You all look desperately sober."
"We've heard some news that has made us all feel very anxious," David answered wearily. "We've sat here talking about it for the last half-hour."
"Then the news concerns us all?" Ralph questioned, with a catch in his voice.
"Very closely, my boy – very closely. The truth is, Julian Seccombe has got wounded out in Egypt."
"And he's the last life on the farm?" Ralph questioned, with a gasp.
"That is so, my boy. It seems strange that I should be so unfortunate in the choice of lives, and yet I could not have been more careful. Who could have thought that the parson's boy would become a soldier?"
"Life is always uncertain," Ralph answered, with a troubled look in his eyes, "whether a man is a soldier or a farmer."
"That is so," David answered reflectively. "Yet my father held his little place on only two lives, and one of them lived to be seventy-five."
"But, even then, I've heard you say the lease ran only a little over sixty years. It's a wicked gamble, is this leasehold system, with the chances in favour of the landlord."
"Why a gamble in favour of the landlord, my boy?" David questioned, lifting his mild eyes to his son's face.
"Why, because if all the 'lives' live out their threescore years and ten, the lease is still a short one; for you don't start with the first year of anyone's life."
"That is true," David answered sadly. "The parson's boy was ten, which I thought would be balanced by the other two."
"And the other two did not live ten years between them."
"Of course, nobody could foresee that," David answered sadly. "They were both healthy children. Our little Billy was three, and the healthiest baby of the lot."
"But with all the ailments of children in front of him?"
"Well, no. He had had whooping-cough, and got through it easily. It was the scarlet fever that carried him off. Poor little chap, he was gone in no time."
"And so, within a year, and after you had spent the greater part of your money, your farm hung upon two lives," Ralph said bitterly.
"But, humanly speaking, they were good lives. Not lives that would be exposed to much risk. Lawyer Doubleday told me that he intended to bring up his boy to the same profession, and Parson Seccombe told me he had dedicated Julian to the Church in his infancy. What better lives, humanly speaking, could you get? Neither parsons nor lawyers run any risks to speak of."
"Yes; that's true enough. The system being what it is, you did the best you could, no doubt."
"Nobody could foresee," David said sadly, "that Doubleday's boy would go and get drowned. I nearly fainted when I heard the news."
"And now you say that young Seccombe has got shot out in Egypt."
"I don't know as to his being shot; but Tom Dyer, who was here this morning, said that he had just seen the parson, who was in great trouble, news having reached him last evening that Julian was wounded."
"Then if the parson's in great trouble, the chances are he's badly wounded."
"I don't know. I thought of walking across to St. Goram directly, and seeing the parson for myself; but I'm almost afraid to do so, lest the worst should be true."
"We shall have to face it, whatever it is," Ralph said doggedly.
"But think of what it would mean to us if the parson's son should die! Poor mother is that troubled that she has not been able to eat a mouthful of breakfast!"
"She seems scarcely able to talk about it," Ralph said, glancing at the door through which his mother and Ruth had disappeared.
"She's a little bit disposed to look on the dark side of things generally," David said slowly. "For myself, I keep hoping for the best. It doesn't seem possible that God can strip us of everything at a blow."
"It doesn't seem to me as though God had any hand in the business," Ralph answered doggedly.
"Hush, Ralph, my boy! The issues of life and death are in His hands."
"And you believe also that He is the author of the leasehold system that obtains in this country?"
"I did not say that, Ralph; but He permits it."
"Just as He permits lying and theft, and murder and war, and all the other evil things there are in the world. But that is nothing to the point. You can't make me believe that the Almighty ever meant a few people to parcel out the world among themselves, and cheat all the rest out of their rights."
"The world is what it is, my boy, and neither you nor I can alter it."
"And you think it is our duty to submit quietly and uncomplainingly to whatever wrong or injustice is heaped upon us?"
"We must submit to the law, my boy, however hardly it presses upon us."
"But we ought to try, all the same, to get bad laws mended."
"You can't ladle the sea dry with a limpet-shell, Ralph, nor carry off a mountain in your pocket. No, no; let us not talk about the impossible, nor give up hope until we are forced to. Perhaps young Seccombe will recover."
"But if he should die, father. What would happen then?"
"I don't know, my boy, and I can't bear to think."
"But we'd better face the possibility," Ralph answered doggedly, "so that, if the worst should come to the worst, we may know just where we are."
"'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,'" David answered, with a far-away look in his eyes. And he got up from his seat and walked slowly out of the house.
Ralph sat looking out of the window for several minutes, and then he went off in search of his mother and Ruth.
"Do you know, mother," he said, as cheerily as he could, "that I have had no breakfast yet? And, in spite of the bad news, I am too hungry for words."
"Had no breakfast?" she said, lifting up her hands in surprise. "I made sure you got something to eat before you went out."
"Well, then, you were wrong for once," he said, laughing. "Now, please put me out of my misery as quickly as possible."
"Ah, Ralph," she answered, with a sigh, "if we had no worse misery than hunger, how happy we should be!"
"That is so, mother," he said, with a laugh. "Hunger is not at all bad when you have plenty to eat."
She sighed again.
"It is well that you young people don't see far ahead of you," she said plaintively. "But come here and get your breakfast."
Two hours later, when in the home close hoeing turnips, he lifted his head and saw his father coming across the fields from the direction of St. Goram, he straightened his back at once and waited. He knew that he had been to see the parson to get the latest and fullest news. David came slowly on with his eyes upon the ground, as if buried in profound thought.
"Well, father, what news?" Ralph questioned, when his father came within speaking distance.
David started as though wakened out of a reverie, and came to a full stop. Then a pathetic smile stole over his gentle face, and he came forward with a quickened step.
"I waited for the parson to get a reply from the War Office, or I should have been home sooner," he said, bringing out the words slowly and painfully.
"Well?" Ralph questioned, though he felt sure, from his father's manner, what the answer would be.
"The parson fears the worst," David answered, bringing out the words in jerks. "Poor man! He's in great trouble. I almost forgot my own when I thought of his."
"But what was the news he got from the War Office?" Ralph questioned.
"Not much. He's on the list of the dangerously wounded, that's all."
"But he may recover," Ralph said, after a pause.
"Yes, he may," David answered, with a sigh. "God alone knows, but the parson gave me no comfort at all."
"How so?"
"He says that the swords and spears of the dervishes are often poisoned; then, you see, water is scarce, and the heat is terrible, so that a sick man has no chance like he has here."
Ralph did not reply. For a moment or two he looked at his father, then went on with his hoeing. David walked by his side between the rows of turnips. His face was drawn and pale, and his lips twitched incessantly.
"The world seems terribly topsy-turvy," he said at length, as if speaking to himself. "I oughtn't to be idling here, but all the heart's gone out of me somehow."
"We must hope for the best," Ralph said, without raising his head.
"The parson's boy is the last 'life,'" David went on, as though he had not heard what Ralph had said. "The last life. Just a thread, a feeble little thread. One little touch, and then – "
"Well, and what then?" Ralph questioned.
"If the boy dies, this little farm is no longer ours. Though I have reclaimed it from the waste, and spent on it all my savings, and toiled from dawn to dark for twelve long years, and built the house and the barn and the cowsheds, and gone into debt to stock it; if that boy dies it all goes."
"You mean that the squire will take possession?"
"I mean that Sir John will claim it as his."
Ralph did not speak again for several moments, but he felt his blood tingling to his finger-tips.
"It's a wicked, burning shame," he jerked out at length.
"It is the law, my boy," David said sadly, "and you see there's no going against the law."
Ralph hung his head, and began hoeing vigorously his row.
"Besides," David went on, "you see I was party to the arrangement – that is, I accepted the conditions; but the luck has been on Sir John's side."
"He took a mean advantage of you, father, and you know it, and he knows it," Ralph snapped.
"He knew that I had set my heart on a bit of land that I could call my own; that I wanted a sort of resting-place in my old age, and that I desired to end my days in the parish in which I was born."
"And so he put the screw on. It's always been a wonder to me, since I could think about it at all, that you accepted the conditions. I would have seen Sir John at the bottom of the sea first."
"I did try to get better terms," David answered, looking wistfully across the fields, "and I mentioned ninety-nine years as the term of the lease, and he nearly turned me out of his office. 'Three lives or nothing,' he snarled, 'and be quick about it.' So I had to make up my mind there and then."
"You'd have been better off, father, if you'd dropped all your money down a mine shaft, and gone to work on a farm as a day labourer," Ralph said bitterly.
"I shouldn't have had to work so hard," David assented.
"And you would have got more money, and wouldn't have had a hundredth part of the anxiety."
"You see, I thought the land was richer than it has turned out to be, and the furze roots have kept sprouting year after year, and that has meant ploughing the fields afresh. And the amount of manure I have had to put in has handicapped me terribly. But I have kept hoping to get into smooth waters by and by. The farm is looking better now than ever it did before."
"But the ground rent, father, is an outrage. Did you really understand how much you were paying?"
"He wouldn't consent to any less," David said wistfully. "You see things were good with farmers at the time, and rents were going up. And then I thought I should be allowed to work the quarry down in the delf, and make some money out of the stone."
"And you were done in that as in other things?"
"Well, yes. There's no denying it. When I got to understand the deed – and it took me a goodish time to riddle it out – I found out that I had no right to the stone or the mineral, or the fish in the stream, or to the trees, or to the game. Do you know he actually charged me for the stone dug out of my own farm to build the house with?"
"And ever since has been working the quarry at a big profit, which would never have been unearthed but for you, and destroying one of your fields in the process?"
"I felt that about the quarry almost more than anything," David went on. "But he's never discovered the tin lode, and I shall never tell him."
"Is there a tin lode on the farm?" Ralph questioned eagerly.
"Ay, a beauty! It must be seven years ago since I discovered it, and I've kept it to myself. You see, it would ruin the farm to work it, and I should not get a penny of the dues; they'd all go to the squire."
"Everything gets back to the rich in the long-run," Ralph said bitterly. "There's no chance for the poor man anywhere."
"Oh, well, in a few years' time it won't matter to any of us," David said, looking with dreamy eyes across the valley to the distant range of hills. "In the grave we shall all be equal, and we shall never hear again the voice of the oppressor."
"That does not seem to me anything to the point," Ralph said, flashing out the words angrily. "We've got as good a right to live as anybody else. I don't ask favours from anybody, but I do want justice and fair play."
"It's difficult to know what justice is in this world," David said moodily. "But there, I've been idling long enough. It's time I went back and fetched my hoe and did a bit of work." And he turned slowly on his heel and walked away toward the house.
Ralph straightened his back and looked after him, and as he did so the moisture came into his eyes.
"Poor old father!" he said to himself, with a sigh. "He's feeling this much more deeply than anyone knows. I do hope for all our sakes that Julian Seccombe will recover."
For the rest of the day Ralph's thoughts hovered between the possible loss of their farm and the chances of Dorothy Hamblyn's recovery. He hardly knew why he should worry himself about the squire's daughter so much. Was it solely on the ground that he had refused to open the gate, or was it because she was so pretty?
