12 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



till the latest summer eve, after the white barn owl had 

 passed round the fir copse. Both with his hands, and 

 with his eyes, now working, now watching, the man 

 ceased not, and such was his dogged pertinacity that, 

 like the mouse, he won a living. He did more, he 

 saved. At what price ? At the price of a fireless 

 life : I mean without cheer, by denial of everything 

 which renders human life superior to that of the rabbit 

 in his burrow. No wife, no children, no niece, or any 

 woman to see to his comforts ; no comfort and no 

 pleasure; a bare house and rheumatism. Bill, his 

 principal labourer, Dolly's brother, slept with him in 

 the same bed, master and man, a custom common in 

 old times, long since generally disused. 



Yet Mr. Roberts was not without some humanism, 

 if such a word may be used ; certainly he never gave 

 away a penny, but as certainly he cheated no man. 

 He was upright in conduct, and not unpleasant in 

 manner. He could not have been utterly crabbed for 

 this one labourer, Bill, to stay with him five and 

 twenty years. This was the six and twentieth year 

 they had dwelt there together in the gaunt, grey 

 lonely house, with woods around them, isolated from 

 the world, and without a hearth. A hearth is no 

 hearth unless a woman sit by it This six and 

 twentieth year, the season then just ended, had been 

 the worst of the series; rain had spoiled the hay, 

 increased the payment of wages by lengthening the 

 time of hay-making ; ruin, he declared, stared him in 

 the face; he supposed at last he must leave the 

 tenancy. And now the harvest was done, the ricks 

 thatched with flags from the marsh (to save straw), 



