About three years previous to Mr. Verner's death, a stranger had appeared in Clay Lane, and set up a shop there. Nearly every conceivable thing in the shape of eatables was sold in it; that is, such eatables as are in request among the poor. Bread, flour, meat, potatoes, butter, tea, sugar, red herrings, and the like. Soap and candles were also sold; and afterwards the man added green vegetables and coals, the latter doled out by the measure, so much a "kipe." The man's name was Peckaby; he and his wife were without family, and they managed the shop between them. A tall, strong, brawny man was he; his wife was a remarkably tall woman, fond of gossip and of smart caps. She would go gadding out for hours at a stretch, leaving him to get through all the work at home, the preparing meals, the serving customers.

Folks fly to new things; to do so is a propensity inherent in human nature; and Mr. Peckaby's shop flourished. Not that he was much honoured with the complimentary "Mr."; his customers brought it out short--"Peckaby's shop." Much intimacy had appeared to exist from the first between him and Roy, so that it was surmised they had been previously acquainted. The prices were low, the shop was close at hand, and Clay Lane flocked to it.

New things, however, like new faces, are apt to turn out no better than the old; sometimes not as good. And thus it proved with Peckaby's shop.

From rather underselling the shops of the village, Peckaby's shop grew to increase its charges until they were higher than those of anybody else; the wares also deteriorated in value. Clay Lane awoke to this by degrees, and would have taken its custom away; but that was more easily contemplated than done. A good many of its families had been allowed to get on Peckaby's books, and they also found that Roy set his face against their leaving the shop. For Roy to set his face against a measure was a formidable affair, not readily contended with: the labourers did not dare to fly in his face, lest he should make an excuse to take their work from them. He had already discharged several. So Clay Lane, for the most part, found itself tied to Peckaby's shop, and to paying some thirty per cent. beyond what they would have paid at the old shops; added to which was the grievance of being compelled to put up with very inferior articles. Dissatisfaction at this state of things had long been smouldering. It grew and grew, threatening to break out into open rebellion, perhaps to bloodshed. The neighbourhood cried shame upon Roy, and felt inclined to echo the cry upon Mrs. Verner; while Clay Lane openly avowed their belief that Peckaby's shop was Roy's shop, and that the Peckaby's were only put in to manage it.

One fearfully hot Monday morning, in the beginning of July, Lionel Verner was passing down Clay Lane. In another week he would be away from Deerham. Lady Verner's illness had commenced near the latter end of April, and it was growing towards the end of June before she began to get better, or would give Lionel leave to depart. Jan, plain-speaking, truth-telling Jan, had at length quietly told his mother that there was nothing the matter with her but "vexing and temper." Lady Verner went into hysterics at Jan's unfilial conduct; but, certain it was, from that very time she began to amend. July came in, and Lionel was permitted to fix the day for his departure.

Lionel was walking down Clay Lane. It was a short cut to Lord Elmsley's house over the hills, a mile or two distant. Not a very suitable day for a walk. Had Lionel been training for a light jockey, without any superfluous weight, he might have dispensed with extra covering in his exercise, and done as effectually without it. A hotter day never was known in our climate; a more intensely burning sun never rode in the heavens. It blazed down with a force that was almost unbearable, scorching and withering all within its radius. Lionel looked up at it; it seemed to blister his face and dazzle his eyes; and his resolution wavered as he thought of the walk before him. "I have a great mind not to go," said he mentally. "They can set up their targets without me. I shall be half dead by the time I get there." Nevertheless, in the indecision, he still walked on. He thought he'd see how affairs looked when he came to the green fields. Green! brown, rather.

But Lionel found other affairs to look at before he reached the fields.

On turning a sharp angle of Clay Lane, he was surprised to see a crowd collected, stretching from one side of it to the other. Not a peaceable crowd evidently, although it was composed for the most part of the gentler sex; but a crowd of threatening arms and inflamed faces, and swaying white caps and noisy tongues. The female population of Clay Lane had collected there.

Smash! went the breaking of glass in Lionel's ears as he came in view; smash! went another crash. Were Peckaby's shop windows suffering? A misgiving that it must be so, crossed the mind of Lionel, and he made few steps to the scene of warfare.

Sure enough it was nothing less. Three great holes were staring in so many panes, the splinters of glass lying inside the shop-window, amidst butter and flour, and other suchlike articles. The flour looked brown, and the butter was running away in an oily stream; but that was no reason why a shower of broken glass should be added to improve their excellences. Mr. Peckaby, with white gills and hair raised up on end, stood, the picture of fear, gazing at the damage, but too much afraid to start out and prevent it. Those big men are sometimes physical cowards.

Another pane smashed! the weapon used being a hard piece of flint coal, which just escaped short of Mr. Peckaby's head, and Lionel thought it time to interfere. He pushed into the midst of them.

They drew aside when they saw who it was. In their hot passions--hot and angry then--perhaps no one, friend or enemy, would have stood a chance of being deferred to but Lionel Verner. They had so long looked upon him as the future lord of Verner's Pride that they forgot to look upon him as anything less now. And they all liked Lionel. His appearance was as oil poured upon troubled waters.

"What is the meaning of this? What is the matter?" demanded Lionel.

"Oh, sir, why don't you interfere to protect us, now things is come to this pass? You be a Verner!" was the prayer of remonstrance from all sides that met his words.

"Give me an explanation," reiterated Lionel. "What is the grievance?"

The particular grievance of this morning, however easy to explain, was somewhat difficult to comprehend, when twenty tongues were speaking at once--and those, shrill and excited ones. In vain Lionel assured them that if one, instead of all, would tell it, he should understand it sooner; that if their tone were subdued, instead of loud enough to be heard yonder at the brick-fields, it might be more desirable. Excited women, suffering under what they deem a wrong, cannot be made quiet; you may as well try to put down a rising flood. Lionel resigned himself to his fate, and listened; and at this stage of the affair a new feature of it struck his eye and surprised him. Scarcely one of the women but bore in her hand some uncooked meat. Such meat! Lionel drew himself and his coat from too close proximity to it. It was of varied hues, and walking away alive. Upon plates, whole or broken, upon half-saucers, upon dust-pans, upon fire-shovels, held at the end of tongs, hooked on to a fork, spread out in a coal-box; anyhow so as to avoid contact with fingers, these dainty pieces were exhibited for inspection.

By what Lionel could gather, it appeared that this meat had been purchased on Saturday night at Peckaby's shop. The women had said then, one and all, that it was not good; and Mr. Peckaby had been regaled with various open conjectures, more plain than polite, as to the state of the animal from which it had been supplied. Independent of the quality of the meat, it was none the better, even then, for having been kept. The women scented this; but Peckaby, and Peckaby's wife, who was always in the shop with her husband on a Saturday night, protested and vowed that their customers' noses were mistaken; that the meat would be perfectly good and fresh on the Sunday, and on the Monday too, if they liked to keep it so long. The women, somewhat doubtfully giving ear to the assurance, knowing that the alternative was that or none, bought the meat and took it home. On Sunday morning they found the meat was--anything you may imagine. It was neither cookable nor eatable; and their anger against Peckaby was not diminished by a certain fact which oozed out to them; namely, that Peckaby himself did not cut _his_ Sunday's dinner off the meat in his shop, but sent to buy it of one of the Deerham butchers. The general indignation was great; the men, deprived of their Sunday's meat, joined in it; but nothing could be done until Monday morning. Peckaby's shop was always hermetically sealed on a Sunday. Mr. Verner had been stringent in allowing no Sunday traffic on the estate.

Monday came. The men went to their work as usual, leaving their wives to deal with the matter. Behold them assembled with their meat, kept for the occasion in spite of its state, before the shop of Peckaby. But of redress they could get none; Peckaby was deaf; and Lionel arrived to find hostilities commenced. Such was the summary of the story.

"You are acting very wrongly," were Lionel's first words to them in answer. "You should blame the meat, not Peckaby. Is this weather for keeping meat?"

"The weather didn't get to this heat till yesterday in the afternoon,"

said they--and Lionel could not deny the fact. Mrs. Dawson took up the word.

"_Our_ meat warn't bought at Peckaby's; our meat were got at Clark's, and it were sweet as a nut. 'Twere veal, too, and that's the worst meat for keeping. Roy 'ud kill us if he could; but he can't force _us_ on to Peckaby's rubbish. We defy him to't."

In point of defying Roy, the Dawsons had done that long ago. There was open warfare between them, and skirmishes took place occasionally. The first act of Roy, after it was known that Lionel was disinherited, had been to discharge old Dawson and his sons from work. How they had managed to live since was a mystery; funds did not seem to run low with them; tales of their night-poaching went about, and the sons got an odd job at legitimate work now and then.

"It's an awful shame," cried a civil, quiet woman, Sarah Grind, one of a very numerous family, commonly called "Grind's lot," "that we should be beat down to have our victuals and other things at such a place as Peckaby's! Sometimes, sir, I'm almost inclined to ask, is it Christians as rules over us?"

Lionel felt the shaft levelled at his family, though not personally at himself.

"You are not beaten down to it," he said. "Why do you deal at Peckaby's?

Stay a bit! I know what you would urge: that by going elsewhere you would displease Roy. It seems to me that if you would all go elsewhere, Roy _could_ not prevent it. Should one of you attempt to go, he might; but he could not prevent it if you all go with one accord. If Peckaby's things are bad--as I believe they are--why do you buy them?"

"There ain't a single thing as is good in his place," spoke up a woman, half-crying. "Sir, it's truth. His flour is half bone-dust, and his 'taturs is watery. His sugar is sand, and his tea is leaves dried over again, while his eggs is rotten, and his coals is flint."

"Allowing that, it is no good reason for your smashing his windows,"

said Lionel. "It is utterly impossible that that can be tolerated."

"Why do he palm his bad things off upon us, then?" retorted the crowd.

"He makes us pay half as much again as we do in the other shops; and when we gets them home, we can't eat 'em. Sir, you be Mr. Verner now; you ought to see as we be protected."

"I am Mr. Verner; but I have no power. My power has been taken from me, as you know. Mrs. Verner is--"

"A murrain light upon her!" scowled a man from the outskirts of the crowd. "Why do she call _herself_ Mrs. Verner, and stick herself up for missis at Verner's Pride, if she is to take no notice on us? Why do she leave us in the hands of Roy, to be--"

Lionel had turned upon the man like lightning.

"Davies, how dare you presume so to speak of Mrs. Verner in my presence?

Mrs. Verner is not the source of your ills; you must look nearer to you, for that. Mrs. Verner is aged and ailing; she cannot get out of doors to see into your grievances."

At the moment of Lionel's turning to the man, he, Davies, had commenced to push his way towards Lionel. This caused the crowd to sway, and Lionel's hat, which he held carelessly in his hand, having taken it off to wipe his heated brow, got knocked down. Before he could stoop for its rescue, it was trampled out of shape; not intentionally--they would have protected Lionel and his things with their lives--but inadvertently. A woman picked it up with a comical look of despair. To put on _that_ again was impossible.

"Never mind," said Lionel good-naturedly. "It was my own fault; I should have held it better."

"Put your handkercher over your head, sir," was the woman's advice.

"It'll keep the sun off."

Lionel smiled, but did not take it. Davies was claiming his attention; while some of the women seemed inclined to go in for a fight, which should secure the hat.

"Could Mr. Verner get out o' doors and look into our grievances, the last years of his life, any more, sir, nor she can?" he was asking, in continuation of the subject.

"No, sir; he couldn't, and he didn't; but things wasn't then brought to the pitch as they be now."

"No," acquiesced Lionel, "I was at hand then, to interpose between Roy and Mr. Verner."

"And don't you think, sir, as you might be able to do the same thing still?"

"No, Davies. I have been displaced from Verner's Pride, and from all power connected with it. I have no more right to interfere with the working of the estate than you have. You must make the best of things until Mr. Massingbird's return."

"There'll be some dark deed done, then, afore many weeks is gone over; that's what there'll be!" was Davies's sullen reply. "It ain't to be stood, sir, as a man and his family is to clam, 'cause Peckaby--"

"Davies, I will hear no more on that score," interrupted Lionel. "You men should be men, and make common cause in that one point for yourselves against Roy. You have your wages in your hand on a Saturday night, and can deal at any shop you please."

The man--he wore a battered old straw hat on his head, which looked as dirty as his face--raised his eyes with an air of surprise at Lionel.

"What wages, sir? We don't get ours."

"Not get your wages?" repeated Lionel.

"No, sir; not on a Saturday night. That's just it--it's where the new shoe's a-pinching. Roy don't pay now on a Saturday night. He gives us all a sort o' note, good for six shilling, and we has, us or our wives, to take that to Peckaby's, and get what we can for it. On the Monday, at twelve o'clock, which is his new time for paying the wages, he docks us of six shilling. _That's_ his plan now; and no wonder as some of us has kicked at it, and then he have turned us off. I be one."

Lionel's brow burned; not with the blazing sun, but with indignation.

That this should happen on the lands of the Verner's! Hot words rose to his lips--to the effect that Roy, as he believed, was acting against the law--but he swallowed them down ere spoken. It might not be expedient to proclaim so much to the men.