hev to scuttle off. An' there's them i' Middlemarch knows what the
Rinform is - an' as knows who'll hev to scuttle. Says they, I know who your
landlord is. An' says I, I hope you're the better for knowin' him, I arn't. Says
they, He's a close-fisted un. Ay, ay, says I. He's a man for the Rinform, says
they. That's what they says. An' I made out what the Rinform were - an' it were
to send you an' your likes a-scuttlin'; an' wi' pretty strong-smellin' things
too. An' you may do as you like now, for I'm none afeard on you. An' you'd
better let my boy aloan, an' look to yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo'
your back. That's what I'n got to say,« concluded Mr. Dagley, striking his fork
into the ground with a firmness which proved inconvenient as he tried to draw it
up again.
    At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for Mr.
Brooke to escape. He walked out of the yard as quickly as he could, in some
amazement at the novelty of his situation. He had never been insulted on his own
land before, and had been inclined to regard himself as a general favourite (we
are all apt to do so, when we think of our own amiability more than of what
other people are likely to want of us). When he had quarrelled with Caleb Garth
twelve years before he had thought that the tenants would be pleased at the
landlord's taking everything into his own hands.
    Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the midnight
darkness of Mr. Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times than for an
hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite somehow of having a
rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to the backbone, a curate nearer
at hand who preached more learnedly than the rector, a landlord who had gone
into everything, especially fine art and social improvement, and all the lights
of Middlemarch only three miles off. As to the facility with which mortals
escape knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of
London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would have
been if he had learned scant skill in »summing« from the parish-clerk of Tipton,
and