direction, with such effect as was to be supposed. Everybody promised
his lordship to do everything. But when his lordship's back was turned,
everybody did just nothing. They knew very well that he could not make
them do anything; and what was more, in some of the very worst cases,
the evil was past remedy now, and better left alone. For the drought
went on pitiless. A copper sun, a sea of glass, a brown easterly blight,
day after day, while Thurnall looked grimly aloft and mystified the
sailors with--

"Fine weather for the Flying Dutchman, this!"

"Coffins sail fastest in a calm."

"You'd best all out to the quay-head, and whistle for a wind: it would
be an ill one that would blow nobody good just now!"

But the wind came not, nor the rain; and the cholera crept nearer and
nearer: while the hearts of all in Aberalva were hardened, and out of
very spite against the agitators, they did less than they would have
done otherwise. Even the inhabitants of the half-a-dozen cottages, which
Scoutbush, finding that they were in his own hands, whitewashed by main
force, filled the town with lamentations over his lordship's tyranny.
True--their pig-styes were either under their front windows; or within
two feet of the wall: but to pull down a poor man's pig-stye!--they
might ever so well be Rooshian slaves!--and all the town was on their
side; for pigs were the normal inhabitants of Aberalva back-yards.

Tardrew's wrath, of course, knew no bounds; and meeting Thurnall
standing at Willis's door, with Frank and Mellot, he fell upon him
open-mouthed.