CHAPTER III

The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large
red house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the
high stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one
among several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with
the title of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood's family was also
understood to be of timeless origin--the Raveloe imagination
having never ventured back to that fearful blank when there were no
Osgoods--still, he merely owned the farm he occupied; whereas
Squire Cass had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him
quite as if he had been a lord.

It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a peculiar
favour of Providence towards the landed interest, and the fall of
prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and
yeomen down that road to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad
husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels. I am speaking
now in relation to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for
our old-fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all
life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and
breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of
heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and
crossing each other with incalculable results. Raveloe lay low
among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents
of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank
freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously