if they called their own houses and land nothing.

There was fresh grumbling too that the food sent out to the labourers
in the field was not as it used to be, good beef and mutton, but only
bread and very hard cheese, and bowls of hasty pudding, with thin,
sour small beer to wash it down. Oates growled and vowed he would
never come again to be so scurvily used; and perhaps no one guessed
that my lady was far more impoverished than her tenants, and had a
hard matter to supply even such fare as this.

Happily the weather lasted good long enough to save the Kentons'
little crop, though there was a sad remembrance of the old times,
when the church bell gave the signal at sunrise for all the
harvesters to come to church for the brief service, and then to start
fair in their gleaning. The bell did still ring, but there were no
prayers. The vicar had never come back, and it was reported that he
had been sent to the plantations in America. There was no service on
Sunday nearer than Bristol. It was the churchwardens' business to
find a minister, and of these, poor Kenton was dead, and the other,
Master Cliffe, was not likely to do anything that might put the
parish to expense.

Goodman Blane, and some of the other more seriously minded folk used
to walk into Bristol to church when the weather was tolerably fine.
If it were wet, the little stream used to flood the lower valley so
that it was not possible to get across. Steadfast was generally one
of the party. Patience could not go, as it was too far for Rusha to
walk, or for the baby to be carried.

Once, seeing how much she wished to go again to church, Stead