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The majority of the cottagers are away in the fields at work, and the place is elsewhere almost quiet. A column of smoke and a distant din guide the visitor to the spot where the hammers are clattering on the anvils. Twisted iron, rusty from exposure, lies in confusion on the blackened ground before the shed.
Wild beyond the imagination of the happy are the thoughts bred by misery and despair. At length we reached the overhanging beach; a cottage stood beside the path; we knocked at the door and it was opened: the bed within instantly caught my eye; something stiff and straight lay on it, covered by a sheet; the cottagers looked aghast. The first words that they uttered confirmed what I before knew.
Soon after they heard the shouts of fishermen and cottagers, hurrying to the shore, and, protecting themselves as well as they could, they joined their neighbors hoping to do some good upon the beach.
It was upon his tongue's end to ask the old woman about the hall; but a moment's reflection told him the cottagers anywhere near the sea would be either favourable to the smugglers, or would hold them in such dread that they would be certain to refuse all information. Even then he was not sure that the old woman was not sending them upon a false scent.
If the cottagers could pay a rent for an acre which, in the aggregate, was three times that given by the ordinary farmer, and could even then make a good thing of it, surely intelligence and skill might do the same on a more extended scale. How very foolish the farmers were! they might raise at least four times the produce they did, and they might pay three times the rent.
"Now then, my dear young friend," he said, addressing the elfin creature, "I want those lines upon your face. Are you seven?" "Yes, we are seven," said the girl sadly, and added, "I know what you want. You are going to question me about my afflicted family. You are Mr. Wordsworth, and you are collecting mortuary statistics for the Cottagers' Edition of the Penny Encyclopaedia."
Those who came from remoter distances have gone back already; and the lady cottagers, lingering hardily on till October, must find the sight of the empty hotels and the windows of the neighboring houses, which no longer brighten after the chilly nightfall, rather depressing. Every one says that this is the loveliest time of year, and that it will be divine here all through October.
"Ay, they behave as if I were dirt," thought Lars Peter. And what were they after all? Most of them did not even own enough ground to grow a carrot in. A good thing he owed them nothing! Even the cottagers from the marsh, whom he had often helped in their poverty, followed the others' example and looked down on him today. There was no chance now of getting anything more out of him.
The cottagers have also more firewood than is the case in some arable districts on account of the immense quantity of wood annually cut in copses and double-mound hedges. The rougher part becomes the labourers' perquisite, and they can also purchase wood at a nominal rate from their employers. This more than compensates for the absence of gleaning.
The sense of ownership engenders a pride in the place, and all his better feelings are called into play. Some of these cottagers, living in such houses as these, are the very best labourers to be had. They stay on one farm a lifetime, and never leave it an invaluable aid to a farmer.
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