the Cleve, was crowned with heather, and ivy scrambled up it from below. A brook brawled down the glen below the house.
The coombe had been wild and disregarded, a jungle of furze and bramble, till Saltren's father settled in it, and no man objecting, enclosed part of the waste, built a house, and called it his own. Lord Lamerton owned the manor, and might have interfered, or claimed ground-rent, but in a former generation much careless good-nature existed among landlords, and squatters were suffered to seize on and appropriate land that was regarded of trifling value. The former Lord Lamerton perhaps knew nothing of the appropriation. His agent was an old, gouty, easy-going man who looked into no matters closely, and so the Saltrens became possessed of Chillacot without having any title to show for it. By the same process Patience Kite's father had obtained his cottage, and Patience held her house on the same tenure as Saltren held Chillacot. Usually when settlers enclosed land and built houses, they were charged a trifling ground-rent, and they held their houses and fields for a term of years or for lives, and the holders were bound to keep the dwellings in good repair. But, practically, such houses are not kept up, and when the leases expire, or the lives fall in the houses fall in also. A landlord with such dwellings and tenements on his property is often glad to buy out the holders to terminate the disgrace to the place of having in it so many dilapidated and squalid habitations.
Saltren's house was not in a dilapidated condition; on the contrary, it was neat and in excellent repair. Stephen drew a respectable salary as captain of the manganese mine and could afford to spend money on the little property of which he was proud. He had had the house recently re-roofed with slate instead of thatch, with which it had been formerly covered. The windows and doors had been
