Tom Harker stood apart from the other men, watching the boat-house door. Although the sun was still shining, under the beech trees one could feel that it was afternoon, and autumn. He was ready to go. He rested his bony chin on his clasped hands which were folded on top of his tall forked stick, immobile, his gaze fixed. He was aware of the men sitting in groups under the trees or on the river bank relaxing for a few more minutes before the call to action, smoking and talking quietly; they were as familiar to him as the other natural phenomena by which he was surrounded. He would have answered for them all if necessary as good enough fellows, given the unfortunate tendency of human nature towards error and iniquity, but he did not think it necessary to exchange small talk with them. He had given young Dan Glass his views on the Game Laws, to Dan’s considerable embarrassment since whatever the faults of the Laws it was his father’s duty to enforce them and Dan did not want to be disloyal to his father, least of all in conversation with Tom Harker. Albert Jarvis the Derbyshire man and Sir Randolph’s loader Charlie Pass had embroiled him somewhat against his will in a political argument: they had exposed themselves, in his opinion, as ignorant men, both claiming that it was the Tory Party which had the interest of the agricultural worker at heart, and remaining unswayed by his eloquent exposition of a quite different view. He had told them that the landlord was the cause of crime. ‘He invents the laws and invents the punishments for breaking them. Now if the land belonged to us all, it stands to reason, there’d be no law of trespass.’

‘Belongs to us all means belongs to the Government,’ said Charlie Pass. ‘If you ask me I’d rather sweat for a bugger I know than a bunch of bloody politicians.’

‘That’s it,’ said Arthur Jarvis. ‘After their own interests, politicians.’

‘That may be so. That may very well be so of most of them. But you get your man of the people and you must follow him. Lloyd George has said …’

But Lloyd George was a Welshman and Albert Jarvis didn’t care for Welshmen. They’d had some Welsh miners up in his parts, came up because they were short of work in their valleys, taking jobs that should have gone to Derbyshire men, getting themselves in with the employers with a lot of smooth talk. Never trust a Welshman, that was Albert Jarvis’s view. Charlie Pass had anyway heard enough of Tom’s quotations from Lloyd George’s speeches – they’d done a job together stonepicking before the last spring ploughing. He moved away on the pretext of asking Mr Glass how his bitch was coming along – seemed excitable still, not much sense – and Tom, unsurprised by their folly and prejudice which were only what he’d expected, walked in his slow way (with his long even stride like a man used to the hills and valleys of infinite distance, though it was not known that he’d been far outside the confines of Oxfordshire), and stationed himself on the grassy ride under the beech trees in a good position to see the first signs of activity from the boat-house, when they came. He did not have long to wait.