Family arrangements required completion, and Christopher Dale required ready money.

The outlying farms flew away, as such new purchases had flown before; but the old patrimony of the Dales remained untouched, as it had ever remained.
It had been a religion among them; and seeing that the worship had been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways without high principle.

To this religion they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other encumbrances than those with which he himself was then already burdened.

And yet there had been no entail.

The idea of an entail was not in accordance with the peculiarities of the Dale mind.
It was necessary to the Dale religion that each squire should have the power of wasting the acres of Allington,--and that he should abstain from wasting them.