He never spoke to or of him.

Low wages, the burden of quick-coming children, the bad sanitary conditions of their wretched cottage, and poor health, had made their lives one long and sordid struggle.

But for years he had borne his load with extraordinary patience.

He and his could just exist, and the man who had been in youth the lonely victim of his neighbours' scorn had found a woman to give him all herself and children to love.

Hence years of submission, a hidden flowering time for both of them.
Till that last awful winter!--the winter before Richard Boyce's succession to Mellor--when the farmers had been mostly ruined, and half the able-bodied men of Mellor had tramped "up into the smoke," as the village put it, in search of London work--then, out of actual sheer starvation--that very rare excuse of the poacher!--Hurd had gone one night and snared a hare on the Mellor land.