God and the Man by Robert W. Buchanan — Read

So it came to pass, through the issue of ill-blood between mere children, and between men and women who were as children in their foolish passions, that the breach between the two houses widened into a gulf as deep as hell. On the one side of this gulf of hate and darkness, sat the Orchardsons, rich, prosperous, in the full sunshine of fat meadow and plenteous vineyard. On the other side crouched the Christiansons, a beggared family, bitter at heart, ever waiting for the evil hour which might bring vengeance. The mortgage was closed. The fat Fen lands passed into the hands of their hereditary foes; and all remaining to them now were the old house, fast falling into decay, and the barren hills and burrows of sea-lying sand.

Well, there are compensations even in the deepest shadows of trouble. It was something at least to have the old house, and not to be turned out by the bailiffs, like conies by the ferret, into the open cold; something more, to possess the ancestral sandhills, barren and desolate as they were. At a pinch, they could at least exist, though no human soul but themselves knew how sore at times the pinch became.