Round About a Great Estate

essly passing to and fro over the 'lands.' Every motion was visible, because, although the green wheat was rising in an adjacent field, no crop had yet appeared here. Now the hare came direct to

ome time exploring up one furrow and down another, his

immense 'stride,' was clearly displayed. I had been so interested in the hare that I had not observed Hilary coming along on the other side of the low fence, looking at his wheat. The hare, busy as he was and see

s had destroyed this the very mainstay. Now, that crop which he had just left had 'tillered out' well; but what profit should he get from the many stalks that had tillered or sprung from each single grain, thus promising a fiftyfold return? It had

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foreign grain. In those old days, seventy or eighty years since, the whole population of the kingdom watched the weather with anxiety; and it was then that the sig

emory of the old man (now dead), who had been a hard master to him in his youth; besides which, some family jar had arisen over money matters; still, he was fond of quoting Jonathan in reference to wheat and the heyday of corn-farming. Jonathan remembered when a load of wheat fetched 55l.-a lo

money. Farmers who had been brought up 'hard,' living like labourers, working like labourers, and with little more amusement than labourers, all at once found their pockets full

he is never very far from the wires or the railway; the railway meets the ocean steamer; and we can form no conception of the utter lack of communication in the old world of our immediate forefathers. The farmer, being away from the main road and the track of the mail coaches, knew no one

. Sometimes the head carter would venture in for instructions, and be gruffly told to take his team and do so and so. 'Eez, zur,' he would reply, 'uz did thuck job isterday.' His master had ordered him to do it the day befor

en no gin even-nothing but ale-had been consumed in that far-away spot; but Jonathan brought in the gin, which speedily became popular. He called it 'spoon-drink' (a spoon being used with the sugar) as a distinguishing name, and as spoon-drink a

sh; he had a bushel of the 'tail,' or second flour, from the mill in lieu of money, settling once a month. Their life was hard indeed. But the great prosperity which had come upon the farmers did them no good. In too many cases it melted away in drink. The habit of drinking became settled in a family. Bad habits

of for a week, till he was discovered at a distant roadside inn, where he had spent the interval in straightforward drinking. These habits are now happily extinct. It was in those old times that wheat was bought and hoarded with the express object of raising

in his early days; and he did not wish to make money by another man's suffering. Still he was always grieving about the wheat crop, and how it had fallen in estimation. It was a sight to see the gusto with which

the open slope had bent the hawthorn before them, and the heat of the sultry summer day appeared the greater on that exposed height. On either hand hills succeeded to hills, and behind I knew they extended farther than the eye could reach. Immediately beneath in front there was a plain, at its extreme boundary a wood, and beyond that the horizon was lost in the summer haz

was the last farm before reaching the hill district proper, and from the slope here all the fields of which it consisted were visible. The house was small, for in those days farmers did not look to live in v

and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before sheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that flourished round the bac

watch the relish with which the swine devoured their favourite food. He saved every bit of crooked wood that was found about the place; for at that date iron was expensive, and wood that had grown crooked and was therefore strong

n flush of prosperity. Every groat thus saved was as a nail driven into an oak, fixed and stable, becoming firmer as time went on. How strangely different the farmers of to-day, with a scor

njury. His top-boots always hung near the fireplace, that they might not get mouldy; and he rode into market upon his 'short-tail horse,' as he called his cr

e next, that they might not get worn to either foot in particular. Shoes lasted a great length of time in those days, the leather being all tanned with oak bark only, and thoroughly seasoned bef

les were not so common. He had himself seen loads of hay drawn home on 'sleds' from English meadows, and could tell where a 'sled' had last been used. There were aged men living about the hamlet in his day-if that could be called a hamlet in which there were barely a score of people, all told-who cou

and after they had hobnobbed a while the old fellow took him, with many precautions that they should not be observed, into the pig-sty and showed him fifty guineas hid in

t he produced a nail-bag from under his coat and counted out the money. A nail-bag is made of the coarsest of all kinds of sacking. In this manner the former generation, eschewing outward show, collected their money coin by coin, till a

n was not much over a score, and of the labourers they boasted not one was married. For in those old times each parish kept its own poor, and consequently disliked an increase of the population. The farmers m

tpath just inside the hedge. Such footpaths ran beside the roads for miles; here and there in country places a short section of such tracks may still be found. 'Pack-roads,' too, may be occasionally met with, retaining their designation to this day. It was the time of the great wars with the First Napoleon; and t

n traversing on foot those perilous roads. It was about five feet long, perhaps more, an inch and a half in diameter, and shod with an iron ferrule and stout spike. With

ed they could hear the roar of Napoleon's cannon, the old fogger came rushing in with the news that the armies could be seen fighting in the heavens. It was an aurora, the streamers shooting up towards the zenith, and great red spots among

the road which passed the house; it was caused by a very large flock of sheep driven slowly. The individual 'baa' of each lamb was so mixed, as it were, with the bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound took a strange, mysterious tone; a voice that seemed to speak of trouble, and perplexity, and anxiety for rest. Hilary, as a farmer, mu

e it out to be a steam-plough waiting till the corn should be garnered to tear up the stubble. How much meaning there lay in the presence of that black funnel! There were the same broad open fields, the same beautiful crops of golden w