All Men are Ghosts Part 20

Undoubtedly it was due to Jeremy's influence that I came to appreciate this side of the matter. He also taught me to regard the tenant farmer as superior to all other varieties of his cla.s.s. I know it is wrong-headed, generalising from a particular case and all that--but I would rather be wrong-headed with Jeremy, who took a back-view of everything, than right-headed with some forward spirits who treat the land as a _corpus vile_ for political experiments. And what logical mind could resist arguments like the following, back-views though they be?

"It takes _two_, sir," said Jeremy, "for to handle the land. A n.o.bleman to own it, and a farmer to cultivate it. There's nothing that gives you _confidence_ like having a real gentleman behind you--and the Dook's a real gentleman if ever there was one. And you want confidence in farming--and that's what these 'ere Radicals don't see. I don't want none o' _their_ safeguards! Give me the Dook--he's safeguard enough for me! And what safeguard have you when fellers like Prendergast begin buying up the land? Look at _his_ tenants--not a real farmer among 'em, no, and not one as can make both ends meet. These little landlords are the men they ought to shoot at, not the big 'uns. Now isn't it a wonderful thing that my family and the Dook's has kept step with one another for a matter of two hundred years? Eight Dooks in that time and eight Jeremys--one Jeremy to each Dook! But who'll ever keep step with Prendergast? Who'll ever _want_ to? Why, I wouldn't be seen walking down the street with him, no, not if you was to give me a thousand pounds.

And if he was to offer me his best farm rent-free to-morrow, I'd tell him to go and boil hisself.

"No, sir," he continued, "it don't pay to own the land you farm; and don't you believe them as tells you it does. Leastways, it pays a sight better to farm under a good landlord. Them as can't make farming pay under a landlord, can't make it pay at all. Now look at me and then look at Charley Shott. Me and Charley started the same year, him with 400 acres of his own, and me with 380 acres under the Dook, rented all round at twenty-eight s.h.i.+llings an acre. And where are we both now after thirty years? Why, if Charley's land, and all he's made on it, and all he's put into it, were set at auction to-morrow, I could buy him up twice over! And me paying over five hundred pounds a year rent for thirty years, and him not paying a penny. How does that come about?

Well, you're not a farmer, and you wouldn't understand if I told you.

But I'll tell you one thing as perhaps you can understand. It hurts the land to break it up. And it _hurts_ the land still more to _sell_ it.

Now I dare say you never heard of that before."

I confessed that I had not.

"Well, it's a fact. When you break land up it won't _keep_. It goes like rotten apples: first a bit goes rotten here and then a bit there; and the rottenness spreads and runs together. And as to _selling_, I tell you there's something in the land _as knows when you're goin' to sell it, and loses heart_. I've seen the same thing in 'osses. It takes the land longer to get used to a new master than it does a 'oss; and there's some land as never will.

"No, sir, I say again, if you want to make farming _pay_, take a farm on a big estate, one that's never been broke up and's never likely to be, one that's been in the same hands for hundreds o' years, one that's never been shaken up and messed with and slopped all over with lawyer's ink, and made sour with lawyer's lies. Never mind if the rent's a bit stiffish. Rent never bothered _me_."

I ventured to dissent from these opinions, for I had given lectures on Political Economy, and I knew of at least four different theories of Rent all at variance with Jeremy's--and with one another. Perhaps I should have succeeded better had I known of only one. But, knowing of four, I may have become a little confused in my attempts to confute Farmer Jeremy. Not that this made very much difference. On all questions relating to the nature of land and its uses Jeremy was a mystic, and orthodox Political Economy was as futile to his mind as it was to Mr Ruskin's. Every position I took up was immediately stormed by the rejoinder, "Ah, well, you're not a farmer, and you don't understand." I could not help remembering that I had often been overthrown in more abstruse arguments by the same sort of answer. I might, indeed, have countered by saying, "Ah, well, Mr Jeremy, you're not an economist, and _you_ don't understand." But it occurred to me that the reply would be feeble.

"I tell you," he went on, "that good land _likes_ to be high-rented. It sort o' keeps it in humour. Land _likes_ to be owned by a gentleman, and keeps its heart up accordin'. Whenever the rent o' land goes down, the quality goes down too. I've noticed it again and again."

I tried to indicate that this last statement was an inversion of cause and effect, but the argument made not the faintest impression on Mr Jeremy, who merely brushed away a fly that had settled on his nose, and continued:

"I never spoke to the Dook but once. I met him one morning riding to hounds with Lady Sybil and Lady Agatha. As soon as he sees me he trots his horse up to where I was standing and holds out his hand. 'Jeremy,'

says he, 'I want to shake hands with you. You're a splendid specimen of the British farmer.' 'Thank you, your Grace,' I says; 'and you're a splendid specimen of the British Dook,' for I was never afraid of speaking my mind to anyone. At that his Grace bursts out laughin', and so did Lady Sybil and Lady Agatha too. 'Let me introduce you to my two daughters,' says he. So he introduces me, and I can tell you I stood up to 'em like a man, though I did keep my hat in my hand all the time.

'Well, Jeremy,' says he, 'you've got your farm in tip-top condition'; and then he begins talking about putting up some new buildings, as me and the agent had been talking over before. 'We'll put 'em up next spring,' says his Grace; 'and remember, Jeremy, that in all that concerns the development of this farm you have me behind you.' 'I've never forgotten it, your Grace,' I says, 'and I never shall. And I'm not the only one who remembers it. _The land_ remembers it too, your Grace,'

I says. 'I hope it does, Jeremy,' says he, 'for I love it.' And I never see a young lady look prettier than Lady Agatha did when she heard her father say them words."

I had heard this story so often from Farmer Jeremy, and always with the same reference to Lady Agatha at the end, that I was familiar with every word of it. He was growing old, and I believe that in the course of the year he managed to tell the story a hundred times over. "I was coming home from market last Sat.u.r.day," said he, "and a lot of other farmers was in the same compartment with me. We begins talkin' about the Dook, and I happened to tell 'em about that time when I met his Grace with Lady Sybil and Lady Agatha. There was a chap sitting in one corner as didn't belong to our lot, and as soon as he hears the Dook's name mentioned he drops his paper and begins listening. Well, I never see such a rage anywhere as that man got into when I told 'em how I kept my hat in my hand while talking to the ladies. Regular insultin' is what he was; and I can tell you I never came nearer giving a man one in the eye than I did him. I believe I'd ha' done it if there'd been room in the carriage for him to put up his hands and make a square fight on it. I don't say as he weren't a plucky chap too; for there wasn't a man in the carriage as couldn't ha' knocked his head off with the flat of his hand, if he'd had a mind to. 'Look here, you fellows,' he says, 'you're a lot of blasted idiots, that's what you are. It's because of the besotted ignorance of men like you that England has the worst land-system in the world. Slaverin' and grovellin' before a lot o'

rotten Dooks--why, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves! I'll bet that Dook o' yours and his two painted gals was mounted on fine horses and dressed up to the nines.' 'Of course they was,' I says, 'and so they ought to be.' 'Well,' says he, 'who paid for the horses and the clothes--and the paint?' 'Here,' I says, jumping up from my seat, 'you drop the paint, or I'll pitch you out o' that winder.' 'Well, then,'

says he, 'who paid for the horses and the clothes?' 'I neither know nor care,' says I; 'so long as they was paid for, it's no business of mine or yourn who paid for 'em.' '_You paid for 'em_, you fool,' says he.

'Oh, indeed,' says I. 'And now, young man, perhaps you'll allow me to give you a word of advice.' 'Fire away,' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'the next time your missus has a was.h.i.+n' day, you just wait till she's made the copper 'ot, and then jump into it and boil yourself!'"

The "chap" in the railway carriage was by no means the only person to whom Mr Jeremy addressed this drastic advice. It was his usual mode of clinching an argument when his instincts supported a conclusion to which his intelligence could not find the way. This method of arriving at truth was especially useful in regard to politics and theology, in both of which Mr Jeremy took a lively, or even violent, interest. Needless to say, his political aversions were of the strongest, and Mr Lloyd George was the statesman who had to bear the hottest flame of Jeremy's wrath.

More than once I have seen him fling his weekly paper on the floor with the words, "I wish this 'ere Lloyd George would jump into the copper and boil hisself"; and on my remarking that I thought this a rather inhuman suggestion, he would wave his arm round the room, in a manner to indicate the entire Liberal Party, and say, "I wish the whole lot on 'em would jump into coppers and boil themselves." As to theology, I seldom dared to address a hint of my heresies to Mr Jeremy. But on my once saying to another person, in his presence, something to the effect that I did not believe in eternal d.a.m.nation, he quickly crossed over to where I was sitting, and, giving me a rather ugly dig with his powerful forefinger, said, "Look here! You just jump into the copper and boil yourself." A wise stupidity was the keynote of Mr Jeremy's life.

Another expression reserved for occasions when great emphasis was needed, was "a finished specimen." A thing, in Mr Jeremy's eyes, deserved this t.i.tle when its general condition was so bad that nothing worse of its kind could be conceived, and the expression accordingly was only used after the ordinary resources of descriptive language had given out. It was applied to persons as well as to things. Mr Lloyd George was, naturally, "a finished specimen": so was the German Emperor: so was Dr Crippen: so was a lady of uncertain reputation who "had taken a cottage" in the neighbourhood. A wet harvest, a badly built hayrick, a measly pig, a feeble sermon by the curate, were all "finished specimens." Once when the curate, getting gravelled for lack of matter at the end of five minutes--for he was preaching _ex tempore_--abruptly concluded his sermon by promising to complete the subject next week, I heard Jeremy whisper to his wife, "Well, _he_'s a finished specimen, that he is." Nothing irritated the good man so much as an unfinished job, and the fact that a thing was unfinished was precisely what he meant to express when he called it "a finished specimen." A great deal of human language, especially philosophical language, seems to be constructed on the same principle.

Mr Jeremy was a regular church-goer. The Church in his eyes was part of the established order of Nature, on due observance of which the farmer's welfare depends, and merely extended into the next world those desirable results which sound instincts, punctuality, and "putting your back into it" produced in this. On week-days Mr Jeremy farmed the broad acres of the "Dook"; on Sundays he farmed Palestine, and occasionally drove a straight furrow clean across the back of the Universe. To both operations he applied the same methods, the same instincts, the same ideas. I confess that I have often smiled with the air of a superior person when listening to a highly trained Cathedral choir proclaiming to the strains of great music that "Moab was their washpot"; but when Mr Jeremy repeated the words in the village church I felt that he spoke the truth, and I went away with a clearer conception of Moab than I have ever gained from the works of Kuenen or Cheyne. "Moab," I reflected, "can be no other than the little field on the hillside, where Jeremy washes his sheep in the pool behind the willows." Again, I was morally certain that if Jeremy had lived in the neighbourhood of Edom he would have "cast out his shoe" upon that country, accurately aiming the missile at the head of any rascally Edomite who happened to be prowling about with a rabbit-snare in his pocket. So too when he shouted "Mana.s.seh is mine"--he always shouted the Psalms--I was sure that Mana.s.seh really was his, in a tenant-farmer way of speaking, and that next Thursday he would begin to rip up Mana.s.seh with his great steam plough, and reap in due course a crop of forty bushels to the acre, paying the "Dook" a high rent for the privilege. Nor was Jeremy making any idle boast when he thundered out his further intentions, which were "to divide Sichem," "to mete out the valley of Succoth," and "to triumph" over Philistia. All this was Pragmatism of the purest water; you were sure he would keep his promise to the letter; you were glad for Sichem and Succoth, which were to be "divided" and "meted out," though perhaps a little sorry for the Philistines, who were to be "triumphed over," that a man like Jeremy should have undertaken the business; but you recognised that no better man for the job could be found anywhere than he. To be sure, Mr Jeremy, although he would have gladly boiled the whole Liberal Party in coppers, was much too tender-hearted to wish that anybody's little ones should be dashed against the stones; but I believe that in his innermost thought he launched the words against "them tarnation sparrers" and "that plague o' rats." On the whole, no one who listened to Mr Jeremy's repet.i.tion of these Psalms could doubt their entire appropriateness as a religious exercise for men such as he, or refrain from hoping that they would never be expunged from the Book of Common Prayer until the last British farmer had gone to church for the last time.

So too with the Creeds. I believed every one of them as recited by Mr Jeremy, and I found the Athanasian the most convincing of them all. The Sundays set down for the use of that Creed--and its use was never omitted in our parish--were the most serious Sundays of the year to Mr Jeremy, and the vigour of his voice and his att.i.tude, and the fervour of his partic.i.p.ation, made a spectacle to be remembered. I wish William James might have seen it before he wrote his _Varieties of Religions Experience_; it would have given him a new chapter. At the very first words Jeremy joined in like a trained sprinter starting for a race; and though the clergyman rattled through the clauses as fast as he could p.r.o.nounce, or misp.r.o.nounce, the syllables, the farmer headed him by a word or two from the very first, gradually increasing his lead as the race proceeded until towards the end he was a full sentence to the good.

It was evident that to Jeremy's mind, and perhaps to the clergyman's also, a subtle relation existed between the truth of the Creed and the speed with which it could be rendered. Long before the end was in sight, and while Jeremy was still battling with various "incomprehensibles,"

the rest of the compet.i.tors had retired from sheer exhaustion; the children were munching sweets; the lads and la.s.ses were ogling one another at the back of the church; Mrs Jeremy was staring in front of her, wondering perhaps if the careless Susan would remember that onion sauce _always_ went with a leg of mutton on Sundays; while Lady Agatha and Lady Sybil--I grieve to record this, but my historical conscience compels me--sat down. As to those of us who remained attentive to what was going on, our confidence in Catholic Truth gradually took the form of a certainty that the farmer would come in first and the clergyman be nowhere. So it always proved. Standing in the pew behind that of Jeremy, I could see the muscles of his mighty back working up and down beneath the broadcloth of his Sunday coat; and as I looked from him to the easily winded gentleman from Pusey House who was running against him in the chancel, I could not help reflecting how ridiculous, nay, how unsportsmanlike, it was to allow two men so ill matched to compete for the same event. This, no doubt, was the first symptom that, in spite of the standing att.i.tude, I was going to sleep. But before it could happen I was suddenly brought to my senses by the _fortissimo e prestissimo_ of Jeremy's conclusion. "He _cannot_ be saved," he roared out, banging his prayer-book down on the book-rest, with a defiant look around him, as though the whole Liberal Party were in church. "He _cannot_ be saved,"--and visions of all sorts of people boiling in coppers filled the mental eye.

Jeremy, for a farmer, was the most outrageous optimist I have ever met.

He never grumbled, save at politicians, and the worst weather could hardly disconcert him. "You can always turn a bit o' bad weather to good account--if you put your back into it. Yes, it's been a _wet_ season, no doubt, but not what I should call a _bad_ season. It's true we've made but little hay, and that not good; but the meadows isn't dried up as they was last year, and there'll be feed for the stock in the open most of the winter. I bought fifty new head o' stock last Wednesday--bought 'em cheap of a man as got frightened--and they'll be well fattened by Christmas." Serious setbacks, of course, often occurred; but Jeremy, unlike most of his kind, was not the man to talk about them. "What I believe in," he said, "is not only keeping your own heart up, but helping your neighbours to keep up theirs. I've no patience with all this 'ere grumbling and growling. Of course, a person has a lot to put up with in farming; but it doesn't do a person no good to be always thinking about that. Pleasant thoughts goes a long way in making money.

And I tell you there's money to be made in farming, let folks say what they will. What farmers want is not for Parliament to help 'em, but for Parliament to leave 'em alone. That's why I can't stand this 'ere Liberal Government. Why can't they stop messing wi' things--messing wi'

the land, messing wi' the landlords, messing wi' the tenants, messing wi' the farm-labourers? Why can't they leave it all alone and stick to what they understand, if there's anything they _do_ understand, which I doubt? No, sir; I don't want their laws, good or bad. Give me the custom of the county, and a good bench o' magistrates, and a cheerful disposition, and a farmyard full o' muck, and I've got all I want to make farming _pay_--always provided you put your back into it."

But during the long-continued rain of last summer I could not help observing that Jeremy, in spite of his fidelity to these principles, was making an effort to keep up his heart. Not only was his hay ruined, but the finest crop of wheat he had ever raised was sprouting in the ear.

There was sickness among the sheep and the pigs; and the standing crop in his great orchard was sold to a middleman for a quarter the usual price. But Jeremy made no complaint. Only, meeting the clergyman one day in the road, he said, "Parson, it's high time you put up the prayer for fine weather." Jeremy had a firm belief in the power of prayer--and especially of this one.

On the first occasion when this prayer was used in the village church I was present in my usual place behind Jeremy. As the prayer proceeded it was evident that the farmer was putting his back into it. I could see the movement of the deltoid muscles, and I watched a great crease form itself in the lower portion of his coat and gradually creep upwards until it formed a straight line from one shoulder-blade to the other.

When the prayer concluded Jeremy said "Amen _and_ Amen!" with the utmost fervour; and the crease in his coat slowly disappeared. I am afraid I was more occupied in watching this crease than in recalling the lesson that was taught to us sinners when it pleased Jehovah to "drown all the world, except eight persons."

During the next ten days the rain fell with increasing volume and fury: the ditches were in flood; the roads were watercourses, and much damage was done on Jeremy's farm. Meeting him at this time, I said in the course of conversation, perhaps foolishly, "Mr Jeremy, the prayer for fine weather seems to have done us very little good." For a moment he looked at me rather angrily, as though suspecting that some lukewarmness on my part had deprived the prayer of its due effect. Then he checked himself and seemed to reflect. "No," he said at length, "it's done us no good at all. But what else can you expect, _with all them gigglin'

wenches at the back of the church_?"

For three miserable weeks the heavens were deaf to our entreaties, and matters began to look pretty black. A change for the better was confidently expected with the new moon; and though I have never been able to discover the origin of the superst.i.tion, nor a reason for it, I found myself as expectant as any of my neighbours--like that other great philosopher, who didn't believe in ghosts, but was desperately afraid of them. However, the new moon brought no relief to our sorry plight--and the superst.i.tion lives on in our parish, unimpaired. Ominous rumours about the end of the world spread from cottage to cottage, and our wits were busy in discovering the culprit whose misdeeds had precipitated the coming catastrophe. Most of us were persuaded that it was Tom Mellon the waggoner, a good workman but an irredeemable drunkard; and Tom, who was aware of our suspicions, became thoroughly scared. For the first time in twenty years Tom kept away from the public-house when his wages were paid, and went to bed sober but terribly depressed on Sat.u.r.day night. On Monday morning, Mrs Mellon, whose face for once bore no trace of bruises, informed our cook that "her master had had a dreadful bad night. He would keep jumping out o' bed and going to the window, to look into the sky and _see if anything was up_." Tom had communicated his fears, when in an early stage of development, to his boon companion, Charley Stamp the ex-roadman, whose old-age pension went the way of Tom's wages and swelled the revenues of the public-house by the regular sum of five s.h.i.+llings per week. These two Arcadians, as they sat over their cups, concerted a plan, composed mainly of bad language, for defeating the ends of justice on the Day of Doom; and on the Sat.u.r.day night previous to the one last mentioned came home together abominably intoxicated, waving their hats and roaring out as they went up the village that they were "ready" for Judgment--"with a tooral-ri-looral, and a rooral-li-ray." Subsequent events proved that neither of them was "ready." Tom's courage, as we have seen, went to pieces on hearing it definitely whispered that the universe was about to be wiped out in consequence of his bad habits. Charley's downfall was even more sudden.

In the small hours of the very morning after his performance in the village street it happened that Farmer Jeremy's bull, scenting a cow in a neighbouring pasture, expressed his sentiments by emitting a loud bellow. The sound travelled to Charley's cottage, and, descending the chimney, mingled with his drunken dreams. "Get up, missis," he shouted, "get up; _the trumpet's sounding_!" and rus.h.i.+ng into the garden he began to howl like a jackal. The howls woke the village, and a score of terrified souls, myself among them, convinced that "it was come at last," looked out of their windows--only to find that a lovely morning was breaking over the hills. Fine weather returned soon after; and I am sorry to say that with its coming the moral reformation which had begun so hopefully in Tom and Charley, and spread to several less hardened sinners in our village, was terminated at a stroke.

It must have been some four or five days before the change came in the weather that I took advantage of a bright interval in the evening to walk across the summit of the hill which shades my house from the setting sun. I pushed on into the upland until the dusk had fallen, and found myself at last in a deserted quarry--a long familiar spot, where in old days I used to meet Snarley Bob. There I sat down on the very heap of stones on which he sat as he talked to me of the stars. In due time the stars came out, and I wondered in which of them the great spirit of my old friend had found its abode. I imagined it was Capella; why I know not, unless it be that Capella was the star to which Snarley's finger often pointed when he lifted up his voice about the things on high. This has nothing to do with my story, and I mention it here only because I find myself wondering at this moment how spirits so diverse as those of Snarley Bob and Tom Mellon could have breathed the same atmosphere and drawn their sustenance from the same environment.

I lingered in the quarry pondering my memories until the great rain-clouds, creeping up from different points of the horizon, had met in the zenith and every star had disappeared. A sullen rain began to fall, and black darkness was over the hill.

I turned homewards, reflecting that it might not be easy to find my way by the sheep-tracks on so dark a night. I remembered that on the summit of the hill, some two miles from where I was, there stood an isolated barn surrounded by sheds for the shelter of cattle. From this point the way down into the village could hardly be missed, and thither accordingly I turned my steps. With some difficulty I found the barn; for the ways were wet and in some places impa.s.sable, and the night, as I have said, was very dark.

On nearing the barn I was astonished to notice a gleam of light issuing from the half-closed door. I approached, and as I did so I was yet more astonished, and a little scared, to hear the loud and lamentable tones of a human voice. I listened, and at once recognised the voice as Jeremy's, though I could not hear what he was saying nor explain to myself the preternatural solemnity of the tone. It was not a cry of pain, nor that of a man in need of human help. I drew yet nearer, and it became plain to me that Jeremy was praying.

Curiosity tempting me on, I crept up to the barn and looked in through the partly opened door. This is what I saw. Kneeling on the floor towards the further side of the barn, with a lighted stable-lantern suspended over his head, was Jeremy. His back was towards me, but I could see that he had a book in his hand. A glance was sufficient to show me that I was looking at a man in wrestle with his G.o.d. I knew the signs of Jeremy's earnestness; and they were there--intense, unmistakable. Never have I witnessed a more solemn spectacle, and, had not something held me spell-bound to the spot, I should have retreated in very shame of my intrusion.

At the moment when I first caught sight of his figure Jeremy was silent.

His head was bowed on his chest, his feet were drawn close together, and his right hand, holding the book--which I saw was the Book of Common Prayer--drooped on the ground. I noted the head of a steel rat-trap protruding from the big side-pocket of his coat. I also remember how the bright nails of his boots, of which the soles were turned towards me, glittered in the light of the lantern.

Presently Jeremy raised the book, turned over the leaves--for he had lost the place--slightly readjusted his position, and in a deep and solemn voice again began to pray. And this was his prayer:

"O Almighty Lord G.o.d, who for the sin of man didst once drown all the world, except eight persons, and afterward of thy great mercy didst promise never to destroy it so again: we humbly beseech thee, that although we for our iniquities have worthily deserved a plague of rain and waters, yet upon our true repentance thou wilt send us such weather, as that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season; and learn both by thy punishment to amend our lives, and for thy clemency to give thee praise and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

_Amen._"

It was enough. Quickly and silently as I could I slipped away into the darkness, filled with a sense of the sacrilege of my intrusion and the solemnity of the hour. I have listened in my time to many prayers of many men; I have heard the Almighty flattered, complimented, instructed in the metaphysics of his own nature, and insulted by the grovelling and insincere self-depreciation of his own creatures; I have heard him talked at, and talked about, by cowardly men-pleasers who had no more religion than a rhinoceros; and I have wondered much at the patience of heaven with all this detestable eloquence. I have heard also the short and stumbling prayers of the honest, of the Salvationist kneeling in the thoroughfare of a town full of sin, of the mother with her arms round the neck of a dying child; but none even of these have dealt so shrewd a thrust at my self-satisfaction as did the prayer of Farmer Jeremy. What strange secrets, I thought, are hidden in the human heart! Verily, the ways of man, like the ways of G.o.d, are past finding out.

Now, it so happened that I had given Jeremy a promise that I would, that very night, join him at supper and "have a chat." I would gladly have found an excuse if I could. But it was not easy to excuse oneself to Jeremy; his discernments were keen. Moreover, I half feared that he might have discovered my footsteps outside the barn; and I knew that if he had, the only wise course was to face the situation, tell the truth, and have it out. It was soon evident, however, that he had discovered nothing; and I, of course, kept my counsel.

I entered the farm kitchen and found Mrs Jeremy awaiting her husband by the fire. "Master's late in coming home," she said. "He's gone up the hill with a lantern, to set traps in the Grey Barn. He says it's full o'

rats. But he ought to have come back half an hour ago."

"He'll be back soon," I answered; and a moment later I heard the ring of his boots on the stone flags outside.

Entering the room, Jeremy, without greeting me, walked across the floor and tapped the barometer on the wall. "It's rising," he said. "I thought it would by the look of the moon last night. Well, given a bit o' fine weather now, we shall not do so badly after all. The wheat's less sprouted than I thought it was; just a little down in 'the Guns,' but none at all in 'Quebec.' Please G.o.d, we shall get forty-five to the acre, up there; and all in tip-top condition."

"How are the root-crops?" I asked.

"Looking splendid; couldn't be better. You see, they're all on the high ground."

"Did you set your traps?" said Mrs Jeremy.

"I did. But there's too many rats for trappin' to do much good. We must try this 'ere new poison. That'll cook their gooses for 'em, according to what I hear."

After supper the conversation turned once more on the weather. "It's bound to mend," said Jeremy; "there's a rising gla.s.s, and the wind's gone round to the north-west since I went up the hill. Just look out o'