Wheat-hoeing. [MAY, 



Who is this approaching ? Farmer Thorpe ? Yes, of a certainty, it is 

 that substantial yeoman, sallying forth from his substantial farm-house, 

 which peeps out from between two huge walnut-trees on the other side of 

 the road, with intent to survey his labourers in the wheat-field. Farmer 

 Thorpe is a stout, square, sturdy personage of fifty, or thereabouts, with a 

 hard weather-beaten countenance, of that peculiar vermilion, all over 

 alike, into which the action of the sun and wind sometimes tans a fair 

 complexion ; sharp shrewd features, and a keen grey eye. He looks com- 

 pletely like a man who will neither cheat nor be cheated : and such is his 

 character an upright, downright English yeoman just always, and kind 

 in a rough way but given to fits of anger, and filled with an abhorrence 

 of pilfering, and idleness, and trickery of all sorts, that makes him strict 

 as a master, and somewhat stern at workhouse and vestry. I doubt if he 

 will greatly relish the mode in which Jem and Susan are administering 

 the hoe in his wheat-drills. He will not reach the gate yet; for his usual 

 steady active pace is turned, by a recent accident, into an unequal, impa- 

 tient halt as if he were alike angry with his lameness and the cause. I 

 must speak to him as he passes not merely as a due courtesy to a good 

 neighbour, but to give the delinquents iu the field notice to resume their 

 hoeing ; but not a word of the limp that is a sore subject. 



" A fine day, Mr. Thorpe !" 



" We want rain, ma'am !" 



And on, with great civility, but without pausing a moment, he is gone. 

 He'll certainly catch Susan and her lover philandering over his wheat-fur- 

 rows. Well, that may take its chance ! they have his lameness in their 

 favour only that the cause of that lameness has made the worthy farmer 

 unusually cross. I think I must confide tho story to my readers. 



Gipsies and beggars do not in general much inhabit our neighbourhood ; 

 but, about half a mile off, there is a den so convenient for strollers and 

 vagabonds, that it sometimes tempts the rogues to a few days' sojourn. It 

 is, in truth, nothing more than a deserted brick-kiln, by the side of a lonely 

 lane. But there is something so snug and comfortable in the old building 

 (always keeping in view gipsy notions of comfort); the blackened walls are 

 so backed by the steep hill on whose side they are built so fenced from 

 the bleak north-east, and letting in so gaily the pleasant western sun ; and 

 the wide rugged impassable lane (used only as a road to the kiln, and 

 with that abandoned) is at once so solitary and deserted, and so close to 

 the inhabited and populous world, that it seems made for a tribe whose 

 prime requisites in a habitation are shelter, privacy, and a vicinity to farm- 

 yards. 



Accordingly, about a month ago, a pretty strong encampment, evidently 

 gipsies, took up their abode in the kiln. The party consisted of two or 

 three tall, lean, sinister-looking men, who went about the country mending 

 pots and kettles, and driving a small trade in old iron ; one or two chil- 

 dren, unnaturally quiet, the spies of the crew; an old woman, who sold 

 matches and told fortunes ; a young woman, with an infant strapped to 

 her back, who begged; several hungry-looking dogs, and three ragged 

 donkeys. The arrival of these vagabonds spread a general consternation 

 through the village. Gamekeepers arid housewives were in equal dismay. 

 Snares were found in the preserves poultry vanished from the farm-yards 

 a lamb was lost from the lea and a damask table-cloth, belonging to 

 the worshipful the Mayor of W , was abstracted from the drying- 

 ground of Mrs. Welles, the most celebrated laundress in these parts, to 

 whom it had been sent for the benefit of country washing. No end to the 



