A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. IO3 



apiece ; his wife worked tirelessly for the house. 

 When things were ripe he moved to Rispham, and 

 did very well with Southdowns. At last he came to 

 Lycetts, and settled down to end his days on the 

 hundred and thirty acres of middling land, content 

 with fortune, and recognising easily the limit of his 

 affairs, No less in secure middle age on his own 

 farm than in the up-hill years when he gathered other 

 men's harvests, he worked as few work now. Since 

 rheumatism cut him down at seventy, he makes shift 

 to hoe among turnips, propped between the hoe and 

 a stick, or to look after the horses. But it is not much 

 more than a formal defiance to idleness ; four sons, 

 tall men whose worth is not to be calculated in terms 

 of the ordinary labourer, live in the house and keep 

 the land " like a garden." " Good boys, they are," 

 says the old man ; "I alias know they'll do just what 

 I tell 'em. I does without any odd man so long as I 

 can ; you can't put no trust in 'em. That's half why 

 farmin's as bad as it is ; there's not what I call 

 honesty ! There was a fella I turned off last year, 

 he was tellin' them in the publics down in the 

 village how he'd been makin' a fool of me, and 

 what he got out of the place. They han't got 

 their hearts in the work, not in no sense, like. 

 They must be right here" he says, laying a 



