Ten Thousand a Year 259 



and wind and cloud and the very colors of the 

 landscape. The weather always warned him and 

 he recognized the warning. So when his neigh- 

 bors — Crawford, Moorhead, McCord, Mottier, 

 Butt, Nash, Hampson, and so on for miles — ^might 

 be holding off, as they said, for bad weather, 

 Neville would be in full figure in his fields, pushing 

 his work vigorously. But when he hugged the fire, 

 most of his neighbors hugged theirs. I do not 

 doubt that his weather-wisdom largely accounted 

 for his bank-account. 



His rigid honesty of course cost him, as it costs 

 anyone, what some of his neighbors were wont to 

 call ''a pretty penny.'* Whatever detail of his 

 estate you looked at, the thing you saw was the 

 real thing. His teams were of standard stock, 

 powerful animals, each capable of pulling his full 

 share. He kept '^ Castor*' and 'ToUux'* for the 

 road; his plow teams were never on the road, 

 save to haul loads. ''A mile on the road for a 

 plow-horse,'* said he, "wears him out more than 

 five miles in the grape-rows." He would not 

 tolerate any misuse of his teams, though I have 

 seen him use the whip thoroughly and to advantage 

 on a stupid horse. But this was the last resort. 

 He never coddled his horses, but cared for them as 

 members of his household. I incline to think that 

 he attributed a sort of soul to a horse, and he cer- 

 tainly believed in a horse-heaven. But his curious 

 fancy for personifying everything which has life 

 may possibly explain this. He never sold a horse. 



