THE FIELD-PLAY. 11 



the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer 

 declined, he would have said that a living could only 

 be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost- 

 time. By sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the 

 keenest frost-bitten meanness of living ; by scraping 

 a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder, a 

 farmer might possibly get through the year. At the 

 end of each year he would be rather worse off than 

 before, descending a step annually. He must nibble 

 like a frost-driven mouse to merely exist So poor 

 was the soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in 

 wet weather a slip of the foot exposed it the heel 

 cut through the veneer of turf into the cold, dead, 

 moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a 

 horse moved over the marshy land his hoof left deep 

 holes which never again filled up, but remained the 

 year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and 

 now dry holes. The rain made the ground a swamp ; 

 the sun cracked it as it does paint. Who could pay 

 rent for such a place ? for rushes, flags, and water. 



Yet it was said, with whisper and nod, that the 

 tenant, Mr. Roberts, was a warm man as warm men 

 go after several years of bad seasons, falling prices, 

 and troubles of all kinds. For one thing, he hopped, 

 and it is noted among country folk, that, if a man 

 hops, he generally accumulates money. Mr. Roberts 

 hopped, or rather dragged his legs from rheumatics 

 contracted in thirty years' hardest of hard labour on 

 that thankless farm. Never did any man labour so 

 continually as he, from the earliest winter dawn when 

 the blackbird, with puffed feathers, still tried to 

 slumber in the thornbush, but could not for cold, on 



