se across the Wash belonging to Mr.
Caldigate. The fields around are all square and all flat, all mostly
arable, and are often so deep in mud that a stranger wonders that a
plough should be able to be dragged through the soil. The farming is,
however, good of its kind, and the ploughing is mostly done by steam.

Such is and has been for some years the house at Folking in which Mr.
Caldigate has lived quite alone. For five years after his wife's death
he had only on rare occasions received visitors there. Twice his brother
had come to Folking, and had brought a son with him. The brother had
been a fellow of a college at Cambridge, and had taken a living, and
married late in life. The living was far away in Dorsetshire, and the
son, at the time of these visits, was being educated at a private
school. Twice they had both been at Folking together, and the uncle had,
in his silent way, liked the boy. The lad had preferred, or had
pretended to prefer, books to rats; had understood or seemed to
understand, something of the advantages of cheap food for the people,
and had been commended by the father for general good conduct. But when
they had last taken their departure from Folking, no one had entertained
any idea of any peculiar relations between the nephew and the uncle. It
was not till a year or two more had run by, that Mr. Daniel Caldigate
thought of making his nephew George the heir to the property.

The property indeed was entailed upon John, as it had been entailed upon
John's father. There were many institutions of his country which Mr.
Caldigate hated with almost an inhuman hatred; but there were none more
odious to him than that of entails, which institution he was wont to
prove by many arguments to be the source of all the ignorance and all
the poverty and all the troubles by which his country was inflicted. He
had got his own property by an entail, and certainly never would have
had an acre had his father been able to consume more than a
life-interest. But he had denied that the property had done him any
good, and was loud in declaring that the entail had done the property
and those who lived on it very much harm. In his hearts of hearts he did
feel a desire that when he was gone the acres should still belong to a
Caldigate. There was so much in him of the leaven of the old English
squirarchic aristocracy as to create a pride in the fact that the
Caldigates had been at Folking for three hundred years, and a wish t