ith pleasure of other things
as simple and common to everyday life--such things as he ordinarily
faced merely because he must, since he could not afford an experienced
bailiff. He was his own bailiff, his own steward, merely, he had often
thought, an unsuccessful farmer of half-starved lands. But this morning
neither he nor they seemed so starved, and--for no reason--there was a
future of some sort.

He emerged from his pool glowing, the turf feeling like velvet beneath
his feet, a fine light in his eyes.

"Yes," he said, throwing out his arms in a lordly stretch of physical
well-being, "it might be a magnificent thing--mere strong living. THIS
is magnificent."

CHAPTER XXXVI

BY THE ROADSIDE EVERYWHERE

His breakfast and the talk over it with Penzance seemed good things. It
suddenly had become worth while to discuss the approaching hop harvest
and the yearly influx of the hop pickers from London. Yesterday the
subject had appeared discouraging enough. The great hop gardens of the
estate had been in times past its most prolific source of agricultural
revenue and the boast and wonder of the hop-growing county. The neglect
and scant food of the lean years had cost them their reputation. Each
season they had needed smaller bands of "hoppers," and their standard
had been lowered. It had been his habit to think of them gloomily, as
of hopeless and irretrievable loss. Because this morning, for a remote
reason, the pulse of life beat strong in him he was taking a new view.
Might not study of the subject, constant attention and the application
of all available resource to one end produce appreciable results? The
idea presented itself in the form of a thing worth thinking of.

"It would provide an outlook and give one work to do," he put it to his
companion. "To have a roof over one's head, a sound body, and work to
do, is not so bad. Such things form the whole of G. Selden's cheerful
aim. His spirit is alight within me. I will walk over and talk to
Bolter."

Bolter was a farmer whose struggle to make ends meet was almost too much
for him. Holdings whose owners, either through neglect or lack of money,
have failed to do their duty as landlords in the matter of repairs of
farmhouses, outbuildings, fences, and other things, gradually fall into
poor hands. Resourceful and prosperous farmers do not care to hold lands
under unprosperous landlords. There were farms lying vacant on the Mount
Dunstan estate, there were othe