pectability, they set up a cheer, and I waved my hat, and
promised, amidst great applause, to come back with it full of sixpences.

CHAPTER XXX

COCKS AND COXCOMBS

Major Hockin brought the only fly as yet to be found in Bruntsea, to
meet me at Newport, where the railway ended at present, for want of
further encouragement.

"Very soon you go," he cried out to the bulkheads, or buffers, or
whatever are the things that close the career of a land-engine.
"Station-master, you are very wise in putting in your very best cabbage
plants there. You understand your own company. Well done! If I were to
offer you a shilling apiece for those young early Yorks, what would you
say, now?"

"Weel, a think I should say nah, Sir," the Scotch station-master made
answer, with a grin, while he pulled off his cap of office and put on a
dissolute Glengary. "They are a veery fine young kail, that always pays
for planting."

"The villain!" said the Major, as I jumped into the fly. "However, I
suppose he does quite right. Set a thief to watch a thief. The company
are big rogues, and he tries to be a bigger. We shall cut through his
garden in about three months, just when his cabbages are getting firm,
and their value will exceed that of pine-apples. The surveyor will
come down and certify, and the 'damage to crops' will be at least five
pounds, when they have no right to sow even mustard and cress, and a
saucepan would hold all the victuals on the land."

From this I perceived that my host was as full of his speculative
schemes as ever; and soon he made the driver of the one-horse fly turn
aside from the unfenced road and take the turf. "Coachman," he cried,
"just drive along the railway; you won't have the chance much longer."

There was no sod turned yet and no rod set up; but the driver seemed to
know what was meant, and took us over the springy turf where once had
run the river. And the salt breath of the sea came over the pebble
ridge, full of appetite and briskness, after so much London.

"It is one of the saddest things I ever heard of," Major Hockin began
to say to me. "Poor Shovelin! poor Shovelin! A man of large capital--the
very thing we want. It might have been the making of this place. I have
very little doubt that I must have brought him to see our great natural
advantages--the beauty of the situation, the salubrity of the air, the
absence of all clay, or marsh, or noxious deposit, the bright crisp
turf, and the nob