d man's
work; of a father, who spoke seldom and never twice--a father whose
heavy foot upon the threshold sent his children scuttling like rabbits
to hidden lairs and dens. She remembered the dogs; the bright gun-barrel
above the chimney-piece; the steam of clothes hung to dry after many a
soaking in "soft" weather; the reek of the peat; the brown eyes and
steaming nostrils of the bullocks, that sometimes looked through the
kitchen window in icy winter twilights, as though they would willingly
change their byres for the warmth within.

Mrs. Blanchard enjoyed the thought that her son should reanimate these
scenes of her own childhood; and he, burning with energy and zeal, and
not dead to his own significance as a man of money, saw promises of
prosperity on either hand. It lay with him, he told his heart, to win
smiling fatness from this hungry region. Right well he knew how it came
about that those who had preceded him had failed, missed their
opportunities, fooled themselves, and flung away their chances.
Evidences of their ignorance stared at him from the curtains of the
mist, but he knew better; he was a man who had thought a bit in his time
and had his head screwed on the right way, thank God. These facts he
poured into his mother's ear, and she smiled thoughtfully, noted the
changes time had wrought, and indicated to him those things the landlord
might reasonably be expected to do before Will should sign and seal.

The survey ended, her son helped Damaris into a little market-cart,
which he had bought for her upon coming into his fortune. A staid pony,
also his purchase, completed the equipage, and presently Mrs. Blanchard
drove comfortably away; while Will, who yet proposed to tramp, for the
twentieth time, each acre of Newtake land, watched her depart, then
turned to continue his researches. A world of thought rested on his
brown face. Arrived at each little field, he licked his pencil, and made
notes in a massive new pocketbook. He strode along like a conqueror of
kingdoms, frowned and scratched his curly head as problem after problem
rose, smiled when he solved them, and entered the solution in his book.
For the wide world was full of young green, and this sanguine youth
soared lark-high in soul under his happy circumstances. Will breathed
out kindness to all mankind just at present, and now before that
approaching welfare he saw writ largely in beggarly Newtake, before the
rosy dawn which Hope spread over this