d his old-fashioned prejudices on the matter,
which were insuperable. "My forefathers," quoth he, "did not put that
clause in their leases without good cause; and as the Casino lands are
entailed on Frank, I have no right to gratify your foreign whims at his
expense."

To make up for the loss of the flax, Jackeymo resolved to convert a very
nice bit of pasture into orchard ground, which he calculated would bring
in L10 net per acre by the time Miss Violante was marriageable. At this
the squire pished a little; but as it was quite clear that the land
would be all the more valuable hereafter for the fruit-trees, he
consented to permit the "grass-land" to be thus partially broken up.

All these changes left poor Lenny Fairfield very much to himself,--at
a time when the new and strange devices which the initiation into
book knowledge creates made it most desirable that he should have the
constant guidance of a superior mind.

One evening after his work, as Lenny was returning to his mother's
cottage, very sullen and very moody, he suddenly came in contact with
Sprott the tinker.

CHAPTER V.

The tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an old kettle,
with a little fire burning in front of him, and the donkey hard by,
indulging in a placid doze. Mr. Sprott looked up as Lenny passed, nodded
kindly, and said,--

"Good evenin', Lenny: glad to hear you be so 'spectably sitivated with
Mounseer."

"Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancour in his recollections,
"you're not ashamed to speak to me now that I am not in disgrace. But
it was in disgrace, when it wasn't my fault, that the real gentleman was
most kind to me."

"Ar-r, Lenny," said the tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said
Ar-r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real
gentleman, who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his
c'racter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his
'sociations. But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!"

"To me?"

"To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say."

Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this
invitation.

"I hears," said the tinker, in a voice made rather indistinct by a
couple of nails, which he had inserted between his teeth,--"I hears as
how you be unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum nice cheap books in my
bag yonder,--sum as low as a penny."

"I should like to see them