folly! to fret yourself out of this jolly world because you can't
get one particular slice of its upper crust. Why, one bit of land is as
good as another; and I'll show you how to get land--in this
neighborhood, too. Ay, right under Sir Charles's nose."

"Show me that," said Bassett, gloomily and incredulously.

"Leave off moping, then, and I will. I advise the bank, you know, and
'Splatchett's' farm is mortgaged up to the eyes. It is not the only
one. I go to the village inns, and pick up all the gossip I hear
there."

"How am I to find money to buy land?"

"I'll put you up to that, too; but you must leave off moping. Hang it,
man, never say die. There are plenty of chances on the cards. Get your
color back, and marry a girl with money, and turn that into land. The
first thing is to leave off grizzling. Why, you are playing the enemy's
game. That can't be right, can it?"

This remark was the first that really roused the sick man.

Wheeler had too few clients to lose one. He now visited Bassett almost
daily, and, being himself full of schemes and inventions, he got
Bassett, by degrees, out of his lethargy, and he emerged into daylight
again; but he looked thin, and yellow as a guinea, and he had turned
miser. He kept but one servant, and fed her and himself at Sir Charles
Bassett's expense. He wired that gentleman's hares and rabbits in his
own hedges. He went out with his gun every sunny afternoon, and shot a
brace or two of pheasants, without disturbing the rest; for he took no
dog with him to run and yelp, but a little boy, who quietly tapped the
hedgerows and walked the sunny banks and shaws. They never came home
empty-handed.

But on those rarer occasions when Sir Charles and his friends beat the
Bassett woods Richard was sure to make a large bag; for he was a cool,
unerring shot, and flushed the birds in hedgerows, slips of underwood,
etc., to which the fairer sportsmen had driven them.

These birds and the surplus hares he always sold in the market-town,
and put the money into a box. The rabbits he ate, and also squirrels,
and, above all, young hedgehogs: a gypsy taught him how to cook them,
viz., by inclosing them in clay, and baking them in wood embers; then
the bristles adhere to the burned clay, and the meat is juicy. He was
his own gardener, and vegetables cost him next to nothing.

So he went on through all the winter months, and by the spring his
health and strength were restored. Then he turned