round-barrelled cobs; and to be well horsed
was to be in better spirits about Long-Ash Lane than poor pedestrians
could attain to during its passage.

But the farmer did not talk much to his friend as he rode along. The
enterprise which had brought him there filled his mind; for in truth it
was important. Not altogether so important was it, perhaps, when
estimated by its value to society at large; but if the true measure of a
deed be proportionate to the space it occupies in the heart of him who
undertakes it, Farmer Charles Darton's business to-night could hold its
own with the business of kings.

He was a large farmer. His turnover, as it is called, was probably
thirty thousand pounds a year. He had a great many draught horses, a
great many milch cows, and of sheep a multitude. This comfortable
position was, however, none of his own making. It had been created by
his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present
representative of the line.

Darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a buttoned-up
pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial subtlety. In Darton
the son, this trade subtlety had become transmuted into emotional, and
the harshness had disappeared; he would have been called a sad man but
for his constant care not to divide himself from lively friends by piping
notes out of harmony with theirs. Contemplative, he allowed his mind to
be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes. So that, naturally
enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his
present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a
capitalist--a stationary result which did not agitate one of his
unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired. The
motive of his expedition to-night showed the same absence of anxious
regard for Number One.

The party rode on in the slow, safe trot proper to night-time and bad
roads, Farmer Darton's head jigging rather unromantically up and down
against the sky, and his motions being repeated with bolder emphasis by
his friend Japheth Johns; while those of the latter were travestied in
jerks still less softened by art in the person of the lad who attended
them. A pair of whitish objects hung one on each side of the latter,
bumping against him at each step, and still further spoiling the grace of
his seat. On close inspection they might have been perceived to be open
rush baskets--one containing a turkey, and t