g was put
aside for the time. They turned canal diggers instead. Irrigation
became their aim and task; the engineer was in his right place. The
water was raised from the stream and led out upon the moor, and
presently grass grew in the sand which the wiry stems of the heather
had clutched so long. Green meadows lined the water-runs, and
fragrant haystacks rose. To the lean sheep was added a cow, then
two. The farmer laid by a little, and took in more land for
cultivation. That meant breaking the heath. Also, it meant marl. The
heath is lime-poor; marl is lime in the exact form in which it best
fits that sandy soil. It was known to exist in some favored spots,
but the poor heath farmer could not bring it from a distance. So the
marl borer went with the canal digger. Into every acre he drove his
auger, and mapped out his discoveries. At last accounts he had found
marl in more than seventeen hundred places, and he is not done yet.
Where there was none, Dalgas's Society built portable railways into
the moor far enough to bring it to nearly every farmer's door.

It was as if a magic wand had been waved over the heath. With water
and marl, the means were at hand for fighting it and winning out.
Heads that had drooped in discouragement were raised. The cattle
keep increased, and with it came the farmer's wealth. Marl changes
the character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it there
was no reason why it should not grow crops--none, except the
withering blast of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to preach tree
planting had come.

While the canal digger and marl seeker were at work, there had been
neighborhood meetings and talks at which Captain Dalgas did the
talking. When he spoke the heath boer listened, for he had learned
to look upon him as one of them. He wore no gold lace. A plain man
in every-day gray tweeds, with his trousers tucked into his boots,
he spoke to plain people of things that concerned them vitally, and
in a way they could understand. So when he told them that the heath
had once been forest-clad, at least a large part of it, and pointed
them to the proofs, and that the woods could be made to grow again
to give them timber and shelter and crops, they gave heed. It was
worth trying at any rate. The shelter was the immediate thing. They
began planting hedges about their homesteads; not always wisely, for
it is not every tree that will grow in the heath. The wind whipped
and wore them, the ahl crampe