thousand acres."

"But I don't know," said Mrs Norton, smiling; "you promised to
explain."

"To be sure; so I did!" he exclaimed, eagerly reaching down a rolled-up
plan, and spreading it upon the table. "Now look here, Ada; this will
be an expensive affair, and we shall reap no benefit from it ourselves,
for it is a matter of years and years; but that young dog will have an
estate which will make him hold up his head as high as he likes. Now,
see here--this is my side. I've bought these two thousand acres of
worthless marshland--worthless save for peat-digging and wild-duck
shooting. This is the piece, Ada, love," he said, solemnly, as he laid
a finger upon the plan. "I chose this so that I might preserve the
pine-wood untouched."

He stopped to gaze up in his wife's face, and as she recalled the past,
she bent over him until her cheek touched his forehead.

"Well, love," he said, raising himself and speaking cheerfully, "we--
that is to say, the other purchasers and myself--dig a large drain, or
canal, through our marsh pieces right to the Trent, and fit our drain
with sluice-gates, so that at every high tide we flood our low tract of
marsh with the thick, muddy waters loaded with the alluvial soil of
Yorkshire and our own county, brought down by many a river and stream,
which, after the fashion of the hill floods, by slow and almost
imperceptible degrees, is deposited upon our peat and rushes, in a
heavy, unctuous, wondrously rich mud, or warp, till, in the course of
time, we have it two, three, and in places even four feet deep. Then
comes the change: we cease flooding, and give all our attention to
thoroughly draining our warp land, which now becomes, in place of marsh,
fit only to grow water-plants, a rich and fertile soil. Nature has
converted it for us; and twenty years hence, instead of marsh, Master
Brace will have a couple of thousand acres of the best soil in England.
That is all I can do for him, and after all I don't think that it will
be such a very mean heritage. Now, love, what do you say to that?"

Mrs Norton's answer was a cry of joy: for at that moment, free of step,
bright and happy, in came Brace Norton, to be strained again and again
to his mother's breast.

There was a grim smile of pride and pleasure upon Captain Norton's
scarred face, as, after hastily rolling up his plans, he caught at his
son's disengaged hand.

"My dear Brace, how well and hearty you look!" he exclaimed, as he