Towards the evening a gentleman and lady, the first middle-aged, the
latter very young--father and daughter--approach, their horses seeming to
linger as they walk through the shallow stream, and the cool water
splashes above their fetlocks. The shooting season is near at hand,
Parliament has risen, and the landlords have returned home. Instead of the
Row, papa must take his darling a ride through the lanes, a little dusty
as the autumn comes on, and pauses to read the notice on the wall. It is
his neighbour's tenant, not his, but it comes home to him here. It is the
real thing--the fact--not the mere seeing it in the papers, or the warning
hints in the letters of his own steward. 'Papa,' is rather quiet for the
rest of the ride. Ever since he was a lad--how many years ago is that?--he
has shot with his neighbour's party over this farm, and recollects the
tenant well, and with that friendly feeling that grows up towards what we
see year after year. In a day or two the clergyman drives by with his low
four-wheel and fat pony, notes the poster as the pony slackens at the
descent to the water, and tells himself to remember and get the tithe.
Some few Sundays, and Farmer Smith will appear in church no more.

Farmer Smith this beautiful morning is looking at the wheat, which is, and
is not, his. It would have been cut in an ordinary season, but the rains
have delayed the ripening. He wonders how the crop ever came up at all
through the mass of weeds that choked it, the spurrey that filled the
spaces between the stalks below, the bindweed that climbed up them, the
wild camomile flowering and flourishing at the edge, the tall thistles
lifting their heads above it in bunches, and the great docks whose red
seeds showed at a distance. He sent in some men, as much to give them
something to do as for any real good, one day, who in a few hours pulled
up enough docks to fill a cart. They came across a number of snakes, and