intelligence and superior energy. But intelligence, mind, has ever had
every obstacle to contend against. Look at M. Lesseps and his wonderful
Suez Canal. I tell you that to introduce scientific farming into England,
in the face of tradition, custom, and prejudice, is a far harder task than
overcoming the desert sand.'





CHAPTER IV



GOING DOWNHILL


An aged man, coming out of an arable field into the lane, pauses to look
back. He is shabbily clad, and there is more than one rent in his coat;
yet it is a coat that has once been a good one, and of a superior cut to
what a labourer would purchase. In the field the ploughman to whom he has
been speaking has started his team again. A lad walks beside the horses,
the iron creaks, and the ploughman holding the handles seems now to press
upon them with his weight, and now to be himself bodily pulled along. A
dull November cloud overspreads the sky, and misty skits of small rain
sweep across the landscape. As the old man looks back from the gate, the
chill breeze whistles through the boughs of the oak above him, tearing off
the brown dry leaves, and shaking out the acorns to fall at his feet. It
lifts his grey hair, and penetrates the threadbare coat. As he turns to
go, something catches his eye on the ground, and from the mud in the