dingle. How uneven the ground is! Surely these excavations, now so
thoroughly clothed with vegetation, must originally have been huge
gravel pits; there is no other way of accounting for the labyrinth,
for they do dig gravel in such capricious meanders; but the quantity
seems incredible. Well! there is no end of guessing! We are
getting amongst the springs, and must turn back. Round this corner,
where on ledges like fairy terraces the orchises and arums grow, and
we emerge suddenly on a new side of the dell, just fronting the
small homestead of our good neighbour Farmer Allen.

This rustic dwelling belongs to what used to be called in this part
of the country 'a little bargain': thirty or forty acres, perhaps,
of arable land, which the owner and his sons cultivated themselves,
whilst the wife and daughters assisted in the husbandry, and eked
out the slender earnings by the produce of the dairy, the poultry
yard, and the orchard;--an order of cultivators now passing rapidly
away, but in which much of the best part of the English character,
its industry, its frugality, its sound sense, and its kindness might
be found. Farmer Allen himself is an excellent specimen, the
cheerful venerable old man with his long white hair, and his bright
grey eye, and his wife is a still finer. They have had a hard
struggle to win through the world and keep their little property
undivided; but good management and good principles, and the
assistance afforded them by an admirable son, who left our village a
poor 'prentice boy, and is now a partner in a great house in London
have enabled them to overcome all the difficulties of these trying
times, and they are now enjoying the peaceful evenings of a
well-spent life as free from care and anxiety as their best friends
could desire.