After you pass the “Blue Anchor”—the sign of which swings from the branch of an elm tree older even than the house itself—a few steps along the road bring you in sight of the , square tower of Coombe-Acton Church. You cannot see the church itself, as, with schools and rectory close by it, it lies at the back of the village, about two hundred yards up a lane. Like the village to whose spiritual needs it ministers, the church, to an ordinary observer, is nothing out of the common, although certain small of architecture, not noticed by an uncultured eye, make it an object of some interest to archæologists. Visit it or not, according to your , but afterwards keep on straight through the long, straggling village, until the houses begin to grow even more straggling, the gardens larger and less cared for as , displaying more cabbages and runners than roses—keep on until the houses cease altogether and hedges take the place of palings and walls, and at last you will come to Watercress Farm, a long, low white house, one side of which on the highway, whilst the other looks over the three hundred acres of land attached to it.  
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Not a very large acreage, it is true, but then it is all good land, for the most part such as auctioneers describe as rich, warm, deep, old pasture land; such land that, at the time this tale opens, any farmer, by , knowledge of his business, and hard work, could make even more than a bare living out of, and could meet his landlord on rent day with a cheerful face, knowing that after rent and other outgoings were provided for something would yet be left for himself.
 
Who occupies the Watercress Farm now, and whether in these days of depression his rent is forthcoming or not, matters little. At the time I write of it, it was rented by farmer Leigh, even as his , according to village tradition, had rented it for some two hundred years. In quiet, conservative places like Coombe-Acton, a farm of this kind often goes from father to son with more than an estate, landlord and well knowing that their interests are identical.
 
It was a fine afternoon towards the end of June. Abraham Leigh was by the gate of the field known as the home meadow looking at the long, ripe grass as the summer breeze swept across it. He was a good of the Somersetshire farmer. A big, sturdy man, whose movements were slow and deliberate. His face, if heavy and , not by any means the face of a fool. No doubt, a man of views—the world, for him, extending to Bristol market and westwards to the Bristol Channel. Nevertheless, respected in his little world as a wonderful judge of a beast, a great authority on tillages, and, above all, a man who always[145] had a balance in his favor at the Somersetshire Bank; a type of that extinct race, the prosperous farmer, who looked on all townsmen with contempt, thinking, as all farmers should think, that the owners of broad acres, and those engaged in agriculture were alone of respect.
 
Yet, to-day, in spite of his advantages and acquirements, Farmer Leigh looked on the fifteen-acre meadow with a puzzled and discontented expression on his honest face; and, moreover, of dissatisfaction were from his lips. Farmers—Somersetshire farmers especially—are proverbial grumblers, but it is seldom they without an audience. It is outsiders who get the benefit of their complaints. Besides, one would think that the tenant of Watercress Farm had little at present to complain of. The drop of rain so badly wanted had been long in coming, but it had come just in the nick of time to save the grass, and if the crop outwardly looked a little thin, Mr. Leigh’s experienced eye told him that the undergrowth was thick, and that the quality of the hay would be first-class. Moreover, what corn and roots he had looked , so it seems strange that the farmer should be when he had no one to listen to him, and should lean so upon the gate of the field when no one observed him.
 
“I can’t make him out,” he said. “Good boy he be, too; yet, instead o’ me with the land, always going about dreaming or messing with mud. Can’t think where he got his notions from. Suppose it must ’a been from the mother, poor thing! Always fond o’ gimcracks and such like, she were. Gave the lad such an outlandish name I’m ashamed to hear it.[146] Father’s and grandfather’s name ought to be good enough for a Leigh—good boy though he be, too!”
 
A soft look settled on Abraham Leigh’s face as he repeated the last words; then he went deeper into his of despond, where, no doubt, he battled as manfully as a until he reached the other shore and fancied he had found the solution of his difficulties.
 
His face brightened. “Tell ’ee what,” he said, addressing the waving grass in front of him, “I’ll ask Mr. Herbert. Squire’s a man who have seen the world. I’ll take his advice about the boy. Seems hard like on me, too. Ne’er a Leigh till this one but what were a farmer to the !”
 
His mind made up, the farmer strode off to make arrangement with mowers. Had he been troubled with twenty and sons, the hay must be made while the sun shines.
 
Although he had settled what to do, it was some time before the weighty resolve was carried into execution. Folks about Coombe-Acton do not move with the celerity of cotton or other men of business. Sure they are, but slow. So it was not until the September rent day that the farmer consulted his landlord about his domestic difficulty—the possession of a son, an only child, of about fifteen, who, instead of making himself useful on the land, did little else save wander about in a dreamy way, looking at all objects in nature, or inanimate, or employed himself in the mysterious pursuit which his father described as “messing with mud.” Such conduct was a departure from the respectable traditions of the Leigh family, so great, that at times the father thought it an infliction[147] laid upon him for some cause or other by an inscrutable .
 
There are certain Spanish noblemen who, on account of the of their families and services rendered, are permitted to enter the royal presence with covered heads. It was, perhaps, for somewhat similar reasons, a custom handed down from father to son and established by time, that the tenant of Watercress Farm paid his rent to the landlord in person, not through the medium of an agent. Mr. Herbert being an important man in the West country, the Leigh family valued this privilege as highly as ever hidalgo valued the one above mentioned. Mr. Herbert, a refined, intellectual-looking man of about fifty, received the farmer , and after the rent, without a word as to or reduction, had been paid in notes of the county bank—dark and , but valued in this particular district far above Bank of England promises—landlord and tenant settled down to a few minutes’ conversation on crops and kindred subjects. Then the farmer unburdened his mind.
 
“I’ve come to ask a favor of your advice, sir, about my boy, Jerry.”
 
“Yes,” said Mr. Herbert, “I know him—a nice, good-looking boy. I see him at church with you, and about your place when I pass. What of him?”
 
“Well, you zee, zur,” said the farmer, speaking with more Somerset dialect than usual, “he’ve a been at Bristol Grammar School till just now. Masters all send good accounts of him. I don’t hold wi’ too much learning, so thought ’twere time he come home and helped me like. But not a bit o’ good he be on the varm; not a bit, zur! Spends near all his time messing about wi’ dirt.”
 
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“Doing what?” asked Mr. Herbert, astonished.
 
“A-muddling and a-messing with bits o’ clay. Making little figgers, like, and tries to bake ’em in the oven.”
 
“Oh, I see what you mean. What sort of figures?”
 
“All sorts, sir. Little clay figgers of horses, dogs, pigs—why, you’d scarce believe it, sir—last week I found him making the figger of a naked ’ooman! A naked ’ooman! Why, the lad could never a’ seen such a thing.”
 
Abraham Leigh waited with open eyes to hear Mr. Herbert’s opinion of such an extraordinary, if not unusual, proceeding.
 
Mr. Herbert smiled. “Perhaps your son is a youthful genius.”
 
“Genius or not, I want to know, sir, what to do wi’ him. How’s the boy to make a living? A farmer he’ll never be.”
 
“You follow me and I will show you something.”
 
Mr. Herbert led his guest to his drawing-room—a room furnished with the taste of a travelled man. As the farmer at its , he directed his attention to four beautiful statues standing in the corners of the room.
 
“I gave the man who made those seven hundred pounds for them, and could sell them to-morrow for a thousand if I chose. That’s almost as good as farming, isn’t it?”
 
His tenant’s eyes were wide with . “A thousand pounds, sir!” he . “Why, you might have bought that fourteen-acre field with that.”
 
“These give me more pleasure than land,” replied Mr. Herbert. “But about your boy; when I am riding[149] by I will look in and see what he can do, then give you my advice.”
 
The farmer thanked him and returned home. As he jogged along the road to Watercress Farm, he muttered at : “A thousand pounds in those white figures! Well, well, well, I never did!”
 
Mr. Herbert was a man who kept a promise, whether made to high or low. Five days after his interview with Abraham Leigh he rode up to the door of the farm. He was not alone. By his side rode a gay, laughing, light-haired child of thirteen, who ruled an indulgent father with a rod of iron. Mr. Herbert had been a for some years; the girl, and a boy who was just leaving Harrow for the university, being his only surviving children. The boy was, perhaps, all that Mr. Herbert might have wished, but he could see no fault in the , imperious, spoilt little maid, who was the sunshine of his life.
 
She tripped lightly after her father into the farm-house, laughing at the way in which he was obliged to bend his head to avoid damage from the low ; she seated herself with becoming dignity on the chair which the widowed sister, who kept house for Abraham Leigh, tendered her with many courtesies. A pretty child, indeed, and one who gave rare promise of growing into a lovely woman.
 
The farmer was away somewhere on the farm, but could be fetched in a minute if Mr. Herbert would wait. Mr. Herbert waited, and very soon his tenant made his appearance and thanked his visitor for the trouble he was taking on his behalf.
 
“Now let me see the boy,” said Mr. Herbert, after all sense of trouble.
 
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Leigh went to the door of the room and shouted out, “Jerry, Jerry, come down. You’re wanted, my man.”
 
In a moment the door opened, and the cause of Mr. Leigh’s discontent came upon the scene in the form of a dark-eyed, dark-haired, pale-faced boy, tall but slightly built; not, so far as physique went, much credit to the country-side. Yet in some respects a striking-looking if not handsome lad. The dark, eyes and strongly-marked brow would arrest attention; but the face was too thin, too thoughtful for the age, and could scarcely be associated with what commonly constitutes a good-looking lad. Yet regularity of feature was there, and no one would dare to be sure that beauty would not come with manhood.
 
He was not seen at that moment under circumstances. Knowing nothing about the visitors, he had obeyed his father’s summons in hot haste; consequently he entered the room in his sh............