"Well, I wouldn't meddle with 'em myself," said Solomon. "But some say
this country's seen its best days, and the sign is, as it's being
overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut
it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the
little, so as there shan't be a team left on the land, nor a whip to
crack."
"I'll crack _my_ whip about their ear'n, afore they bring it to that,
though," said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved
onward.
Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by
railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in
the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for
talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.
One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and
Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy,
it happened that her father had some business which took him to
Yoddrell's farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value
an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb
expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be
confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms
from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in
walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his
work, he encountered the party of the company's agents, who were
adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them,
observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going
to measure. It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which
become delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little,
and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the
hedgerows.
The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along
the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by
unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on
one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on
the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the
working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman
without capital and generally unskilled. It was the harder to Fred's
disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer
rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this
pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds. Even when he had fixed on
what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father. But
it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the
more difficult task:--what secular avocation on earth was there for a
young man (whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was
at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special
knowledge? Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and
slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go
round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges
from one field to another. Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and
on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven
men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive
approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while
Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening across the field to join
the threatened group. Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find
the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in
smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing
after swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats
before them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth's assistant, a lad
of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb's order,
had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless. The coated men
had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting
in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw
their chase into confusion. "What do you confounded fools mean?"
shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right
and left with his whip. "I'll swear to every one of you before the
magistrate. You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I
know. You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you
don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he
remembered his own phrases.