It was a fine afternoon towards the end of June. Abraham Leigh was standing by the gate of the field known as the home meadow looking at the long, ripe grass rippling as the summer breeze swept across it. He was a thoroughly good specimen of the Somersetshire farmer. A big, sturdy man, whose movements were slow and deliberate. His face, if heavy and stolid, not by any means the face of a fool. No doubt, a man of circumscribed views--the world, for him, extending eastwards 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 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 worthy 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, murmurs of dissatisfaction were proceeding from his lips. Farmers--Somersetshire farmers especially--are proverbial grumblers, but it is seldom they grumble 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 promising, so it seems strange that the farmer should be grumbling when he had no one to listen to him, and should lean so disconsolately 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' helping 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. 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 slough of despond, where, no doubt, he battled as manfully as a Christian until he reached the other shore and fancied he had found the solution of his difficulties.