This gateway was only between two meadows, and the ordinary farmer, when the old gate wore out, would have stopped it with a couple of rails, or a hurdle or two, something very, very cheap and rough; at most a gate knocked up by the village carpenter of ash and willow, at the lowest possible charge. Iden could not find a carpenter good enough to make _his_ gate in the hamlet; he sent for one ten miles, and paid him full carpenter's wages. He was not satisfied then, he watched the man at his work to see that the least little detail was done correctly, till the fellow would have left the job, had he not been made pliable by the Goliath ale. So he just stretched the job out as long as he could, and talked and talked with Iden, and stroked him the right way, and drank the ale, and "played it upon me and on William, That day in a way I despise." Till what with the planing, and shaving, and smoothing, and morticing, and ale, and time, it footed up a pretty bill, enough for three commonplace gates, not of the Iden style. Why, Iden had put away those pieces of timber years before for this very purpose, and had watched the sawyers saw them out at the pit. They would have made good oak furniture. There was nothing special or particular about this gateway; he had done the same in turn for every gateway on the farm; it was the Iden way. A splendid gate it was, when it was finished, fit for a nobleman's Home Park. I doubt, if you would find such a gate, so well proportioned, and made of such material on any great estate in the kingdom. For not even dukes can get an Iden to look after their property. An Iden is not to be "picked up," I can tell you. The neighbourhood round about had always sneered in the broad country way at Iden's gates. "Vit for m' Lard's park. What do _he_ want wi' such geates? A' ain't a got no cattle to speak on; any ould rail ud do as good as thuck geat." The neighbourhood round about could never understand Iden, never could see why he had gone to such great trouble to render the homestead beautiful with trees, why he had re-planted the orchard with pleasant eating apples in the place of the old cider apples, hard and sour. "Why wouldn't thaay a' done for he as well as for we?" All the acts of Iden seemed to the neighbourhood to be the acts of a "vool." When he cut a hedge, for instance, Iden used to have the great bushes that bore unusually fine May bloom saved from the billhook, that they might flower in the spring. So, too, with the crab-apples--for the sake of the white blossom; so, too, with the hazel--for the nuts. But what caused the most "wonderment" was the planting of the horse-chestnuts in the corner of the meadow? Whatever did he want with horse-chestnuts? No other horse-chestnuts grew about there. You couldn't eat the horse-chestnuts when they dropped in autumn.