Alick was also perfectly satisfied with the course events were taking, for he was always well supplied with money to ward off the attacks of the usurers, and at what seemed to him a very small price, for he never thought of adding up at the end of the year how much the total came to, and he was firmly convinced that his affairs were better attended to now that he lived at Pümpelhagen than they had ever been before. It was the old story over again. When a young squire who knows nothing whatever of farming wants to make improvements, he always begins with the live-stock. And why is this the case? Well, I imagine it is because young gentlemen think this subject the easiest to understand. All that they have to do is to buy a new bull, and a ram or two of some new fashioned breed, and then, as the laws of cattle-breeding are still sufficiently indefinite to allow of much theorising, even the stupidest of them has no difficulty in speaking learnedly on the subject. They have only to pass over as of no account, all that the old men around them have learnt from the experience of years, and they do not find it hard to do; after that these youthful farmers are as worthy of being listened to, in their own opinion at least, as those whose hair has grown grey at the work. There was a dairy of Breitenburg cows at Pümpelhagen, which the old squire had bought by Hawermann's advice and with Hawermann's assistance. This dairy must now be improved, so Alick went to Sommersdorf in Pommerania where there was a great cattle-show, and bought a splendid Ayrshire bull by Pomuchelskopp's advice. He bought this bull because he was handsome, because he came from Scotland, and because he was something new. There was a flock of Negretti sheep which produced a great quantity of wool, and were of a high market-value, but as Pomuchelskopp _said_ he had got four and sixpence a stone more for his wool, the young squire was induced to buy a couple of Electoral rams from his worthy neighbour, for which he was obliged to pay ready money. It never occurred to Alick to set the sum he made by the large quantity of wool given by his sheep, against that gained by Pomuchelskopp for the smaller quantity of finer wool; had he done so he might have found the result to be in his own favour, but unfortunately for him he had enough to do adding up other sums on a different subject.