Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most heroic of us all. So I began to prepare myself in good earnest; and I followed Trevanion's instructions with a perseverance, which I could never, at that young day, have thrown into the dead life of books. I was in a good school amongst our Cumberland sheepwalks, to learn those simple elements of rural art which belong to the pastoral state. Mr Sidney, in his admirable _Australian Hand-Book_, recommends young gentlemen who think of becoming settlers in the Bush to bivouac for three months on Salisbury Plain. That book was not then written, or I might have taken the advice; meanwhile I think, with due respect to such authority, that I went through a preparatory training quite as useful in seasoning the future emigrant. I associated readily with the kindly peasants and craftsmen, who became my teachers. With what pride I presented my father with a desk and my mother with a work-box, fashioned by my own hands! I made Bolt a lock for his plate-chest. And (that last was _my_ magnum opus, my great masterpiece) I repaired and absolutely set going an old turret clock in the tower, that had stood at two P.M. since the memory of man. I loved to think, each time the hour sounded, that those who heard its deep chime would remember me. But the flocks were my main care. The sheep that I tended and helped to shear, and the lamb that I hooked out of the great marsh, and the three venerable ewes that I nursed through a mysterious sort of murrain, which puzzled all the neighbourhood--are they not written in thy loving chronicles, O House of Caxton! And now, since much of the success of my experiment must depend on the friendly terms I could establish with my intended partner, I wrote to Trevanion, begging him to get the young gentleman who was to join me, and whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us. Trevanion complied, and there arrived a tall fellow somewhat more than six feet high, answering to the name of Guy Bolding, in a cut-away sporting-coat, with a dog-whistle tied to the button-hole; drab shorts and gaiters, and a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive pockets. Guy Bolding had lived a year and a half at Oxford as a "fast man;" so "fast" had he lived that there was scarcely a tradesman at Oxford into whose books he had not contrived to run. His father was compelled to withdraw him from the university, at which he had already had the honour of being plucked for the little go: and the young gentleman, on being asked for what profession he was fit, had replied with conscious pride, "That he could tool a coach!" In despair, the sire, who owed his living to Trevanion, had asked the statesman's advice, and the advice had fixed me with a partner in expatriation.