Then, Ned had acquired literary tastes and a knowledge of minstrelsy, which made him a perfect treasure at harvest-homes, sheep-shearings, and such-like. Amongst his class he was considered an orator, and it is greatly to be questioned whether Mario was ever more warmly applauded than Mr. Byrne, when at the festive board he “favoured the company” with “Auld Lang Syne.” A true diplomatist, he always selected songs which would bear a chorus, well knowing that the true secret of personal popularity is to induce every one to believe that some portion of that popularity is reflected on him or her. A man is, as a rule, much more heartily clapped when the audience feel they are clapping themselves at the same time—clapping their own talents, sentiments, virtues; and Ned’s admirers accordingly stamped their feet, and hammered on the table with their spoons and knives in precise proportion as the chorus to Mr. Byrne’s melody had been long, loud, and discordant. After leaving the printing-office, which he quitted, because, as he stated, the hours kept by authors were bad for his constitution, he obtained a situation with a lawyer residing in the Temple, whose hours proved to be still worse than those affected by the authors with whom Ned had previously associated. “You might get some sleep in the one case, drop off in the hall, or have forty winks sitting on the stairs, but with Mr. Froom there was rest neither day nor night,” he said; so, finding that town habits were not to his mind, that he had to work harder in London than “anybody ever was asked to work in the country,” Ned, then a stunted, pale-faced, sickly lad, resolved to cut the undesirable acquaintance of members both of the literary and legal professions, and return home to those peaceful shades where, in former days, he had digested fat bacon, cheese in quantity, and— “Home-made bread As heavy as lead;” to say nothing of various other delicacies: such as batter and Yorkshire puddings, treacle roll-up, bubble-and-squeak, toad-in-the-hole, harslet-pie, and liver-and-crow—fearful combinations, which are all as appetising to the agricultural classes as the daintiest dishes of a French _chef_ to the upper ten thousand. Upon this fare, Ned, in the pure country air, throve and grew apace, and when, in due time, he took service with Major Dudley, of Berrie Down, he was a fine, strapping fellow, willing and able to do almost anything in the way of farm labour, and not above putting his hand to whatever his hand found to do. He had been “odd and useful man” at Berrie Down so long back as the memory of Arthur Dudley extended. His hair had grown grey from the passage of years spent at the Hollow, and not, as he facetiously informed young women, from its having stayed out too long in the wet one night and got mouldy.