Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! as the fly-wheel whizzed round with a sudden ease in working. "I detest these ploughing engines," said Squire Thorpe, looking over the gate and leaning his arms on it, as country people always do. "But if the tenants find deep ploughing and manuring better, I suppose that's the point," said Valentine. "For the tenant, yes," said the Squire, as he shouldered his gun and turned away from the gate. "For _me_, it is another matter. It is a question with me if this deep ploughing will not exhaust the earth." "But the artificial manure," said Valentine, who was inclined to argue with any one. "Rubbish! Why, it's only used like dust--not an eighth of an inch thick; and they take all that out again quick enough. Then these deep drains; they carry away as much of the richness of the soil as water." "You don't think much of unexhausted improvements," said Geoffrey. "The greatest nonsense ever talked," said the Squire, working himself into a temper. "It's simply a device to suck every atom out of the soil, and leave me as dry as a dead hemlock. What profit do you suppose I get out of the land? I'm pestered to put up cattle-stalls and sheds, to sink wells and rebuild farmhouses, to put in drains--confound the drains! Then I must make reductions because the labourers want higher wages, and take off ten per cent, because the weather's been bad! As if the weather had not always been wrong these three hundred years! I'm perfectly sick of science and superphosphates, shorthorns, and steam tackle. Then they bring public opinion, forsooth, on me, and say I must disgorge! [Intense disgust.] Disgorge! Let them take the land, and welcome, and give me an equivalent in Consols, I should be twenty times better off. No; I'll be shot if they shall! [With energetic inconsistency.] I would sooner be flayed alive than part with a square inch! I love the land next to my mother! There! But I'll be let alone. I'll plant the whole place with oaks. My woods are the only things that pay me--except the rabbits, and that rascally Guss Basset poaches and nets them by the score. Look out!" A covey of partridges rose, and Valentine, who was a little in advance, fired both barrels without effect. "Mark!" said the Squire. "Gone to the turnips of course, the only place left for the poor things; this short stubble makes them as wild as hawks. Val, your nerves are shaky this afternoon, and, by Jove, that horse dying was enough!" "My nerves are not at all shaken," said Valentine, as he reloaded. He affected a stoical indifference, though really hit hard. His temper had been boiling like molten lead under the surface, and it wanted but little to make him explode. His losses and vexation, his jealousy of Geoffrey, the unfortunate suspicions that had been aroused in his mind about the night on the Downs--all had combined to irritate him to the last degree.