To make up for the loss of the flax, Jackeymo resolved to convert a very nice bit of pasture into orchard ground, which he calculated would bring in £10 net per acre by the time Miss Violante was marriageable. At this, the Squire pished a little; but as it was quite clear that the land would be all the more valuable hereafter for the fruit trees, he consented to permit the "grass land" to be thus partially broken up. All these changes left poor Lenny Fairfield very much to himself--at a time when the new and strange devices which the initiation into book knowledge creates, made it most desirable that he should have the constant guidance of a superior mind. One evening after his work, as Lenny was returning to his mother's cottage very sullen and very moody, he suddenly came in contact with Sprott the tinker. CHAPTER V. The tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an old kettle--with a little fire burning in front of him--and the donkey hard by, indulging in a placid doze. Mr. Sprott looked up as Lenny passed--nodded kindly, and said: "Good evenin', Lenny: glad to hear you be so 'spectably sitivated with Mounseer." "Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancor in his recollections, "You're not ashamed to speak to me now, that I am not in disgrace. But it was in disgrace, when it wasn't my fault, that the real gentleman was most kind to me." "Ar--r, Lenny," said the Tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said Ar--r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real gentleman who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his cracter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice in his 'sociations. But sit down here a bit, Lenny; I've summat to say to ye!" "To me--" "To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, I say." Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, accepted this invitation. "I hears," said the Tinker in a voice made rather indistinct by a couple of nails which he had inserted between his teeth; "I hears as how you be unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum nice cheap books in my bag yonder--sum as low as a penny." "I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes sparkling.