‘I was getting good wages: there was a cottage and garden, belonging to the ploughman of the Home Farm, that I had never taken up, because I had lived with my father. The ’Squire made me many presents, and I had saved a little money, made by working at different things in winter evenings, being always handy with tools. Well, to make a long story short, Lucy found her father had left nothing behind him but a quarter’s pension he had not had time to drink, a few pounds due for work, and the furniture of his cottage. She had nobody to take care of her, so we moved the furniture to my cottage, and were married before I was nineteen, and on the day Parson Calton gave her that Bible, that never has left me since I left her. Many people blamed us, and wanted us to wait. I don’t think good Mr. Calton quite liked it, but his daughters were well pleased, and gave Lucy her wedding dress. Oh, God, sir, when I think upon those days, on two years that followed, and think of what I am, I wonder how I live and keep my senses. There was not a happier couple or prettier cottage in the county. My working days were not hard, for I had Lucy to welcome me home; and then on Sundays, to see her dressed in her best and walk across the fields to church, and hear her sing! Why, there was not a lady in the county could compare with her, and I have heard many great gentlemen say so. ‘I had a child, too, a darling little Lucy. * * * But this was too much happiness to last; we had been married just two years. The ’Squire stopped at our cottage, as he was riding by on his way to London, to settle about a ploughing-match that he had determined to make up for the next week, and talked over a plan for breaking up a lot of old pasture. A fortnight afterwards the bailiff came down with a letter in his hand, and said with a grave face, “Carden, I have some bad news for you; the ’Squire has determined to give up farming, and is going to foreign parts. I am to discharge all the hinds as soon as I can get a tenant for the farm. You are to be paid up to Christmas, and you may keep the cottage until the farm’s let, but I rather think Farmer Bullivant will take it.” ‘Here was a blow; we had thought ourselves provided for for life, and now we had a home and a living to seek. Farmer Bullivant would not keep me on, I knew well; he had his own ploughman, a relation. Well, we were put to sore straits; but at last I got another place, although at lower wages, some distance from my native village. Hard times came on; wages were lowered again and again; and at the same time a cry rose up round the country against the threshing-machines that were being very much used, and were throwing a good many poor people out of work. The people in England, sir, are not as we are here, sir, a very few words, and one or two desperate fellows can always lead them; they are so ignorant, they are ready for anything when they are badly off.