But Yelland died, as I tell ’e, an’ the young man comed to his own. With all his airs an’ graces, he knowed when he was well off, an’ of course followed his faither’s footsteps an’ stuck to the land, despite his mother’s hopes, as planned an’ prayed with her last breath for him to be a lawyer. Though why a lawyer should be a greater man than a farmer, you’d have to ax a lawyer to tell ’e. An’ I won’t say that Nicholas was a bad farmer. He’d got sense, though no broad-mindedness. The difference between him an’ his faither was showed by a path-field as ran through Cator Court lands and was very much used by folks coming up from Widecombe to Postbridge and the farms round about, because it saved foot-passengers a good mile of walking, an’ it had been there time out of mind. But there weren’t no right of way with it all the same, an’ farmer he always used to shut it up one day a year to make good his claim in the eye of the law. He wouldn’t have turned back the leastest little one he’d found on the field-path, for ’twas his pride an’ pleasure always to make life easier for man, woman an’ child when the chance offered. An’ the boys had the filbert nuts an’ the girls had the mushrooms; an’ he never minded, bless you; he liked ’em to be there. Well, this here carmudgeon of a young Yelland—first thing he done, out of pure sourness of disposition, was to shut up the field-path an’ stick up a lot o’ scowling nonsense ’bout “trespassers would be prosecuted.” So much for his radical ideas an’ everybody being equal! But it’s always that sort who talk loudest about the rights of men, be the sharpest about the rights of property. Belted Earls will throw open their beautiful parks, but you won’t catch common men doing it. An’ the boys knocked young Yelland’s boards down with stones, an’ broke his hedges; an’ the Widecombe people, as didn’t care a snap of the finger for the man, took their even way as usual. He spent half his time storming up an’ down the great meadow in the farm-bottom, where Webburn river goes clattering to meet Dart; but he only turned back women an’ children, for he was a little chap—thin an’ not overstrong—so men just told him to get out of their road, else they’d knock him upsy-edgeways into the hedge.