Had any friend of stalwart hearty John Beacham’s, who had known the farmer one short year before, chanced, after that period of absence, to come suddenly upon him as he took his solitary way across the home-paddock, that friend could have scarcely failed to notice the change that had taken place, not only in John’s countenance, but in his walk and manner. The cares inseparable from married life had fallen, and that with no feather-weight, upon the man whose step was once so brisk and buoyant, and his smile, so frank and genial, was the index of a mind at peace with himself and in good humour with the world. He whistled as he went, not from the absence of, but from a plethora of anxious thought; for John, though he had yielded to his wife’s entreaty, and to his mother’s counsels (counsels which he little suspected were given with the latent object of lessening Honor’s home influence), in the matter of the proposed journey, was yet very far from being satisfied with the result of the morning’s deliberation. Strive as he would--and John was a man who read his Bible, and endeavoured as much as in him lay to do his duty towards his neighbours--strive as he would, he had never yet succeeded in feeling, in the most fractional degree, in charity with Colonel Frederick Norcott. A bad and baneful man he believed the father of his precious Honor to be; and believing this, John viewed--with perhaps excusable dread--the prospect of his wife’s temporary domestication in the Colonel’s family. What but harm, he thought, could by any possibility come of this companionship with all that was vile, unprincipled, and false? That Honor could return to him the pure-minded woman he now knew her to be, John believed to be impossible; and therefore it was that, whistling as he went, the heart of the man was heavy within him. He had not proceeded beyond the length of two fields, when he fell in with one of his most trusted men, employed in carefully leading up and down a sandy lane one of the most valuable of the thoroughbred sires. A grand animal he was, large of bone and muscle, and simply perfect in his magnificent proportions. Over the well-rounded hips, the mottled skin shone and glistened in the sun’s rays, and there was both love and gratitude in the animal’s open fearless eye as he rubbed his velvet nose against his master’s outstretched hand, and neighed his answer to John’s morning greeting.