Marvel now recollected that, at the very moment when he was going to give this order to the boy, his attention had been drawn away by the sight of a new decoy in the fields adjoining to his sheep pasture. In his haste to examine the decoy, he forgot to give that order to his shepherd, on which the safety of his fine flock of sheep depended. {Footnote: A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lincoln, p. 330. “It well deserves noting that a shepherd, who, when young, was shepherd’s boy to an old man, who lived at Netlam, near Lincoln, a place famous for the rot, told Mr. Neve that he was persuaded sheep took the rot only of a morning, before the dew was well off. At that time they folded, being open field: his master’s shepherd kept his flock in fold always till the dew was gone; and, with no other attention, his sheep were kept sound, when all the neighbours lost their flocks.”} Such are the negligences and blunders of those who endeavour to do half a dozen things at once. The failure of one undertaking never discouraged Marvel from beginning another; and it is a pity, that, with so much spirit and activity, he had so little steadiness and prudence. His sheep died, and he set out for Spalding full of the thoughts of the heronry. Now this heronry belonged to Sir Plantagenet Mowbray, an elderly gentleman, who was almost distracted with family pride: he valued himself upon never having parted with one inch of the landed property that had descended to him, through a long line of ancestors, from the Plantagenets. He looked down upon the whole race of farmers and traders as beings of a different species from himself; and the indignation with which he heard, from a Lincolnshire farmer, a proposal to purchase his heronry, may perhaps be imagined, but cannot be described. It was in vain that Marvel rose in his offers; it was in vain that he declared he was ready to give any price that Sir Plantagenet would set upon the heronry. Sir Plantagenet sent word, by his steward, that not a feather of his birds should be touched; that he was astonished at the insolence of such a proposal; and that he advised Marvel to keep out of the way of _his people_, lest they should revenge the insult that had been offered to their master. This haughty answer, and the disappointment of all his hopes and schemes respecting the heronry, threw Marvel into a degree of rage scarcely inferior to what was felt by Sir Plantagenet. As he was galloping down the avenue from Plantagenet-hall, he overtook a young man, of a shabby appearance, who was mounted upon a very fine horse. At first Marvel took it for granted that he was one of Sir Plantagenet’s _people_, and he was riding past him, when he heard the stranger say, in a friendly tone, “Your horse gallops well, sir: but have a care; there’s a carrion a little way farther on that may startle him.”