"Nice plum weather still, your honour," said Uncle Smallridge, as he made his way from the blaze. "The sun have been drawing up the autumn rains these many days, but winter's here at last. The water will all come home again in snow." "Wet enough," said the other. "I marvel your grass here doesn't rot in the ground." "An' so it do in some places," answered Richard Beer; "as if it wasn't hard enough to get a living for the dumb things without walling the Moor off against the rightful owners. Come presently there won't be a bit of sweet grazing us can call our own. Now here's this Mr. Malherb--a foreigner from down Exeter way--bitten off a few more hundred acres of the best." "Who says any ill of him?" asked the stranger. "'Tis only hearsay," declared Woodman. "There may be good in him; but I wish he'd bided away." "Lord knows I wouldn't speak no malice against the gentleman," continued Beer, "for I am going to ax him to give me work. He wants a few understanding chaps, 'tis said. An' I know the Moor better'n my Bible, more shame to me. You'll bear me out, neighbours, that I can get what man may from Dartymoor soil?" "You'm very witty at it, us all knows," admitted Harvey Woodman. "How would you tackle those wet slopes under Fox Tor?" asked the new-comer. "Well," answered Beer, "drain, drain, drain an' graze, graze, graze; an' leave the natural herbage as much as you may. You won't better it." The stranger laughed. "If Maurice Malherb can't improve upon Nature on Dartmoor, 'tis pity," he declared. But Richard Beer shook his head. "You've got to follow in these parts, not lead. Nature do know her own business; an' you can't teach her, for her won't larn. Farming be a sort of coaxing her to your way o' thinking. There's two sorts o' stuff the place be made of: peaty moor, as'll yield good grass; an' swamp, as be useful to nought but a frog. This here Mr. Malherb must drain, an' pare, an' burn in reason; but he must not overdo it." "Mind you, the natural things have their value," put in old Smallridge. "French furze at four years' growth do fetch a pound an acre. An' if the land be fatted properly the man might grow potatoes." "Potatoes do eat up all afore you eat them," said Beer; "though the appleing of 'em do keep the earth sweet an' mellow. Then he'll follow with barley, not wheat." "As to the chances of corn?" asked the stranger. His wet coat smoked and sent up a fire-lit steam in the darkening chamber.