Willsworthy was an ancient manor, never of great importance, and without fertility, yet not despicable in the eyes of a poor gentleman. It lay on the extreme limits of cultivated land, or rather it may be said to have occupied the debateable ground between the waste and culture. It occupied a hill that ran as a spur out of the moorland, between torrents, and seemed to be what, no doubt, it was, a portion of wilderness snatched from savagery, and hedged in. It possessed no good soil, it lay too high for wheat to ripen on it, it was destitute of these pasture meadows by the waterside, where the grass grows knee-deep, and is gold-sprinkled in spring with buttercups; it was dominated by rugged tors, and stood near the entrance of the gorge of the Tavy, where it roared and leaped, and shot as it came down into the lowlands, and with it came down the cold blasts that also roared and whirled, and beat about the lone Manor of Willsworthy. Mrs. Malvine talked disparagingly of her farm, her brother Solomon Gibbs averred it was an estate on which to starve, and not to live. Urith accepted their verdict as final, she knew the need for money that ever prevailed in her house; and yet Fox Crymes cast greedy eyes upon the estate. He saw that it possessed capabilities that were disregarded by the widow and her brother. The manor owned considerable rights. It had the freedom of the moor, to send out upon it an unlimited number of sheep and cattle and colts; at a time when English wool was fetching a high price, and was exported to the Mediterranean, to Cadiz, to Leghorn, to Palermo, to Marseilles; this was important--it afforded exceptional opportunities of making money. There needed but the initial outlay on the stock, their keep was free. Not only so, but sheep in lowlands were, in wet seasons, afflicted with disease which slew them in great numbers, which sometimes exterminated entire flocks. But sheep on the moor were never known thus to suffer; they enjoyed perfect immunity from the many maladies which attend keeping them on cultivated land.