George Woodburn was a young man of very pleasing person, but considered, by young men in general, peculiar. He had been educated at Repton, the great Derbyshire grammar school, where he had made the acquaintance of the sons of the principal nobles and gentry of the county. Henry Clavering, the son of Sir Emanuel, their near neighbour, had been one of his schoolfellows, and they had ever since been great friends. They had enjoyed together all the pleasures and sports of country life. Clavering was now away, and Thorsby was a very acceptable companion for George. It was in the country and at home, however, that this companionship was enjoyed, for George could never be persuaded to join Thorsby’s social circles in town. George had a steadfast dislike of towns and great companies. From a boy there had been a certain gravity in his character, combined with the utmost kindliness of disposition. He loved above everything the country and country life. His heart and soul were in his profession of agriculturist. In everything connected with farming and with the objects of nature lay his whole happiness. He knew every creature, great and small, that inhabited the fields; their haunts and habits were as familiar to him as the doings in his own family. Every species of insect was known to him, and might be said to be loved by him. As a boy he could tell you not only of every bird that built in the hedges, the orchard-trees, the cart-sheds, and the eaves, but the mason-bees that built in the old garden-wall he could show you passing in and out, and name them by names of his own, knowing every one individually. He had from a mere lad accustomed himself to exposure to all kinds of weather, hot or cold, to battle with the wildest snows in looking after the sheep, to the most drenching rains, following the plough, or carting out compost for the land. There was no kind of manual labour on the farm in which he was not as expert as any labourer or farm-servant of them all. No one could beat him in mowing, reaping, ploughing, threshing, or in any kind of work. He could plash a hedge, cut a ditch or a drain, or fell a tree with any of them. His strength was prodigious, from constant exercise, and from absence of any enfeebling indulgence, for he had an innate aversion to much wine or beer, preferring what he called the mother and staple of all drinks—the crystal daughter of the rock. In these respects George Woodburn was a most beneficial companion for Harry Thorsby, for George’s unequivocal dislike of anything dissipated, his equally unmistakeable enjoyment of the simplest pleasures of the country, struck Thorsby with wonder; and when he saw George’s real pleasure in the moderate number of friends that he mixed with, and his enormous capacity for enduring exertion, he wondered the more. In their shooting excursions he would have tired down a horse, and never appeared to know what fatigue was in himself.