“When you grow up to be a man, Phil,” he would say to his son, “and I have grown old, you shall live in the big house and farm Stoke Ferry all to yourself. You stick to your trade like wax, my boy, and you’ll have a red face when you come to be old, and a sound liver, a strong jolly heart, aye, and your pocket full of yellow-boys, tew.”
When Philip was talked to like this he would go to work with hoe, spade, or sickle, as if were a young hero cutting himself a path to glory with his sword. His father’s words gave him thoughts which cheered him to his work far more than the black muddy beer which was sent out to them in stone or leather bottles. And sometimes, as he plodded across the fallow fields while the last red clouds in the west were fading into white, and while the dew was rising like a fog from the meadow grass, he would stop and fold his arms upon his breast, and, looking up to the sky, dream that he could see a farmhouse with a great straw yard and massive barns and countless heads of cattle.
But by daylight he gave himself no time for reverie. Even at nooning, when the labourers were enjoying their dinner and siestas, his mind was full of business, and questions streamed from his lips as water from a bucket overthrown.
“Phil will be a great man,” his father used to say; “he does his work like a free horse, an’ is allays peerin’ about to pick up wrinkles. His heart’s in his call, an’ that’s the head thing to look after.
But poor Phil was not destined to fulfil the farmer’s predictions; he was cut off when on the very threshold of life—stricken down by the hand of an assassin.
His connection with Nell Fulford had been a source of anxiety to the farmer long before his son’s death. It was a subject he never afterwards made reference to; but although he was silent on the subject he had not forgotten it.
One evening when Patty was away (she had gone to the hall to spend a day or two with Lady Aveline, at her ladyship’s special request), Jamblin had for his companion John Ashbrook.
Strange to say, on the evening in question there were no chance droppers in—the reason for this being, perhaps, the absence of Patty.
The two farmers were seated in the parlour before a bright, cheerful fire.
“Kitty,” said Jamblin, addressing himself to a red-faced, red-armed servant girl, who was kept more for use than ornament, “go down to the cellar and bring up a big jug of the October old ale out of that little cask in the corner.”