Harvey Woodman was ploughing with a team of six bullocks, and as he plodded behind them over the burnt ground, he sang a strange song understanded of the cattle. It cheered them at their toil, and the low, monotonous notes sometimes broke suddenly, and leapt abruptly a whole octave upward. When the song stopped, the steers also stopped, nor would they resume their labour until the ploughman returned to his music. Beside Woodman tramped his son to turn the team when necessary. But they made poor ploughing through the heavy and ill-drained ground, and Maurice Malherb, who watched the operations from a distance, was alive to the fact. His personal unwisdom prompted the enterprise, for he was engaged in attempting to reclaim land that defied the effort; but, as usual, he set all blame upon other shoulders than his own. Now he approached Mr. Woodman and accosted him.
"You're not getting what you might out of those brutes. If you'd sing less and watch your work closer——"
"Ban't that, your honour—devil a bit will they go unless a man chants their proper song to 'em. 'Tis the nature of the earth, not the cattle."
"Nonsense. The land is no worse than the rest aloft there, that I've drained and pared and turned into fine fallow. The cattle go uneasily. I'll wager that fool blacksmith at Prince Town shoed them ill." He examined the hoof of an ox as he spoke. The inside claws behind were left unprotected, but the outer ones had been carefully shod with iron. Malherb perceived that the work was good.
"Then he threw them carelessly, I'll wager. These big steers should be thrown with the greatest skill."
"To be just, your honour, 'twas very cleverly done, for I helped myself," answered Woodman.
The master turned away without another word. In his stormy mind of late there had been growing a darkness foreign to it. Dim suspicions, thrust aside only to reappear, shadowed his waking hours and haunted his pillow. From cursing ill success he had, by rare fits and starts, risen superior to his character and asked himself the reason for it. With impatience and an oath the answer was generally rapped out; but the question returned. In secret arcana of his heart, Maurice Malherb knew that he had acted with overmuch of haste. Thereupon he distributed the blame of his enterprise right and left: and chiefly he censured Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, in that the knight had always prophesied smooth things. Yet honesty reminded Malherb that while pursuing the suggestions of local men where it pleased him to do so, he had widely departed from the beaten track of experience in many directions. He remembered a recent interview with the owner of Tor Royal, and the words bluntly uttered then: that in certain particulars of husbandry Malherb attempted the impossible. The impossible, indeed, had always possessed a fatal charm for him. He had of late despatched cattle to Bideford Fair and sheep to that at Bampton—a matter of considerable expense in those days. But no prize nor commendation rewarded his undertaking. He was spending money still with but meagre return for it. He saw his means dwindling, and already the future of his family depended largely upon the success of a midland canal, in which Maurice Malherb, fired by glowing promises, had embarked a very large proportion of his capital. Canals were the rage amongst speculators a hundred years ago, but few sensibly succeeded; many were no more than the schemes of rascals and existed only upon paper.
Now this man, conscious of gathering troubles, lifted a corner of the veil that hid his spirit and looked upon himself. The spectacle was disquieting and made him first impatient, then sad. Angry he often was, but sadness before this apparition proved something of a new emotion. For a few fleeting moments he glimpsed the real and perceived that his own stubborn pride and boyish vanity were near the roots of life's repeated failures. For once, in the glare of a mental lightning-flash, he saw and understood; then his troubled eyes caught sight of flocks feeding in the bosom of Cater's Beam; and Malherb's misery lifted. Scattered upon the hills like pearls, their fleeces washed to snowy whiteness by recent rain, the farmer saw his sheep; and they put heart into him, and dispelled the gloom begotten elsewhere. He turned his back on Harvey Woodman and failure; he stopped his ears to the cattle song, and looked out upon the Moor.
"The music of a sheep-bell rings my fortune," he reflected. "There lies my strength; that wool means high prosperity presently and an issue out of these perplexities."
Now his flocks represented the counsel of other men.