“Yes; and I charged this boy always to keep them in fold till the dew was off,” replied Marvel, turning with an angry countenance to the shepherd boy.
“I never heard nothing of it till this minute, I am sure, master,” said the boy.
Marvel now recollected that, at the very moment when he was going to give this order to the boy, his attention had been drawn away by the sight of a new decoy in the fields adjoining to his sheep pasture. In his haste to examine the decoy, he forgot to give that order to his shepherd, on which the safety of his fine flock of sheep depended. {Footnote: A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lincoln, p. 330. “It well deserves noting that a shepherd, who, when young, was shepherd’s boy to an old man, who lived at Netlam, near Lincoln, a place famous for the rot, told Mr. Neve that he was persuaded sheep took the rot only of a morning, before the dew was well off. At that time they folded, being open field: his master’s shepherd kept his flock in fold always till the dew was gone; and, with no other attention, his sheep were kept sound, when all the neighbours lost their flocks.”} Such are the negligences and blunders of those who endeavour to do half a dozen things at once.
The failure of one undertaking never discouraged Marvel from beginning another; and it is a pity, that, with so much spirit and activity, he had so little steadiness and prudence. His sheep died, and he set out for Spalding full of the thoughts of the heronry. Now this heronry belonged to Sir Plantagenet Mowbray, an elderly gentleman, who was almost distracted with family pride: he valued himself upon never having parted with one inch of the landed property that had descended to him, through a long line of ancestors, from the Plantagenets. He looked down upon the whole race of farmers and traders as beings of a different species from himself; and the indignation with which he heard, from a Lincolnshire farmer, a proposal to purchase his heronry, may perhaps be imagined, but cannot be described. It was in vain that Marvel rose in his offers; it was in vain that he declared he was ready to give any price that Sir Plantagenet would set upon the heronry. Sir Plantagenet sent word, by his steward, that not a feather of his birds should be touched; that he was astonished at the insolence of such a proposal; and that he advised Marvel to keep out of the way of his people, lest they should revenge the insult that had been offered to their master.
This haughty answer, and the disappointment of all his hopes and schemes respecting the heronry, threw Marvel into a degree of rage scarcely inferior to what was felt by Sir Plantagenet. As he was galloping down the avenue from Plantagenet-hall, he overtook a young man, of a shabby appearance, who was mounted upon a very fine horse. At first Marvel took it for granted that he was one of Sir Plantagenet’s people, and he was riding past him, when he heard the stranger say, in a friendly tone, “Your horse gallops well, sir: but have a care; there’s a carrion a little way farther on that may startle him.”
Marvel pulled in his horse; the stranger rode up beside him, and they entered into conversation. “That carrion, sir,” said he, pointing to the dead horse, which had just been shot for the baronet’s son’s hounds, “that carrion, sir, was in my opinion the best horse Sir Plantagenet, or his son either, were possessed of. ‘Tis a shame for any man, who pretends to be a gentleman, and who talks this way and that so high of his family, should be so stingy in the article of horseflesh.”
Marvel was not unwilling at this instant to hear the haughty baronet blamed and ridiculed; and his companion exactly fell in with his humour, by telling a variety of anecdotes to prove Sir Plantagenet to be every thing that was odious and contemptible. The history of his insolence about the heronry was now related by Marvel; and the stranger seemed to sympathize so much in his feelings, that, from a stranger, he began to consider him as a friend. Insensibly the conversation returned to the point at which it commenced; and his new friend observed that it was in vain to expect any thing good from any gentleman, or indeed from any man, who was stingy in the article of horseflesh.
A new sense of honour and of shame began to rise in our hero’s mind; and he sat uneasy in his saddle, whilst he reflected that the horse upon which he was mounted, was perhaps as deservedly an object of contempt as any of Sir Plantagenet’s stud. His new friend, without seeming to notice his embarrassment, continued his conversation, and drew a tempting picture of the pleasures and glories of a horse-race: he said, “he was just training a horse for the York races, and a finer animal never was crossed. Sir Plantagenet’s eldest son would have been the proudest and happiest of men, if his father would but have bought the horse for him: but he had refused, and the youth himself had not the price, or half the price, at his command.”
Our hero was no judge of horses, but he was ambitious to prove that his spirit was superior to that of the haughty baronet; and that something good might be expected from him, as he was not stingy in horseflesh. Besides, he was worked up to a high degree of curiosity to see the York races; and his companion assured him that he could not appear there without being well mounted. In short, the hour was not at an end before he had offered a hundred guineas for the finest horse that ever was crossed. He was charmed with the idea that he should meet Sir Plantagenet Mowbray’s son and heir at the York races, and should show him that he was able and willing to pay for the horse, which his arrogant father could not afford to purchase.
From the anecdote of the heronry, his companion perceived that Marvel was a man fond of projects; and he proposed to him a scheme, which caught his fancy so much that it consoled him for his disappointment. It was the fault of our enterprizing hero’s character always to think the last scheme for making a fortune the best. As soon as he reached home he was in haste to abandon some of his old projects, which now appeared to him flat, stale, and unprofitable. About a score of his flock, though tainted with the rot, were not yet dead; he was eager to sell them, but no one would buy sheep of such a wretched appearance. At last Wright took them off his hands. “I will throw the threescore jackets into the bargain,” said Marvel; “for you are a generous fellow, to offer so handsomely for my poor sheep, and you deserve to be treated as you treat others. If I come in at the end of the ten years for the legacy, I shall remember you, as I told you before: as to my cousin Goodenough here, he thinks so much of himself, that there is no occasion for others to think of him. I asked him to join me in a bond, yesterday, for a hundred pounds, just to try him, and he refused me. When I come in for the legacy, I will cut him off with a shilling,—I will give him fair notice.”