CHAPTER I.
The merry ploughboy cheers his team,
Wi’ joy the tentie seedsman stalks.—Burns.
“Mossgray,” said Halbert Graeme, as they sat next morning at their cheerful breakfast-table, “I wish you would come out with me to-day, and see these fields at Shortrigg—they are in a very bad state: small, oddly-shaped fields, ‘three neukit,’ as Saunders calls them, with quite a superabundance of hedges. I should like to sweep those encumbrances away, and bring them into better working order. Will you come and see them, Mossgray?”
“Halbert, my man,” said Mossgray, smiling, “I am too old to learn—even your training will scarcely make a good farmer of me, I am afraid; and I give you full discretion, you know.”
“But, Mossgray,” persisted Halbert, “I am sure you have no concern for those thriftless hedges; and good agriculture—”
“Is a very necessary, noble, and honourable art,” said the Laird, “perfectly so, Halbert; and I am by no means a sentimental admirer of thriftless hedges; but I am old, you know, and not a good judge: you must take it into your own hands.”
Halbert was not quite satisfied.
“Still, Mossgray, if you are not engaged—”