The matter was soon settled. Five hundred pounds for the lease--ten
years unexpired--of Ash Farm, about eleven hundred acres, and the
stock, implements; the ploughing, sowing, &c. already performed, to be
paid for at a valuation based on present prices. I drew out the
agreement in form, it was signed in duplicate, a large sum was paid
down as deposit, and Mr Hurst with his friend withdrew.
'Well,' I said, taking a glass of port from a bottle Dutton had just
ordered in--'here's fortune in your new career; but as I am a living
man, I can't understand what you can be thinking about.'
'You haven't read the newspapers?'
'O yes, I have! Victory! Glory! March to Paris! and all that sort of
thing. Very fine, I daresay; but rubbish, moonshine, I call it, if
purchased by the abandonment of the useful, comfortable, joyous life
of a prosperous yeoman.'
'Is that all you have seen in the papers?'
'Not much else. What, besides, have you found in them?'
'Wheat, at ten or eleven pounds a load--less perhaps--other produce in
proportion.'
'Ha!'
'I see further, Sharp, than you bookmen do, in some matters. Boney's
done for; that to me is quite plain, and earlier than I thought
likely; although I, of course, as well as every other man with
a head instead of a turnip on his shoulders, knew such a
raw-head-and-bloody-bones as that must sooner or later come to the
dogs.
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