not only saved money, and judiciously invested it, but he had kept it a profound secret, because he feared if his landlord learnt that he was saving money so fast the rent of the little farm would have been speedily raised.  Here, again, he was in direct conflict with the modern farmer.  The modern man, if he has a good harvest or makes a profit, at once buys a ‘turn-out,’ and grand furniture, and in every way ‘exalts his gate,’ When landlords saw their tenants living in a style but little inferior to that they themselves kept up, it was not really very surprising that the rents a few years back began to rise so rapidly.  In a measure tenants had themselves to blame for that upward movement.

Old Hodson carried his money to a long distance from home to invest, so anxious was he that neither his landlord nor any one else should know how quickly he was getting rich.  So he entered upon his new venture—­the great upland farm, with its broad cornfields, its expanse of sheep walk and down, its meadows in the hollow, its copses (the copses alone almost as big as his original holding), with plenty of money in his pocket, and without being beholden to bank or lawyer for a single groat.  Men thought that the size of the place, the big manor-house, and so on, would turn his head.  Nothing of the kind; he proceeded as cautiously and prudently as previously.  He began by degrees.  Instead of investing some thousand pounds in implements and machinery at a single swoop, instead of purchasing three hundred sheep right off with a single cheque, he commenced with one thing at a time.  In this course he was favoured by the condition of the land, and by the conditions of the agreement.  He got it, as it were, gradually into cultivation, not all at once; he got his stock together, a score or two at a time, as he felt they would answer.  By the year the landlord was to have the full rent:  the new tenant was quite able to pay it, and did pay it without hesitation at the very hour it was due.  He bought very little machinery, nothing but what was absolutely necessary—­no expensive steam-plough.  His one great idea was still the same, i.e. spend no money.

Yet he was not bigoted or prejudiced to the customs of his ancestors—­another proof that he was a man of mind.  Hodson foresaw, before he had been long at Upcourt Farm, that corn was not going in future to be so all in all important as it had been.  As he said himself, ’We must go to our flocks now for our rent, and not to our barn doors.’  His aim, therefore, became to farm into and through his flock, and it paid him well.  Here was a man at once economical to the verge of meanness, prudent to the edge of timidity, yet capable of venturing when he saw his chance; and above all, when that venture succeeded, capable of still living on bacon and bread and cheese, and putting the money by.