Though no “scholard,” his wonderful memory stood him in good stead, and was most valuable to me.  He came in for a talk every evening, to report the events of the day and arrange the work for the morrow.  After a long day spent with one of the carters delivering such things as faggots—­locally “kids”—­of wood, he would recall the names of the recipients, and the exact quantities delivered at each house without the slightest effort.  His only memoranda for approximate land measurements would be produced on a stick with a notch denoting each score yards or paces.  This primitive method is particularly interesting, the numeral a score being derived from the Anglo-Saxon sciran, to divide.  Similar words are plough share, shire, shears, and shard.  He could keep the daily labour record when I was away from home; but though I could always decipher his writing, he found it difficult to read himself.  A letter was a sore trial, and he often told me that he would sooner walk to “Broddy” (Broadway) and back, ten or eleven miles, than write to the veterinary surgeon there, whose services we sometimes required.

We had a simple method of disposing of small pigs; it was an understood thing that no pig was to be sold for less than a pound.  I had a good breed, always in demand by the cottagers, who never failed to apply, sometimes, perhaps, before the pound size was quite reached, as it was a case of first come first served, and there was the danger that the best would be snapped up before an intending buyer could have his choice.  Bell’s face was wreathed in smiles when he came in and unloaded a pocketful of sovereigns on my study table, saying, when trade was brisk, “I could sell myself if I was little pigs!”

Many and anxious were the deliberations we held in the early days of my farming; the whole system of the late tenant was condemned by my theoretical and Bell’s practical knowledge, but they did not invariably coincide, and, after a long discussion on some particular point, he would yield, though I could see that he was not convinced, with, “Well, I allows you to know best.”

When, a few years later, I introduced hop-growing as a complete novelty on the farm, he regarded it at first as an extravagant and unprofitable hobby, akin to the hunters my predecessor kept.  He “reckoned,” he said, that my hop-gardens were my “hunting horse,” and I heard that my neighbours quoted the old saw about “a fool and his money.”  Bell was not so enlightened as to be quite proof against local superstitions; I had to consult his almanac and find out when the “moon southed,” and when certain planets were in favourable conjunction, before he would undertake some quite ordinary farm operations.