and jogged along the deep-rutted plashy roads, which had not been mended after their winter’s wear, towards the dwelling of the wizard.  About noon they passed the gate which opened on to the large common, and old Dobbin toiled slowly up the hill, while Benjy pointed out a little deep dingle on the left, out of which welled a tiny stream.  As they crept up the hill the tops of a few birch-trees came in sight, and blue smoke curling up through their delicate light boughs; and then the little white thatched home and inclosed ground of Farmer Ives, lying cradled in the dingle, with the gay gorse common rising behind and on both sides; while in front, after traversing a gentle slope, the eye might travel for miles and miles over the rich vale.  They now left the main road and struck into a green track over the common marked lightly with wheel and horse-shoe, which led down into the dingle and stopped at the rough gate of Farmer Ives.  Here they found the farmer, an iron-gray old man, with a bushy eyebrow and strong aquiline nose, busied in one of his vocations.  He was a horse and cow doctor, and was tending a sick beast which had been sent up to be cured.  Benjy hailed him as an old friend, and he returned the greeting cordially enough, looking however hard for a moment both at Benjy and Tom, to see whether there was more in their visit than appeared at first sight.  It was a work of some difficulty and danger for Benjy to reach the ground, which, however, he managed to do without mishap; and then he devoted himself to unharnessing Dobbin and turning him out for a graze ("a run” one could not say of that virtuous steed) on the common.  This done, he extricated the cold provisions from the cart, and they entered the farmer’s wicket; and he, shutting up the knife with which he was taking maggots out of the cow’s back and sides, accompanied them towards the cottage.  A big old lurcher got up slowly from the door-stone, stretching first one hind leg and then the other, and taking Tom’s caresses and the presence of Toby, who kept, however, at a respectful distance, with equal indifference.

“Us be cum to pay ’ee a visit.  I’ve a been long minded to do’t for old sake’s sake, only I vinds I dwon’t get about now as I’d used to’t.  I be so plaguy bad wi’ th’ rheumatiz in my back.”  Benjy paused, in hopes of drawing the farmer at once on the subject of his ailments without further direct application.

“Ah, I see as you bean’t quite so lissom as you was,” replied the farmer, with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door; “we bean’t so young as we was, nother on us, wuss luck.”

The farmer’s cottage was very like those of the better class of peasantry in general.  A snug chimney corner with two seats, and a small carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the fireplace, a dresser with shelves on which some bright pewter plates and crockeryware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and settles, some framed samplers, and an old print or two, and a bookcase with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon, and other stores fastened to the ceiling, and you have the best part of the furniture.  No sign of occult art is to be seen, unless the bundles of dried herbs hanging to the rack and in the ingle and the row of labelled phials on one of the shelves betoken it.