A good scheme had been worked by one or two of Riles’s neighbours. These men—transplanted Englishmen themselves—who, to tell the truth, had made a very indifferent success of agriculture, had hit upon the idea of giving instruction to young Englishmen of good family in the art of farming as it is practised in the Canadian West. They had no difficulty in finding fond fathers who, for reasons that need not be entered into here, were anxious that their sons should have a “colonial” experience, and were willing to pay from fifty to two hundred pounds a head per year (according to the state of the paternal exchequer and the desirability of the exodus) for the board, lodging and instruction of their sons in the “colony.” Of course it never occurred to these worthy parents that there are state-controlled institutions for giving just the instruction needed, where their sons would be brought in contact with the best influences in the land. Even had they known of these institutions they would probably have preferred to place their young hopefuls with some old acquaintance whose Munchausian reports of his success in Canada were accepted as gospel, but whose real accomplishments consisted mainly in supporting the brewery and dodging the bailiff—two occupations which usually go hand in hand.
But Riles was not of the blood. He knew no one in England, and one or two advances which he made to the English neighbours mentioned with a view to “getting in on a good thing” were met with a coldness which amounted to a rebuff. There remained only one thing to be done—adopt a Barnardo boy. Riles would have much preferred a grown-up man, but on consultation with some of the neighbours who had adopted these boys he was assured that they could be depended upon to do as much work as a man, and were more easily controlled. Twenty years ago the latter consideration would not have appealed to Riles, but he recalled the incident where he received his scar, and he knew enough about Englishmen to know that if they excelled in anything it was in their ability to protect themselves from physical damage, and incidentally to administer a thrashing to their assailants. On the whole, perhaps a boy would suit his purpose better.