'If you don't mind, squire, I'll take a turn with you,' said Crinkett at last; 'while Jack can sit anywhere about the place.'
'Certainly,' said Caldigate. And so they took their hats and went off, and Jack Adamson was left 'sitting anywhere' about the place.
Caldigate thought that he had better take his companion where there would be the least chance of encountering many eyes. He went therefore through the garden into the farmyard and along the road leading back to the dike, and then he walked backwards and forwards between the ferry, over the Wash, and the termination of the private way by which they had come. The spot was not attractive, as far as rural prettiness was concerned. They had, on one hand or the other as they turned, the long, straight, deep dike which had been cut at right angles to the Middle Wash; and around, the fields were flat, plashy, and heavy-looking with the mud of February. But Crinkett for a while did not cease to admire everything. 'And them are all yourn?' he said, pointing to a crowd of corn-stacks standing in the haggard.
'Yes, they're mine. I wish they were not.'
'As prices are at present, a man doesn't make pinch by growing corn and keeping it to this time of the year.'
'And where them chimneys is,--is that yourn?' This he said pointing along the straight line of the road to Farmer Holt's homestead, which showed itself on the other side of the Wash.
'It belongs to the estate,' said Caldigate.
'By jingo! And how I remember your a-coming and talking to me across the gate at Polyeuka Hall!'
'I didn't know as you were an estated gent in those days.'
'I had spent a lot of money when I was young, and the estate, as you call it, was not large enough to bear the loss. So I had to go out and work, and get back what I had squandered.'
'My word, yes! What a lot of money you took out of the colony, Caldigate!'
'I'm not going to praise myself, but I worked hard for it, and when I got it I didn't run riot.'
'Well;--I don't know as you was very much more of a Joseph than anybody else.' Then Crinkett laughed most disagreeably; and Caldigate, turning over various ideas rapidly in his mind, thought that a good deed would be done if a man so void of feeling could be drowned beneath the waters of the black deep dike which was slowly creeping along by their side. 'Any way you was lucky,--infernally lucky.'