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In the dark valley lying to the immediate east of Sedgehill stood the Osierfield Works, the largest ironworks in Mershire in the good old days when Mershire made iron for half the world. The owners of these works were the Farringdons, and had been so for several generations.
"I'm glad you fancy them, my love; take some more, deary, it'll do you good." "No, thanks; I'd rather have a wig now." And Elisabeth helped herself to one of the three-cornered cakes, called "wigs," which are peculiar to Mershire. "You always are fortunate in your pigs," Mrs. Hankey remarked; "such fine hams and such beautiful roaded bacon I never see anywhere equal to yours.
Christopher was fast becoming one of the most influential men in Mershire; and his able management of the Osierfield had raised those works to a greater height of prosperity than they had ever attained before, even in the days of William and John Farringdon. But now the shadows were darkening around Alan Tremaine, as day by day Willie gradually faded away.
The old people wring their hands and mourn that the former things are passing away, and that Mershire's youthful beauty will soon be forgotten; but the young people laugh and are glad, because they know that life is greater than beauty, and that it is by her black coalfields, and not by her green woodlands, that Mershire will save her people from poverty, and will satisfy her poor with bread.
The fine weather hastened Christopher's recovery; and, as he gained strength, he and Elisabeth spent much time in the old garden, looking toward the Welsh mountains. "So we have come to the country on the other side of the hills at last," she said to him, as they were watching one of the wonderful Mershire sunsets and drinking in its beauty.
The Moat House had been vacant for some time, as the owner was a delicate man who preferred to live abroad; and great was the interest at Sedgehill when, a year or two after Elisabeth left school, it was reported that a stranger, Alan Tremaine by name, had taken the Moat House for the sake of the hunting, which was very good in that part of Mershire.
When in due time this worthy man was gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of believing and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience to listen to it that the Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means, ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire.
Tremaine, if at our place the puddlers wanted to do the work of the shinglers, and the shinglers wanted to do the work of the rollers, and the rollers wanted to do the work of the masters, the Osierfield wouldn't be for long the biggest ironworks in Mershire. Not it! You have to use your common sense in religion as in everything else."
One course leads headlong down another steep hill so steep that unwary travellers usually descend from their carriages to walk up or down it, and thus are enabled to ensure relief to their horses and a chill to themselves at the same time; for it is hot work walking up or down that sunny precipice, and the cold winds of Mershire await one with equal gusto at the top and at the bottom.
Saint Peter warns us against braiding of hair and putting on of apparel; and when all's said and done it don't go as far as a good complexion, and we don't need any apostle to tell us that we can see it for ourselves." "And as for cleverness, there ain't her like in all Mershire," continued Mrs. Bateson.
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