At Twybridge lived Mrs.Peak's elder sister, Miss Cadman; but between this lady and her nearest kinsfolk there had been but slight correspondence--the deceased Cadman left her only a couple of hundred pounds.

With capital at command, Nicholas Peak took a lease of certain fields near his house, and turned farmer.

The study of chemistry had given a special bent to his economic speculations; he fancied himself endowed with exceptional aptitude for agriculture, and the scent of the furrow brought all his energies into feverish activity--activity which soon impoverished him: that was in the order of things.

'Ungainly integrity' and 'headlong irascibility' wrought the same results for the ex-dispenser as for the Ayrshire husbandman.

His farming came to a chaotic end; and when the struggling man died, worn out at forty-three, his wife and children (there was now a younger boy, Oliver, named after the Protector) had no very bright prospects.
Things went better with them than might have been anticipated.