CHAPTER VI.
ANERLEY FARM On the eastern coast of the same great county, at more than ninety miles of distance for a homing pigeon, and some hundred and twenty for a carriage from the Hall of Yordas, there was in those days, and there still may be found, a property of no vast size--snug, however, and of good repute--and called universally "Anerley Farm." How long it has borne that name it knows not, neither cares to moot the question; and there lives no antiquary of enough antiquity to decide it.

A place of smiling hope, and comfort, and content with quietude; no memory of man about it runneth to the contrary; while every ox, and horse, and sheep, and fowl, and frisky porker, is full of warm domestic feeling and each homely virtue.
For this land, like a happy country, has escaped, for years and years, the affliction of much history.

It has not felt the desolating tramp of lawyer or land-agent, nor been bombarded by fine and recovery, lease and release, bargain and sale, Doe and Roe and Geoffrey Styles, and the rest of the pitiless shower of slugs, ending with a charge of Demons.

Blows, and blights, and plagues of that sort have not come to Anerley, nor any other drain of nurture to exhaust the green of meadow and the gold of harvest.

Here stands the homestead, and here lies the meadow-land; there walk the kine (having no call to run), and yonder the wheat in the hollow of the hill, bowing to the silvery stroke of the wind, is touched with the promise of increasing gold.
As good as the cattle and the crops themselves are the people that live upon them; or at least, in a fair degree, they try to be so; though not of course so harmless, or faithful, or peaceful, or charitable.
But still, in proportion, they may be called as good; and in fact they believe themselves much better.