Thus in 1801 the price of wheat in March was 55_l._ per load, while in October it had fallen to 15_l._ Men forgot the misery of the poor in their eagerness for guineas.
Hilary, with all his old prejudices, was not so foolish as to desire a return of times like that.

He had undergone privation himself in youth, for farmers' sons were but a little better off than plough-lads even in his early days; and he did not wish to make money by another man's suffering.

Still he was always grieving about the wheat crop, and how it had fallen in estimation.

It was a sight to see the gusto with which he would run his hand into a sack of wheat to sample it.
'Here, feel this,' he would say to me, 'you can slip your hand in up to your elbow; and now hold up your palm--see, the grains are as plump as cherry-stones.' After hearing Hilary talk so much of old Jonathan I thought I should like to see the place where he had lived, and later in the season walked up on the hills for that purpose.

The stunted fir-trees on the Down gave so little shadow that I was glad to find a hawthorn under whose branches I could rest on the sward.