Page 80 - The snake's pass

68 THE SNAKE'S PASS.
"Badly, poor fellow, I am told; indeed, from what I
see of him, I am sure of it. They tell me that up to lately
he was a bright, happy fellow, but now he is a stern, hard-
faced, scowling man ; essentially a man with a grievance,
which makes him take a jaundiced view of everything
else. The only one who is not afraid to speak to him is
his daughter, and they are inseparable. It certainly is
cruelly hard on him. His farm is almost an ideal one for
this part of the world; it has good soil, water, shelter,
trees, everything that makes a farm pretty and com-
fortable, as well as being good for farming purposes ; and
he has to change it for a piece of land as irregular in
shape as the other is compact; without shelter, and
partly taken up with this very bog and the utter waste
and chaos which, when it shifted in former times, it left
behind."
"
" And how does the other, Murdock, act ?
" Shamefully ; I feel so angry with him at times that I
could strike him. There is not a thing he can say or do,
or leave unsaid or undone, that is not aggravating and in-
sulting to his neighbour. Only that he had the precaution
to bind me to an agreement for a given time I'm blessed
if I would work for him, or with him at all—interesting
as the work is in itself, and valuable as is the opportunity
it gives me of studying that strange phenomenon, the
shifting bog."
"What is your work with him?" I asked: "mining
"
or draining, or what ?
He seemed embarrassed at my question. He ' 'hum'd