fine-bred cattle from the manors down by the Ness. He did not let the cows wander in the woods from spring to autumn, and half-starve, but sent them to pasture in the open meadow. Everything that could be thought of to enhance the value of the farm was done: he carried on protracted negotiations with the peasants on the west side of the dale for the purchase of lands adjoining his; he built cottages for his workmen, that they might have decent homes, with outbuildings and a bit of ground where they could keep a cow and a pig.
Nor were his labours in vain. Within a year the farm paid back all he had laid out on it. There was such a harvest of hay he hardly knew where to store it all for the winter. For every bushel of peas sown he got twenty bushels in return, and when he planted turnips the ground gave forth such a blessed abundance it was more than his own folk could gather in. So he sent word to the neighbours to come with horse and cart, and take home all the turnips they could dig.
However, there was one serious obstacle to this work of improving the farm, and that was the little river Ämtan, which meandered in all sorts of graceful bends and curves down in the dale, where his fields lay. Ordinarily, the stream was not much bigger than a forest brook, but as soon as there came a good fall of rain it overflowed its banks, converting his clover meadows and oat fields into little lakes.
The Lieutenant decided that something must be done about the river. Where it flowed through his own
