Other trees grew round; unpruned and thickly-tangled rank grass sprang up wherever the warm sunbeams found an entrance; and as far as the eye could reach, appeared a wilderness of docks and brambles, with huge plantains and giant thistles, inclosed with a boundary hedge of such amazing height as wholly to exclude all further prospect.
Eighty acres of good land belonged to Dancer's farm. An ample stream once held its winding course among them, but becoming choked at the further end with weeds and fallen leaves, and branches broken by the wind, it spread into a marsh, tenanted alike by the slow, creeping blind-worm, and water-newt, the black slug, and frogs of portentous size. The soil was rich, and would have yielded abundantly; the timber, too, was valuable, for some of the finest oaks, perhaps, in the kingdom grew upon the farm; but the cultivation of the one, and the culling of the other, was attended with expense, and both were consequently left uncared for.
In the centre of this lone and wretched spot, dwelt the miserable Dancer and his sister, alike in their habits and penuriousness. The sister never went from home; the brother rarely, except to sell his hay. He had some acres of fine meadow-land, upon which the brambles had not trenched, and his attention was exclusively devoted to keeping them clear of weeds. Having no other occupation, the time of hay-harvest seems to have been the only period at which his mind was engrossed with business, and this too was rendered remarkable by the miser's laying aside his habits of penuriousness--scarcely any gentleman in the neighborhood gave his mowers better beer, or in greater quantity; but at no other time was the beverage of our Saxon ancestors found within his walls.
Some people thought that the old man was crazed; but those who knew him spoke well of his intelligence. As his father had been before him, so was he; his mantle had descended in darkness and in fullness on all who bore his name, and while that of Daniel Dancer was perhaps the most familiar, his three brothers were equally penurious. One sordid passion absorbed their every faculty; they loved money solely and exclusively for its own sake, not for the pleasures it could procure, nor yet because of the power it bestowed, but for the love of hoarding.