ee what he's like."

The pastor's jaw dropped. My father went grey with rage. Dick stood
a pace back, smiling; and the sun glanced on the gold rings in his
ears.

"No, sirs. It ain't blasphemy. But I know you can't give me a
notion that won't make him out to be a sort of man, pretty much like
yourselves--two eyes, a nose, mouth, and beard perhaps. Now my wife
says there's points about a woman that you don't reckon into your
notion; and my dog says there's more in a tail than most men
estimate--"

"You foul-tongued poacher--" broke out my father.

"Now you're mixing matters up," Dick interrupted, blandly; "I poach,
and that's a crime. I've shown your boy to-day how men kill badgers,
and maybe that's wrong. But look here, sir--I've taught him some
things besides; the ways of birds and beasts, and their calls; how to
tell the hour by sun and stars; how to know an ash from a beech, of a
pitch-dark night, by the sound of the wind in their tops; what herbs
will cure disease and where to seek them; why some birds hop and
others run. Sirs, I come of an old race that has outlived books and
pictures and meeting-houses: you belong to a new one and a cock-sure,
and maybe you're right. Anyhow, you know precious little of this
world, whatever you may of another."

He stopped, pushed a hand through his coarse black hair, and, as if
suddenly tired, resumed the old, sidelong gypsy look that he had been
straightening with an effort.

"Your boy'll believe what you tell him: he's got the strength in his
blood. Take him home and don't beat him too hard."

He glanced at me with a light nod, untied his dogs, shouldered his
tools, and slouched away down the path, to sleep under his accustomed
tree that night and be off again, next day, travelling amongst men
and watching them with his weary ironical smile.

THE CAROL.

I was fourteen that Christmas:--all Veryan parish knows the date of
the famous "Black Winter," when the _Johann_ brig came ashore on
Kibberick beach, with a dozen foreigners frozen stiff and staring on
her fore-top, and Lawyer Job, up at Ruan, lost all his lambs but two.
There was neither rhyme nor wit in the season; and up to St. Thomas's
eve, when it first started to freeze, the folk were thinking that
summer meant to run straight into spring. I mind the ash being in
leaf on Advent Sunday, and a crowd of martins skimming round the
church windows during sermon-time. Each morning brought blue sky,
wa