can tell."

"The parson follows where the squire leads, I've a notion," remarked
another seafaring man, who was considered an oracle among his mates.
"He never said a word about it before the squire took the matter up.
Many's the time we've had a score of kegs stowed away in his tool-house,
and if one was left behind, if he didn't get it I don't know who did."

On hearing this I felt very much inclined to stop and declare that my
father had never received a keg of spirits, or a bribe of any sort, for
I was very sure that he would not condescend to that, though I could not
answer for the integrity of John Dixon, our old gardener, who had been,
on more than one occasion, unable to work for a week together; and
although his wife said that he was suffering from rheumatics, the doctor
remarked, with a wink, that he had no doubt he would recover without
having much physic to take.

Some of the men were even more severe in their remarks, and swore that
if the parson was going to preach in that style, they would not show
their noses inside the church. Others threatened to go off to the
methodists' house in the next village, where the minister never troubled
the people with disagreeable remarks.

I did not tell my father all I had heard, as I knew it would annoy him.
It did not occur to me at the moment that he had introduced the subject
for the sake of currying favour with Sir Reginald, indeed I did not
think such an idea had crossed his mind.

He was greatly surprised in the afternoon, when the service was
generally better attended than in the morning, to find that only half
his usual congregation was present. When he returned home, after making
some visits in the parish, on the following Tuesday, he told us he
suspected from the way he had been received that something was wrong,
but it did not occur to him that his sermon was the cause of offence.

I, in the meantime, was spending my holidays in far from a satisfactory
manner. My elder brothers amused themselves without taking pains to
find me anything to do, while Ned was always at his books, and was only
inclined to come out and take a constitutional walk with me now and
then. My younger brothers were scarcely out of the nursery, and I was
thus left very much to my own resources. I bethought me one day of
paying the old sailor Roger Riddle a visit, and perhaps getting his son
Mark to come and fish with me.

I told Ned where I was going, and was just setting off