ired a
whole field to turn in.

At that date folk had no banking accounts, but kept their coin in a
strong chest under the bed, sometimes hiding it in strange places.
Jonathan was once visiting a friend, and after they had hobnobbed a
while the old fellow took him, with many precautions that they should
not be observed, into the pig-sty and showed him fifty guineas hid in
the thatch. That was by no means all his property, but the old fellow
said, with a wink, that he liked to have a little hoard of his own
that his wife knew nothing about.

Some land being put up for sale, after biddings by the well-to-do
residents, an old dealer in a very small way, as was supposed, bid
above them all. The company looked upon him with contempt, and his
offer was regarded as mere folly; but he produced a nail-bag from
under his coat and counted out the money. A nail-bag is made of the
coarsest of all kinds of sacking. In this manner the former
generation, eschewing outward show, collected their money coin by
coin, till at last they became substantial men and owners of real
estate. So few were the conveniences of life that men had often to
leave the road and cross several fields out of their way to light
their pipes at a burning couch-heap or lime-kiln.

They prided themselves then in that hill district that they had
neither a cow nor a poor married man in the parish. There was no cow,
because it was entirely a corn-growing place. The whole resident
population was not much over a score, and of the labourers they
boasted not one was married. For in those old times each parish kept
its own poor, and consequently disliked an increase of the population.
The farmers met in vestry from time to time to arrange for the support
of the surplus labour; the appearance of a fresh family would have
meant a fresh tax upon them. They regarded additional human beings as
an incumbrance.

The millers sent their flour round the country then on packhorses;
waggons and carts were not so common as now, while the ways, when you
once quitted the main road, were scarcely passable. Even the main
roads were often in such a state that foot-passengers could not get
along, but left the road and followed a footpath just inside the
hedge. Such footpaths ran beside the roads for miles; here and there
in country places a short section of such tracks may still be found.
'Pack-roads,' too, may be occasionally met with, retaining their
designation to this day. It was t