he time of the great wars with the
First Napoleon; and the poor people, as the wheat went up to famine
prices, were often in a strait for bread. When the miller's packhorse
appeared the cottagers crowded round and demanded the price: if it had
risen a penny, the infuriated mob of women would sometimes pull the
miller's boy off the horse and duck him in the village pond.

The memory of those old times is still vivid in farmhouses, and at
Hilary's I have myself handled old Jonathan's walking-staff, which he
and his father before him used in traversing on foot those perilous
roads. It was about five feet long, perhaps more, an inch and a half
in diameter, and shod with an iron ferrule and stout spike. With this
he could prod the sloughs and ascertain their depth, or use it as a
leaping-pole; and if threatened by sturdy rogues whirl it about their
heads as a quarter-staff.

Wars and famines were then terrible realities--men's minds were full
of them, and superstition flourished. The foggers and shepherds saw
signs in the sky and read the stars. Down at Lucketts' Place one
winter's night, when folk almost fancied they could hear the roar of
Napoleon's cannon, the old fogger came rushing in with the news that
the armies could be seen fighting in the heavens. It was an aurora,
the streamers shooting up towards the zenith, and great red spots
among the stars, the ghastly stains of the wounded. The old fogger
declared that as he went out with his lantern to attend to the cows
calving he could see the blood dripping on the back of his hand as it
fell down from the battling hosts above.

To us the ignorance even of such comparatively recent times is almost
incredible. As Hilary was telling me of such things as we sat in his
house one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, a
humming deep bass, somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with a
pressure on the pedal. It increased and became louder, coming from the
road which passed the house; it was caused by a very large flock of
sheep driven slowly. The individual 'baa' of each lamb was so mixed,
as it were, with the bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound took
a strange, mysterious tone; a voice that seemed to speak of trouble,
and perplexity, and anxiety for rest. Hilary, as a farmer, must of
course go out to see whose they were, and I went with him; but before
he reached the garden gate he turned back, remarking, 'It's Johnson's
flock; I know the tang of hi