impressiveness of manner whisper loudly, 'Now you take un and put un
away; and mind you don't mix um. You put he along with the fives and
not with the tens.'

Hilary once showed me the heel of a boot which had just been mended by
the hedge carpenter and cobbler who worked for him; and offered to bet
that not all the scientific people in Europe, with microscope,
spectrum analysis, all their appliances, could tell what leather the
new heel-piece was made of. Unable to guess, I gave it up; it was of
bacon. A pig that was never a 'good doer' was found in a ditch dead.
There is always a competition among the labourers for a dead pig or
sheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted
it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of
bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw
it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to
throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs
could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using
it as leather to mend shoes; so half his customers walked about the
world on bacon heels.

So far as I could discover, the cottage folk did not now use many
herbs. They made tea sometimes of the tormentil, whose little yellow
flowers appear along the furrows. The leaves of the square-stemmed
figwort, which they called 'cresset' or 'cressil,' were occasionally
placed on a sore; and the yarrow--locally 'yarra'--was yet held in
estimation as a salve or ointment.

It would be possible for any one to dwell a long time in the midst of
a village, and yet never hear anything of this kind and obtain no idea
whatever of the curious mixture of the grotesque, the ignorance and
yet cleverness, which go to make up hamlet life. But so many labourers
and labouring women were continually in and out of the kitchen at
Lucketts' Place that I had an opportunity of gathering these items
from Mrs. Luckett and Cicely. Years since they had employed even more
labour, before machinery came into use so much: then as many as
twenty-four women might have been counted in one hayfield, all in
regular rank like soldiers, turning the hay 'wallows' with their
rakes. 'There's one thing now you have forgotten,' said Cicely. 'They
pick the canker-roses off the briars and carry them in the pocket as a
certain preventive of rheumatism.'

CHAPTER V.

WIND-ANEMONES. THE FISHPOND.

The only spot about the