ppointed with him, and inclined to disbelieve him;
until he happily remembered that His Majesty had died in great pain,
with blue spots on his breast and black spots all across his back, and
these in the form of a cross, by reason of Papists having poisoned him.
When Sam called this to his remembrance (or to his imagination) he was
overwhelmed, at once, with so many invitations to dinner, that he scarce
knew which of them to accept; but decided in our favour.

Grieving much for the loss of the King, however greatly it might be (as
the parson had declared it was, while telling us to pray against it) for
the royal benefit, I resolved to ride to Porlock myself, directly after
dinner, and make sure whether he were dead, or not. For it was not by
any means hard to suppose that Sam Fry, being John's first cousin, might
have inherited either from grandfather or grandmother some of those
gifts which had made our John so famous for mendacity. At Porlock I
found that it was too true; and the women of the town were in great
distress, for the King had always been popular with them: the men, on
the other hand, were forecasting what would be likely to ensue.

And I myself was of this number, riding sadly home again; although bound
to the King as churchwarden now; which dignity, next to the parson's in
rank, is with us (as it ought to be in every good parish) hereditary.
For who can stick to the church like the man whose father stuck to it
before him; and who knows all the little ins, and great outs, which must
in these troublous times come across?

But though appointed at last, by virtue of being best farmer in the
parish (as well as by vice of mismanagement on the part of my mother,
and Nicholas Snowe, who had thoroughly muxed up everything, being too
quick-headed); yet, while I dwelled with pride upon the fact that I
stood in the King's shoes, as the manager and promoter of the Church of
England, and I knew that we must miss His Majesty (whose arms were above
the Commandments), as the leader of our thoughts in church, and handsome
upon a guinea; nevertheless I kept on thinking how his death would act
on me.

And here I saw it, many ways. In the first place, troubles must break
out; and we had eight-and-twenty ricks; counting grain, and straw, and
hay. Moreover, mother was growing weak about riots, and shooting, and
burning; and she gathered the bed-clothes around her ears every night,
when her feet were tucked up; and prayed not