charms, and inspire for
themselves and their dwellings great respect, not to say fear, amongst a
simple folk such as the dwellers in the Vale of White Horse. Where this
power, or whatever else it may be, descends upon the shoulders of a man
whose ways are not straight, he becomes a nuisance to the neighbourhood;
a receiver of stolen goods, giver of love-potions, and deceiver of silly
women; the avowed enemy of law and order, of justices of the peace,
headboroughs, and gamekeepers. Such a man in fact as was recently caught
tripping, and deservedly dealt with by the Leeds justices, for seducing
a girl who had come to him to get back a faithless lover, and has been
convicted of bigamy since then. Sometimes, however, they are of quite a
different stamp, men who pretend to nothing, and are with difficulty
persuaded to exercise their occult arts in the simplest cases.

Of this latter sort was old farmer Ives, as he was called, the "wise
man" to whom Benjy resorted (taking Tom with him as usual), in the early
spring of the year next after the feast described in the last chapter.
Why he was called "farmer" I cannot say, unless it be that he was the
owner of a cow, a pig or two, and some poultry, which he maintained on
about an acre of land enclosed from the middle of a wild common, on
which probably his father had squatted before lords of manors looked as
keenly after their rights as they do now. Here he had lived no one knew
how long, a solitary man. It was often rumoured that he was to be turned
out and his cottage pulled down, but somehow it never came to pass; and
his pigs and cow went grazing on the common, and his geese hissed at the
passing children and at the heels of the horse of my lord's steward, who
often rode by with a covetous eye on the enclosure, still unmolested.
His dwelling was some miles from our village; so Benjy, who was half
ashamed of his errand, and wholly unable to walk there, had to exercise
much ingenuity to get the means of transporting himself and Tom thither
without exciting suspicion. However, one fine May morning he managed to
borrow the old blind pony of our friend the publican, and Tom persuaded
Madam Brown to give him a holiday to spend with old Benjy, and to lend
them the Squire's light cart, stored with bread and cold meat and a
bottle of ale. And so the two in high glee started behind old Dobbin,
and jogged along the deep-rutted plashy roads, which had not been mended
after their winter's