130 IDLEHURST : 



burned by machinery-rioters, and of himself and his 

 sisters being taken in a waggon to an uncle's house 

 in the country, arriving in the early summer morning ; 

 and of his father calling out, " They've smoked us 

 out at last, George ! " He said that the fire and the 

 journey in the waggon were all a kind of dream, not 

 very terrible ; but that when they reached the house, 

 so still and quiet, with white pigeons on the grass and 

 the shadows of the hollyhocks across the flagged path 

 in the morning sun, it all came back to him with an 

 agony of crying. 



This burnt-out great-grandfather, whose silhouette 

 shows a tailed wig and a very strong chin, was an 

 attorney ; save that he married a penniless beauty, I 

 have no further tradition of him. Next to him hangs 

 a paternal great-uncle, a sea-captain who died in a 

 French prison : it is told of him that he once swore 

 at his sister because she cut his toast in two instead 

 of in three. The sister, a spinster Mehala, a light of 

 some Independent congregation, is beneath him, in a 

 mob cap ; her snuff-box and stick are extant, together 

 with her fame for housekeeping, extreme plainness 

 of person, and stateliness of carriage. Last, under a 

 full wig, is the strong original of all our derivatory 

 noses, the hook of the Derbyshire dalesman beyond 

 whose cloth-mill begin the myths. I feel a sort of 



