A Farmer’s Life 
hollered, ‘what be ye got up to now?’ So 
then they hauled ’n out o’ church and put ’n 
in the stocks for brawlin’ in church.” 
This man was once cutting hedges for my 
uncle. “‘It used to be a perquisite of the man 
that was cuttin’ a hedge to take home any of 
the dead wood in a nitch. None of the other he 
wasn’t entitled to, but only the dead. Old Tom 
was goin’ home with a biggish nitch, when 
Hughes met ’n. Hughes was bailiff at Farn- 
borough Park. ‘ What ye got there?’ he says. 
‘Why, hedge-cuttin’s,’ old Tom says. ‘ D’your 
master know what you be at?’ Hughes says. 
‘What business is that of yours?’ old Tom says. 
‘ Well,’ Hughes says, ‘I knows if ’twas my old 
man he’d very soon have ye for it.’ ‘ Yes,’ 
Tom says; ‘ but I en’t workin’ for your old man. 
I be workin’ for Mister Smith.’ 
““One day after that he was a bit drunk and 
rolled into a ditch—there used to be a open ditch 
down there by the bridge. Hughes happened 
to come along, and pulled ’n out and set ’n in 
the bank across t’other side of the road—and 
he set there and sweared at ’n for it. But 
Hughes went on down to the ‘ Prince 0’ Wales’ 
—told ’m what had happened and that old Tom 
was there, and said he’d give ’em five shillin’s 
to fetch a cab so that he could take ’n home. 
But when he got back to the bridge with the 
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