IO4 Wild Life in a Southern County 



too, is a curiously carved piece of iron, to fit into the 

 Hand, with a front of steel before the fingers, like a 

 skeleton rapier guard ; it is the ancient steel with which, 

 and a flint, the tinder and the sulphur match were ignited. 



Up in the lumber-room are carved oaken bedsteads of 

 unknown age; linen-presses of black oak with carved 

 panels, and a drawer at the side for the lavender-bags ; a 

 rusty rapier, the point broken off; a flintlock pistol, the 

 barrel of portentous length, and the butt weighted with a 

 mace-like knob of metal, wherewith to knock the enemy 

 on the head. An old yeomanry sabre lies about some- 

 where, which the good man of the time wore when he 

 rode in the troop against the rioters in the days of 

 machine-burning which was like a civil war in the 

 country, and is yet recollected and talked of. The present 

 farmer, who is getting just a trifle heavy in the saddle 

 himself, can tell you the names of labourers living in the 

 village whose forefathers rose in that insurrection. It is 

 a memory of the house how one of the family paid 40L 

 for a substitute to serve in the wars against the French. 



The mistress of the household still bakes a batch of 

 bread at home in the oven once now and then, priding 

 herself that it is never ' dunch,' or heavy. She makes all 

 kinds of preserves, and wines too cowslip, elderberry, 

 ginger and used to prepare a specially delicate biscuit, 

 the paste being dropped on paper and baked by exposure 

 to the sun's rays only. She has a bitter memory of some 

 money having been lost to the family sixty years ago 

 through roguery, harping upon it as a most direful mis- 

 fortune : the old folk, even those having a stocking or a 

 teapot well filled with guineas, thought a great deal of 

 small sums. After listening to a tirade of this kind, in 

 the belief that the family were at least half-ruined, it 



