AN OUTCAST 249 



self completed the picture during my few days in the 

 village. 



The man who fed his neighbour's dog, and sent the 

 beggar satisfied away, and made presents to the children, 

 and lived on six ounces of tobacco a week, is a native of 

 Zennor in Cornwall. "Wonderful place for pedlars is 

 Cornwall. The towns are so few and far between that 

 the people along the road aren't used to pedlars, and when 

 you do call you are sure of the best of treatment." He 

 was apprenticed to a shoemaker in a town in South 

 Devon, and for a time practised his trade there as an 

 assistant. He was very clever at boxing and wrestling, 

 and a hard fighter, too, though unwilling to make a 

 quarrel. But he was a queer youth and took violent likes 

 and dislikes to men, and one day he dropped a boot and 

 went out into the street and took a young gentleman by 

 the arm and said to him : " Excuse me, sir, you have 

 passed this shop for five years nearly every day and I 

 can't stand it any longer." Whereupon he gave that 

 young gentleman a beating. He was sent to prison; he 

 lost his employment and went to sea. And at sea or else 

 in foreign countries he stayed six years. He left the sea 

 only because he broke an arm which had at length to be 

 amputated above the elbow. He was a changed man and 

 many thought then that he was mad. When he left the 

 hospital it was December and bitter weather : he had only 

 five shillings and it was notorious how he spent it. 

 Every day for a week he bought three loaves of bread 

 and went out and fed the birds with them. When that 

 week was over he had to go into the workhouse, and 

 there he stayed until the spring. It was there that he 

 fell in with the tall man who helped to tell his tale. 



