Old Memories. 129 
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 4o/. 
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 misfortune : 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 
turns out to be all about roo/, Her grandmother 
after marriage travelled home on horseback behind 
her husband ; there had been a sudden flood, and the 
newly-married couple had to wait for several hours 
till the waters went down before they could pass. 
Times are altered now. 
Since this family dwelt here, and well within what 
K 
