} 
' MY OLD VILLAGE. 315 
The next cottage was a very marked one, for houses 
grow to their owners. The low thatched roof had 
rounded itself and stooped down to fit itself to Job’s 
shoulders ; the walls had got short and thick to suit him, 
and they had a yellowish colour, like his complexion, as 
if chewing tobacco had stained his cheeks right through. 
Tobacco juice had likewise penetrated and tinted the wall. 
It was cut off as it seemed by a party-wall into one room, 
instead of which there were more rooms beyond which 
no one would have suspected. Job had a way of shak- 
ing hands with you with his right hand, while his left 
hand was casually doing something else in a detached 
sort of way. ‘Yes, sir, and ‘No, sir, and nodding to 
everything you said all so complaisant, but at the end 
of the bargain you generally found yourself a few shil- 
lings in some roundabout manner on the wrong side. Job 
had a lot of shut-up rooms in his house and in his cha- 
racter, which never seemed to be opened todaylight. The 
eaves hung over and beetled like his brows, and he had 
a forelock, a regular antique forelock, which he used to 
touch with the greatest humility. There was a long 
bough of an elm hanging over one gable just like the fore- 
lock. His face was a blank, like the broad end wall of 
the cottage, which had no window—at least you might 
think so until you looked up and discovered one little 
arrow slit, one narrow pane, and woke with a start to the 
idea that Job was always up there watching and listening. 
That was how he looked out of his one eye so intensely 
cunning, the other being a wall eye—that is, the world 
_supposed so, as he kept it half shut, always betwcen the 
lights ; but whether it was really blind or not I cannot 
say. Job caught rats and rabbits and moles, and 
bought fagots or potatoes, or fruit or rabbit-skins, or 
rusty iron: wonderful how he scemed to have command 
