"I bean't varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in moy life, nor never
wool. I farms my own land, and my vathers avore me, this ever so mony
hoondred year. I've got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they
fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's head--what
was the name of um?"

"Charles the First?"

"Ees--that's the booy. We was Parliament side--true Britons all we was,
down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head
of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw
'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans--I
wool,--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though the country
through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please
any one), "to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so flat as a
barn's floor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!--and
vour sons--or was vour on 'em--every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes,
to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty
pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as
dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch
runners, down the wind, again' either a one o' the bairns!"

And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and
chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious
tone, two or three times, "Vour on 'em there was--vour on 'em there was;"
and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came
to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and
insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never drank fermented
liquors.