but preferred wandering the fens as a pedlar, first round the
villages, then, as he grew older, to castles and to towns, buying
and selling--what, Reginald does not tell us: but we should be glad
to know.

One day he had a great deliverance, which Reginald thinks a miracle.
Wandering along the great tide-flats near Spalding and the old Well-
stream, in search of waifs, and strays, of wreck or eatables, he saw
three porpoises stranded far out upon the banks. Two were alive,
and the boy took pity on them (so he said) and let them be: but one
was dead, and off it (in those days poor folks ate anything) he cut
as much flesh and blubber as he could carry, and toiled back towards
the high-tide mark. But whether he lost his way among the banks, or
whether he delayed too long, the tide came in on him up to his
knees, his waist, his chin, and at last, at times, over his head.
The boy made the sign of the cross (as all men in danger did then)
and struggled on valiantly a full mile through the sea, like a brave
lad never loosening his hold of his precious porpoise-meat till he
reached the shore at the very spot from which he had set out.

As he grew, his pedlar journeys became longer. Repeating to
himself, as he walked, the Creeds and the Lord's Prayer--his only
lore--he walked for four years through Lindsey; then went to St.
Andrew's in Scotland; after that, for the first time, to Rome. Then
the love of a wandering sea life came on him, and he sailed with his
wares round the east coasts; not merely as a pedlar, but as a sailor
himself, he went to Denmark and to Flanders, buying and selling,
till he owned (in what port we are not told, but probably in Lynn or
Wisbeach) half one merchant ship and the quarter of another. A
crafty steersman he was, a wise weather-prophet, a shipman stout in