Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/660

550 You'll be in the room: if I scratch my nose with my fork you'll know that he has not paid up. Dear me! what a shocking thing were his linch-pin to be gone, and he going down Knowstone Hill, and in such a dark night—and the wheel were to come off."

And certainly if Tom saw the vicar put his silver fork to his nose, so certainly would Farmer Q—— be thrown out of his trap by the wheel coming off, to be found by the next passer along the road with dislocated thigh, or broken arm and collarbone.

A gentleman near had offended him. This person had a plantation of larch near his house. Froude said to Tom, "Bad job for Squire——, if his larch lost their leaders!" Next morning every larch in the plantation had been mutilated.

The Rev. W. H. Thornton says in his delightful book, Reminiscences of an Old West-country Clergyman: "He always had around him a tribe of vagabonds, whom he harboured. They beat the covers when he shot, they found hares for his hounds to hunt, they ran on his errands, they were the terror of the countryside, and were reputed to commit crimes at their master's instigation. He never paid them anything, or spared or sheltered them from punishment. Sometimes they were in gaol, and sometimes out. They could always have as much bacon, potatoes, bread and cheese, and cider at his house as they pleased, as well as a fire to sit by, and a rough bed to lie down upon.

"Plantations were burned, horses mutilated, chimneys choked, and Chowne's men had the credit of these misdeeds, which were generally committed to the injury of some person with whom Chowne had quarrelled.

"I have known him say to a young farmer: 'John, I like that colt of yours. I will give you twenty-five pounds for him.' The owner had replied that it was