Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/828

704 "Oh, Jacob," Palk would say, "I hope thou hast not been poaching."

"Poaching!" Jacob would exclaim; "Lord, sir, if a hare runs across the road, I may knock un on the head, I reckon, and no one say nort."

"I should like to know just where it was—as a study in nat'ral history."

"Well, if you must know, Cap'n, it were in Buckland-on-the-Moor, Squire Bastard's woods."

"I dare say, friend, it will be all the fatter and better eating."

In these Buckland Woods larch grew finer than almost anywhere else in England, and the timber was obtained thence for Vitifer and Birch Tor mines. Some forty years ago, as much as a hundred and twenty feet of timber was got out of a single tree.

"Well," said Palk, "I've had Squire Bastard's larch wood and obliged him. The trees grew too thick. Hares there too thick. It's a favour to him to thin them out for me. One hand washes the other."

Palk was an assiduous attendant at the Quakers' Annual Meetings, both in Devon and in Cornwall. That of Cornwall was held at S. Austell, and it fell at the time when the hay was cut, and that was frequently wet, so that a rhyme was commonly repeated to caution the farmers:—

At one of these gatherings, when the monthly advices to the members were being read out, and there was one specially enjoining forbearance from "vain sports," up rose a lately-joined member, and with an anxious voice inquired what these vain sports embraced. "Now," said he, "Do'ee reckon that kissing the mydens