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Rh nation to see, and I be terr'ble weak in the legs, so I just crept out in the night, so quiet as a star-beam, and sheltered in the orchard yonder, till I seed the rod fairly put in my hand by the Almighty, that I mid strike manna out of the stream, like old Moses, so to speak."

"You're a funny man," said Angel. "You've a rum way of talking."

"I come from Devon by natur," he answered, "and my tongue still has the twist o't though I haven't seed the moors these sixty years."

"You must be pretty old."

"Old! I be so aged that I can remember my grandmother when she was but a rosy-cheeked slip of a gal."

We stared in awe before such antiquity.

The Seraph ventured: "Did your grandmother put you in the work'us?"

"No, no. Not she. It was my two grandsons. Well-fixed men they be too, for Philip had a fine cow until the bailiff took her; and Zachary thinks naught on a Fair day o' buying meat pasties for hisself and his missus, and parading about before the nation wi' the gravy fair running down their wrists. Ay—but the work'us was good enough for old Granfa. 'Darn'ee,' says I to Philip, 'there's life in the old dog yet, and I'll escape from here in the fulness of time!' Which I did."

We grouped ourselves about him in easy atti-