Page:The English Peasant.djvu/202

 Hobbling along the road to Frantfield was a poor old labourer who lived at Buxted.

"Bad times here in the winter?" I asked.

"Not so bad," he replied. "The farmer keeps the married ones on, and turns off the single ones."

My admiration for the kindness of the farmer was somewhat lessened when it was afterwards pointed out that philanthropy had little to do with this arrangement, but that a single man could and would go elsewhere, while a married one with a family came at once on the rates.

"There wasn't much drinking," the old labourer said, "about there. They hadn't enough to get drunk upon."

As to witches, he hadn't heard speak of any since he was a boy; his mother used to talk of 'em. "Did I think, now, that a witch could stop a cart going up-hill?"

"Did he?"

"Well, he wasn't sure."

"Pharisees? What were they? Oh, yes; he had heard speak of fäery rings."

"Did he go to church?"

"Yes, and sometimes to the Wesleyans. All we have to do," said he, as if he wished to give a summary of his creed, "is to stick to the Bible.".

Yet even he had his difficulties.

"I be ignorant, sir, I be. Maybe ye can tell me what this means. I think it be in one of the little books where it do say, 'God came from Teman.' How can that be when it say 'God was, and is, and ever shall be'?"