glasses, and it appeared that this indicated the locality from whence they came.  Probably she had noticed their accent, and, being a native of Worcestershire, remembered their intimate drinking custom as a county peculiarity.  The men proceeded to describe the sights of London, and one of them added that there was one thing they could not find there, stopping suddenly in some confusion.  I pressed him to explain.  He still hesitated, and, turning to the others, said:  “You tell the master, Bill.”  Bill was not so diffident.  “Well,” he said, “we couldn’t see a good-looking ’ooman in Lunnon; for Jarge here, ’e was judge over ’em for a bit, and then Tom ’e took it, nor ’e couldn’t see one neither!”

Jarge was somewhat of a bon vivant, and much appreciated my annual present of a piece of Christmas beef.  When thanking me and descanting upon its tenderness and acceptability, on one occasion, he continued, “It ain’t like the sort of biff we folks has to put up with, that tough you has to set in the middle of the room at dinner, for fear you might daish your brains out agen the wall a-tuggin’ at it with your teeth!”

Jarge had one song and only one that I ever heard, and he was always called upon for it at harvest suppers and other jollifications; it was not a classic, but he rendered it with characteristic drollery, and always brought down the house.  I conclude my sketch of him by mentioning it because it is almost my last impression of his vivid personality, trotted out with great energy at my farewell supper, a day or two before I left Aldington.

Among the men who were bequeathed to me, so to speak, by my predecessor, Tom was one of whom I always had a high opinion.  Tall, vigorous, and well made, one recognized at once his possibilities as a valuable man.  He was somewhat cautious, taciturn, very sensitive and reserved, but would open out in conversation when alone with me.  As quite a young man he had worked at the building of the branch line from Oxford to Wolverhampton, via Worcester, the “O.W. and W.,” or “Old Wusser and Wusser,” as it was called, until taken over by the Great Western Railway.  The latter, extending from London to Oxford, was, I believe, one of Brunell’s masterly conceptions, being without a tunnel the whole way.  But the new line had to pierce the Cotswolds before reaching the Vale of Evesham, and Tom had many yarns about the construction of the long Mickleton tunnel.  Among them was a tradition of the cost, so great that guineas laid edgeways throughout its length would not pay for it.

In my time there was a splendid service of express trains running from London to Worcester without a stop, and coming downhill into the Vale, through the tunnel and towards Evesham, the speed approximated to a mile a minute.  I was talking to one of my men, a hedger, working near the line which bounded a portion of my land, when one of the express trains came dashing along and passed us with a roar in a few seconds.  “My word,” said he, “I reckon that’s a co-rider.”  I was puzzled, but presently it came to me that he meant “corridor”; he had probably seen the word in the local paper without having heard it pronounced.