In those days it was necessary that the wedding service should be all over by twelve o’clock, and it was most important that due notice should be given of the date of the wedding, a matter about which Dick was sometimes rather careless.

The vicar had gone into Derbyshire for a few days to fish the River Derwent.  He was fishing a long distance up the stream when he heard his name called, and saw his servant running towards him, who said that a wedding was waiting for him at the church.  Dick had forgotten to give due notice of this event.  The vicarage trap was in readiness, but the road over the Derbyshire Peak was rough and steep, the pony small, the distance ten miles, and the vicar encumbered with wet clothes.  The chance of getting to the church before twelve o’clock seemed remote.  But the vicar and pony did their best; it was, however, half an hour after the appointed time when they reached the church.  Glancing at the clock in the tower, the vicar, to his astonishment, found the hands pointing to half-past eleven.  The situation was saved, and the service was concluded within the prescribed time.  The vicar turned to the clerk for an explanation.  “I seed yer coming over the hill,” he said, “and I just stopped the clock a bit.”  Dick was an ingenious man.

There was another character in the parish quite as peculiar as Dick, and he was one of the principal singers, who sat in the west gallery.  He had formerly played the clarionet, before an organ was put into the church.  During service he always kept a red cotton handkerchief over his bald head, which gave him a decidedly comic appearance.

On one occasion the clergyman gave out a hymn in the old-fashioned way:  “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God the twenty-first hymn, second version.”  Up jumped the old singer and shouted, “You’re wrang, maister; it’s first version.”  The clergyman corrected himself, when the singer again rose:  “You’re wrang agearn; it’s twenty-second hymn.”  Without any remark the clergyman corrected the number, and the man again jumped up:  “That’s reet, mon, that’s reet.”  When the old singer died his widow was very anxious there should be some record on his tombstone of his having played the clarionet in church; so above his name a trumpet-shaped instrument was carved on the stone, and some doggerel lines were to be added below.  The vicar had great difficulty in persuading the family to abandon the lines for the text, “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised.”

A neighbouring vicar was on one occasion taking the duty of an old man with failing eyesight, and Dick reminded him before the afternoon service that there was a funeral at four o’clock.  “You must come into the church and tell me when it arrives,” he told the clerk, “and I will stop my sermon.”  It was the habit of the old clergyman to relapse into a strong Yorkshire dialect when speaking familiarly, and this will account for the brief dialogue which