a left-handed person, do you see—­flung or chucked up a stone, which lighting on the top of the steeple, which was at least a hundred and fifty feet high, did there remain.  After repeating this feat two or three times, I “hulled” up a stone, which went clean over the tower, and then one, my right foot still on the ledge, which rising at least five yards above the steeple, did fall down just at my feet.  Without knowing it, I was showing off my gift to others besides myself, doing what, perhaps, not five men in England could do.  Two men, who were passing by, stopped and looked at my proceedings, and when I had done flinging came into the churchyard, and, after paying me a compliment on what they had seen me do, proposed that I should join company with them; I asked them who they were, and they told me.  The one was Hopping Ned, and the other Biting Giles.  Both had their gifts, by which they got their livelihood; Ned could hop a hundred yards with any man in England, and Giles could lift up with his teeth any dresser or kitchen table in the country, and, standing erect, hold it dangling in his jaws.  There’s many a big oak table and dresser in certain districts of England, which bear the marks of Giles’s teeth; and I make no doubt that, a hundred or two years hence, there’ll be strange stories about those marks, and that people will point them out as a proof that there were giants in bygone times, and that many a dentist will moralise on the decays which human teeth have undergone.

’They wanted me to go about with them, and exhibit my gift occasionally as they did theirs, promising that the money that was got by the exhibitions should be honestly divided.  I consented, and we set off together, and that evening coming to a village, and putting up at the alehouse, all the grand folks of the village being there smoking their pipes, we contrived to introduce the subject of hopping—­the upshot being that Ned hopped against the schoolmaster for a pound, and beat him hollow; shortly after, Giles, for a wager, took up the kitchen table in his jaws, though he had to pay a shilling to the landlady for the marks he left, whose grandchildren will perhaps get money by exhibiting them.  As for myself, I did nothing that day, but the next, on which my companions did nothing, I showed off at hulling stones against a cripple, the crack man for stone throwing, of a small town, a few miles farther on.  Bets were made to the tune of some pounds, I contrived to beat the cripple, and just contrived; for to do him justice, I must acknowledge he was a first-rate hand at stones, though he had a game hip, and went sideways; his head, when he walked—­if his movements could be called walking—­not being above three feet above the ground.  So we travelled, I and my companions, showing off our gifts, Giles and I occasionally for a gathering, but Ned never hopping unless against somebody for a wager.  We lived honestly and comfortably, making no little money by our natural endowments, and were known over a great part of England as ‘Hopping Ned,’ ‘Biting Giles,’ and ‘Hull over the Head Jack,’ which was my name, it being the blackguard fashion of the English, do you see, to—­’