of poaching, exposed himself very sadly, when the ale was in him, by relating a number of poaching tricks I had never heard before.  One was of how to catch stares, or shepsters, when they fly up and down, as they do before lodging in a thicket.  Then you must turn out, said Dick, a quick stare with a limed thread of three yards long, when she will fly straight to the rest, and, flocking among them, will infallibly bring down at least one or two, and perhaps five or six, all entangled in her thread.  And another was how to take wild ducks.  Go into the water, said he, up to the neck, with a pumpkin put over your head, and whilst the ducks come up to eat the seeds, you may take them by the legs and pull them under quietly, one by one, till they be drowned.  But I would not like to do that in cold weather; and indeed it seems to me altogether like that other method by which you take larks by a-putting of salt upon their tails.  I asked Dick, very serious, whether he had tried that plan; and he said he had not, but that a friend had told him of it; and the company became very merry.

There were other tales too, more grave than these, of sacrilege, and suchlike.  One, which my man James told, was of a man who took an altar stone from an old church, to press cheeses with; but the cheeses ran blood; so they took it from that and put it in the laundry to bat the linen on.  But at night, such a sound of batting was heard continually from the laundry—­and no one there—­that the man took it back again to the church, and buried it in the churchyard.  And another was of two men who had thrown down a village-cross upon a bowling-green; and when one of them next day tried to move it from there, for the playing—­he being a very strong man, and lifting it on end—­it fell upon him, backwards, and crushed his breast, so that he never spoke again.  And there were many tales told of church-lands; and how my Lord Strafford, that was beheaded, before his death told his son to get rid of them all, for that they brought a curse always upon them that held them.  And there was another story told at the end by a man from the farm who had been in London at the time, and had seen it for himself—­how my Lords Castlehaven and Arran, in St. James’ Park, did, for a wager, kill a strong buck in His Majesty’s presence, by running on foot, and each with a knife only.  They took nearly three hours to do it in, but the wager was for six, so they won that.  They killed him at last in Rosamund’s Pond, having driven him in there with stones.  I could well believe this latter tale, and that the thing had been done in the king’s presence, having seen what I had at supper two nights before.

* * * * *

When we came into the Great Chamber after supper all was ready for the dancing; and Mr. Thompson, who was the Hormead schoolmaster, and a concealed Catholic—­though he went to the church with the children and did teach them their religion, for his living—­was at the spinet to which we were to dance.  There was a fellow also to play the fiddle, and another for a horn.