A very smart young person came from the neighbouring market town once, and tried the pond with the fly.  He had just reached his third dozen when he was caught by old Sam, the gamekeeper, and three fishermen.  They tied a cart-rope round his waist and threw him into the pond; they then pitched the whole of the trout back into the water, and after that they dragged the trespasser out, floured him carefully, and sent him on his road.

These incidents are not idyllic, but they serve to show what kind of a hold a strong, just man may obtain upon simple people if he only shows that he is ready to work for them.  The whole of the tenantry and the villagers knew that their stern old master gave up his life for their sake.  They knew that he worked like a common bailiff; they knew that he drank nothing but water; they knew that he put by money every year with the sole object of making improvements which might better their condition, and they respected him accordingly.

When he reached the age of ninety-six years he was no longer capable of guiding his pony:  the pony guided him.  On one afternoon the beast turned just at the end of the Fisher Row and walked the old man quietly back to the stables.  He could not dismount without assistance, and he had to wait in the stall, while Matchem munched his oats, until one of the stable boys came and released him.  From that day the Squire rode no more, and the occasion was memorable, alike for fishers and hinds.

When the old man died he was followed to his grave by the entire population from nine farms and two fishing villages.  Old men of eighty, who remembered him when he was a bright young fellow in George the Third’s time, went and stood round his grave.  Everybody wanted some remembrance of him, but this could not be attained until the clever national schoolmaster of the village suggested that an engraving should be made from a photograph.  You cannot go into one cottage or one farm-house on the whole of the estate without finding an engraved portrait of the splendid old man hung in a place of honour.

THE VILLAGE PREACHER.

The Methodists got a very strong hold in seaside places at the end of the last century, but during the long pressure of the great War the claims of religion were somewhat forgotten.  Smuggling went on to an extraordinary extent and the consequent demoralisation was very apparent.  The strict morality which the stern Methodists of the old school taught had been broken, and some of the villages were little better than nests of pirates.  The decent people who lived inland were continually molested by marauding ruffians who came from seaside places, and to call a man a “fisher,” was to label him with a term of reproach.

On Saturday nights every Fisher Row was a scene of drunken turmoil, and on Sunday the men lounged about drinking, the women scolding, while the old-fashioned simplicity of life seemed to be forgotten altogether.