Thus guided by the association of ideas, Charlie took my vile body within three or four miles of Norton, and then hailed a native: “Which way should I go to get to Norton; _far to go the nighest way?_” Implying that he knew several routes, but was unable to decide on the best. The school was then found. Very seldom he put up at the “Red Lion”; usually he went straight to the Rectory, where he got entertainment for man and beast, and provided entertainment for the cook by retailing the latest news from Norwich. Our conversation was most improving. All that I knew about “The Principles of Agriculture”--a possible subject of examination in schools--I got from Charlie in those drives. He did his best to teach a short-sighted man the difference between swedes, mangolds, and turnips; and between wheat, oats, and barley, before their ears were developed. He taught me not to expect a field of wheat where I had been so much pleased with the crop last year. It would be three years before the phenomenon recurred, and in those years other vegetables would be seen. This was not to relieve the monotony of agricultural life, and so to bring the labourer “back to the land,” but for certain agricultural-chemical reasons which Charlie did not explain. He had views about cattle, too, and their approximate value, and attributed the introduction of cattle plague to Gu-anner. Also he discoursed upon birds, plants, and flowers under their Norfolk names, such as Stubin wood, Pretty Betsy, Mergule, and White Rim, and gave me much information. In return one day, as I travelled with my colleague, I taught him indirectly the mysteries of Roadside Cribbage: you know the game? A. and B., sitting right and left, count all the men and beasts on their respective sides of the road within the limits of two hedges, marking ten for a white horse and ten for a windmill: the higher score at the end of an agreed distance or time wins the game, but a cat on the window-sill, or an old woman in spectacles is Game at once. Charlie was referee about the shade of the horses claimed as “white”; he watched the game with the keenest interest, and once, when I snatched a victory at the last moment in the face of a heavy majority, by espying a spectacled hag, he rolled about in tearful laughter till the black horse wondered if we had been to a funeral in his dog-cart.