The night before a Constable there came, Who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name, My businesse, and a troupe of questions more, And wherefore we did land vpon that shore? To whom I fram'd my answers true and fit, (According to his plenteous want of wit) But were my words all true or if I ly'd With neither I could get him satisfi'd. He ask'd if we were Pyrats? We said No, (_As if we had we would haue told him so_) He said that Lords sometimes would enterprise T' escape and leaue the Kingdome in disguise: But I assur'd him on my honest word That I was no disguisèd Knight or Lord. He told me then that I must goe sixe miles T' a Justice there, Sir John or else Sir Giles: I told him I was lothe to goe so farre, And he told me he would my journey barre. Thus what with Fleas and with the seuerall prates Of th' officer, and his _Ass_-sociats We arose to goe, but Fortune bade us stay: The Constable had stolne our oares away, And borne them thence a quarter of a mile Quite through a Lane beyond a gate and stile; And hid them there to hinder my depart, For which I wish'd him hang'd with all my heart. A plowman (for us) found our Oares againe, Within a field well fil'd with Barley Graine. Then madly, gladly, out to sea we thrust, 'Gainst windes and stormes, and many a churlish Gust, By _Kingston_ Chappelle and by _Rushington_, By _Little-Hampton_ and by _Middleton_. [Sidenote: THE MILLER AND SWEET DEATH] Highdown, above Goring, is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a hill should be according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a sweeping view of the coast and the Channel; but its fame as a resort of holiday makers comes less from its position and height than from the circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it. John Oliver was the miller of Highdown Hill. When not grinding corn he seems to have busied himself with thoughts upon the necessary end of all things, to such an extent that his meditations on the subject gradually became a mania. His coffin was made while he was still a young man, and it remained under his bed until its time was ripe, fitted--to bring it to a point of preparedness unusual even with the Chinese, those masters of anticipatory obsequies--with wheels, which the miller, I doubt not, regularly oiled. John Oliver did not stop there. Having his coffin comfortably at hand, he proceeded to erect his tomb. This was built in 1766, with tedious verses upon it from the miller's pen; while in an alcove near the tomb was a mechanical arrangement of death's-heads which might keep the miller's thoughts from straying, when, as with Dr. Johnson's philosopher, cheerfulness would creep in.