In those days pastoral life was not so charmingly innocent, nor the Colins and Phoebes nearly so amiable and virtuous, as imaginative poets and painters have pictured them to us. In Alderley, as in many other places, drunkenness was the besetting sin; immorality, as a matter of course, followed in its train; and what should have been a kind of Arcadia was oftentimes the scene of riotous disorder. The good rector spared no pains to repress the evil, and whenever he heard of any drunken fight in the village he would, with the dash and daring of an English sailor, hurry off to put a stop to it. It is related that on one occasion word was brought to him that a riotous crowd had assembled on the confines of his parish to witness a desperate prize fight. "The whole field," so a rustic spectator described it, "was filled, and all the trees round about, when in about a quarter of an hour I saw the rector coming up the road on his little black horse as quick as lightning, and I trembled for fear they should harm him. He rode into the field, and just looked quick round (as if he thought the same) to see who there was that would be on his side. But it was not needed--he rode into the midst of the crowd, and in one moment it was all over; there was a great calm; the blows stopped; it was as if they would all have wished to cover themselves up in the earth--all from the trees they dropped down directly--no one said a word, and all went away humble." The following day he sent for the two men, but instead of scolding he reasoned with them, and sent each away with a Bible in his hand.