‘I was born in a village in Hampshire, the youngest of a large family—the son of labouring people. As soon as I had strength and voice enough, I was sent into the fields to scare the birds from the corn, and at eight years old, I began to drive plough for my father, so I got very little schooling but what I picked up in the winter evenings at a school kept by an old pensioned soldier. To tell the truth, I never liked my books when I was young, for which now I have often need to be sorry. But I was a strong hearty lad, and no out-door work came amiss to me. As soon as I could stand to them, I took hold of the stilts of the plough, and by the time I was sixteen, I could do a man’s day’s work. ‘When I was seventeen I won a great ploughing-match. Among the young gentlemen that came to see it was our young ’Squire, that owned nearly all the parish. He had just left College, and come into his fortune, for his father had been dead a many years. He was so much pleased with what he saw at the ploughing-match, that he determined to take the Home Farm into his own hands, and nothing would serve him but that I must be his head ploughman; indeed, I believe if I had understood writing and cyphering, he would have made me his bailiff,—for he was a young gentleman that nothing could stop when he took a fancy into his head. I mind well when he sent me off at twelve o’clock at night to London in his own carriage to buy a team of Suffolk Punches, he had heard of from a gentleman that was dining with him. Well, this made a man of me at once. I was as tall as I am now, and I’m afraid I grew spoiled with so much good. I was courting my Lucy at the time. She was the only daughter of the blacksmith in the next village, and if ever there was an angel she was one. The parson and his daughters noticed her a good deal, because she was clever at her book and sang so sweetly at church. Her father was a drunken old chap; her mother had been dead many years. I used to look out for him when he came down to our village, as he often did to drink and play at bowls, and see him safe over the stiles when he was ill able to walk straight. Many and many a day, after ploughing all day, and supping up my horses, have I walked five miles, half leading, half carrying, old Johnny Dunn, for the sake of five minutes’ talk to dear Lucy. Well, one night, in a wet autumn, I was up at the Hall to take the ’Squire’s instructions; for he loved, when he had strangers from London, to have me in after dinner, to give me a glass o’ wine and make believe of talking farming; old Dunn tried to get home after an evening’s bouse by a short cut over a ford I had often led him, missed his footing, and was found by some lads that went next morning to take up their night lines, stone dead—drowned. ‘There was poor Lucy left all alone in the world, for her father, who had been a dragoon farrier, and married one of Parson Calton’s maid-servants, had no relations in that part of the country.