Instead of turning homewards, we prolonged our walk through the lanes to a considerable distance. When we entered the village, we observed as great a bustle in the street as if it had been the day of the much-talked-of meeting. A crowd was slowly making its way along the middle of the street. At first we thought it was a fight; but there was no scuffling, no rocking of the group backwards and forwards as in a fight, no giving way and closing again as if there was fear of any object within. Before we were near enough to see or hear, Sir H. Withers’s carriage came along the street, and the crowd being obliged to give way to let it pass, we saw in the midst a ballad-singer—a youth with tattered dress and a bundle of papers. As the carriage passed, he raised his voice in song, as if to catch the ears of the coachman and footman who were looking back from the box. Ballad-singers and ballads were sufficiently rare at Brooke to justify their curiosity. They soon heard what made them long to stop and hear more, as they no doubt would have done if the carriage had been empty. The singer bawled after them in something like music, ’Twill be all a humbug To talk of deprivations, When the pheasants roost snug. In Sir Harry’s new plantations. “It is about Sir Henry Withers!” cried my brothers; and they were running off to hear more, when my mother called them back and bade them walk quietly beside her, and wait till they got home, to hear the rest of this beautiful song. We were favoured with another verse, however, when the ballad-man saw that we were fairly within hearing. It ran thus: Let your babes cry with cold, For the turf it is sold, And the cows are all gone.—Why, you blockhead! Fire and food are but trash, So they’re now turned to cash, And they dangle in Malton’s big pocket. Just as the last quaver on the big pocket died away, we turned into Miss Black’s shop, where I wanted to make a purchase.