XXX. A CHRISTMAS SCENE, 490 EPILOGUE, 497 IN TAUNTON TOWN. CHAPTER I. _THE SNOWE FAMILY._ I certainly never thought when I was young that I should live to write a book! Scarce do I know how it betides that I have the courage to make so bold, now that I am well stricken in years, and that my hair has grown grey. To be sure (if I may say so without laying myself open to the charge of boasting, a thing abhorrent to me), I have always been reckoned something of a scholar, notwithstanding that I was born a farmer's son, and that my father would have been proud could he but have set his name on paper, as men of his station begin to do now-a-days, and think little of it. But times have changed since I was a boy--perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse; who knows? Anyhow, there is more of learning in the world, for sure, though whether more of honesty let others be the judge! And now, how and when am I to begin my tale? Sitting over the fire and recalling stirring scenes of bygone days, it seems simple enough to record in writing my memories of those times when we good folks of the West Country thought we had found a deliverer who would break from the neck of England the yoke of the hated Papist tyranny which was being laid upon us (at least so we all feared and believed) by one whose name is yet spoken in these parts with a curse. But when one sits to a table with quill and ink-horn beside one, then it does not appear so simple a task; and inasmuch as I have no skill in such matters as the writing of chronicles, I must e'en go to work my own fashion, and if that fashion be a poor one, must ask pardon of all such as may have the patience or complaisance to read my poor story. Well, then, it seems that the first thing to do is to state who I am, and how it came about that I was so mixed up with that brief period of history which has left such indelible marks in the hearts of the people of our fair West Country. The former is quickly and easily explained; the latter will be unfolded as this narrative proceeds. My father was one Joseph Snowe, a farmer of some substance, and the eldest of three brothers. He was a man of some importance, being the owner of Five Gable Farm at Shorthorne; and Shorthorne--as I suppose all men know--lies midway betwixt Taunton and Bridgewater, two notable fair towns of our fertile and pleasant county of Somerset. There was an old saw spoken anent the Snowe family which said that the men thereof who were not farmers and tillers of the soil were brewers of malt liquor and the keepers of hostelries. Nor would it become me to deny with too much eagerness the truth of this saying, seeing that I myself have been master of an inn these many years, and that I have brothers who both till the soil and sell and make malt liquor.