This cottage had five windows facing us, and receiving the volleys of foul gray smoke, as a smart south-west wind drove it; and the fires being piled with diseased potato-haulm, of which there was abundance in that bad year, as well as bottomed with twitch-grass, beth-wine, cat’s-tail, and fifty other kinds of weed, and still more noxious refuse, the reek was more than any nose could stand, when even a mild puff strayed towards us. But the main and solid mass was rushing, in a flood of embodied stench, straight into the windows of that peaceful cot, penetrating sash and frame and lining. Once or twice as the cloud wisped before the wind, we seemed to catch a brief glimpse of some agitated mortal, holding up his hands in supplication, or wringing them, and applying them in anguish to his nose. “Pile on some more, Bill, and stir them up again,” shouted Uncle Corny, with his pitchfork swinging in the thick of it. “Agricultural operations must not be suspended to suit the caprice of individuals,—as the County-court judge said, when Noakes tried to stop me from carting manure near his parlour-window. If old Harker won’t hearken, well make him sniff, eh? See the joke, Selsey Bill?” Selsey Bill saw it, after deep reflection, and shook his long sides with a longer guffaw. “If a’ don’t sniff at this, a’ must have quare nostrils”—he was wheezing himself, as he clapped on another great dollop of rottenness, and stirred it; “I could never have bided it two minutes; though the Lord hathn’t made me too partiklar. Sure us’ll vetch ’un out this time, Maister. Here a’ coom’th, here a’ coom’th. Lookey see!” Following his point we descried a little man, timidly opening the cottage door, and apparently testing the smells outside, to compare them with those he was quitting. He glanced at the bonfires, and shook his fist wildly; then threw his skirt over his head, and made off, as if he had smelled quite enough of this world. “Run and get the key, Bill,” my uncle cried, as soon as he could speak for laughing; “lock the door, and bring the key to me. We’ll send for the fire-engine by-and-by, and wash down the front, and then put your wife in, and scrub the whole place out. Beat abroad the fires, men, and throw some earth upon them. That’s what I call something like an ejectment. The old rogue has paid no rent since Lady Day; though he had it dirt cheap at three and six a week, and me to pay the rates and taxes. Come, you shall have a pint of beer all round. I am sure you want something to take the taste out.”