Before their fête the Rationals had a dinner, and I went. A man opposite me was saying that he had given more benefit to the Society than the Society had given to him, for he was now past fifty and had never drawn sick-pay yet. I was able to say that I was past fifty also, and had never yet been ill enough to stay in bed all day. But a man lower down the table must have thought that we were getting proud, for he remarked very audibly just then:--“There be a sort that do go sudden, when they do go.” A few years afterwards I was ill enough to stay in bed for many weeks, but I managed to get out of doors for May-day. I noticed a group of people talking together and glancing at me now and then, and presently one of them came over and explained:--“What us be sayin’, zir, be this: whatever shall us do for our May-day, when you be dead.” They were ringing a knell at North Bovey one afternoon when I was out beyond there; and it sounded very weird, when the gusts of wind carried the wail of the bells across the hills. I met one of the Lustleigh ringers as I was coming back, and I asked him why they never did it there. He answered:--“But us do. Sometime. Not for all folk like, though. But us’ll ring’n for thee.” When I was overhauling one of the old houses here, I made good some panelling that had been covered up with lath and plaster. After it was done, a man came over to tell me of some seasoned oak of extraordinary width, which I might buy. I saw that it would make fine panels, but my panelling was done. And then he said:--“Well, and if you didn’t use it for panellin’, it might serve some other purpose. Why, th’old Mr ***** and his wife both had their coffins made from that same tree.” One of the old Wreyland houses looked out upon an orchard at the back; but the orchard was not let with the house, and at that time there was no back-door. Riding down the lane one day, the owner saw a piece of wood, as long as a fishing-rod, coming slowly out from one of the windows at the back, and going on until it reached an apple on a tree: it caught the apple in a sort of pocket at the end, and then went slowly back into the house again, taking the apple with it. To make quite sure, he waited till he saw this done a second time; and then he went round to the front, and told the father of the family what he thought about the sons, for obviously it was the boys who did it. The father said he would no longer be the tenant of a man who spoke to him like that: so he bought a piece of ground in Lustleigh, and built himself a house.