“Master,” said Peter, putting down his rake as the parson came up the walk, “I have won a silver groat on your words this day.” “How so? what dost thou mean, Peter?” “Why, last market day, when I was in the kitchen at the old Pack Horse at Axbridge, that vinegar-faced old hypocrite, Master Pynche, the staymaker, comes in, and asks me to bring out Betsy Blount’s new stays. “Says I, ‘That I’ll do for Betsy’s sake,--a lass that hasn’t her better for a good heart, or a pretty face, in all Somersetshire.’ “‘Verily, Master Peter, I think,’ said he, ‘thy speech might have more respect to me, and more decency to the damsel, but thou savourest not of the things that be from above:--thou art of the earth, earthy.’ “‘Why, for the matter of things above,’ said I, ‘Master Pynche, I don’t pretend to any skill in moonshine; and as to being of the earth, that I don’t deny, and thirsty earth too; with that I put to my lips the cup of ale that I had in hand, and drank it down.’ “‘Is it not written,’ he replied in a snuffling tone, ‘that favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain?--but thou art a servant of Beelzebub, and thou speakest the words of thy master, and his works wilt thou do.’ “‘In the name of plain Peter,’ I added, ‘herewith I proclaim you Prince of Fools, and I will send you a coloured coat, and a hood and bells, and thou shalt have a bauble, and a bladder of pease, and a licence to preach next April.’ “With that he lifted up his eyes and hands, and muttering something about pearls and swine, glided off like a ghost at cock crow.” “Peter,” interrupted Noble, “thou shouldst not have said such things.” “Marry, did he not call me a servant of Beelzebub? the peevish old puritan!--Well, but to go on with my story. The folk in Dame Wattle’s kitchen fell a discoursing after Pynche was gone; and some spake up after a fashion that made my hair stand up. Says a sturdy pedlar in the corner,--‘Ay, they’ll soon be uppermost, and the sooner the better; rot ’em, I don’t like ’em, the godly rogues; but they are better than parsons, any way.’ “So with that I felt my blood come up, and I was going to speak, when old Hardy, the cobbler, took up his words, and says he, ‘That’s true of some, and it’s true of our old Tosspot; but there’s Peter’s master, of Cheddar,--you may search the country far and near before you will find his like. I remember when my niece Sally lay dying, night and day, fair weather and foul, he would trudge through mire or snow to give her medicine for body as well as soul, and that’s what I call a good parson.’” “‘A good puritan,’ said Dame Wattle. ‘I have heard of his sayings and doings, and trust me, he’ll go with your parliament men, your down-church men: you’ll never have any more May-games and Christmas gambols at Cheddar.’ “‘There you’re out, Dame,’ said I, ‘and don’t know any more about Master Noble than a child unborn.’ “‘A silver crown to a silver groat he’ll give a long preachment against the May-pole next May-morning.’