"Then why don't you make preserves of some of your fruit?" "Preserves? what's that, mister?" "Why, jam, you know. Besides, surely you eat some of your own fruit, don't you?" "Fruit's to sell, not to heat!" "Well, then, if you can't sell it, don't preserve it, and won't eat any of it, _what_ do you do with it?" "Give it ter the pigs, in coorse!" "Yes, but why not eat some of it yourself?" "Heat it! D'yer take me for a bloomin' Nebuchadnezzar? Besides, it's that there ondergestuble----!" "But Nebuchadnezzar didn't eat fruit. He hadn't got the chance, poor fellow. He could only find grass to eat." "Grass 'ood'n't be so ondergestuble as fruit, I reckon. Blame me if you town folks don't think a man can live on nothink. Now, a pound or two o' steak, a few rashers o' fat bacon, an' a few heggs for bre'kfuss--that's more my line. Hexpeck a Christian man to heat fruit----!" "But you expect people to buy yours, don't you?" "Naw, I don't hexpeck nothin'." "Then why do you grow it?" "Bekause I suppose I'm a fool; that's about the size of it. Good day t'ye, mister." XXXI The history of Faversham town is extremely long and interesting, but as it does not lie on the direct road to Dover, it will not be necessary to go into a very detailed account of it. It is a curious, half-maritime borough whose Mayor wears a chain of office decorated with badges of oars and rudders; a town whose records include such events as the burial of King Stephen, his Queen, and his son Eustace; and at a very much later date, the attempted escape of James the Second. Faversham fishermen recognized the fugitive King as he crouched, shivering in the hoy at Shellness on that bitter December morning of 1688, and, robbing him of his watch and chain and his money, they brought him a prisoner to the Mayor's house, where he was detained two days, guarded by a mob of countrymen, on whom his terror-stricken appeals to be allowed to escape had no effect. [Sidenote: FAVERSHAM] "He who is not with me is against me," exclaimed the frantic bigot. "My blood will be upon your heads if I fall a martyr." But the dignity of a martyr was not to be his. A troop of Life-guards was sent to effect his release from the ignorant mob, who only refrained from stealing his diamond shoe-buckles because they thought them to be pieces of glass. James's terror of the Faversham fishers is reflected in his manifesto issued years afterwards, in which he offers an amnesty to his "rebel subjects," but expressly excepts such arch-traitors as Churchill, Danby, and the poor oyster-dredgers of Faversham.