It was at "Boughton-under-the-Blee" that Chaucer's Canon and Yeoman overtook the pilgrims. The Canon's hat hung down his back by a lace, for he had ridden as though he were mad. Under his hood he had placed a burdock-leaf to cool his head, but yet his forehead dropped like a still that was full of plantain and wallflower. The Canon's Yeoman tells the pilgrims how pleased his master would be of their company as far as Canterbury; and the Host makes him welcome, asking if his master can please the party with a merry story. "A story?" asks the Yeoman; "that is nothing to what the Canon can do. He is an Alchemist, and so clever that-- "all this ground on which we be riding, Till that we come to Canterbury town, He could all cleane turnen up so down, And pave it all of silver and of gold." "Ah!" says Harry Bailly, the Host, "that's all very well, you know, but how is it that this wonderful master of yours wears such a threadbare coat?" To this query, the Yeoman is bound to answer that his master is too clever by half, or not clever enough, and that he has, for all his alchemy, only wasted his substance and that of many more. The Canon hears something of this, and bidding his servant hold his tongue, makes off for very shame, while the Yeoman tells the story that brings the party to Harbledown. XXXII [Sidenote: BOUGHTON] Boughton-under-Blean is perhaps the neatest, quietest, longest, and most cheerfully picturesque village on the Dover Road. It lies near the foot of the hill. Half-way up is the church. In the churchyard of Boughton there is a great yew-tree whose girth at three feet from the ground was taken by the vicar in 1894. It was then 9 ft. 9 in. The age of this tree is exactly known, for a seventeenth century vicar, the Reverend John Johnson, recorded, "the little yew-tree by the south doer was sett in 1695." The yew, therefore, expands one foot in sixty-one years. One or two country houses with large gardens and trimly cut hedges occupy the crest of the hill; and just beyond, on the level plateau of Dunkirk, is the church, built in 1840, as some means toward civilizing the untutored savages the villagers of this beautiful county had become under the neglect of that Christian Church whose Metropolitan Cathedral rises proudly beyond the hillside village of Harbledown, less than three miles away. God in His goodness has blessed with a boundless fertility the fair land of Kent, so that old Michael Drayton merely expressed facts when he wrote that rapturous eulogy-- O famous Kent! What county hath this isle that can compare with thee? That hath within thyself as much as thou canst wish; Thy rabbits, venison, fruits, thy sorts of fowl and fish; As what with strength compares, thy hay, thy corn, Nor anything doth want that anywhere is good.