Most unexpectedly, the vicar requested me to remain a few days at his house. Hitherto, we had had little to say to each other; he never had much to say to any one. I had disliked him from my early childhood, when I got the impression that he was bound in parchment like one of his folios, and that the back of his head had been chopped off. His days were passed among those folios, and Mr. Butharwick spoke with respect of his learning, but what good came of it I never knew. He preached sermons of an inordinate length, and totally incomprehensible to me, and, as I judged, to his parishioners generally, who composed themselves for slumber when they heard the text. My aunt attended to all the affairs of the parish, and always inspected the parson before he left the house, to see that he was decently clad, and had his handkerchief in his pocket. The calamitous flood aroused him to the everyday life around him, not all at once, but slowly. He entered into the sorrows of his bereaved parishioners especially, of whom there were many. One Coggan, a small farmer, had been found dead in the water at the foot of a ladder descending from his bedroom. Another man, a somewhat drunken fellow, had been overtaken by the flood, while sleeping off his drink on the kitchen floor. An old man, whose people had left him alone for the night, had been caught and overwhelmed in the act of opening his door, apparently. The child of Ducker, the blacksmith, had been ailing for a day or two, but on the night of the inundation had fallen asleep on a couch, and slept so peacefully that the mother would not disturb its slumber, but covered it up as it lay, and went to bed. She found it drowned in the morning. Besides these cases in the town itself, numerous bodies were recovered in the neighbourhood of the cottages on the banks of the Don and elsewhere. In these circumstances, many appeals were made to the vicar for guidance, help, and consolation. The sexton lost his wits, poor man, and there were difficulties in making preparation for the decent interment of so many bodies, as well as difficulties as to who would guarantee payment for this and that. We were hard put to it to find a messenger to go for the coroner, every man's hands were so full of his own, or his master's business. Consequently, the vicar impressed me into service, and gave everything into my charge. I must do him the justice to acknowledge that he was diligent in attending to his spiritual duties, and generous with his purse. The painful and somewhat horrible details are no necessary part of my narrative, and so I leave them; but, as may be supposed, I was fully occupied for several days.