Ben, now upwards of forty years of age, still lives with the old man, working as a labourer on his farm, and is maintained with his children. Money he never sees: but his father allows him to sell bundles of straw; and he may be seen, in an evening, with two bundles of straw under each arm, proceeding to the alehouse in the next village, where he barters them for the evening cup. Nay, the other night, a person encountered, as he supposed, a thief, issuing from the old man’s yard, with a huge beam on his shoulder. It was Ben, going to turn it into ale; who desired his neighbour to say nothing. Nothing can more strikingly close this account than the old man’s usual description of his three sons. “My son Dick has Cain’s mark on his forehead; Ben, if ale was a guinea a-pint, and he had but one guinea in the world, would buy a pint of ale; and, as for Simon--he is a gentleman! He takes a certificate to shoot. He runs with those long legs of his over three parishes, and comes slinging home with a crow, or a pinet[6]--ay, ay, Simon is a gentleman!” [6] Magpie. In this same nook of the world might be seen, some years ago, two brothers, stout farmers--farmers of their own property--heaping curses and recriminations on each other about their possessions, in so loud a voice that they have been heard half a mile off. This enmity outlasted the elder, and burned in the breast of the younger for years after. For it was some years after, that he attended the funeral of a niece whom he left through life to the charity of another. When the funeral was over, they adjourned with the parson to the public-house; and here the person who had cared for the neglected niece, urged the uncle now to pay some part of the funeral charges. “Yes,” said he, “thou hast been at a deal of cost,” (these country people still retain the use of thou and thee), “and here is sixpence for the parson’s glass of brandy and water.” The astonished man pushed back the sixpence with contempt; but, at this moment, in came a lad to tell them that the grave being made too near that of the deceased brother, the earth had suddenly fallen in, and broken in the lid of the old man’s coffin. At this, the living brother started up in evident delight, and exclaimed--“Why, has it? Why, has it? Thou tells me summut, lad! thou tells me summut!” And he gave him the sixpence he had generously destined for the parson’s glass.