The jolly one had charge of a gang of half-a-dozen semi-amphibious agricultural labourers, who were driving down the great iron-shod piles deep into the sand, by means of an erection very similar in construction to a guillotine, except that instead of the lunette a huge block of iron weighing several hundredweight fell upon the pile to be driven when a lever is pulled. The men, with whom I conversed while they ate their noonday meal, were of the usual type of tawny-bearded, brown-faced, straight-nosed men one sees on the east coast, who, when not employed in farm work, gain their scanty living on the sea. But the ganger was a man of a different stamp; he was short and thick like a Shetland pony, and very nearly as rugged and unkempt as one of those sturdy animals, for his iron-grey beard and hair blew about in the wind like the tattered rags on a mawkin. He was a most jocular little-big man, full of fun and funny sayings, and the loudest to laugh at his own jokes was--himself. His laugh was hearty at any time, but on special occasions he would give a peculiar roar that would quite startle any person not used to Billy Flowerdue’s wild guffaw. I invited Billy to spend an evening in my caravan, an invitation which he readily accepted, as he was some miles from his home, and only at present lodging in the inn of a neighbouring village. Billy opened his eyes at many of the curiosities I had picked up during my travels, and widest of all at a curious piece of work which had been made by a man in the same line of business as himself--that of a carpenter and wheelwright. It was a wooden leg, which had been made for a cow, and which the animal had worn for several years, until she met her death by lightning. It was a curious contrivance made of two pieces of wood, jointed at the knee with a pair of ordinary iron hinges, and made to fly out straight when the animal arose from a recumbent position, by means of thick india-rubber springs attached from the upper to the lower timbers. If the powerfully-built little carpenter opened his eyes wide at what he was pleased to call “that thayer cur’us contraption,” he did so even more fully when I asked him to allow me to send him to sleep by a peculiar power I possessed, and I quite believe he thought I was either insane, bent on robbing him, or else thirsting for his blood. I had, therefore, to fully explain the meaning of hypnotism to Billy, who, although a masterful hand with the adze or chisel, had apparently no brain for other subjects. His head was full of chips and timber, and nothing more. By dint of persevering persuasion, he was at length prevailed upon to permit me to place him in a state of trance, but not until I had first placed my faithful collie “Skybo” in a mesmeric sleep; at the sight of which Billy laughed loudly enough to make the plates and crockery in my house on wheels rattle again.