I can fancy myself now sitting in the cosy bar-parlour--though it is fifty years ago--listening to the wonderful yarns spun by Captain Cooper; yarns which appeared to me to become more astounding as he warmed up with the many and various liquids he imbibed. Then I recollect a startling occurrence which happened in the midst of the story-telling; it was the entrance of a travelling showman, who wished to know if he could put up at our house for the night, as he wanted some repairs done to his caravan next day. He was of medium height, stoutish and florid, just the type of person one would expect to be connected with the show business. He was a perfect stranger to my father, but as there was work to be done for him in the morning, my father bade him take his caravan upon the green, and after he and the ostler had fixed up all for the night, come and have a comfortable pipe and chat with us. Jim, our ostler, accompanied the showman, and having stabled the horse for the night, and put the van into a good berth, the showman rejoined us. He proved to be a capital story-teller, as are most of his profession. His tales, if anything, were more wonderful than Captain Cooper’s; anyway, I never heard such stories as they told one against the other, and I do not doubt that if I had glanced at myself in the looking-glass, my eyes would have resembled small china tea-saucers. My father did not call them stories, he used a harsher but shorter word; but I, in my verdancy, imagining they _might_ be true, gave them the benefit of the doubt, and swallowed them like so many sugar-plums. Now the thing that fixes this scene so vividly on my memory was, that while these men were so busy racking their brains for the toughest yarns, the half-door leading into the bar was suddenly opened, and the space filled with the huge form of a man, who inquired, in no amiable strain, if the showman were going to sit there all night, and leave him without so much as a quart to moisten his lips with. The ceiling of the bar-parlour was certainly not lofty, being barely seven feet from the floor, but to my surprise, and I might also add horror, when the man pushed open the half-door and entered the room he could not stand upright, so gigantic was his stature. His entrance created quite a commotion among those present, but the showman soon smoothed matters by ordering a gallon of ale, and telling us that our visitor was a giant with whom he was travelling round the country for exhibition purposes. I had never seen a giant before, and he quite frightened me when he planted himself right beside me on the settle. I rose to find fresh quarters, not quite so close to such an uncanny monster, but he pulled me back and sat me on his knee, just as if I had been a four-year-old child, instead of a good-sized lad of fifteen.