We had but half-a-mile to walk, and that in a biting east wind, varied with still more piercing squalls of snow and sleet, and I trembled in every limb, while my heart rattled on like a donkey-engine getting in a chain cable--all bumps and thumps. I looked at the marrams,[13] and calculated what chance I should have if I tried leg-bail; but when I looked at the length of my companion, I gave it up as onpractical. I was cold, although in what we call about here a “muck swat,” but my new friend was all of a glow (especially about the mouth). He would have made a rare fiery speaker for the House of Commons; he would have frightened them that he couldn’t convince by his speechifying. His conversation was dreadful--I don’t mean perfane or rude-like, but the things that man told me made my flesh creep on my bones. He wanted to make out to me that he had been buried three hundred years, just before the old church was pulled down! I can swallow a pretty thick strand of a yarn, but this here fellow wanted me to swallow a whole cable, for he went on to tell me how, in 1584, he came over from Harlingen to Yarmouth, in a fishing-boat of which he was mate, and that while ashore he one day fell in with three or four fellows who were kinder interfering with a good-looking young girl. Being strong he went for the whole set of them, and got the girl away, but one of the gang struck him a blow with a heavy stick and broke his arm. The girl’s father came up and thanked the young Dutchman, and finding that his daughter’s protector had broken a limb and could not work for a week or two, took him to a surgeon and had the limb set. He left him with the onderstanding that Dutchy would come and spend a week with them, when the doctor had finished with him. The old fellow was a farmer at Eccles, and being market-day, had as usual brought his daughter with him to Yarmouth. Well, up to there was what the play-actors would call Act One, and that was all very nice and proper, but just you listen, and you’ll see how it will turn out. By and by away goes the young Dutchman to Eccles, and of course he naturally fell in love with the mawther.[14] But she wouldn’t have him at no price. No, she thanked him, and tried all she could to make him comfortable, but--she already had a sweetheart. This staggered Dutchy, but he had no idea of letting her go so easily, and as every one in the village was afraid of the giant, the girl’s father ordered the banns to be put up, to make sure that his neighbour’s son should not be frightened out of his rights. Dutchy tried all he knew to get the girl to alter her mind for a whole week; and finding it in wain, he one morning disappeared. That was what you might term Act Two. So far it had been all comedy, as the play-actors call it, but the last act was a wiolent and wicious one, as you shall hear.