He was then put with the Rev. Mr. Laffer, at Liskeard. Mr. Laffer was the son of a yeoman at Altarnun: he afterwards became incumbent of St. Gennys. At this time he was head master of the Liskeard Grammar School. There Robert Hawker was happy. He spent his holidays either with his father at Stratton, or with his grandfather and aunt at Plymouth. At Stratton he was the torment of an old fellow who kept a shop in High Street, where he sold groceries, crockery and drapery. One day he slipped into the house when the old man was out, and found a piece of mutton roasting before the fire. Robert took it off the crook, hung it up in the shop, and placed a bundle of dips before the fire, to roast in its place. He would dive into the shop, catch hold of the end of thread that curled out of the tin in which the shopkeeper kept the ball of twine with which he tied up his parcels, and race with it in his hand down the street, then up a lane and down another, till he had uncoiled it all, and laced Stratton in a cobweb of twine, tripping up people as they went along the streets. The old fellow had not the wits to cut the thread, but held on like grim death to the tin, whilst the ball bounced and uncoiled within it, swearing at the plague of a boy, and wishing him “back to skule again.” “I doan’t care whether I ring the bells on the king’s birthday,” said the parish clerk, another victim of the boy’s pranks; “but if I never touch the ropes again, I’ll give a peal when Robert goes to skule, and leaves Stratton folks in peace.” As may well be believed, the mischievous, high-spirited boy played tricks on his brothers and sisters. The clerk was accustomed to read in church, “I am an alien unto my mother’s children,” pronouncing “alien” as “a lion.” “Ah!” said Mrs. Hawker, “that means Robert: he is verily a lion unto his mother’s children.” “I do not know how it is,” said his brother one day: “when I go out with Robert nutting, he gets all the nuts; and when I go out rabbiting, he gets all the rabbits; and when we go out fishing together, he catches all the fish.” “Come with me fishing to-morrow, Claud,” said Robert, “and see if you don’t have luck.” Next day he surreptitiously fastened a red herring to his brother’s hook, playing on his brother the trick Cleopatra had played on Anthony; and, when it was drawn out of the water, “There!” exclaimed Robert, “you are twice as lucky as I am. My fish are all raw; and yours is ready cleaned, smoked and salted.” The old vicarage at Stratton is now pulled down: it stood at the east end of the chancel, and the garden has been thrown into the burial-ground.