“My coat,” said he, when asked by a lady why he wore one of such a cut and colour, “my coat is that of an Armenian archimandrite.” But this he said only from his love of hoaxing persons who asked him impertinent questions. When Mr. Hawker went up to London to be married the second time, he lost his hat, which was carried away by the wind as he looked out of the window of the train, to become, perhaps, an inmate of a provincial museum as a curiosity. He arrived hatless in town after dark. He tied a large crimson silk handkerchief over his head, and thus attired paced up and down the street for two hours before his lodging, in great excitement at the thought of the change in his prospects which would dawn with the morrow. I must leave to the imagination of the reader the perplexity of the policeman at the corner over the extraordinary figure in claret-coloured clerical coat, wading-boots up to his hips, blue knitted jersey, and red handkerchief bound round his head. His gloves were crimson. He wore these in church as well as elsewhere. In the dark chancel, lighted only dimly through the stained east window, hidden behind a close-grated screen, the vicar was invisible when performing the service, till, having shouted “Thomas,” in a voice of thunder, two blood-red hands were thrust through the screen, with offertory bags, in which alms were to be collected by the churchwarden who answered the familiar call. Or, the first appearance of the vicar took place after the Nicene Creed, when a crimson hand was seen gliding up the banister of the pulpit, to be followed by his body, painfully worming its way through an aperture in the screen, measuring sixteen inches only; “the camel getting at length through the eye of the needle,” as Mr. Hawker called the proceeding. In church he wore a little black cap over his white hair, rendered necessary by the cold and damp of the decaying old church. At his side he carried a bunch of seals and medals. One of his seals bore the fish surrounded by a serpent biting its tail, and the legend ἰχθύς. Another bore the pentacle, with the name of Jehovah in Hebrew characters in the centre. This was Solomon’s seal. “With this seal,” he said, “I can command the devils.” His command of the devil was not always successful. He built a barn on the most exposed and elevated point of the glebe; and when a neighbour expostulated with him, and assured him that the wind would speedily wreck it, “No,” he answered: “I have placed the sign of the cross on it, and so the devil cannot touch it.” A few weeks after, a gale from the south-west tore the roof off. “The devil,” was his explanation, “was so enraged at seeing the sign of the cross on my barn, that he rent it and wrecked it.” A man whom he had saved from a wreck, in gratitude sent him afterwards, from the diggings in California, a nugget of gold he had found. This Mr. Hawker had struck into a medal or seal, and wore always at his side with the bunch.