Mr. Hawker stood by whilst Mrs. Hawker and the maid prepared the blue room. He would not have the jackdaws disturbed; he had given them his word of honour. Mrs. Hawker argued that necessity knows no law: the bishop must have a fire, and the jackdaws must make way for the bishop. She prevailed. “I wrung my hands, I protested, entreated and foretold evil,” was the vicar’s account of the affair. “Well, and did evil come of it?” “Yes, the bishop never arrived, after all.” Mr. Hawker was warmly attached to the Bishop of Exeter, and was accustomed to send him some braces of woodcocks every October. Not far from the church and vicarage was the Well of St. John, a spring of exquisitely clear water, which he always employed for his font. Sir J. Buller, afterwards Lord Churston, claimed the well, and an expensive lawsuit was the result. The vicar carried his right to the well, and Sir J. Buller had to pay expenses. Mr. Hawker would tell his guests that he was about to produce them a bottle of the costliest liquor in the county of Cornwall, and then give them water from the Well of St. John. The right to this water had cost several thousands of pounds. A letter dated 7th Feb., 1852, to a young friend going up to the university, refers to his cats and dogs, and to his annual gift of woodcocks to the bishop, and may therefore be quoted at the conclusion of this chapter. Our roof bends over us unchanged. Berg (his dog) is still in our confidence, and well deserves it. The nine soft, furry friends of ours are well, and Kit rules them with a steady claw. Peggy is well and warm.... I never knew game so scarce since I came to Morwenstow; except some woodcocks, which I sent to the bishop as usual in October and November, we have had literally none. And now for one of those waste things, a word of advice. You are in what is called by snobs a fast college. I earnestly advise you to eschew fast men. I am now suffering from the effects of silly and idle outlay in Oxford. I do hope that nothing will induce you to accept that base credit which those cormorants, the Oxford tradesmen, always try to force on freshmen, in order to harass and rob them afterwards. No fast undergraduate in all my remembrance ever settled down into a respectable man. Ask God for strong angels, and He will fulfil your prayer. Never forget Him, and He will never neglect you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V