So I walked straight into the courtyard, which backs upon the church, and found there a large man with considerable girth, a square, honest face and kindly eyes. He was wearing a cap, and wearing it in a fine rakish way too. His appearance gave me the impression that his wife had tossed the cap at him and failed to drop it on his head squarely, but had landed it in a lopsided manner, and then our friend had walked off without thinking anything more about it. He was singing a song to himself and staring at a pile of bundles of straw. He looked up and nodded good-humouredly. "Looks like rain!" said I. "Aw 'es, tu be sure, now you come to mention it. I dawnt think rain's far off." "Can you tell me," said I, "if I can get a meal and a bed at this inn?" "What you like," returned the man, with a quick tilt of his head, which drew my eyes with a kind of fascination to his ill-balanced cap, "but as I've nothing to do with the place I should ask the landlord avore me." "Ah, to be sure," said I. "Sorry to trouble you. I thought you might be the landlord." The man stopped singing his song to stare at me wide-eyed. "Well, I beant; but it's a fine thing to be a landlord, with barrels o' beer down 'ouze and money in the bank." "Then may I ask what trade you follow," said I, "and why you study that straw so intently?" "Young fellow," said he, staring, "I follow a main-zorry trade in these days. I be a thatcher, and thatching to-the-truth-of-music is about done for. If you look at these thatched cottages about Dorset they will tell their own story. Why, the reed is just thrown on the roof hugger-mugger. They can't thatch no more down this part, I can tellee; they lay it on all of a heap." "And is this the straw for thatching?" I inquired. "Yes," said he, smiling; "they call them bundles of reed in Dorset--but in my country, which is Devon, they call 'em 'nitches o' reed.'" "Then you are not contented with your trade?" "Not quite," answered the thatcher, his face falling. "It has always been my wish to have a little inn--and barrels o' beer down 'ouze and money...." "Far better be a thatcher," said I. "I'll be dalled ef I can see why." "It's an out-of-doors life in the first place," said I. The thatcher nodded, and his cap looked about as perilous as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. "It is a happier life, too, I should say." "Aw! I an't ayerd nort about that," he returned. "And who ever heard of a starving thatcher?" "Young fellow," he sighed, "there soon will be no thatchers to starve. Tez a lost art is thatching. I am the last of my family to follow the trade, and we can go back three hundred years." "Then thatch is dying out?" "Yes, chiefly on the score of it being hard to 'dout' in case of fire." "'Dout' is a strange old word. It means extinguish, I take it," said I.