"Master Hubby," said a jolly fat farmer who called, with his fat wife and her egg-basket, at the schoolmaster's door, towards five of the clock on a market afternoon, "we've browt ye a queer, odd-fashionedish sort on a thing, here, that we f'un i'th' home clooas tuther day; can ye tell us what it is?" and the farmer produced an ancient fragment of ironwork of a crooked form, but so unlike any modern utensil of any kind, that any one but an antiquary might well be puzzled with it. Nay, the profoundly erudite Zerubbabel himself was nonplused for the moment! He turned it over and over, and put on his spectacles, and then took them off again, and wiped them, and re-adjusted them to the most perfect distance for his natural optics—that is to say, he placed them as near to the very tip of his nose as they would remain without falling off,—but all his delays for consideration would not do: he was compelled to confess that he did not know what it was! "Why dooant ye, indeed?" cried the farmer with a stare. "The Lord ha' marcy on us! you dooant say so, Master Hubby, do ye?" echoed the farmer's wife, perfectly electrified with the thought that there was any thing ancient which Hubby did not understand; and she set down her basket of eggs, and drew out her spectacle-case, and put on her spectacles also, to gaze at Hubby in his. And so there stood the odd trio at the learned schoolmaster's door: the man of ancient learning, barnacled to the nose-tip, and holding up the curious crooked rusty piece of iron with a gaze of indescribable eagerness; and the farmer with open mouth, and hands buried in the profound pockets of the plush waistcoat that enveloped the goodly rotundity of his person; and the farmer's wife, with the basket at her feet, her arms a-kimbo, and her eyes directed with intense earnestness through her spectacles on the movements of the illustrious Zerubbabel's countenance. There was a perfect silence of full three minutes, and still the trio gazed on. "Where found ye it?" asked Hubby, at last, not knowing what other question to adventure. "At Hambleton on th' hill," replied the farmer; "and what think ye to't then now, Master Hubby?" he asked again. Zerubbabel shook his head, and there was again a profound and perfect silence. "You know, Davy," said the farmer's wife, at length, "young Bob Rakeabout said he was somehow of a mind it was——" "Pooh, woman!" said the impatient farmer; "where's the use and sense of telling what such a rattle-scallion as he thinks?" "Nay, but, Davy," reiterated the spouse, "it may be of use, for they say he's book-larnt." "Book-larnt! ay, mally good faith, I think as much: and noose-larnt, too," replied the farmer; "and I wish, when his last noose is tied, he may be allowed benefit o' clargy!" and he burst into a loud laugh at his own wit. "Well, howsomever," said the wife, "young Bob said he could swear it was a spur, and nowt else."