“Yes, Missis,” says Tom, who had been shut up a few months for making free with Sir Benjamin Bullockshed’s hares. “Yes, Missis, and who should I meet as I was coming home that very day, but Sir Benjamin’s own self. It was on the Furze Bank, where I had snickled my hares. ‘So Tom,’ says he, ‘you are abroad again, eh? I hope you have learned, however, now to know your own.’ ‘Oh yes! your worship,’ says I, ‘and a little of other folks’s.’ ‘Ah! thou hast learned too much by half,’ Sir Benjamin said, says he, and rode on, but suddenly turning round, ‘Eh! Boddily! here’s a gate thrown off the hooks. Can you tell me who’s done that?’ ‘Yes, your worship,’ said I, and he looked all alive to know. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I can tell your worship. As Sir Roger Rockville says,—“It’s either Bill Newton, or Jack Shelton, or somebody else.”’ The squire asked no more questions; but before he could get out of ear-shot, I said, ‘Thank your worship for sending me to the Stone Jug for three months; there’s better keep there nor at home. I don’t know how I shall ever make you amends, unless I come and dine with your worship some day.’ ‘Dine with the devil!’ he exclaimed, turning as red as Farmer Winterwheat’s new-painted barndoor, and digging his spurs into his innocent horse—wishing, I reckon, as it had bin me.” With this anecdote of Tom Boddily’s, the whole rustic company rose, with a great scraping of feet and scrawling of wooden chairs on the brick floor; and sallied forth with much laughter and approbation of Tom’s _tu-quoque_. The summer was now in its glory. The elder-flower scented the breeze, the pink wild rose waved in long sprays from the hawthorn hedges. The breeze fanned deliciously the hot brown cheek of the milkmaid, as she sang over her milking-pail in the golden-flowered croft. The lark sung her lustiest and clearest strains over the heads of mowers and haymakers at the Grange farm. It was busy time at the Grange in the hay-season. Besides several fields of mowing-grass on his farm on this side of the river, Mr. Woodburn had a great extent of hay-meadow on the other side. This hay they got up and stacked in the field, and it was sold thence to Castleborough. Mr. Woodburn and George were every day busy with the workpeople there till it was done. They had access to these great meadows by a primitive sort of ferry over the Trent, just below the Grange, to which a winding hollow lane, betwixt high banks and hedges, led. The boat, or rather punt, was capable of taking a horse, but not a cart over: carts and wagons they had to take over at the bridge, lower down the river. Anyone could pass himself over at this punt, by pulling at a chain which stretched across the river, and was secured at each end to a post with a pulley. The ferry was known by the name of “Wink’s Ferry,” from a man who once lived in a cottage near.