"Ees--that's the booy. We was Parliament side--true Britons all we was, down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw 'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans--I wool,--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though the country through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please any one), "to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so flat as a barn's floor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!--and vour sons--or was vour on 'em--every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes, to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch runners, down the wind, again' either a one o' the bairns!" And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious tone, two or three times, "Vour on 'em there was--vour on 'em there was;" and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never drank fermented liquors. "Aw? Eh? How can yow do that then? Die o' cowd i' the fen, that gate, yow would. Love ye then! they as dinnot tak' spirits down thor, tak' their pennord o' elevation, then--women-folk especial." "What's elevation?" "Oh! ho! ho!--yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge, and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains." "But what is it?" "Opium, bor' alive, opium!" "But doesn't it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of drunkenness." "Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak'th 'em cruel thin then, it do; but what can bodies do i' th'ago? Bot it's a bad thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Didst ever know one called Porter, to yowr trade?" I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with us a year or two before--a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish lad, brother of Crossthwaite's wife. "Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more." The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over, and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence. "Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?" "How lost?" "Why, yow told o' they sweaters--dee yow think a mon might get in wi' one o' they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?"