woman held to her point. "Begging your Reverence's pardon, sir,
there be more in this than we knows. They says up at Oakwood,
there's no peace in the place for the spite of him, and when they
thinks he is safe locked into his chamber, there he be a-clogging of
the spit, or changing sugar into pepper, or making the stool break
down under one. Oh, he be a strange one, sir, or summat worse. I
have heerd him myself hollaing 'Ho! ho! ho!' on the downs enough to
make one's flesh creep."

"I will tell you what he is, dame," said the Doctor gravely. "He is
a poor child who had a fit in his cradle, and whom all around have
joined in driving to folly, evil, and despair through your foolish
superstitions. He is my guest, and I will have no more said against
him at my table."

The village gossips might be silenced by awe of the parson, but
their opinion was unshaken; and Silas Hewlett, a weather-beaten
sailor with a wooden leg, was bold enough to answer, "Ay, ay, sir,
you parsons and gentlefolk don't believe naught; but you've not seen
what I have with my own two bodily eyes--" and this of course was
the prelude to the history of an encounter with a mermaid, which
alternated with the Flying Dutchman and a combat with the Moors, as
regular entertainment at the Sunday meal.

When Mrs. Woodford went upstairs she was met by the servant Nicolas,
declaring that she might get whom she would to wait on that there
moon-calf, he would not go neist the spiteful thing, and exhibiting
a swollen finger, stung by a dead wasp, which Peregrine had
cunningly disposed on the edge of his empty plate.