parish out of their senses, and who turned out to be the blacksmith's
apprentice disguised in drink and a white sheet. It was Benjy, too,
who saddled Tom's first pony, and instructed him in the mysteries of
horsemanship, teaching him to throw his weight back and keep his hand
low, and who stood chuckling outside the door of the girls' school when
Tom rode his little Shetland into the cottage and round the table, where
the old dame and her pupils were seated at their work.

Benjy himself was come of a family distinguished in the Vale for their
prowess in all athletic games. Some half-dozen of his brothers and
kinsmen had gone to the wars, of whom only one had survived to come
home, with a small pension, and three bullets in different parts of his
body; he had shared Benjy's cottage till his death, and had left him his
old dragoon's sword and pistol, which hung over the mantelpiece, flanked
by a pair of heavy single-sticks with which Benjy himself had won renown
long ago as an old gamester, against the picked men of Wiltshire and
Somersetshire, in many a good bout at the revels and pastimes of the
country-side. For he had been a famous back-swordman in his young days,
and a good wrestler at elbow and collar.

Back-swording and wrestling were the most serious holiday pursuits of
the Vale--those by which men attained fame--and each village had its
champion. I suppose that, on the whole, people were less worked then
than they are now; at any rate, they seemed to have more time and energy
for the old pastimes. The great times for back-swording came round once
a year in each village; at the feast. The Vale "veasts" were not
the common statute feasts, but much more ancient business. They are
literally, so far as one can ascertain, feasts of the dedication--that
is, they were first established in the churchyard on the day on which
the village church was opened for public worship, which was on the wake