"Corn high,--hay dear, your honour," replied the clerk.

"Ah, I suppose so; a good time to sell ours, Peter;--we must see about it
on Saturday. But, pray, have you heard any thing from the Corporal since
his departure?"

"Not I, your honour, not I; though I think as he might have given us a
line, if it was only to thank me for my care of his cat, but--

'Them as comes to go to roam,
Thinks slight of they as stays at home.'"

"A notable distich, Peter; your own composition, I warrant."

"Mine! Lord love your honour, I has no genus, but I has memory; and when
them ere beautiful lines of poetry-like comes into my head, they stays
there, and stays till they pops out at my tongue like a bottle of ginger-
beer. I do loves poetry, Sir, 'specially the sacred."

"We know it,--we know it."

"For there be summut in it," continued the clerk, "which smooths a man's
heart like a clothes-brush, wipes away the dust and dirt, and sets all
the nap right; and I thinks as how 'tis what a clerk of the parish ought
to study, your honour."

"Nothing better; you speak like an oracle."

"Now, Sir, there be the Corporal, honest man, what thinks himself mighty
clever,--but he has no soul for varse. Lord love ye, to see the faces he