LXXIII. HOW TO GET OUT OF CHANCERY

LXXIV. DRIVEN BEYOND ENDURANCE

LXXV. LIFE AND LORNA COME AGAIN




CHAPTER I

ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION

If anybody cares to read a simple tale told simply, I, John Ridd, of the
parish of Oare, in the county of Somerset, yeoman and churchwarden, have
seen and had a share in some doings of this neighborhood, which I will
try to set down in order, God sparing my life and memory. And they who
light upon this book should bear in mind not only that I write for the
clearing of our parish from ill fame and calumny, but also a thing which
will, I trow, appear too often in it, to wit--that I am nothing more
than a plain unlettered man, not read in foreign languages, as a
gentleman might be, nor gifted with long words (even in mine own
tongue), save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William
Shakespeare, whom, in the face of common opinion, I do value highly. In
short, I am an ignoramus, but pretty well for a yeoman.

My father being of good substance, at least as we reckon in Exmoor, and
seized in his own right, from many generations, of one, and that the
best and largest, of the three farms into which our parish is divided
(or rather the cultured part thereof), he John Ridd, the elder,