examination of the bridge had shown that it had been sawn across, and an
inquiry traced the matter to Mr. Chillingfoot's boarders. To save a
wholesale expulsion of the school from the town, I was forced to
acknowledge myself as both the inventor and perpetrator of the deed.
Chillingfoot was entirely in the power of the Vicar, so he was forced to
read me a long homily in public--which he balanced by an affectionate
leave-taking in private--and to expel me solemnly from the school.
I never saw my old master again, for he died not many years afterwards;
but I hear that his second son William is still carrying on the
business, which is larger and more prosperous than of old. His eldest
son turned Quaker and went out to Penn's settlement, where he is
reported to have been slain by the savages.

This adventure shocked my dear mother, but it found great favour in the
eyes of my father, who laughed until the whole village resounded with
his stentorian merriment. It reminded him, he said, of a similar
stratagem executed at Market Drayton by that God-fearing soldier Colonel
Pride, whereby a captain and three troopers of Lunsford's own regiment
of horse had been drowned, and many others precipitated into a river, to
the great glory of the true Church and to the satisfaction of the chosen
people. Even of the Church folk many were secretly glad at the
misfortune which had overtaken the Vicar, for his pretensions and his
pride had made him hated throughout the district.

By this time I had grown into a sturdy, broad-shouldered lad, and every
month added to my strength and my stature. When I was sixteen I could
carry a bag of wheat or a cask of beer against any man in the village,
and I could throw the fifteen-pound putting-stone to a distance of
thirty-six feet, which was four feet further than could Ted Dawson, the
blacksmith. Once when my father was unable to carry a bale of skins out