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 of the yard, I whipped it up and bare it away upon my shoulders.

The old man would often look gravely at me from under his heavy thatched eyebrows, and shake his grizzled head as he sat in his arm-chair puffing his pipe.

'You grow too big for the nest, lad,' he would say.