To crown all, there was a story, full ten years old now, which had lost nothing in the telling, of his treatment of a cattle-drover.

To the village it had an eerie look, that windmill-like rage let loose upon a man who, after all, had only been twisting a bullock's tail and running a spiked stick into its softer parts, as any drover might.

People said--the postman and a wagoner had seen the business, raconteurs born, so that the tale had perhaps lost nothing--that he had positively roared as he came leaping down into the lane upon the man, a stout and thick-set fellow, taken him up like a baby, popped him into a furzebush, and held him there.

People said that his own bare arms had been pricked to the very shoulder from pressing the drover down into that uncompromising shrub, and the man's howls had pierced the very heavens.

The postman, to this day, would tell how the mere recollection of seeing it still made him sore all over.