allace, pretending to be conning the lesson all
the while." Borrow calls Hickathrift his countryman; the legend is that
Tom Hickathrift ridded the Fenland between Lynn and Wisbech, of a
monstrous giant, by slaying him with the axle-tree of his cart. I gave
the full story of this Norfolk giant-killer in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, for January, 1896. The boy's genius for story telling was
quite exceptional, and when he was at Norwich Grammar School, as his
schoolfellow Dr. Martineau informed me, "He used to gather about him
three or four favourite schoolfellows, after they had learned their class
lesson and before the class was called up, and with a sheet of paper and
book on his knee, invent and tell a story, making rapid little pictures
of each _Dramatis __Persona_. The plot was woven and spread out with
much ingenuity, and the characters were various and well-discriminated.
But two of them were sure to turn up in every tale, the Devil and the
Pope: and the working of the drama invariably had the same issue--the
utter ruin and disgrace of these two Potentates."

At Clonmel it was his good luck to make friends with one more notable
character, another figure in his gallery of strange personages--Murtagh,
a Papist gasoon, sent to school by his father to be "made a saggrart of
and sent to Paris and Salamanca." But the gasoon loved cards better.
George had a new pack, which soon changed hands. "You can't learn Greek,
so you must teach Irish!" said George. "Before Christmas, Murtagh was
playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable
quantity of broken Irish."

In January, 1816, the regiment was moved on to Templemore, a charming
town in mid-Tipperary, where the Borrows remained but a short time,
reaching Norwich again on May 13th, and tarrying at the Crown and Angel
till they settled at the historic little house in King's Court, Willow
Lane, which they leased from a builder named Thomas King. At the
instance of Sir Peter Eade, it was re-named Borrow's Court, and the
tablet commemorating the residence there of George Borrow was affixed on
November 6th, 1891. Now, by the generosity of the Lord Mayor of Norwich
(Arthur Michael Samuel), in this year of grace 1913, it has become a
possession of the City of Norwich as a Borrow Museum in perpetuity.

At Templemore George Borrow, tall and large-limbed for a lad of thirteen,
still had adventures; for on an excursion to visit his brother at
Loughmo