aborers who were too busy to come in person. Nine sacks,
each containing fifty gallons of flour, were emptied by two sturdy
miller's men into an immense tub. The family being an old Roman
Catholic one, a religious ceremony was the prelude of the
distribution. The domestic chaplain offered up a short prayer, and
after invoking the blessing of Heaven on the gift, sprinkled the flour
with holy water in the form of a cross. It was no uncommon thing for
one person to carry away three or four gallons of flour: the largest
award was in the case of a family consisting of man, wife and seven
children, the wife carrying away with her five and a half gallons.
Many of those whose names appeared as witnesses for the defence during
the memorable trial were present--John Etheridge, the blacksmith, and
Kennett, coachman to the dowager Lady Tichborne, among the number. The
latter lives in a small freehold cottage, his own property, at
Cheriton, the next parish to Tichborne. Persons of all denominations
were relieved--Church people, Dissenters and Roman Catholics
alike--without the slightest favoritism being shown to any.

The same kind of charity, though on a smaller scale, and by the custom
of living patrons instead of the will of deceased ones, is dispensed
at various times in the year through the whole country by both large
and small landed proprietors.

The 11th of November (St. Martin's Day) is the one generally chosen
for the distribution of winter clothing to the poor of the parish, and
this in commemoration of the mediaeval legend of the holy Bishop
Martin, who gave half his ample cloak to a shivering leper who begged
of him in the street. Next night, says the legend, he saw in a dream
Christ himself clothed in that cloak, and remembered the promise that
"inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these, ye have done it unto
Me." The writer has often assisted at such distribution of warm
clothing, both made and unmade. In every county squire's house there
is a bi-or tri-weekly distribution of soup to the village poor, and in
most two or three sets of fine bed-linen and soft baby-clothes, to be
lent out on occasions requiring greater comforts than the poor and too
often thriftless women of agricultural villages can afford. Private
charity is all-reaching: the "hall" is the dispensary and the general
ark of refuge for all county ills, moral, physical and pecuniary, and
its help is never thought degrading, like that of the "parish."