ct The
Seraph if need be from the consequences of his hardy act; but the old man
was smiling placidly.

"That trout," he said, "is so gleeful to get away from his captivity as I
be to escape from the work'us."

"Oh, did you run away from the workhouse?" we cried, in chorus, gathering
around him, "Have you run far?" And we looked at his broken boots.

"I ban't a dareful man," he replied, "that would run down the road in
daylight for the whole nation to see, and I be terr'ble weak in the legs,
so I just crept out in the night, so quiet as a star-beam, and sheltered in
the orchard yonder, till I seed the rod fairly put in my hand by the
Almighty, that I mid strike manna out of the stream, like old Moses, so to
speak."

"You're a funny man," said Angel. "You've a rum way of talking."

"I come from Devon by natur," he answered, "and my tongue still has the
twist o't though I haven't seed the moors these sixty years."

"You must be pretty old."

"Old! I be so aged that I can remember my grandmother when she was but a
rosy-cheeked slip of a gal."

We stared in awe before such antiquity.

The Seraph ventured: "Did your grandmother put you in the work'us?"

"No, no. Not she. It was my two grandsons. Well-fixed men they be too, for
Philip had a fine cow until the bailiff took her; and Zachary thinks naught
on a Fair day o' buying meat pasties for hisself and his missus, and
parading about before the nation wi' the gravy fair running down their
wrists. Ay--but the work'us was good enough for old Granfa. 'Darn'ee,' says
I to Philip, 'there's life in the old dog yet, and I'll escape from here in
the fulness of time!' Which I did."

We grouped ourselves about him in easy attitudes of attention. We felt
strangely drawn to this ancient rebel against authority. We pictured the
workhouse as a vast schoolroom where white-haired paupers laboured over
impossible tasks, superintended by a matron, cold and angular, like Mrs.
Handsomebody.

"Are your own children all dead?" I put the question timidly, for I feared
to recall more filial ingratitude.

"Dead as door-nails," he replied, solemnly. "All of them."

"Were there many?"

"When I had been married but seven years, there were six; and after that I
lost count. At that time I was moved to compose a little song about them,
and I'd sing it to 'ee this moment if I had a bite o' victuals to stay me."

"Look here, Seraph," I cried, "You cut back to the hamper and fetch some
be