nd the women. So he tried everything he could think
of to get set up. He even went on an expedition to the dwelling of one
of those queer mortals, who--say what we will and reason how we
will--do cure simple people of diseases of one kind or another without
the aid of physic; and so get to themselves the reputation of using
charms, and inspire for themselves and their dwellings great respect,
not to say fear, amongst a simple folk such as the dwellers in the
Vale of White Horse. Where this power, or whatever else it may be,
descends upon the shoulders of a man whose ways are not straight, he
becomes a nuisance to the neighborhood; a receiver of stolen goods,
the avowed enemy of law and order. Sometimes, however, they are of
quite a different stamp, men who pretend to know nothing, and are with
difficulty persuaded to exercise their occult[3] arts in the simplest
cases.

BENJY RESORTS TO A "WISE MAN."

Of this latter sort was old Farmer Ives, as he was called, the "wise
man" to whom Benjy resorted (taking Tom with him as usual), in the
early spring of the year next after the feast described in the last
chapter. Why he was called "farmer" I cannot say, unless it be that he
was the owner of a cow, a pig or two, and some poultry, which he
maintained on about an acre of land inclosed from the middle of a wild
common, on which probably his father had squatted before lords of
manors[4] looked as keenly after their rights as they do now. Here he
had lived no one knew how long, a solitary man. It was often rumored
that he was to be turned out and his cottage pulled down, but somehow
it never came to pass; and his pigs and cow went grazing on the
common, and his geese hissed at the passing children and at the heels
of the horse of my lord's steward, who often rode by with a covetous
eye on the inclosure, still unmolested. His dwelling was some miles
from our village; so Benjy, who was half ashamed of his errand, and
wholly unable to walk there, had to exercise much ingenuity to get the
means of transporting himself and Tom thither without exciting
suspicion. However, one fine May morning he managed to borrow the old
blind pony of our friend the publican,[5] and Tom persuaded Madam
Brown to give him a holiday to spend with old Benjy, and to lend them
the squire's light cart, stored with bread and cold meat and a bottle
of ale. And so the two in high glee started behind old Dobbin, and
jogged along the deep-rutted plashy roads,