all the summer thro', while
ponds below are utterly dried up." There is, however, another reason why
the highest points are chosen, and that is that the chalk here often has
a capping of red clay which holds the water.

[Sidenote: NICK COSSUM'S HUMOUR]

To the smuggling chapter might have been added, again with Mr. Lower's
assistance, a few words on the difficulties that confronted the London
revenue officers in the Sussex humour. To be confounded by too swift a
horse or too agile a "runner" was all in the night's work; but to be
hoodwinked and bamboozled by the deliberate stealthy southern fun must
have been eternally galling. The Sussex joker grinds slowly and
exceeding small; but the flour is his. "There was Nick Cossum the
blacksmith [the words are a shepherd's, talking to Mr. Lower]; he was a
sad plague to them. Once he made an exciseman run several miles after
him, to take away a keg of _yeast_ he was a-carrying to Ditchling!
Another time as he was a-going up New Bostall, an exciseman, who knew
him of old, saw him a-carrying a tub of hollands. So he says, says he,
'Master Cossum, I must have that tub of yours, I reckon!' 'Worse luck, I
suppose you must,' says Nick in a civil way, 'though it's rather again'
the grain to be robbed like this; but, however, I am a-going your road,
and we can walk together--there's no law again' that I expect.' 'Oh,
certainly not,' says the other, taking of the tub upon his shoulders. So
they chatted along quite friendly and _chucker_[6] like till they came
to a cross road, and Nick wished the exciseman good bye. After Nick had
got a little way, he turned round all of a sudden and called out: 'Oh,
there's one thing I forgot; here's a little bit o' paper that belongs to
the keg.' 'Paper,' says the exciseman, 'why, that's a _permit_,' says
he; 'why didn't you show me that when I took the hollands?' 'Oh,' says
Nick, as saucy as Hinds, 'why, if I had done that,' says he, 'you
wouldn't a carried my tub for me all this way, would you?'"

[Sidenote: ANOTHER PARISH CLERK]

The story, at the end of Chapter XIX, of the clerk in Old Shoreham
church, whose loyalty was too much for his ritualism, may be capped by
that of a South Down clerk in the east of the county, whose seat in
church commanded a view of the neighbourhood. During an afternoon
service one Sunday a violent gale was raging which had already unroofed
several barns. The time came, says Mr. Lower, for the psalm before the
sermon,