t school with you, and you beat me very
lamentably, when I tried to fight with you. You remember me not? It is
likely enough: I am forced to take strong waters, John, from infirmity
of the liver. Attend to my directions; and I will call again in the
morning.'

And in that melancholy plight, caring nothing for business, went one
of the cleverest fellows ever known at Tiverton. He could write Latin
verses a great deal faster than I could ever write English prose, and
nothing seemed too great for him. We thought that he would go to Oxford
and astonish every one, and write in the style of Buchanan; but he fell
all abroad very lamentably; and now, when I met him again, was come down
to push-pin and shovel-board, with a wager of spirits pending.

When Master Huckaback came home, he looked at me very sulkily; not only
because of my refusal to become a slave to the gold-digging, but also
because he regarded me as the cause of a savage broil between Simon
Carfax and the men who had cheated him as to his Gwenny. However, when
Uncle Ben saw Ruth, and knew what had befallen her, and she with tears
in her eyes declared that she owed her life to Cousin Ridd, the old man
became very gracious to me; for if he loved any one on earth, it was his
little granddaughter.

I could not stay very long, because, my horse being quite unfit to
travel from the injuries which his violence and vice had brought upon
him, there was nothing for me but to go on foot, as none of Uncle Ben's
horses could take me to Plover's Barrows, without downright cruelty: and
though there would be a harvest-moon, Ruth agreed with me that I must
not keep my mother waiting, with no idea where I might be, until a
late hour of the night. I told Ruth all about our Annie, and her noble
furniture; and the little maid was very lively (although her wounds were
paining her so, that half her laughter came 'on the wrong side of her
mouth,' as we rather coarsely express it); especially she laughed about
Annie's new-fangled closet for clothes, or standing-press, as she called
it. This had frightened me so that I would not come without my stick to
look at it; for the front was inlaid with two fiery dragons, and a glass
which distorted everything, making even Annie look hideous; and when it
was opened, a woman's skeleton, all in white, revealed itself, in the
midst of three standing women. 'It is only to keep my best frocks in
shape,' Annie had explained to me; 'hanging them up does