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and shut himself inside, just as the young woman’s mother busted into the milk-house. “The villain—where is he?” says she, “I’ll claw his face for’n, let me only catch him!” Well, she hunted about everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack lying a’most stifled inside the churn, and the poor maid—or young woman rather—standing at the door crying her eyes out. I shall never forget it, never! ’Twould have melted a marble stone! But she couldn’t find him nowhere at all.’

The dairyman paused, and one or two words of comment came from the listeners.

Dairyman Crick’s stories had the peculiarity of seeming to be ended when they were not really so, and strangers were often betrayed into premature interjections of finality; though old friends knew better.

The narrator went on—

‘Well, how the old woman should have had the wit to guess it I could never tell, but she found out that he was inside that there churn. Without saying a word she took hold of the winch (it was turned by hand-power then), and round she swung him, and Jack began to flop about