A graceful looseness, when he pleased, put on,
And, laughing, could instruct.”
Armstrong.
THE nearest neighbour to Nathan Blyth was an old farm labourer called Adam Olliver, who for forty years and more, as man and boy, had toiled and moiled on Gregory Houston’s farm. He had now reached an age at which he was unequal to prolonged and heavy labour, and so he spent his time in cutting and trimming the farmer’s hedges—his thoughtful master giving him to understand that though his wages were to be continued as usual, he was at full liberty to work when it pleased him, and to rest when he chose. The old man used to ride to and from his labour on a meek and mild old donkey, which rejoiced in the name of Balaam, and which was never known to travel at any other pace than a slow jog-trot, or to carry any other rider than his master. No sooner did old Balaam become conscious that he was bestridden by any unfamiliar biped, than he curved his neck downwards, placed his head between his knees, elevated his hinder quarters suddenly into mid-air, and ejected the unwelcome tenant of the saddle, and with so brief a notice to quit, that he had generally completed an involuntary somersault, and was landed on Mother Earth, before he knew the nature of the indignity to which he had been subjected.
Adam was somewhat short in stature, thick-set in form and frame; his hair was short and grizzly, and his thick iron-grey eyebrows overarched a pair of twinkling blue eyes, full of keen insight and kindly humour. His fustian coat and battered “Jim Crow,” like his wrinkled and sun-browned features, were “weather-tanned, a duffil grey,” and, like his own bending frame, were a good deal worse for wear. A pair of old corduroy nether garments, buttoned at the knees, with gaiters of the same material, affording a peep at the warm, coarse-ribbed, blue worsted stockings underneath, with hobnailed boots armed with heel and toe-plates, all helped to make up a very quaint and favourable picture of his class—a class common enough upon the Yorkshire farms.
Adam Olliver’s talk was the very broadest Doric of the broadest dialect to be found amid all the phonetic fantasies of England, and his responses to the inquiries of tourists and others, not “to the manner born,” who asked the old hedge-cutter the way, say to Kesterton or Hazelby, were given in what was, to all intents and purposes, high Dutch to the bewildered listeners. They would have been left in glorious uncertainty as to his meaning, but that Old Adam’s energetic and oratorical action generally sufficed to speed the querist in the right direction. He was an honest, upright, intelligent Christian, was Adam, and an old-standing member of the little Methodist society, which had managed to hold its own in the village of Nestleton, and which, for want of a chapel, held its meetings in Farmer Houston’s kitchen. All the villagers held the old man in respect, and few there were who did not enjoy “a crack o’ talk” with the old hedger. His odd humour, sound piety, and practical common sense, were expressed in short, sharp, nuggety sentences, which hit the nail on the head with a thump that drove it home without the need of a second blow. But I hope to give Adam Olliver abundant opportunity to speak for himself, and will say no more than that his “Aud Woman,” as he called his good wife Judith, or Judy in Yorkshire parlance, had been the partner of his joys and sorrows for nearly forty years, and was still a buxom body for her age; that of his three children, Jake the eldest, was Farmer Houston’s foreman; Pete, the second, was seeking his fortune in America; and Hannah, a strapping good-looking lass of nineteen, was under-housemaid at Waverdale Hall, and that all of them will ever and anon appear in the true and impartial village annals I am here recording.
On the evening of a fine spring day, Old Adam, having made Balaam snug and comfortable in a little thatched, half-tumble-down outhouse which did duty for a stable, and having despatched his frugal evening meal, was seated on a small wooden bench outside his cottage door, enjoying the fragrance of some tobacco which Pete had sent him, using for that purpose a short black pipe of small dimensions, strong flavour, and indefinite age.
“Hallo! Adam; then you are burning your idol again,” said Blithe Natty, who had sauntered round for a little gossip.
“Hey,” said Adam, “you see he’s like a good monny idols ov another sooat. He tak’s a plaguey deal o’ manishin’. He’s a reg’lar salimander. Ah’ve been at him off an’ on for weel nigh fotty year, an’ he’s a teeaf ’un; bud,” said he, with a twinkle in his eye, “Ah’ll tak’ good care ’at he ends i’ smook.”