“Now, I’ll tell yu what, Mr. Pengelly,” says the Devil after a pause, “I’d like to deal handsome by yu. Yu’ve done me many a gude turn in your day. I’ll let you live as long as yonder cann’l-end burns.”
“Thank’y kindly, sir,” says Mr. Pengelly. And presently he says, for the Devil did not make signs of departing: “Would yu be so civil as just tu step into t’other room, sir? I’d take it civil. I can’t pray comfably with yu here, sir.”
“I’ll oblige yu in that too,” said the Devil; and he went out to look after Mrs. Pengelly.
No sooner was his back turned, than Mr. Pengelly jumped out of bed, extinguished the candle-end, clapped it in the candle-box, and put the candle-box under his bed. Presently the Devil came in, and said: “Now, Mr. Pengelly, yu’re all in the dark: I see the cann’l’s burnt out, so yu must come with me.”
“I’m not so much in the dark as yu, sir,” says the sick man, “for the cann’l’s not burnt out, and isn’t like to. He’s safe in the cann’l-box. And I’ll send for yu, sir, when I want yu.”
Mr. Pengelly is still alive; but let not the visitor to his farm ask him what he keeps in his candle-box, or, old man of seventy-eight though he is, he will jump out of his chair, and lay his stick across the shoulders of his interrogator. “They du say,” said my informant, “that Mrs. Pengelly hev tried a score of times to get hold of the cann’l-end, and burn it out; but the master is tu sharp for his missus, and keeps it as tight from her as he does from the Devil.”
Mr. Pengelly has the credit of having been only once in his life cheated, and that was by a tramp, in this wise:—
One day a man in tatters, and with his shoes in fragments, came to his door, and asked for work.
“I like work,” says the man, “I love it. Try me.”
“If that’s the case,” says Mr. Pengelly, “yu may dig my garden for me, and I will give yu one shilling and twopence a day.” Wages were then eighteen pence, or one and eightpence.