deceiving serpent is more scotched than killed yet.  However, ye seem to me to be likelier to lack the ambition than the genius, so we may let that bide.  But there’s a snare of mine, Jan, that I mean your feet to be free of, and that’s a mischosen vocation.  I’m not a native of these parts, ye must know.  I come from the north, and in those mining and manufacturing districts I’ve seen many a man that’s got an education, and could keep himself sober, rise to own his house and his works, and have men under him, and bring up his children like the gentry.  For mark ye, my lad.  In such matters the experiences of the early part of an artisan’s life are all so much to the good for him, for they’re in the working of the trade, and the finest young gentleman has got it all to learn, if he wants to make money in that line.  I got my education, and I was sober enough, but—­ Heaven help me—­I must be a poet, and in that line a gentleman’s son knows almost from the nursery many a thing that I had to teach myself with hard labor as a man.  It was just a madness.  But I read all the poetry I could lay my hands on, and I wrote as well.”

“Did you write poetry, Master Swift?” said Jan.

“Ay, Jan, of a sort.  At one time I worshipped Burns.  And then I wrote verses in the dialect of my native place, which, ye must know, I can speak with any man when I’ve a mind,” said Master Swift, unconscious that he spoke it always.  “And then it was Wordsworth, for the love of nature is just a passion with me, and it’s that that made the poet Keats a new world to me.  Well, well, now I’m telling you how I came here.  It was after my wife.  She was lady’s-maid to Squire Ammaby’s mother, and the old Squire got me the school.  Ah, those were happy days!  I was a godless, rough sort of a fellow when she married me, but I became a converted man.  And let me tell ye, lad, when a man and wife love god and each other, and live in the country, a bit of ground like this becomes a very garden of Eden.”

“Did your wife like your poetry, sir?” said Jan, on whom the idea that the schoolmaster was a poet made a strong impression.

“Ay, ay, Jan.  She was a good scholar.  I wrote a bit about that time called Love and Ambition, in the style of the poet Wordsworth.  It was as much as to say that Love had killed Ambition, ye understand?  But it wasn’t dead.  It had only shifted to another object.

“We had a child.  I remember the first day his blue eyes looked at me with what I may call sense in ’em.  He was in his cradle, and there was no one but me with him.  I went on like a fool.  ’See thee, my son,’ I said, ’thy father’s been a bad ’un, but he’ll keep thee as pure as thy mother.  Thy father’s a poor scholar, but he’s not that dull but what he’ll make thee as learned as the parson.  Thy father’s a needy man, a man in a small way, but he and thy mother’ll stick here in this dull bit of a village,