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and to Holy Writ rather than to bickering. But I could not then say him nay, for he held his staff thus and so and laughed in his throat in a way that I have a misliking of. So I said yes, and took in my own name fifty acres of marsh land, and paid down more than thirty pound sterling, and expanded all of eight pound sterling for the ploughing and twice that for the burning, and sowed it with rape-seed at ninepence the acre, and paid twelve pound for the second ploughing and eleven pound for the fencing—all this did I draw from Sir John, who, to pay the Devil his due, gave it me with a free hand; and if God had been pleased to send the ordinary blessing upon mine acres I should have got it from at harvest three hundred or four hundred or even five hundred quarters of good rape-seed. And what with reaping and threshing and all, at four and twenty shillings the quarter I should have repaid him his hundred pounds, threefold or fourfold. All this by the blessing of God should I have done but for some little bugs that came upon mine acres in armies, and the fowls of the air that came in clouds and ate up my rape-seed and my tender young rape, so that I lost all that I laid out. And Sir John would not see that in another year I ought, God favouring me, to get him back his silver I had lost, even as the books says. He is a man of his word and, crying that the jest was worth the money, he sent me out the gate with the dogs at my heels and with Jamie Barwick laughing till his fat belly shook, to see me go; for I was always in terror of the dogs which are great tall beasts that delight to bark and snap at me. And the last word to greet my ears, ere I thought they would have torn me limb from limb, was Sir John bawling at me, ‘Thou puddling quacksalver!’ which Jamie