plants. One of my earliest memories is of the masons at work, shaping
the two great bows. I remember how my nurse used to stop to watch
them, at the corner of the road, on the green strip by the river-bank,
where the gipsies camped on the way to Gloucester horse-fair. One of
the masons was her sweetheart (Tom Farrell his name was), but he got
into bad ways, I remember, and was hanged or transported, though that
was years afterwards, when I had left that countryside. My father and mother died when I was still a boy--my mother on the day
of Trafalgar battle, in 1805, my father four years later. It was very
sad at home after mother died; my father shut himself up in his study,
never seeing anybody. When my father died, my uncle came to Newnham
from his home in Devonshire; my old home was sold then, and I was
taken away. I remember the day so very clearly. It was one sunny
morning in early April. My uncle and I caught the coach at the top of
the hill, at the door of the old inn opposite the church. The coachman
had a hot drink handed up to him, and the ostlers hitched up the new
team. Then the guard (he had a red coat, like a soldier) blew his
horn, and the coach started off down the hill, going so very fast that
I was afraid, for I had never ridden on a coach before, though I had
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