When we reached what we thought was a fairly safe distance, we
took refuge in an outbuilding belonging to a small establishment for
smelting iron, and here we were joined by another wayfarer, sheltering
like ourselves from the rain, which was coming down in torrents. He told
us about the stonemason who had recently had the fortune left to him,
but he said the amount mentioned in the newspaper was L40,000 and not
L80,000, as we had been informed. He wished the money had been left to
him, as he thought he could have put it to better use, for he had been
an abstainer from intoxicating drinks for twelve years, whereas the man
with the fortune, who at the moment was drinking in a beerhouse close
by, had no appetite for eating and would soon drink himself to death.
What the fate of poor "Jim Topping" was we never knew, but we could not
help feeling sorry for him, as he seemed to us one of those good-natured
fellows who are nobody's enemy but their own. The man told us that Jim
was a heavy drinker before he had the fortune left him. He surmised that
the place we had stopped at last night was Haverthwaite in Lancashire.
We saw a book of poems written in the Cumberland dialect, and copied the
first and last verses of one that was about a Robin Redbreast:
REED ROBIN
Come into mey cabin, reed Robin!
Threyce welcome, blithe warbler, to me!
Noo Siddaw hes thrown a wheyte cap on,
Agean I'll gie shelter to thee!
Come, freely hop into mey pantry;
Partake o' mey puir holsome fare;
Tho' seldom I bwoast of a dainty.
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