money—nine-and-six—haw! haw! haw!”

Mr. Bumpkin by this time came up to him, but was so much out of breath, or “winded,” that he was unable to carry on the conversation, so he just tapped the bag with his stick as if to be certain the pig was there, and sure enough it was, if you might judge by the extraordinary wriggling that went on inside the bag.

The indomitable Snooks, however, with the largest and most hideous grin I ever saw, pushed on with his barrow, and Mr. Bumpkin having now sufficiently recovered his breath, said,

“Thee see ur tak un, didn’t thee, Joe?”

“Sure did ur,” answered the lad.  “I seed un took un clane out o’ the stye, and put un in the sack, and wheeled un away.”

“Ha! so ur did, Joe; stick to that, lad—stick to un.”

“And thee seed I pay th’ money for un, Joe, didn’t thee?” laughed Snooks.  “Seed I put un on t’ poast, and thee took un oop—haw! haw! haw!  I got t’ pig and thee got t’ money—haw! haw! haw!  Thee thowt thee’d done I, and I done thee—haw! haw! haw!”

And away went Snooks and away went pig; but Snooks’ laugh remained, and every now and then Snooks turned his head and showed his large yellow teeth and roared again.

The rage of Mr. Bumpkin knew no bounds.  There are some things in life which are utterly unendurable; and one is the having your pig taken from you against your will and without your consent—an act which would be described legally as the rape of the pig.  This offence,

in Mr. Bumpkin’s judgment, Snooks was guilty of; and therefore he resolved to do that which is considered usually a wise thing, namely, to consult a solicitor.

Now, if I were giving advice—which I do not presume to do—I should say that in all matters of difficulty a man should consult his wife, his priest, or his solicitor, and in the order in which I have named them.  In the event of consulting a solicitor the next important question arises, “What solicitor?”  I could write a book on this subject.  There are numerous solicitors, within my acquaintance, to whom I would entrust my life and my character; there are some, not of my acquaintance, but of my knowledge, into whose hands, if I had one spark of Christian feeling left, I would not see my enemy delivered.  There is little difference between one class of men and another as to natural disposition; and whether you take one or another, you must find the shady character.  But where the opportunities for mischief are so great as they are in the practice of the Law, it is necessary that the utmost care should be exercised in committing one’s interests to the keeping of another.  Had Mr. Bumpkin been a man of the world he would have suspected that under the most ostentatious piety very often lurked the most subtle fraud.  Good easy man, had he been going to buy a hay-stack, he would not have judged by the outside but have put his “iron” into it; he could not put his iron into Mr. Prigg, I know, but he need not have taken him by his appearance alone.  I may observe that if Mr. Bumpkin had consulted his sensible and affectionate spouse, or a really respectable solicitor, this book would not have been written.  If he had consulted the Vicar, possibly another book might have been written; but, as it was, he resolved to consult

Mr. Prigg in the first instance.  Now Mrs. Bumpkin, except as the mother of the illustrious Bull, has very little to do with this story.  Mr. Prigg is one of its leading characters; but in my description of that gentleman I am obliged to be concise: I must minimize Prigg, great as he is, and I trust that in doing so I shall prospectively minimize all future Priggs that may ever appear on the world’s stage.  I do not attempt to pulverize him, that would require the crushing pestle of the legislature; but merely to make him as little as I can, with due consideration for the requirements of my story.

I should be thought premature in mentioning Prigg, but that he was a gentleman of great pretensions in the little village of Yokelton.  Gentleman by Act of Parliament, and in his own estimation, you may be sure he was respected by all around him.  That was not many, it is true, for his house was the last of the straggling village.  He was a man of great piety and an extremely white neck-cloth; attended the parish church regularly, and kept his white hair well brushed upwards—as though, like the church steeple, it was to point the way at all times.  He was the most amiable of persons in regard to the distribution of the parish gifts; and, being a lawyer it was not considered by the churchwardens, a blacksmith and a builder, safe to refuse his kind and generous assistance.  He involved the parish in a law-suit once, in a question relating to the duty to repair the parish pump; and since that time everyone knew better than to ignore Mr. Prigg.  I have heard that the money spent in that action would have repaired all the parish pumps in England for a century, but have no means of ascertaining the truth of this statement.

Mr. Prigg was a man whose merits were not appreciated

by the local gentry, who never asked him to dinner.  Virtue is thus sometimes ill-rewarded in this world.  And Mrs. Prigg’s virtue had also been equally ignored when she had sought, almost with tears, to obtain tickets for the County Ball.

Mr. Prigg was about sixty years old, methodical in his habits, punctilious in his dress, polite in his demeanour, and precise in his language.  He wore a high collar of such remarkable stiffness that his shoulders had to turn with his head whenever it was necessary to alter his position.  This gave an appearance of respectability to the head, not to be acquired by any other means.  It was, indeed, the most respectable head I ever saw either in the flesh or in marble.

Mr. Prigg had descended from the well-known family of Prigg, and he prided himself on the circumstance.  How often was he seen in the little churchyard of Yokelton of a Sunday morning, both before and after service, pointing with family pride to the tombstone of a relative which bore this beautiful and touching inscription:—

here
lie the ashes of
Mr. John Prigg,
of smith street, bristol,
originally of duck green, yokelton,
who under peculiar disadvantages
which to common minds
would have been a bar to any exertions
raised himself from all obscure situations
of birth and fortune
by his own industry and frugality
to the enjoyment of a moderate competency.
he attained a peculiar excellence
in penmanship and drawing
without the instructions of a master,
and to eminence in arithmetic,

the useful and the higher branches of
the mathematics,
by going to school only a year and eight months.