"
"Like enough. He dares not abroad, if so much as the value or size of my
thumb-nail of the sun's rim were left above the hill!"
"Come, Gaffer, strike up a merry trowl," said a thin, squeaking voice,
from a personage almost hidden behind a copious supper of broken meat
and pastry. But whether the party thus addressed was too much alarmed to
let the current of his spirit run bubbling from the spring of either
mirth or minstrelsy, or he was too deeply buried in his own thoughts, it
were needless to inquire. The request for a while passed by unheeded.
Gaffer Gee was the ballad-monger of the whole district. He kept on a
comfortable and vagabond sort of existence, by visiting the different
mansions where good cheer was to be had, and where he was generally a
welcome guest, both in bower and hall. His legendary lore seemed
inexhaustible; and, indeed, his memory was like an old chest full of
scraps continually rummaged. He knew all the scandal and family secrets
throughout the parish, and had a quick eye at detecting either a love
affair or a feud. He composed a number of the wild ballads that he sang
or recited, or at least put them into that jingling and quaint rhythm,
acquired by habitual intercourse with the phraseology peculiar to these
popular descants.
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