A few days after this I saw the dear old face coming up the side of the hill where I was with the sheep. He was approaching very slowly; he never could walk very fast across the fields, because Miss Brown always would insist on his wearing a pair of her old clogs that he shouldn't catch cold, "bless your heart." When he came up to me he began to ask me questions and whether I found time to read the Bible. So by degrees he got me to show him my fragment of a Testament. He turned over the leaves and returned it to me. Then he pulled out from his pocket a brand new Bible. It was a reference Bible, such a book as could not be bought at that time for less than seven or eight shillings. Mr. Cornwall gave it to me and told me to read, mark, learn, etc. In the fly leaf he had written:--"Presented to Roger Langdon, for his good conduct at the Sunday school, by the Rev. P. M. S. Cornwall."
I cannot describe my feelings on that occasion. I believe I laughed and cried. I kept that Bible, and carried it about with me wherever I went; until, a few days before I was married, it was stolen from my lodgings in Bristol.
SINCE Jim had compelled me to plough the ground while he slept, or otherwise idled his time, by the time I was twelve years of age I could plough a straight furrow. It was considered a crime of the deepest dye to plough a crooked one. There was a ploughing match to come off at Haselbury, and Mr. Greenham entered me on the list as a first-class boy, and Jim was entered as a first-class man; we then had to practise side by side in a field of clover. Everybody said I should win the head prize, which for the boys was £3, while the head prize for men was £5 with a society's coat and buttons. At length the important day arrived, and everybody went to the field where a piece of land or ridge must be ploughed in fourteen rounds; that is to say, the plough must go across the field and back again fourteen times, which makes twenty-eight furrows for each piece of land. Neither more nor less must be ploughed in these twenty-eight furrows. All the furrows must be straight, no grass or weeds must be seen sticking up between them, and when finished the ridge must be level and even. Now there was one ridge which had a hollow across it in a diagonal direction, and as all the pieces of land to be ploughed were drawn for by lot, this piece came to my share.