and picturesque tracts which formed their

environment.

Readers have already recognised a tender and sympathetic penetration into Nature in the writings of "A Son of the Marshes," as rare as it is delicate, and will be interested in discovering from the following chapters, which are to some extent biographical, how Nature herself educates her own students.

A small portion of the matter has already appeared in magazine form. I am indebted to the editors for their courtesy in allowing me to include it here.

J. A. OWEN.

ANNALS OF A FISHING VILLAGE.

CHAPTER I.

MARSHTON AND THE "MA'SHMEN."

MARSHTON, at the time of which our annals treat, was little more than a straggling fishing village; yet it had a wonderfully interesting history of its own, reaching back to the time when the kings of Kent had their palace there. This palace was burnt by Earl Godwin in the year 1052. In King Alfred's time the town was attacked by the Danish pirate Hastings. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth a large trade was carried on in the place; and, in the time of Charles I., it was a royal manor held in dowry by the queens.

The Portreeve was chosen annually at the Court leet, said to have been instituted by King Alfred the Great.

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You may know a marshman-or a man of the ma'shes," as he is locally termed-wherever you chance to come across him, by the way he grasps his stick. In his native marshes it was rather a pole than a stick that he carried-one about as thick as your wrist and pointed at its stoutest end. As a rule, a "ma'shbird" has a grave demeanour, and very deliberate he is in action. At the same time he is hot-tempered, and, if roused suddenly, becomes as quick of motion as one of his own dyke eels.

Fifty years ago the dwellers in the marshlands were a distinct race, quite apart from the people of the inland towns, whom they always styled “furriners." That long monotonous belt of land just within the sea-wall would have ill suited people used to social gatherings. As a rule, a man's com panions were his gun and fishing-net. Our longshore shooters had, many of them, to trudge three or four miles night and morning to get to their fishing or shooting grounds. A man living only a mile away was looked on as quite a near neighbour.

Any active religious feeling amongst our folks was mostly of a gloomy character, or, at any rate, stern and uncompromising. Their surroundings and solitary occupations fostered this. They were very much in earnest; revival meetings were fre