After all, Mr. Bingham, it is very wrong and ungrateful
of me to speak like this. I have more advantages than nine-tenths of
the world, and I ought to make the best of them. I don't know why I have
been speaking as I have, and to you, whom I never saw till yesterday.
I never did it before to any living soul, I assure you. It is just like
the story of the man who came here last year with the divining rod.
There is a cottage down on the cliff--it belongs to Mr. Davies, who
lives in the Castle. Well, they have no drinking water near, and the new
tenant made a great fuss about it. So Mr. Davies hired men, and they dug
and dug and spent no end of money, but could not come to water. At last
the tenant fetched an old man from some parish a long way off, who said
that he could find springs with a divining rod. He was a curious old man
with a crutch, and he came with his rod, and hobbled about till at last
the rod twitched just at the tenant's back door--at least the diviner
said it did. At any rate, they dug there, and in ten minutes struck a
spring of water, which bubbled up so strongly that it rushed into the
house and flooded it.
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