_From the picture by F. Northcote, R.A._ ]
Black John's lair was a rude hut, which he had wattled for a snug abode, close to the kennel. He loved to retire to it, and sleep near his chosen companions, the hounds. When they were unkennelled, he accompanied and ran with them afoot, and so sinewy and so swift was his stunted form that he was very often in their midst at the death. Then, with the brush of the fox elaborately disposed as the crest of his felt hat, John would make his appearance on the following Sunday at church, where it was displayed, and pompously hung up above his accustomed seat, to his own great delight and the envy of many among the congregation. When the pack found the fox, and the huntsman's ear was gladdened by their shrill and sudden burst into full cry, Black John's shout would be heard in the field, with his standing jest, "There they go! there they go! like our missus at home in one of her storms!" As he grew older, and less equal to the exertion of his strong and youthful days, John took to wandering, gipsy-fashion, about the country-side; and he found food and welcome at every cottage and farmhouse. His usual couch was among the reeds or fern of some sheltering brake or wood, and he slept, as he himself used to express it, "rolled up, as warm as a hedgeboar, round his own nose." One day, in bitter snowy weather, he was found wanting from his accustomed haunts--"one morn they missed him on the usual hill"--and after long search he was discovered shrouded in snow, cold, stiffened, and to all outward appearance dead. He was carried home, and in due course was coffined and borne towards the grave. But there, just as the clergyman[59] who read the service had reached the solemn words which commit the body to the ground, a loud thumping noise was heard within the coffin. The bystanders rent open the lid in hot haste, and up started Black John alive, in amazement, and in furious wrath. He had been in a long _deliquium_, or death-trance,[60] from cold, and had been restored to life by the motion and warmth of his own funeral ride. As he told the astonished mourners, "He heard the words 'dust to dust,' and then," said he, "I thought it was high time to bumpy." His words passed into a proverb; and to this very day, when Cornish men in these parts are placed in some sudden extremity, and it becomes necessary to take strong and immediate measures for extrication, the saying is, "It is time to bumpy, as Black John said." In his anger and mental confusion, Black John ever after attributed his attempted burial to the conspiracy and ill-will of the clergyman, whose words he had interrupted by his sudden resurrection. More than once the reverend gentleman was suddenly assaulted in his walks by a stone hurled at him from a hedge, followed by an angry outcry, in a well-known voice, of "Ha! old Dust-to-dust; here I be, alive and kicking!"