And, when so tough a frame she could not bend, Exceeded her commission to befriend.

She was a brittle old lady who creaked as she walked, and cracked like a whin-pod in the heat, but she did her dozen miles or more a day, and passed all the fowls in review, and could not be deceived by the craftiest of farmers' wives; and in the tail of the day she became possessor, and did herself thraw the neck of the stoutest and toughest hen that ever entered a linen bag head foremost.

He endeavoured to make one word do the work of twoor three if they were very short wordsand working up a conversation with him was as tough a job as one could lay hold of.

"And he and the parson were too tough a nut for us, weren't they, sir?"

As Jack remarked, the scanty rations of black bread and tough meatthe latter the produce of some of the innumerable bullocks which arrived at Sebastopol with convoys, too exhausted and broken down for further servicewere not calculated to cause any feverish excitement to the blood, nor, had it been so, would the temperature have permitted the fever to rise to any undue height.

though tough The road we travel, steep, and rough; Though Rydal-heights and Dunmail-raise, 140 And all their fellow banks and braes, Full often make you stretch and strain, And halt for breath and halt again, Yet to their sturdiness 'tis owing That side by side we still are going!

I long to ride in Armour, And looking round about me to see nothing But Seas and shores, the Seas of Christians blood, The shoares tough Souldiers.