The keeper was always up there in the kitchen; he was as pleasant and jovial as a man could well be, though full of oaths on occasion.

He was a man of one tale--of a somewhat enigmatical character.
He would ask a stranger if they had ever heard of such-and-such a village where water set fire to a barn, ducks were drowned, and pigs cut their own throats, all in a single day.
It seemed that some lime had been stored in the barn, when the brook rose and flooded the place; this slaked the lime and fired the straw, and so the barn.

Something of the same kind happens occasionally on the river barges.

The ducks were in a coop fastened down, so that they could not swim on the surface of the flood, which passed over and drowned them.

The pigs were floated out of the sty, and in swimming their sharp-edged hoofs struck their fat jowls just behind the ear at every stroke till they cut into the artery, and so bled to death.