“Bro—— what, sir?”

“Bromide of potassium. I have to take it every night. I must. My nerves are in such a state, I can’t sleep without it; and this gentleman, knowing that, has let me come away without it. I sha’n’t go to bed. I’ll sit up all night. If I go to bed I shall go mad, because I sha’n’t be able to go to sleep. Go to bed, all of you. I’ll go out for a walk. There’s a forest near here; I can roam about that all night. I must do something, for I can’t go to sleep without my bromide of potassium.”

“Oh,” I said, “perhaps the country air will make you sleep.”

“No, it won’t,” he said; and he began to put on his hat and coat. “I must go and walk about the forest all night. If I get tired I can hang myself to the branch of a tree.”

“Oh, please don’t do that,” I said, for I knew I shouldn’t sleep a wink thinking of him roaming about the forest in his excited state.

“Oh, very well,” he said, taking off his hat and coat and flinging them down on the floor, “then perhaps you’ll tell me what I am to do. I won’t go to bed and lie awake all night. It’s too awful.”

The Swedish gentleman, who was looking awfully worried, let him go on, and, when he’d done, he said quietly—

“Don’t put yourself out like that, sir; you’ll only be ill all day to-morrow. Let me go to a chemist’s.”

I was just going to say that there wasn’t a chemist’s in the village, and the doctor lived a mile and a half away, when I saw that the Swedish gentleman was trying to make signs to me not to say anything, so I held my tongue.

At first Mr. Saxon refused. He said he wasn’t going to have a respectable chemist dragged out of his warm bed at that time of night because he was surrounded with idiots; but the Swedish gentleman quieted him a bit, and then beckoned me to come outside.

When the door was shut he said, “Come downstairs with me, Mrs. Beckett, and show me a light, please.”

“Yes, sir,” I said; “but you’ll have to go a mile and a half to get what you want.”

“No, I sha’n’t,” he said. “Come downstairs to the parlour.”

When we got there he pulled the empty medicine bottle out of his pocket, and said, “Get me some cold water.”

I got him some cold water, and he put it in a tumbler. Then he said, “Give me a little salt.”

I gave him the salt, and he put it in the water. Then he mixed it up well with a spoon, and then he tasted it. “That’ll do,” he said. Then he poured it into the medicine-bottle, and corked it up.

“Now,” he said, “I’ll put on my hat and coat, and you let me out and bang the door loud.”

I did, and waited five minutes; and then he knocked, and I let him in.

He was quite out of breath.

“Why, you’ve been running!” I said.

“Yes; I’ve been running up and down outside to make me look as if I’d been a long way. Now, I’ll go upstairs and give the governor his bromide of potassium.”

“But it’s salt and water.”

“Never mind; he’ll think it’s the bromide, and that’s all that’s necessary. I know Mr. Saxon, and I know how to manage him.”

And he did certainly, for the next morning, when I went to take breakfast up to the sitting-room, there was Mr. Saxon looking quite jolly, and he said he’d had the best night’s rest he’d had for a year.

“And if I hadn’t had the bromide,” he said, “I shouldn’t have closed my eyes all night.”

The Swedish gentleman never let a muscle of his face move, but I caught him looking at me, and there was a twinkle in his light blue eyes that said a good deal.

There was no doubt about his understanding Mr. Saxon, and knowing how to manage him.

* * * * *

The next evening Mr. Saxon hadn’t any work to do, and so after dinner he and the Swedish gentleman came and sat in the bar-parlour along with Mr. Wilkins and the company, and he and the Swedish gentleman joined in the conversation, and they both told such wonderful stories that it made our village people open their eyes. Mr. Wilkins generally had all the talk, but he had to sit still because Mr. Saxon didn’t let him get a word in edgeways when he was once fairly started.

Of course he must talk about awful things—things to make your blood curdle—it wouldn’t be him if he didn’t do that; and the stories he told made what hair Mr. Wilkins had on his head stand upright, he being a very nervous man, and believing in ghosts and supernatural things.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” said Mr. Saxon.

“Well, I do to a certain extent,” said Mr. Wilkins; “but I’ve never seen one.”

“You’ve never had a conversation with a dead man?”

“Lor’, no,” said Mr. Wilkins, “nor nobody else, I should think.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Saxon, “I have.”

We were all silent directly, and I began to feel creepy, and as if somebody was breathing on the back of my neck, which is a feeling I always have when people begin to tell ghost stories.

“I’ll tell you about it,” said Mr. Saxon; and then he began. Of course I can’t tell it in his own words, because I had to write it down from memory afterwards, but this is something like it.

“When I was a young fellow,” said Mr. Saxon, “and a clerk in my father’s office in the City, I used to knock about a good deal of an evening and see life, and as my father and mother wouldn’t let me have a latchkey, and didn’t like me coming in at all hours, I left home, and went to live by myself in lodgings in a street running off the Camden-road. There were a lot of other young fellows living in the house—all of them lads studying for veterinary surgeons at the Royal Veterinary College in Great College-street. Lots of the houses in this neighbourhood were filled with these young fellows, as many of them came up from the country for the ‘term,’ and, of course, wanted to live near the College.

“One of the nicest of them, and my particular friend, was Charley Ransom. He was a good-looking lad about eighteen, but very reckless, and a good deal fonder of billiard-rooms, and betting, and music-halls, than he was of work. He’d been up for an examination and failed, and he told me that his old dad down in the country was very wild with him, and that if he didn’t pass this term he would have to go back home and go into an office as a clerk.

“He made up his mind to try, but he was in with a bad set, and they got him out of an evening when he ought to be studying, and unfortunately he was a fellow that a very little drink made excited, and then he lost his head, and no freak was too mad for him.

“At this time I had just begun to get things that I wrote put into the newspapers, and as I had to be at the City all day, I used to go straight home and shut myself up in my room, and work till very late, sometimes till one in the morning; but I always went out for a walk before going to bed, no matter what time it was when I left off.

“Once or twice when I was going out I met Ransom coming in, looking very queer, and walking very unsteady, and from that, and what the landlord told me, I knew he was ‘going wrong.’

“One Sunday morning I met him in Park-street, and we walked into the Park together, and I ventured to say I thought it was a pity he didn’t try and settle down and be steady, as I was sure he’d never pass his exam. the way he was going on, and he might be wrecking all his future life.

“He took my advice in good part, and said I was quite right, but he couldn’t help it. He’d got a lot of trouble, and he was up a tree.

“‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Tell me; I may be able to help you.’

“‘No; you can’t, old fellow,’ and then he told me his trouble, and a very dreadful one it was. It seems he’d been squandering money and gambling, and had got into debt, and, not wanting his father to know, he’d raised money. He wouldn’t tell me how, because he said it would incriminate another fellow; but I knew it was in some way that might land him in a police-court.

“He had hoped to have got the money again, poor lad; he’d been betting to get it back again, but he’d only got deeper into the mire, and now every day might bring exposure, disgrace, and ruin.

“I was very sorry, but I couldn’t help him. I hadn’t any money to spare. All I could do was to beg him to write to his father, tell him everything, and get assistance there.

“This he refused to do. I found out afterwards that his father had sustained heavy losses, and was himself in straitened circumstances.

“Two nights afterwards, while I was at work, there came a knock at my door, and one of the young fellows came in. ‘Oh, Mr. Saxon,’ he said, ‘such a terrible thing’s happened! Charley Ransom’s poisoned himself accidentally.’ As soon as I had recovered from the shock Ransom’s friend told me all about it. Charley, who had been suffering with a troublesome cough, carried a bottle of ‘drops’ in his pocket, which he took when the cough was bad. That afternoon he had had a small bottle filled with poison which he was going to use in a chemical experiment. It was supposed that, the cough coming on, he had by mischance taken the poison instead of the drops. He had been found lying in an insensible state in the lavatory of a billiard-room in Park-street, and had been taken to the hospital.

“I guessed the truth at once. In a moment of despair and desperation Ransom had committed suicide.

“I went to the hospital that evening to make inquiries. I was told that the case was almost hopeless, and that death might be expected at any moment.

“The landlord telegraphed to Charley’s father, and the next day the poor old gentleman came up. He was allowed to see his son, but the lad was unconscious, and, being able to do nothing, the father came away.

“That night a message came to the house from the hospital.

“Ransom was dead!

“The next morning, when I got to the city, I found my father there before me. He called me into his office and told me I must pack up at once and go to the South of France. My mother was there with my two sisters, and both of them had been attacked with scarlet fever. My mother wanted me to go out to her at once, as she did not like to be there alone with this anxiety on her mind.

“I returned to my lodgings, and, as I should probably be away some time, I paid my rent and a week in lieu of notice, and left. I was not at all sorry to turn my back upon the place, for Ransom’s terrible fate had made me very miserable.

“I went to Nice, and when I got there soon found something to distract my thoughts from Ransom. My sisters were seriously ill. For a month it was a battle between life and death, and it was two months before they could be moved. In this fresh trouble I forgot all about poor Charley. Under any other circumstances, I should have tried to get the English newspapers, and have watched for the inquest.

“When my sisters were well enough to travel we returned to London, but only for a day, as they were to go at once to the seaside. I went down with them to Eastbourne, which was the place recommended by the doctors.

“The first evening that we were there, after dinner I strolled out. It was just twilight, and, lighting my pipe, I turned away from the sea, and walked along the road leading to the Links. The quietness of the country, and the stillness of the night, set me meditating, and I began to think of Charley Ransom. I was tired with my walk, and I sat down on a seat under one of the big trees, and was soon lost in reverie.

“How long I sat there I don’t know, but presently I became conscious that somebody was sitting beside me. I struck a match to relight my pipe, which had gone out, and the light of the vesta fell full on the face of the man who was my companion.

“I could not speak—for a second I could not move. It was no human being that sat beside me. The face I saw was the white face of death—the face of the man who had poisoned himself and died in a London hospital—the face of Charley Ransom!

“I rose with an effort, and walked—almost ran—away. I am not ashamed to confess that in that moment of horror I was an absolute, abject coward. I walked on at full speed until I got to the town and saw the lights of the shops, and mixed with the crowd, and then only I began to recover myself.

“I said to myself that I had been deceived by my imagination—that there was nobody by me on that seat. I had been thinking of Ransom, and had imagined that I saw him. Such things, I knew, had often occurred to imaginative people.

“By the time I reached home I was convinced that I had been the victim of an hallucination.

“I determined to conquer my folly, and the next evening I went to the same place and sat down. There was no one there. The road was lonely and deserted. I sat on till it was dark, and no one came. I rose to go. I walked a little distance away, and then I turned round.

“There was a man on the seat now. I walked back again—trembling, but determined to know the truth. When I came within a few yards I could see the man’s face.

“It was that white, dead face again—it was the face of Charley Ransom!

“With a supreme effort I went right up to the ghost. Its head was bent a little, its eyes were on the ground.

“‘Ransom!’ I said.

“The face was slowly lifted. The strange lack-lustre eyes looked into mine.

“It was the dead man’s ghost!

“One look was sufficient to convince me, and then I took to my heels and fairly bolted.

“Laugh at me, if you will—call me a coward—but put yourself in my place, and say what you would have done. One doesn’t stop to reason—one doesn’t think of what a ghost can do, and what it can’t. The sight of a man you know to be dead and buried sitting within arm’s-length of you is enough to shock the nervous system of a brave man—and a brave man I am not, and never was.

“I didn’t go that walk again. No power on earth would have tempted me to pass, after the sun had gone down, that haunted seat. That, Mr. Wilkins, is the ghost I saw and spoke to—the ghost of the man who took poison and died in the hospital—the ghost of my fellow-lodger, Charley Ransom.”

“Awful!” said Mr. Wilkins, as Mr. Saxon finished.

I didn’t say anything, but that ghostly blowing on the back of my neck was worse than ever, and I made up my mind that we’d burn a nightlight that night. I couldn’t sleep in the dark with Mr. Saxon’s ghost in my head, I was sure of that.

Harry was the first to speak. “I suppose you did see it, sir?” he said. “But why should Mr. Ransom’s ghost come all the way to Eastbourne after you?”

“Ah!” said Mr. Saxon; “I’ll tell you why. It had been ordered there for change of air.”

“A ghost ordered to Eastbourne for change of air?”

“Yes; it seems that the man who had died in the hospital that night was a man named Lansom. By one of those mischances which will sometimes happen, there was a confusion through the similarity of the names, and a messenger was sent to Ransom’s friends and Ransom’s address to give information of his death.”

“The mistake wasn’t rectified till after I had left the next day. It was nobody’s business to write to me, and nobody knew where I was, so I didn’t hear of it. Ransom got better, and, when he was well enough to be moved, was sent to Eastbourne. It was Ransom, and not his ghost, that I had seen on the seat. The deathly look of the face was due to the effect of the poison he had taken.”

“And he wasn’t punished?” I said.

“No; the poison was supposed to have been taken accidentally, for nothing came out about his trouble. The young fellow who had got him into it made a clean breast of it to the other fellows, and the students at the College, like the good-hearted fellows they are, in spite of their little failings, made a subscription and paid the man who could have prosecuted all that was due to him.”

“Three cheers for the vets.!” said Harry.

“Quite so,” said Mr. Saxon; “I’ve known a good many in my time, and, take them altogether, a better set of fellows, though a bit noisy now and again, doesn’t exist.”

* * * * *

I’ve been able to finish Mr. Saxon’s story without being interrupted, for a wonder. I shouldn’t have used it here, only it’s a little triumph for me to have got something out of him for my book. He’s got plenty out of other people. I don’t suppose he thought when he was telling it to make Mr. Wilkins’s hair stand up that I was taking it all in to use for my book. He can’t say anything, because it’s the way he’s served other people all his life. Tit for tat, Mr. Saxon—and one to Mary Jane.

CHAPTER VIII.

MRS. CROKER’S “No. 2.”

They were quite jolly, Mr. Saxon being full of jokes, and insisting upon going behind the bar before they started and pretending to serve the customers, and asking questions about everything he saw; and when I told him anything, the Swedish gentleman had to put it down in the little black book he carried in his pocket, and I noticed he was always making notes in it—whenever Mr. Saxon thought of anything the other having to put it down for him. If a customer came in with a curious manner, Mr. Saxon would say, “Put that down;” and out came the book. If Harry told about something that had happened to him on a voyage, it was, “Put that down;” and I noticed the Swedish gentleman always pulled out about a dozen papers before he found the book. It seems Mr. Saxon picked up handbills, and cut things out of the paper, and wrote things on bits of paper, and everything had to go into the Swedish gentleman’s pocket, till he looked quite bulged out.

Mr. Saxon, when he came in, wrote till dinner-time, and the Swedish gentleman had to copy all he wrote, and when he couldn’t read the words Mr. Saxon went on at him and said his common sense ought to tell him what they were, but there wasn’t anything to attract attention till they had their dinner. They had a very good dinner, and the air had evidently given them an appetite; but Mr. Saxon kept chaffing all the time, and saying the Swedish gentleman would have to be lifted out of his chair by a steam-crane if he ate any more, and begging him not to make us bankrupt, because we were young beginners.

And he told me while they were travelling abroad they had gone to an hotel where the meals were fixed price, and after staying two days the landlord came and offered them a pound to go somewhere else because the Swedish gentleman was ruining him. But I noticed that Mr. Saxon ate quite as much as the other; perhaps not so much meat, but he ate nearly all the apple-pie and three-quarters of a cold jam tart, and the Swedish gentleman didn’t touch the pastry at all.

And after Mr. Saxon had eaten all the pastry, if he didn’t tell me never to put such things on the table again for him, as they were poison; so the next day I only made a milky pudding, and then, if he didn’t say, “What, no pastry! Oh dear me! Here, Mrs. Beckett, go and make us half-a-dozen pancakes.”

What are you to do with a man like that?

The second day, in the morning, I saw that Mr. Saxon had got out of bed the wrong side.

He was groaning when I went to lay the breakfast, and he said his liver was bad, and his life was a burden to him; and certainly he did look green and yellow. And he was looking at himself in the glass, and going on because his hair wouldn’t lie down; and he kept banging it and saying he looked like a death’s-head, and he should be glad when he was in his grave.

I had put his letters—a dozen, I should say—on the table; but just as he was going to open them the Swedish gentleman came in and snatched them away.

“No, sir,” he said; “you have your breakfast first. I see how you are this morning; and there’s sure to be something in the letters to annoy you, so have your breakfast first. I know you won’t eat any if you open them.”

He was right, for when I went to clear the things away Mr. Saxon was walking up and down the room in a dreadful rage, and the perspiration was streaming down his face.

“The wretches, the fiends!” he said, “to dare to say this to me! The scoundrels! but I’ll teach them a lesson; I’ll tell them what I think of them.”

And directly the cloth was off he seized the pen and ink and began writing page after page on letter-paper, and then tearing it up and groaning, and then beginning again.

“There!” he said, “that’s the sort of thing to say to wretches like that. Take that to the post at once.”

The Swedish gentleman took it and put it in his pocket, and went outside the door.

I followed him with the crumb-brush, and I said, “Shall I send the boy to the post with it, sir?”

He said, “Oh no; it’s all right. I sha’n’t post it at all.”

“What!” I said; “not post it?”

“No, bless you; if I were to post all the letters he writes to people when he’s in a rage he wouldn’t have a friend left in the world. I burn them instead. Why, when he’s put out like he is now he writes the most awful things to people. They don’t understand him, and might think he meant it; but I do understand him, and I don’t post the letters.”

“But don’t you tell him?”

“Oh yes; when he’s cooled down a bit, and had time to think; and then he’s very glad. He’s made no end of enemies through writing in a rage when I haven’t been by to stop the letters going; but he sha’n’t make any more if I can help it.”

“What a pity it is he has such a hasty temper,” I said.

“It is, because it gives people a wrong impression of him. But he can’t help it; it’s nervous irritability, and rages and furious letter-writing are only the symptoms.”

“Ah,” I said, “I know. He used to be like that when I was with him; but he’s all right when you know him.”

“Yes,” he said, “he’s like the gentleman in the song—

When I told Harry about the bromide and about the letters that weren’t posted, he said—

“I say, missis, do you think he’s all right?”

“What do you mean, Harry, by ‘all right’?”

“Why, all right here,” and he touched his forehead.

“Why, of course he is. It’s only his curious way.”

“Well,” said Harry, “if you say so, I suppose it’s right. You know more about him than I do; but if I’d met him without being introduced I should have said that he was a lunatic, and the big foreigner was his keeper.”

That was a nice idea, wasn’t it? But, of course, a character like Mr. Saxon isn’t met with every day; and perhaps it’s a good job it isn’t. Too many of them would make things uncomfortable.

All that day Mr. Saxon was very excited, and I could see it was his liver by the look of him; and he kept groaning and saying his head ached, and he felt as if he’d been beaten black and blue.

He said he couldn’t write and he couldn’t read, and he couldn’t sit still, and so he came downstairs into our parlour and made Harry come and sit and talk with him. But he talked so much himself, Harry never had a chance. Harry did manage to say once what a fine thing it must be to be able to make money, and have your name stuck about the hoardings; and that was enough—that started him.

“A fine thing!” he said; “why, I’m the most miserable wretch that ever trod the earth! For twenty years I haven’t known what it is to be well for a single day. I’m always doubled up, I’m always in pain, I can’t go anywhere, I shun society, and I can’t eat anything without being ill for a week.”

“But you manage to write a good deal,” said Harry.

“Ah! I used to, but that faculty’s gone now. I’m too ill. I shall have to give up soon. Then I shall be ruined, and die in the workhouse. It’s an awful thing, Beckett, after working hard all your life, to die in the workhouse.”

“Can’t say, sir,” said Harry jokingly; “I never tried it.”

But Mr. Saxon wouldn’t joke. He kept on talking in such a melancholy way that at last we all began to feel miserable. He said that life was all a mistake—that it was no good trying to be anything in the world, because death was sure to come, and that misery and trouble were our portions from the cradle to the grave. Then he began to tell the most dreadful stories about people he’d known, and the awful things that had happened to them; and Harry, who wasn’t used to that sort of thing, got up and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Saxon, I’ll go and get a little fresh air. If I listen to you much longer I shall begin to believe that I’d better take the missis and the baby and tie them round my neck and jump into the canal, before anything worse happens to us.”

“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Mr. Saxon; “I’m always like that when I’ve got dyspepsia—and I’ve got it awfully this afternoon.”

“Well,” said Harry, “the best thing for that is exercise. Come and have a good walk.”

They went out, Harry and Mr. Saxon and the Swedish gentleman, and when they came back they were all roaring with laughter. Mr. Saxon had forgotten all about his ailments, and Harry told me Mr. Saxon and the Swedish gentleman had been pretending that they were two agents from London, who were down to look for the next heir to a John Smith, who had died in Australia worth a hundred thousand pounds, and they’d been into all the cottages making inquiries and questioning the people about their great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and Harry said that they’d set the whole village agog, and that half the people in it had tried to make out that they once had a relative named Smith. Harry laughed when he told me, because it was so droll, the way all the people began to tell Mr. Saxon their family histories, the Swedish gentleman taking it all down, as grave as a judge, in his note-book.

He said it was as good as a play. But it was an awful nuisance when people kept coming in and wanting to see the two gentlemen, and leaving bits of paper with the names of their ancestors written on, and old samplers, and I don’t know what. And one old gentleman from the almshouses, who hadn’t been out of his room for three months, was brought down in a wheelbarrow, with his family Bible to show his mother’s maiden name was Smith; and he was so disappointed not to find the hundred thousand pounds waiting for him, that Harry had to give him a shilling and a bit of tobacco to comfort him.

It really was too bad of Mr. Saxon to have played a joke like that, because people in a country place always have an idea that they are “next of kin,” or whatever you call it, to rich people, and that there is unclaimed money waiting for them.

You have only to mention that somebody of their name is advertised for or inquired for, and they are certain that they are coming into a fortune. Almost every old lady in a country place believes that there is a fortune left to her somewhere, if she only knew where to look for it.

But Mr. Saxon got nicely paid out for his joke. There was an old lady who lived in the village, a regular character, called Mrs. Croker, though her real name was Mrs. Smith—Croker having been the name of her first husband and Smith of her second; but she went back to her first husband’s name when her second ran away. She was an awful tartar if all they say of her was true, and no wonder the first one died and the second ran away. She was married from the village, her family living there for centuries, and that’s how her history was so well known.

She married a very quiet, middle-aged man first, and went to live in London with him, where he worked at his trade; but she was the master, it seems, from the first. They had a little house over Lambeth way. She made him scrub the stairs and clean the steps, and do all the house-work that a woman generally does, before he went to his work and after he came home from it; and he had to give her all his money, and she allowed him so much a day, just enough for his fare and his dinner that he had to get out. And woe betide him if he didn’t come home to his tea to the minute he ought to be home!

He was due home at half-past five from his work, and at five-and-twenty minutes to six the tea was all cleared away, and he had to go without for being late. Then she used to set him to do cleaning or whatever had to be done, and she always found him a job, because she said it wasn’t good for a man to be idle.

Once a friend called to see poor Mr. Croker, I was told, but she answered the door and gave the friend a bit of her mind. She said when a man came home he belonged to his wife, and she wasn’t going to have any dissolute companions coming there after him luring him into bad ways.

You can guess what a nice sort of woman she was; perhaps being over forty when she married had something to do with it.

Poor Mr. Croker was a very mild little man who daren’t say his soul was his own, and he obeyed like a lamb, and was very kind to her with it all, and I dare say loved her very much—for I’ve heard, and I dare say it’s true, that men do love women like that sometimes much better than women who let themselves be trodden on.

On Sunday Mr. Croker had to work harder than ever, because his wife went to church in the morning, and left him at home to do the cooking and get the dinner ready, and when she came home she sat down and let him dish it up, and a nice to-do there was if everything wasn’t quite right.

On Sunday afternoon she used to have a nap, and to keep Croker out of mischief she used to give him the Sunday-school books that she had had when a little girl to read, and, to make sure he didn’t go to sleep or get lazy, she used to make him learn the collect for the day and a hymn while she was asleep, and he had to say them when she woke up.

It seems hardly possible that a man would lead such a life, but poor Croker did, and I know that it is true, for I can judge by her goings-on now, when I see her very often; and all the people who knew about her married life tell the same story, and poor Croker’s “mates” in his workshop told what they had heard from him when he died, and there was an inquest on him.

But I must not anticipate.

To show how she treated her husband, it was a fact—and she confessed it herself—that she didn’t even let him have what she had in the way of crockery. She had nicer things, china and that sort of thing, which she used for herself, but poor Croker had his tea in a big yellow mug, and had a common cracked old plate to have his dinner on, and had his beer in the same old yellow mug, while she had hers in a glass; and even the beer was different, he having to fetch her a pint of the best, while he was only allowed half a pint of the common.

It was one Sunday afternoon that Mr. Croker came to his end, and it was really through his being so afraid of his wife.

It seems she never allowed him to smoke, because she said it was a wasteful habit; but he used to keep a pipe at the shop, and smoke it secretly till he got near his home, and then call at a friend’s house and leave it for fear she should search his pockets and find it on him.

He had some way of not smelling of tobacco by having a chronic cough, which made him always take a coughdrop that hid the smell of tobacco; and that was enough, because I shouldn’t suppose that Mrs. Croker ever so far unbent her dignity as to kiss the poor man.

Sunday was his great trial, because he was never allowed out till evening, and then she always went with him for a short stroll. Not being able to get a smoke that day made him want it all the more—which is only human nature, and always has been.

At last, noticing that she used to sleep very soundly of an afternoon, he got artful, and would learn his collect beforehand in his dinner-hour at the shop, and, when she was asleep and snoring, creep out of the room with his hymn-book, and learn that over a pipe down in the shed that was at the bottom of the yard, where the coals were always kept, they having no underground coal-cellar in the little house they lived in. He was afraid to smoke in the garden, for fear the neighbours should see him and by chance let her know he had been smoking. So he used to crawl into the shed, and had made himself a comfortable corner there, and a seat on an old basket turned upside down, and he had a candle, which he stuck up to read by; and that was his most enjoyable half-hour on Sunday.

He always managed to go in with some coals, so that, if she woke up and missed him, he could say, when he came in, he had been to the coal-shed. He had to work the kitchen fire in the summer very carefully, so as to make it always want coals just at that time.

His end was very awful. It seems that Mrs. Croker, who was always one to drive a bargain, and had bought no end of things cheap, which she hoarded away, being a miser, as you may guess, had been offered a big can of oil, that is burned in lamps, cheap by a neighbour who had the brokers in, and been sold up or something of the sort, and she had bought it and had it taken into this shed.

One dark Sunday afternoon, poor Croker, knowing nothing about the oil, went into the coal-shed and lit his candle, and sat down to learn his hymn and have his pipe, when, in settling himself down, he knocked over the can that he didn’t know was there, and it made him jump, and in his fright down he came and the candle too, and he and the candle fell into a pool of the oil, and everything was in a blaze in a minute.

His screams brought assistance, and he was got out, but not before he was so burned that he never got over it, but died a little while after.

It was at the inquest that it came out why he was there smoking, one of his mates volunteering and giving off a bit of his mind before the coroner could stop him.

Mrs. Croker, after she got over the shock, said it was a judgment, and it all happened through men deceiving their wives; but other people who knew all about her put it differently.

Two years after Mr. Croker’s quiet Sunday pipe had caused his end, Mrs. Croker, who must have had a tidy bit of money, because she had saved a good deal out of Croker’s wages, and was always thrifty, and had his club and insurance money, married again. This time she married a younger man, a man in good work, named Dan Smith. I suppose Mr. Smith thought she had a bit of money, and didn’t know what a character she was.

At any rate, Mrs. Croker became Mrs. Smith, and she tried the same game on with Daniel as she had with the other.

But Daniel didn’t take it quite in the same way. He humoured her at first, and cleaned the steps and cooked the dinner; but they say it was over the collect and the hymn on Sunday afternoon that they fell out.

He said if she went out Sunday mornings he should go out Sunday afternoons, and he should smoke his pipe out of doors and in the house, too. He wouldn’t give up his baccy for the best woman breathing.

They had awful quarrels about it, and neither would give way; and, what’s more, Mr. Smith wouldn’t hand over all his wages every week as Mr. Croker had done.

She must have led him a pretty life in consequence, for one Saturday morning Mr. Smith went out, and he didn’t come home to dinner, and he didn’t come home to tea. Mrs. Smith worked herself up into an awful rage, and was getting ready to make it warm for him when he did come in—but he didn’t come in to supper, and he didn’t come in all night.

Then she got awfully frightened, and the next morning, Sunday, she went down to the works and found out where the foreman lived, and went to see if he could tell her anything. The foreman told her that Dan had left his employment, having given a week’s notice the Saturday before, and had wished them all good-bye; and then she knew that her husband hadn’t meant to come home—in fact, that he had run away from her.

She went on anyhow about him then, and called him dreadful names, and said he was a villain, and vowed she would find him, if she went to the end of the world after him, and have him up for deserting her.

She didn’t get much sympathy from anybody, because people knew how she’d treated her first husband, and they said she didn’t deserve to have another; but some of the mischievous people played jokes on her. One would come to her and say, “Oh, Mrs. Smith, your husband was seen last night with a young woman in a public-house at Bow.”

Off she would go to the place, and insist on seeing the landlord, and make a fine to-do, accusing him of harbouring her husband. Wherever people told her her husband had been seen she would go, till she had been half over London, and she began to be known as “the old gal who was looking for her husband.”

But at last she gave up the search and sold up her home, and came back to live in her native village near where our house is; and then she pretended to be very poor, and used to ask herself out to tea to different people’s houses as often as she could, and would come in and talk about her wrongs, till people used to have to make all sorts of excuses to get rid of her.

She was said to wear all her clothes one set on top of the other, and she certainly looked very bulky always; and whenever she called and people were at tea, she’d have a cup, and manage to take a lump or two of sugar extra and put in her pocket, and was always asking to be obliged with a stamp, which she didn’t pay for, and all that sort of thing.

She managed to make friends with us somehow soon after we came, and when we weren’t at tea or dinner when she came in, she would have an awful attack of the spasms, and, of course, at first I used to say, “Have a little brandy, or a little gin,” and she never said “No.”

I had managed to stop her calling so often when Mr. Saxon started that story about the Mr. Smith who had died in Australia. She heard of it, and she was certain it was her husband, and down she came to our place and insisted on seeing the agents.

We tried to get rid of her, saying they weren’t in, but she said she’d stay till they did come in, and at last Mr. Saxon had to see her to try and get rid of her.

But once she got in his room, there she stuck. It was no good his saying the man Smith had been in Australia fifty years—she knew better. For everything he said she had an argument ready, and she demanded the name of his employers, and I don’t know what; and as he had some writing to do he got out of temper, and then she slanged him, and said he was in the conspiracy, and at last he put her out of his room and locked the door.

We got her away after she’d shouted at him outside his door for a quarter of an hour; but when he went out the next morning for a walk she was waiting for him, and she followed him and the Swedish gentleman through the village, shouting at them, till everybody came out of their doors, and Mr. Saxon had to run fast to get away from her, because she couldn’t run far with three or four complete sets of clothes on.

When Mr. Saxon returned he came in the back way and sat down in a chair.

“Good heavens, Mary Jane,” he said, “that old woman will drive me mad! Can’t she be put in the pound?”

I said it was a pity he had put that story about, because it would never do to say there was no Mr. Smith—all the other people would be so indignant. He must think of something to persuade Mrs. Smith it wasn’t her husband.

“I know,” said the Swedish gentleman; “we must show her a photograph of the real Mr. Smith, and say that’s the man. Then she can’t say it’s her husband.”

“But I don’t carry photographs about with me,” said Mr. Saxon. Then he asked me if I had one.

“No,” I said, “not that she wouldn’t recognize, because she’s looked through my album over and over again, and I can’t borrow one of anybody in the village, because she’d recognize that too. She knows everybody’s business.”

“Oh, leave it to me, sir,” said the Swedish gentleman; “I’ll manage to get one.”

So he went out and got a photograph, and I heard afterwards how he got it. He certainly was very clever at scheming and planning, seeming to like it.

He went to the photographers in the nearest town to us and asked if they had any photographs of celebrities, and they said, “No; there was no demand for them.” Then he asked if they had any photographs of anybody who didn’t live in the place or near the place. The photographer thought a minute, and then said, “Yes; he thought he had.” He went to a drawer, and brought out a photograph of a man.

“I’m sure that is a stranger,” he said; “you can have this.” The Swedish gentleman had said he wanted an old photograph to do a conjuring trick with, but didn’t want anybody who was an inhabitant.

He paid a shilling for the photo, and brought it back. When he got near our house he met Mr. Saxon, who had gone out for a stroll, and that blessed Mrs. Croker was watching for him, and was on to him again demanding particulars of her husband’s death in Australia and of her fortune. She wasn’t going to let a lot of people that had no claim on him get it.

Mr. Saxon asked the Swedish gentleman in German if he’d got a photo. “Yes,” he said.

Then Mr. Saxon turned to Mrs. Croker and said, “Madam, I suppose you would know your husband’s photograph?”

“Yes, I should,” she said.

“Then, madam, my friend will show you the photograph of our Mr. Smith, and you will see it is not your husband.”

The Swedish gentleman took out his pocket-book and took the photograph he had bought from it.

“There, madam,” he said, “that is the Mr. Smith.”

“Ah!” shouted the woman; “I knew it. That is my husband!”

And it was. The photographer had given the Swedish gentleman a copy of the photograph of Daniel Smith. When Mrs. Croker came to the village she had had a dozen taken to send about, in case she ever heard of any clue in distant parts. The photographer had taken more than had been ordered—she wouldn’t pay for them, and he had to keep them. He had given one to the Swedish gentleman.

That evening Mr. Saxon packed up and fled. He went away in a close carriage, and drove to a station four miles off, to elude the vigilance of Mrs. Croker.

She used to go to London about once a week regularly to look for him, and she was quite convinced that some day she would receive the hundred thousand pounds that her husband left in Australia. She was convinced that she had been hoaxed at last by receiving news of the death of the real Daniel Smith. He had died at——

* * * * *

What’s that smell of burning? It’s from the kitchen. Why, cook, what are you thinking of? You know how particular No. 7 is, and these cutlets are burned to a cinder. You—— Why, good heavens, the woman’s drunk!

CHAPTER IX.

OLD GAFFER GABBITAS.

“Of course I asked her why she should think your name was Mary Jane, ma’am, and then she said, ‘She’s a celebrated authoress. She’s written a book all about us (my daughter is in domestic service), and it’s the truest book I ever read about servants. It’s her “Memoirs” and all about the places she lived in, and the people she lived with. She said in the book she was going to marry Harry and have a country inn.’

“‘Harry’s the landlord’s name, right enough,’ I said; and from one or two things my daughter told me were in that book, ma’am, I’m sure I have the honour of addressing the talented authoress.”

I blushed more than ever when Mr. Wilkins said that, and I felt very uncomfortable. I never thought it would get about that I wrote books, and I felt that if it was known it might injure our business, as folks wouldn’t like to come and stay at an hotel, if they thought the landlady was studying their characters to make stories about them for print. I saw it was no good denying it, so I put a bold face on the matter, and I said, “Mr. Wilkins, it is quite true; but I want you to give me your promise you won’t say a word of what you have found out to anybody else.”

“Good gracious, ma’am!” said Mr. Wilkins. “Why should you hide your candle under a bushel? It’s a great thing to be a writing lady nowadays.”

“Yes: but I’m not a lady, Mr. Wilkins,” I said, “and I’ve my husband’s business to attend to, and I don’t want the people about here to know me as anything else but the landlady of the ‘Stretford Arms.’”

I explained to him as well as I could why it wasn’t advisable for me to be known as an authoress, especially an authoress who wrote about what she saw, and put real live people in her books; and, after a little talk, Mr. Wilkins said he saw what I meant, and he thought I was right, and he gave me his word of honour he wouldn’t breathe my secret to a soul.

After that, of course, I was obliged to take him a good deal into my confidence, and as once or twice he had seen me writing, it was no good my denying that I was at work on more “Memoirs,” and he very soon jumped to the conclusion that it was our inn and its customers, and the people in the place, that I was writing about. Then he asked me point-blank if he was in, and I said, “Yes, Mr. Wilkins; you are.”

Bless the little man, you should have seen him when he heard that. He positively glowed all over his face, and begged and prayed of me to let him see what I’d written about him. I said he should one day, that I’d only just put down some notes at present, and that they weren’t in shape yet.

After that, he was on at me whenever he got a chance about my new “Memoirs.” “I can give you a lot of things to put in,” he said, “because I’ve lived here man and boy, and there isn’t a soul whose history I don’t know. When are you going to publish ’em, ma’am?”

“Oh,” I said, “not yet. It wouldn’t do while we’re here. A nice time I should have of it, if the people here got hold of the book, and came and asked me how I dared put them in!”

“But you aren’t going to leave here?”

“Not yet, of course; but I hope we shall have a better house some day. If we make this a good business we shall sell it, and buy another—a real hotel, perhaps, with waiters in evening dress, and all that sort of thing; but there’s plenty of time to think about that.”

Poor little Mr. Wilkins! certainly he couldn’t have taken more interest in my new work if he’d been writing it himself; and I really believe he did think he was what they call collaborating; for, after a time, whenever he brought me a bit of information, he would say, “Won’t that do for our ‘Memoirs’?”

Our “Memoirs!” It made me a little cold to him at first, because I have an authoress’s feelings; but I saw he didn’t mean any harm, and I soon forgave him, and we were the best of friends. I will acknowledge here that he was of very great service to me; and having been the parish clerk so many years, and his father before him, and having an old-established little business in the place, he had many opportunities of knowing things which I couldn’t have found out. I can say what I like of him now, because the old gentleman, at the time I am writing, is far, far away, and isn’t likely to see or hear of my book. But I must not anticipate. I shall tell you his story by-and-by in its proper place, as it happened long after this.

He certainly kept his word, and never told anybody of what he’d found out, and nobody here ever said anything to me about my “Memoirs,” except one person, and when that one person said it, it took my breath away more than Mr. Wilkins did.

I must tell you about that now, or else I shall forget it. It shows the danger of expressing your opinions too freely in a book.

We were always changing our cooks—in fact, cooks were our great difficulty; and female cooks in hotels generally are a difficulty, and even harder to manage than cooks in private families.

The one I had the most trouble with was a middle-aged woman, who came from London, very highly recommended from her last place. She was capital at first—punctual, clean, and as good with her vegetables as she was with the joints and pastry, and that was a great thing, for some English cooks think vegetables are beneath their notice and ought to be left to the kitchenmaid; but I am very strong on vegetables in plain English cooking—especially in an hotel. I know from our customers, who have travelled about, that the vegetables are the weak points in most hotels, and potatoes and cabbage will be served with an expensive dinner that would be a disgrace to a cookshop.

A gentleman told me one day, after he’d had his dinner, when I’d cooked the vegetables myself, that he’d been travelling about the country, and it was the first time he’d eaten a well-cooked potato since he’d left home. He said vegetables were murdered as a rule, and were so badly served, that the waiter didn’t even give them their names, but called them “veg” (pronounced vedge). I’ve heard that said myself at a restaurant in London where Harry took me to dinner, so I know it’s true. “Veg on five,” said our waiter. That was for the boy to put vegetables on table No. 5. Then another waiter put his head into the lift and shouted, “Now, then, look sharp with the veg, there!”

Yes, and “veg” was the word for what we got. Three nasty, half-boiled, diseased-looking potatoes, that had been out of the saucepan half an hour if they had been a minute, and a dab of cabbage—“dab” is the only word—and the cabbage was tasteless, sodden stuff, floating in water; and not a particle of salt had that cabbage or potato seen.

That was a lesson to me, because I felt what I didn’t like I couldn’t expect our customers to like. So I said to myself, “No veg at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ Mary Jane; you’ll give your customers good sound, honest vegetables, cooked well, with as much care as the meat or the pastry or the pudding.”

I’ve wandered a little bit, I know, but I can’t help it. I do feel so strongly on the shameful treatment of vegetables by the ordinary English cook. Now, to come back to the cook I was telling you about. She went on beautifully for a month, and I thought I’d got a treasure; and then she went and fell in love with a young fellow in the village—a very decent young fellow, but a bit too fond of gallivanting. He was a good-looking chap, and the girls encouraged him, as they will do, for I’ve noticed that if a man’s at all decent-looking there are always plenty of girls ready to encourage him to be a flirt. He fell in love with our cook—at any rate, he walked out with her once or twice, and then she told me they were engaged.

Unfortunately, he left off his work at seven every evening, and when our cook couldn’t go out with him, I dare say he wasn’t particular if he laughed and joked with the other young women of the place, who could get out.

Cook got to hear of something of the sort, and it made her dreadfully jealous, and she was always coming to me and saying, “Oh, please, ma’am, we aren’t very busy this evening; can I just run out and get a piece of ribbon?” or, “Oh, if you please, ma’am, could you spare me for ten minutes this evening?” And if I couldn’t let her go she’d be careless and ill-tempered, and work herself up into quite a rage—of course, fancying that her young man was “up to his larks,” as the kitchenmaid used to call it, when she chaffed poor cook about it.

I let her go out as often as I could when we were slack; but when we were busy, and there were late dinners to cook, and meat teas and early suppers, it wasn’t possible, and I had to be firm, and say no.

One evening, when we’d let the best sitting-room to a London lady and gentleman, and they’d ordered dinner at seven, cook came to me about ten minutes to, and said, “Please, ma’am, everything’s all ready, and Mary can dish up and see to the rest, if you’ll let me go out. I won’t be long.”

“No,” I said; “I really can’t, cook. I’m expecting people by the next train, and they’ll very likely want something cooked at once.”

“Oh, ma’am, do, please; it’s very particular.”

“Nonsense, cook,” I said; “you’ve been out twice this week. You only want to see your young man, and I can’t have it. You’re making yourself ridiculous over him, and neglecting your work. Go back to the kitchen at once.”

“Oh, then, you won’t let me go?” she said, turning fiery red.

“No. I’ve told you so.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” she said. “That’s your fellow-feeling for servants, is it? But it ain’t the sort of stuff you put in your ‘Memoirs.’”

“My what?” I gasped.

“Your ‘Memoirs’! Oh, you know what I mean, Miss Mary Jane Buffham. You’re a nice one to stick up for the poor servants, you are! Why don’t you practise what you preach?”

I never was so insulted in my life. It was all my work to prevent myself taking that woman by the shoulders and shaking her—the idea of her daring to throw my “Memoirs” in my face—my own servant, too!

But I kept my temper, and I said quietly, “Cook, you forget yourself.”

“No, I don’t,” she said, with an exasperating leer. “It’s you that forget yourself. You’re a missus now, but you weren’t always, and when you weren’t, you could reckon missuses up as well as anybody.”

“Go out of the room directly,” I said.

“Oh, I’m a-going! You can give me notice if you like. I’m sick of your twopenny-halfpenny public-house. I’ve always lived with gentlefolk before, and been treated as such.”

“Go out of the room!” I shouted, stamping my foot; “and go out of the house.”

“Yes, I will. I’ll go now, this very minute; but I want a month’s money.”

“You sha’n’t have a penny more than’s due to you, you impudent hussy!” I said. “There!” and I banged her wages up to date down on the table; “there’s your money. Now go and pack your box and be off, or I shall have you turned out.”

She took the money, counted it, and then threw it on the table.

“I want a month’s money or a month’s notice,” she said.

“Then you’ll have to get it,” I said. “Be off, or I’ll send for a policeman.”

“Oh!—hadn’t you better send for the one who used to cuddle you in the kitchen, while your other chap was away at sea?”

I did lose my temper at that. It was more than human flesh and blood could bear. I gave a little scream, and then I ran at her, took her by the shoulders, and ran her right out of the room, and banged the door in her face and locked it. And then I fell back into a chair; and if I hadn’t cried I should have had hysterics.

Harry was just outside when I turned cook out, and she began at him. He saw how the land lay, and he made short work of her, though she kept going on about me all the time. He made her pack and be off within a quarter of an hour; and I had to go into the kitchen, hot and crying and excited as I was, and the kitchenmaid and I had to dish up the dinner, and do all the rest of the cooking that evening.

When I had five minutes I went upstairs and bathed my face and put myself tidy; but I had such a dreadful splitting headache, I could hardly see out of my eyes.

When I came down again, Harry was in the parlour smoking his pipe and staring at the ceiling, and he didn’t look very good-tempered.

“Oh, that wretched woman,” I said; “she’s upset everything.”

Harry didn’t speak.

“Harry,” I said, “haven’t you anything to say? Aren’t you sorry for me to have been so upset?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “I’m sorry; but I wish that d——d policeman was at Jericho!”

That cat!—that ever I should call her so—to go and drag that policeman off the cover of my book and throw him at Harry, and all because I wouldn’t let her go and see her young man before she’d cooked the best sitting-room’s dinner!

It was a blow to me to have what I’d said in my book thrown in my face by my own servant. After that I felt inclined to ask a girl before I engaged her if she’d read my “Memoirs,” and if she said she had, to say, “Then you won’t suit me,” because that book puts wrong notions into girls’ heads. If ever there’s a second edition, there’s one or two things about servants in it that I shall certainly alter. And every bit about that policeman will come out. I made up my mind to that long ago.

Writing about the cook who threw my “Memoirs” in my face, and the rage she put me in, has quite put poor Mr. Wilkins’s nose out of joint. I told you how he was always bringing me things to put in my “Memoirs” of the village and our inn. Lots of the things he came to me full of were no use at all, and I had to tell him so. He seemed to think a book was a sort of dust-bin, into which you shot any rubbish you picked up. But, of course, people who are not authors don’t understand these things—they don’t know that everybody isn’t interested in just what interests them.

But one evening, he came in looking very important, and he had a very, very old gentleman with him—a white-haired, apple-faced old fellow, all wrinkles, who looked like a picture I’ve seen somewhere of a very old man. The gentleman who painted it was a foreigner, I think. I know it was in an illustrated paper, and said, “An Old Man’s Head,” by some name I couldn’t pronounce, and I’m sure I couldn’t spell from memory.

When Mr. Wilkins brought him in he walked with a stick, being a bit bent and feeble; and Mr. Wilkins took his hand, and led him to the fire, and everybody made way for him.

“I’ve brought you a new customer, Mrs. Beckett,” said Mr. Wilkins, with a look which was as much as to say, “Here’s something for our ‘Memoirs.’”

I nodded to the new old gentleman, and said I hoped he was well, and what would he take.

He said he’d take a hot rum-and-water, and I had it brought, and he settled down comfortably in the arm-chair.

“Are you all right, Gaffer?” said Mr. Wilkins.

“Yes, thank’e,” said the old man, in a piping sort of voice. “I’m all right, Muster Wilkins. It’s the fust time I’ve been here for many a year, though; old place be altered surely.”

“My old friend is a very celebrated man, Mrs. Beckett,” said Mr. Wilkins. “He doesn’t live here now, but he’s come to stay with his daughter who does, and I’ve brought him out along with me this evening, and I’ve promised to see him safe home again, haven’t I, Gaffer?”

“Yes, you have, Muster Wilkins.”

“This is old Gaffer Gabbitas, ma’am, as you may have heard of. He was pretty well known about these parts once, weren’t you, Gaffer?”

“Yes, yes; a long time ago. There wasn’t many betterer known than Tom Gabbitas, as I was called afore I got old and folks took to callin’ me Gaffer. Dear me, how it do bring back old times to be sitting here! But it’s all changed, all changed. It’s ten year since I left the village, Muster Wilkins, and went to live in London along o’ my son.”

“Ay, and you were an old man then, Gaffer. Why, you must be a hundred nearly!”

“No, no, Muster Wilkins, though I hope to be, for—thank the Lord!—I’ve all my faculties still; but I ain’t so old as that. I’m only ninety, come next Michaelmas Day.”

“Only ninety.” It almost made me smile to hear the old gentleman talk like that; but he certainly was a wonderful old fellow for his age, for he could see and hear, and he seemed to be pretty strong generally, only a bit feeble when he walked.

“And how many years is it since the murder, Gaffer?” said Mr. Wilkins.

I pricked up my ears at that. Murder! So this old gentleman had something to do with a murder. I understood why Mr. Wilkins had brought him, and why he kept looking across at me, as much as to say, “I’ve got something for you this time, ma’am, and no mistake.”

“Fifty year since the murder,” said the Gaffer. “Quite fifty year; and twenty since they found poor Muster Crunock’s body.”

“Fancy that, ma’am!” exclaimed Mr. Wilkins. “A murder was committed here—two murders—fifty years ago, and one body wasn’t found till thirty years after.”

“Here!” I exclaimed, “not here in this house. You don’t mean to say there was a murder at the ‘Stretford Arms’?”

“No—here—in this village! The murder was at Curnock’s farm, two miles from here—the second murder—but Gaffer’ll tell you all about it; he was in it, weren’t you, Gaffer?”

“Yes, yes; I was in it—I was in it.”

I couldn’t help shuddering. It made me creepy to look at that venerable old man and think that he’d been in a murder.

It took Mr. Wilkins a long time to get the story out of the old gentleman, and it took the old gentleman longer to tell it, for he kept wandering, and he would leave off and go into a lot of outside matters to make himself remember whether a day was a Monday or a Tuesday, when it didn’t matter which it was. You know the sort of thing; but when he had finished his story I was bound to confess it was a very wonderful thing, and it was all true, for Mr. Wilkins borrowed the old newspaper that the Gaffer had kept, and showed it me there.

Fifty years ago, it seemed, in the village next ours—the village where Curnock’s farm was—there was a terrible trouble about the tithes. The parson was disliked by the people, especially the farmers, and some of the farmers wouldn’t pay the tithes at all, and stirred the people up against him, and as far as I could make out, Ned Curnock, a young farmer in the neighbourhood, was the ringleader; so the parson got the law of him, and had a lot of his goods seized and taken away to pay the tithes.

He was fearfully mad about that, and swore he’d be revenged. At that time Tom Gabbitas was a labourer on the farm, and an old servant, for he was forty then.

Ned Curnock and another man—a young fellow, the son of a farmer—went out one night to waylay the parson, who had been to the Squire’s house to a party, and had to ride home through a dark lane. They said they’d give him a jolly good hiding, and that was all they meant to do. The only man who knew they’d gone, and what their errand was, was Tom Gabbitas, for he heard them talking it over, they not knowing he was near them, it being dark at the time.

About ten o’clock they went out, with two big sticks, and about eleven o’clock they came back. Ned Curnock was as white as death, and his clothes were all over blood. Tom met them, and they confided in him and told him what had happened, making him take an awful oath he’d never reveal a word to any living soul that could harm either of them.

It seems they’d met the parson, and pulled him off his horse, and begun to thrash him, when he had pulled out a pistol to shoot them. They got it from him, and somehow or other it went off and shot the parson, and they ran away; but they said they were sure he was killed, and it was a murder job.

Tom Gabbitas ran off to the place to get help, and when he got there he found other people there too. The parson was just dead; but he’d had time to say that he’d been murdered by two men, and he’d recognized one of them as Ned Curnock.