The American Senator

frightened. But at last the real case was allowed to begin, and Goarly was soon in the witness-box. Goarly did not seem to enjoy the day, and was with difficulty got to tell his own story even on his own side. But the story when it was told was simple enough. He had met Mr. Scrobby accidentally in Rufford and they two had together discussed the affairs of the young Lord. They came to an agreement that the young Lord was a tyrant and ought to be put down, and Scrobby showed how it was to be done. Scrobby instigated the action about the pheasants, and undertook to pay the expenses if Goarly would act in the other little matter. But, when he found that the Senator’s money was forthcoming, he had been anything but as good as his word. Goarly swore that in hard cash he had never seen more than four shillings of Scrobby’s money. As to the poison, Goarly declared that he knew nothing about it; but he certainly had received a parcel of herrings from Scrobby’s own hands, and in obedience to Scrobby’s directions, had laid them down in Dillsborough Wood the very morning on which the hounds had come there. He owned that he supposed that there might be something in the herrings, something that would probably be deleterious to hounds as well as foxes⁠—or to children should the herrings happen to fall into children’s hands; but he assured the Court that he had no knowledge of poison⁠—none whatever. Then he was made by the other side to give a complete and a somewhat prolonged account of his own life up to the present time⁠—this information being of course required by the learned barrister on the other side; in listening to which the Senator did become thoroughly ashamed of the Briton whom he had assisted with his generosity.

But all this would have been nothing had not Nickem secured the old woman who had sold the herrings⁠—and also the chemist, from whom the strychnine had been purchased as much as three years previously. This latter feat was Nickem’s great triumph⁠—the feeling of the glory of which induced him to throw up his employment in Mr. Masters’ office, and thus brought him and his family to absolute ruin within a few months in spite of the liberal answers which were made by Lord Rufford to many of his numerous appeals. Away in Norrington the poison had been purchased as much as three years ago, and yet Nickem had had the luck to find it out. When the Scrobbyites heard that Scrobby had gone all the way to Norrington to buy strychnine to kill rats they were Scrobbyites no longer. “I hope they’ll hang ’un. I do hope they’ll hang ’un,” said Mr. Runce quite out loud from his crowded seat just behind the attorney’s bench.

The barrister of course struggled hard to earn his money. Though he could not save his client he might annoy the other side. He insisted therefore on bringing the whole affair of the pheasants before the Court, and examined the Senator at great length. He asked the Senator whether he had not found himself compelled to sympathise with the wrongs he had witnessed. The Senator declared that he had witnessed no wrongs. Why then had he interfered? Because he had thought that there might be wrong, and because he wished to see what power a poor man in this country would have against a rich one. He was induced still to think that Goarly had been ill-treated about the pheasants;⁠—but he could not take upon himself to say that he had witnessed any wrong done. But he was quite sure that the system on which such things were managed in England was at variance with that even justice which prevailed in his own country! Yes;⁠—by his own country he did mean Mickewa. He could tell that learned gentleman in spite of his sneers, and in spite of his evident ignorance of geography, that nowhere on the earth’s surface was justice more purely administered than in the great Western State of Mickewa. It was felt by everybody that the Senator had the best of it.

Mr. Scrobby was sent into durance for twelve months with hard labour, and Goarly was conveyed away in the custody of the police lest he should be torn to pieces by the rough lovers of hunting who were congregated outside. When the sentence had reached Mr. Runce’s ears, and had been twice explained to him, first by one neighbour and then by another, his face assumed the very look which it had worn when he carried away his victuals from the Senator’s side at Rufford Hall, and when he had turned his pony round on his own land on the previous evening. The man had killed a fox and might have killed a dozen hounds, and was to be locked up only for twelve months! He indignantly asked his neighbour what had come of Van Diemen’s Land, and what was the use of Botany Bay.

On their way back to Rufford Hall, Lord Rufford would have been triumphant, had not the Senator checked him. “It’s a bad state of things altogether,” he said. “Of course the promiscuous use of strychnine is objectionable.”

“Rather,” said his Lordship.

“But is it odd that an utterly uneducated man, one whom his country has left to grow up in the ignorance of a brute, should have recourse to any measure, however objectionable, when the law will absolutely give him no redress against the trespass made by a couple of hundred horsemen?” Lord Rufford gave it up, feeling the Senator to be a man with whom he could not argue.

LXX

At Last

When once Mrs. Morton had taken her departure for London, on the day after her grandson’s death, nothing further was heard of her at Bragton. She locked up everything and took all the keys away, as though still hoping⁠—against hope⁠—that the