The Vicar of Bullhampton

as one of the murderers. As a witness he was adjudged to have behaved badly; but the assumed independence of his demeanour was probably the worst of his misbehaviour. He would tell them nothing of the circumstances of the murder, except that having previously become acquainted with the two men, Burrows and Acorn, and having, as he thought, a spite against the Vicar at the time, he had determined to make free with some of the vicarage fruit. He had, he said, met the men in the village that afternoon, and had no knowledge of their business there. He had known Acorn more intimately than the other man, and confessed at last that his acquaintance with that man had arisen from a belief that Acorn was about to marry his sister. He acknowledged that he knew that Burrows had been a convicted thief, and that Acorn had been punished for horse stealing. When he was asked how it had come to pass that he was desirous of seeing his sister married to a horse-stealer, he declined to answer, and, looking round the Court, said that he hoped there was no man there who would be coward enough to say anything against his sister. They who heard him declared that there was more of a threat than a request expressed in his words and manner.

A question was put to him as to his knowledge of Farmer Trumbull’s money. “There was them as knew; but I knew nothing,” he said. He was pressed on this point by the magistrates, but would say not a word further. As to this, however, the police were indifferent, as they believed that they would be able to prove at the trial, from other sources, that the mother of the man called the Grinder had certainly received tidings of the farmer’s wealth. There were many small matters of evidence to which the magistrates trusted. One of the men had bought poison, and the dog had been poisoned. The presence of the cart at the farmer’s gate was proved, and the subsequent presence of the two men in the same cart at Pycroft Common. The size of the footprints, the characters and subsequent flight of the men, and certain damaging denials and admissions which they themselves had made, all went to make up the case against them, and they were committed to be tried for the murder. Sam, however, was allowed to go free, being served, however, with a subpoena to attend at the trial as a witness. “I will,” said he, “if you send me down money enough to bring me up from South Shields, and take me back again. I ain’t a coming on my own hook as I did this time;⁠—and wouldn’t now, only for Muster Fenwick.” Our friends left the police to settle this question with Sam, and then drove home to Bullhampton.

The Vicar was triumphant, though his triumph was somewhat quelled by the disappearance of Carry Brattle. There could, however, be no longer any doubt that Sam Brattle’s innocence as to the murder was established. Head-Constable Toffy had himself acknowledged to him that Sam could have had no hand in it. “I told you so from the beginning,” said the Vicar. “We ’as got the right uns, at any rate,” said the constable; “and it wasn’t none of our fault that we hadn’t ’em before.” But though Constable Toffy was thus honest, there were one or two in Heytesbury on that day who still persisted in declaring that Sam was one of the murderers. Sir Thomas Charleys stuck to that opinion to the last; and Lord Trowbridge, who had again sat upon the bench, was quite convinced that justice was being shamefully robbed of her due.

When the Vicar reached Bullhampton, instead of turning into his own place at once, he drove himself on to the mill. He dropped Gilmore at the gate, but he could not bear that the father and mother should not know immediately, from a source which they would trust, that Sam had been declared innocent of that great offence. Driving round by the road, Fenwick met the miller about a quarter of a mile from his own house. “Mr. Brattle,” he said, “they have committed the two men.”

“Have they, sir?” said the miller, not condescending to ask a question about his own son.

“As I have said all along, Sam had no more to do with it than you or I.”

“You have been very good, Muster Fenwick.”

“Come, Mr. Brattle, do not pretend that this is not a comfort to you.”

“A comfort as my son ain’t proved a murderer! If they’d a hanged ’im, Muster Fenwick, that’d a been bad, for certain. It ain’t much of comfort we has; but there may be a better and a worser in everything, no doubt. I’m obleeged to you, all as one, Muster Fenwick⁠—very much obleeged; and it will take a heavy load off his mother’s heart.” Then the Vicar turned his gig round, and drove himself home.

LII

Carry Brattle’s Journey

Mrs. Stiggs had been right in her surmise about Carry Brattle. The confinement in Trotter’s Buildings and want of interest in her life was more than the girl could bear, and she had been thinking of escape almost from the first day that she had been there. Had it not been for the mingled fear and love with which she regarded Mr. Fenwick, had she not dreaded that he should think her ungrateful, she would have flown even before the summons came to her which told her that she must appear before the magistrates and lawyers, and among a crowd of people, in the neighbourhood of her old home. That she could not endure, and therefore she had flown. When it had been suggested to her that she should go and live with her brother’s wife as her servant, that idea had been hard to bear. But there had been uncertainty, and an opinion of her own which