The Vicar of Bullhampton

are not in themselves beautiful, are safeguards against the ill-effects of ugliness, as they inform the eyes why it is that such disorder lies around. There was the disorder at the Privets now without any such instruction to the eye. Pits were full of muddy water, and half-formed paths had become the beds of stagnant pools. The Vicar then went into the house, and though there was still a workman and a boy who were listlessly pulling about some rolls of paper, there were ample signs that misfortune had come and that neglect was the consequence. “And all this,” said Fenwick to himself, “because the man cannot get the idea of a certain woman out of his head!” Then he thought of himself and his own character, and asked himself whether, in any position of life, he could have been thus overruled to misery by circumstances altogether outside himself. Misfortunes might come which would be very heavy; his wife or children might die; or he might become a pauper; or subject to some crushing disease. But Gilmore’s trouble had not fallen upon him from the hands of Providence. He had set his heart upon the gaining of a thing, and was now absolutely brokenhearted because he could not have it. And the thing was a woman. Fenwick admitted to himself that the thing itself was the most worthy for which a man can struggle; but would not admit that even in his search for that a man should allow his heart to give way, or his strength to be broken down.

He went up to the house again on the Wednesday, and again on the Thursday⁠—but nothing had been heard from the Squire. The bailiff was very unhappy. Even though there might come a cheque on the Saturday morning, which both Fenwick and the bailiff thought to be probable, still there would be grave difficulties.

“Here’ll be the first of September on us afore we know where we are,” said the bailiff, “and is we to go on with the horses?”

For the Squire was of all men the most regular, and began to get his horses into condition on the first of September as regularly as he began to shoot partridges. The Vicar went home and then made up his mind that he would go up to London after his friend. He must provide for his next Sunday’s duty, but he could do that out of a neighbouring parish, and he would start on the morrow. He arranged the matter with his wife and with his friend’s curate, and on the Friday he started.

He drove himself into Salisbury instead of to the Bullhampton Road station in order that he might travel by the express train. That at least was the reason which he gave to himself and to his wife. But there was present to his mind the idea that he might look into the court and see how the trial was going on. Poor Carry Brattle would have a bad time of it beneath a lawyer’s claws. Such a one as Carry, of the evil of whose past life there was no doubt, and who would appear as a witness against a man whom she had once been engaged to marry, would certainly meet with no mercy from a cross-examining barrister. The broad landmarks between the respectable and the disreputable may guide the tone of a lawyer somewhat, when he has a witness in his power; but the finer lines which separate that which is at the moment good and true from that which is false and bad cannot be discerned amidst the turmoil of a trial, unless the eyes, and the ears, and the inner touch of him who has the handling of the victim be of a quality more than ordinarily high.

The Vicar drove himself over to Salisbury and had an hour there for strolling into the court. He had heard on the previous day that the case would be brought on the first thing on the Friday, and it was half-past eleven when he made his way in through the crowd. The train by which he was to be taken on to London did not start till half-past twelve. At that moment the court was occupied in deciding whether a certain tradesman, living at Devizes, should or should not be on the jury. The man himself objected that, being a butcher, he was, by reason of the second nature acquired in his business, too cruel, and bloody-minded to be entrusted with an affair of life and death. To a proposition in itself so reasonable no direct answer was made; but it was argued with great power on behalf of the crown, which seemed to think at the time that the whole case depended on getting this one particular man into the jury box, that the recalcitrant juryman was not in truth a butcher, that he was only a dealer in meat, and that though the stain of the blood descended the cruelty did not. Fenwick remained there till he heard the case given against the pseudo-butcher, and then retired from the court. He had, however, just seen Carry Brattle and her father seated side by side on a bench in a little outside room appropriated to the witnesses, and there had been a constable there seeming to stand on guard over them. The miller was sitting, leaning on his stick, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, and Carry was pale, wretched, and draggled. Sam had not yet made his appearance.

“I’m afeard, sir, he’ll be in trouble,” said Carry to the Vicar.

“Let ’un alone,” said the miller; “when they wants ’im he’ll be here. He know’d more about it nor I did.”

That afternoon Fenwick went to the club of which he and Gilmore were both members, and found that his friend was in London. He had been so, at least, that morning at nine o’clock. According to the porter at the club door, Mr. Gilmore called there every