The Vicar of Bullhampton

was then in the house. He manifested no anger against her when she gave this testimony, but acknowledged that he had been out, that he had wandered up to the road, and explained his former denial frankly⁠—or with well-assumed frankness⁠—by saying that he would, if possible, for his father’s and mother’s sake, have concealed the fact that he had been away⁠—knowing that his absence would give rise to suspicions which would well-nigh break their hearts. He had not, however⁠—so he said⁠—been any nearer to Bullhampton than the point of the road opposite to the lodge of Hampton Privets, from whence the lane turned down to the mill. What had he been doing down there? He had done nothing, but sat and smoked on a stile by the road side. Had he seen any strangers? Here he paused, but at last declared that he had seen none, but had heard the sound of wheels and of a pony’s feet upon the road. The vehicle, whatever it was, must have passed on towards Bullhampton just before he reached the road. Had he followed the vehicle? No;⁠—he had thought of doing so, but had not. Could he guess who was in the vehicle? By this time many surmises had been made aloud as to Jack the Grinder and his companion, and it had become generally known that the parson had encountered two such men in his own garden some nights previously. Sam, when he was pressed, said that the idea had come into his mind that the vehicle was the Grinder’s cart. He had no knowledge, he said, that the man was coming to Bullhampton on that night;⁠—but the man had said in his hearing, that he would like to strip the parson’s peaches. He was asked also about Farmer Trumbull’s money. He declared that he had never heard that the farmer kept money in the house. He did know that the farmer was accounted to be a very saving man⁠—but that was all that he knew. He was as much surprised, he said, as any of them at what had occurred. Had the men turned the other way and robbed the parson he would have been less surprised. He acknowledged that he had called the parson a turncoat and a meddling telltale, in the presence of these men.

All this ended of course in Sam’s arrest. He had himself seen from the first that it would be so, and had bade his mother take comfort and hold up her head. “It won’t be for long, mother. I ain’t got any of the money, and they can’t bring it nigh me.” He was taken away to be locked up at Heytesbury that night, in order that he might be brought before the bench of magistrates which would sit at that place on Tuesday. Squire Gilmore for the present committed him.

The parson remained for some time with the old man and his wife after Sam was gone, but he soon found that he could be of no service by doing so. The miller himself would not speak, and Mrs. Brattle was utterly prostrated by her husband’s misery.

“I do not know what to say about it,” said Mr. Fenwick to his wife that night. “The suspicion is very strong; but I cannot say that I have an opinion one way or the other.” There was no sermon in Bullhampton Church on that Sunday afternoon.

XIII

Captain Marrable and His Father

Only that it is generally conceived that in such a history as is this the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear by words that no further assistance should be needed, I should be tempted here to insert a properly illustrated pedigree tree of the Marrable family. The Marrable family is of very old standing in England, the first baronet having been created by James I, and there having been Marrables⁠—as is well known by all attentive readers of English history⁠—engaged in the Wars of the Roses, and again others very conspicuous in the religious persecutions of the children of Henry VIII. I do not know that they always behaved with consistency; but they held their heads up after a fashion, and got themselves talked of, and were people of note in the country. They were cavaliers in the time of Charles I and of Cromwell⁠—as became men of blood and gentlemen⁠—but it is not recorded of them that they sacrificed much in the cause; and when William III became king they submitted with a good grace to the new order of things. A certain Sir Thomas Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I and George II, and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable, came to the title in the early days of George III he was not a rich man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, died long before the days of which we are writing⁠—Sir Gregory in 1815, and the General in 1820. That Sir Gregory was the second of the name⁠—the second at least as mentioned in these pages. He had been our Miss Marrable’s uncle, and the General had been her father, and the father of Mrs. Lowther⁠—Mary’s mother. A third Sir Gregory was reigning at the time of our story, a very old gentleman with one single son⁠—a fourth Gregory. Now the residence of Sir Gregory was at Dunripple Park, just on the borders of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, but in the latter county. The property was small⁠—for a country gentleman with a title⁠—not much exceeding £3,000 a year; and there was no longer any sitting in Parliament, or keeping of racehorses, or indeed any season in