“Indeed it will, Squire,” said Mrs. Brattle. “It is the idleness that is killing him.”
“Hold your jabbering tongue,” said the miller, turning round upon her fiercely. “Who asked you? I will see to it myself, Squire, tomorrow or next day.”
After two or three further days of inaction at the mill the Squire came again, bringing the parson with him; and they did manage to arrange between them that the repairs should be at once continued. The mill should be completed; but the house should be left till next summer. As to Brattle himself, when he had been once persuaded to yield the point, he did not care how much they pulled down, or how much they built up. “Do it as you will,” he said; “I ain’t nobody now. The women drives me about my own house as if I hadn’t a’most no business there.” And so the hammers and trowels were heard again; and old Brattle would sit perfectly silent, gazing at the men as they worked. Once, as he saw two men and a boy shifting a ladder, he turned round, with a little chuckle to his wife, and said, “Sam’d ’a see’d hisself d⸺d, afore he’d ’a asked another chap to help him with such a job as that.”
As Mrs. Brattle told Mrs. Fenwick afterwards, he had one of the two erring children in his thoughts morning, noon, and night. “When I tell ’un of George,”—who was the farmer near Fordingbridge—“and of Mrs. Jay,”—who was the ironmonger’s wife at Warminster—“he won’t take any comfort in them,” said Mrs. Brattle. “I don’t think he cares for them, just because they can hold their own heads up.”
At the end of three weeks the Grinder was still missing; and others besides Mr. Jones, the attorney, were beginning to say that Sam Brattle should be let out of prison. Mr. Fenwick was clearly of opinion that he should not be detained, if bail could be forthcoming. The Squire was more cautious, and said that it might well be that his escape would render it impossible for the police even to get on the track of the real murderers. “No doubt, he knows more than he has told,” said Gilmore, “and will probably tell it at last. If he be let out, he will tell nothing.” The police were all of opinion that Sam had been present at the murder, and that he should be kept in custody till he was tried. They were very sharp in their manoeuvres to get evidence against him. His boot, they had said, fitted a footstep which had been found in the mud in the farmyard. The measure had been taken on the Sunday. That was evidence. Then they examined Agnes Pope over and over again, and extracted from the poor girl an admission that she loved Sam better than anything in the whole wide world. If he were to be in prison, she would not object to go to prison with him. If he were to be hung, she would wish to be hung with him. She had no secret she would not tell him. But, as a matter of fact—so she swore over and over again—she had never told him a word about old Trumbull’s box. She did not think she had ever told anyone; but she would swear on her deathbed that she had never told Sam Brattle. The head constable declared that he had never met a more stubborn or a more artful young woman. Sir Thomas Charleys was clearly of opinion that no bail should be accepted. Another week of remand was granted with the understanding that, if nothing of importance was elicited by that time, and if neither of the other two suspected men were then in custody, Sam should be allowed to go at large upon bail—a good, substantial bail, himself in £400, and his bailsmen in £200 each.
“Who’ll be his bailsmen?” said the Squire, coming away with his friend the parson from Heytesbury.
“There will be no difficulty about that, I should say.”
“But who will they be—his father for one?”
“His brother George, and Jay, at Warminster, who married his sister,” said the parson.
“I doubt them both,” said the Squire.
“He shan’t want for bail. I’ll be one myself, sooner. He shall have bail. If there’s any difficulty, Jones shall bail him; and I’ll see Jones safe through it. He shan’t be persecuted in that way.”
“I don’t think anybody has attempted to persecute him, Frank.”
“He will be persecuted if his own brothers won’t come forward to help him. It isn’t that they have looked into the matter, and that they think him guilty; but that they go just the way they’re told to go, like sheep. The more I think of it, the more I feel that he had nothing to do with the murder.”
“I never knew a man change his opinion so often as you do,” said Gilmore.
During three weeks the visits made by Head Constable Toffy to the cottage in which Mrs. Burrows lived were much more frequent than were agreeable to that lady. This cottage was about four miles from Devizes, and on the edge of a common, about half a mile from the high road which leads from that
