The Vicar of Bullhampton

town to Marlborough. There is, or was a year or two back, a considerable extent of unenclosed land thereabouts, and on a spot called Pycroft Common there was a small collection of cottages, sufficient to constitute a hamlet of the smallest class. There was no house there of greater pretensions than the very small beershop which provided for the conviviality of the Pycroftians; and of other shops there was none, save a baker’s, the owner of which seldom had much bread to sell, and the establishment for brandy-balls, which was kept by Mrs. Burrows. The inhabitants were chiefly labouring men, some of whom were in summer employed in brick making; and there was an idea abroad that Pycroft generally was not sustained by regular labour and sober industry. Rents, however, were paid for the cottages, or the cottagers would have been turned adrift; and Mrs. Burrows had lived in hers for five or six years, and was noted in the neighbourhood for her outward neatness and attention to decency. In the summer there were always half-a-dozen large sunflowers in the patch of ground called a garden, and there was a rose-tree, and a bush of honeysuckle over the door, and an alder stump in a corner, which would still put out leaves and bear berries. When Head Constable Toffy visited her there would be generally a few high words, for Mrs. Burrows was by no means unwilling to let it be known that she objected to morning calls from Mr. Toffy.

It has been already said that at this time Mrs. Burrows did not live alone. Residing with her was a young woman, who was believed by Mr. Toffy to be the wife of Richard Burrows, alias the Grinder. On his first visit to Pycroft no doubt, Mr. Toffy was mainly anxious to ascertain whether anything was known by the old woman as to her son’s whereabouts, but the second, third, and fourth visits were made rather to the younger than to the older woman. Toffy had probably learned in his wide experience that a man of the Grinder’s nature will generally place more reliance on a young woman than on an old; and that the young woman will, nevertheless, be more likely to betray confidence than the older⁠—partly from indiscretion, and partly, alas! from treachery. But, if the presumed Mrs. Burrows, junior, knew aught of the Grinder’s present doings, she was neither indiscreet nor treacherous. Mr. Toffy could get nothing from her. She was sickly, weak, sullen, and silent. “She didn’t think it was her business to say where she had been living before she came to Pycroft. She hadn’t been living with any husband, and had got no husband that she knew of. If she had she wasn’t going to say so. She hadn’t any children, and she didn’t know what business he had to ask her. She came from Lunnun. At any rate, she came from there last, and she didn’t know what business he had to ask her where she came from. What business was it of his to be asking what her name was? Her name was Anne Burrows, if he liked to call her so. She wouldn’t answer him any more questions. No; she wouldn’t say what her name was before she was married.”

Mr. Toffy had his reasons for interrogating this poor woman, but he did not for a while let anyone know what those reasons were. He could not, however, obtain more information than what is contained in the answers above given, which were, for the most part, true. Neither the mother nor the younger woman knew where was to be found, at the present moment, that hero of adventure who was called the Grinder, and all the police of Wiltshire began to fear that they were about to be outwitted.

“You never were at Bullhampton with your husband, I suppose?” asked Mr. Toffy.

“Never,” said the supposed Grinder’s wife; “but what does it matter to you where I was?”

“Don’t answer him never another word,” said old Mrs. Burrows.

“I won’t,” said the other.

“Were you ever at Bullhampton at all?” asked Mr. Toffy.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said the younger woman.

“I think you must have been there once,” said Mr. Toffy.

“What business is it of yourn?” demanded Mrs. Burrows, senior. “Drat you; get out of this. You ain’t no right here, and you shan’t stay here. If you ain’t out of this, I’ll brain yer. I don’t care for perlice nor anything. We ain’t done nothing. If he did smash the gen’leman’s head, we didn’t do it; neither she nor me.”

“All the same, I think that Mrs. Burrows has been at Bullhampton,” said the policeman.

Not another word after this was said by Mrs. Burrows, junior, so called, and constable Toffy soon took his departure. He was convinced, at any rate, of this;⁠—that wherever the murderers might be, the man or men who had joined Sam Brattle in the murder⁠—for of Sam’s guilt he was quite convinced⁠—neither the mother, nor the so-called wife knew of their whereabouts. He, in his heart, condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire, of Gloucestershire, of Worcestershire, and of Somersetshire, because the Grinder was not taken. Especially he condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire, feeling almost sure that the Grinder was in Birmingham. If the constabulary in those counties would only do their duty as they in Wiltshire did theirs, the Grinder and his associates would soon be taken. But by him nothing further could be learned, and Mr. Toffy left Pycroft Common with a heavy heart.

XVI

Miss Lowther Asks for Advice

All these searchings for the murderers of Mr. Trumbull, and these remandings of Sam Brattle, took place in the month of September, and during that same month the energy of other men of law was very keenly at work on a widely different subject. Could Messrs. Block and Curling assure Captain Marrable that a portion of his inheritance would be saved for him, or had that graceless father of