MY FELLOW POACHER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XIX, 9 November 1895, Page 579

MY FELLOW POACHER.

(BY

W. E. NORRIS.)

»IS name was Jeremiah Bartlett ; but I believe we had been acquaintances, not to say intimate friends, for a considerable length of time before I learned, or cared to inquire, what his patronymic might be. On the occasion of our first introduction to one another (which was of an informal character, and took place without the intervention of any third person) he told me that he was Jerry, and I responded, with proper dignity, that I was Master George : that seemed to us to meet adequately the demands of the case. I remember thinking at the time that it was necessary to be a little bit dignified ; for he was quite a common, and even a ragged little boy, whereas I was the grandson of Sir George Ringwood, who owned the whole parish, including the woods where our encounter occurred ; moreover, he was taller, stronger, and evidently older than I. As a matter of fact, he was probably my senior by not much more than a year ; but that means a good deal when one’s own years can be counted up without need for using the fingers of both hands to assist calculation. For the rest, I must say that Jerry was the last person in the world to give himself airs on any score, and although he knew such a vast number of things of which I was at that time profoundly ignorant, lie had a fashion of imparting his knowledge which conveyed no wounding sense of inferiority to the disciple. How can I hope to enlist the sympathies of rightthinking readers on his behalf when I confess that that knowledge consisted not only of a singular familiarity with the ways and characteristics of all woodland creatures, but of every illicit method that can be employed for their destruction ? Perhaps one might as reasonably assert at once (what indeed happens to be the truth) that Jerry loved birds, beasts and fishes as well as he understood them. He took an odd way of showing his love, it may be said ; but really these are cosas de Espana, and it is useless to dilate upon them. There are sportsmen who are devoid of poaching instincts; there are, as we all know, poachers who are no sportsmen ; added to which, human nature is notoriously made up of inconsistencies. At any rate, a lonely little soul, such as I then was, spending his holidays in a great deserted house with a far more lonely old man, who never thought of asking how his grandson amused himself, may be pardoned for having welcomed with joy the companionship which a chance meeting brought to him, and which proved in the sequel productive of many blissful and breathlessly exciting experiences. I do not, of course, mean to say that Jerry then and there proceeded to instruct me in the art of setting a wire or taught me where to search for partridges’ eggs—swift though the development of a boy’s friendship is, he cannot, if engaged in certain practices, neglect some measures of precaution at the outset—but we entered into brisk conversation, we passed a whole summer afternoon together, and in the course of our devious wanderings through the coverts he showed me quite casually a multitude of things which I had never seen in my iife before. Then we agreed to meet again on the morrow, and then —very soon —I was admitted into Jerry’s entire confidence. This handsome, dark-com-plexioned boy, with his large, rather melancholy brown eyes, his slim figure and his small, strong hands, had something of the appearance of a gipsy, and it is just possible that he may have had a strain of gipsy blood in his veins ; though his father was a tenant farmer and his mother, I believe, had come from the same class. Butin the far west of England dark complexions are common enough ; there were plenty of boys in the village whose hair was as black as Jerry’s, though none, I should think, with hands quite like his, and certainly none who shared his taste for solitary rambling. A few, so he afterwards told me, were intermittent poachers ; but he spoke of them with contempt as sorry bunglers at the game, and he did not care to associate with them. Again and again I have seen Jerry catch a hare in his hand ; but I was never able to accomplish that feat myself, nor can I even now explain how it was done. Everybody knows that a hare, crouching in her form, will allow you to approach quite close to her ; but to stoop and seize her is another affair. Jerry would do this, and, stretching her across his knee, would break her neck, so that she was dead in an instant. I have also seen him secure pheasants by slipping a noose, suspended at the end of a long wand, over the birds’ heads ; while in the art of tickling trout he was a past master. I suppose that in poaching, as in everything else, there is a certain inborn aptitude and capacity which can never be taught even to the most painstaking pupil; and, in spite of the very great enjoyment which I derived from Jerry’s society, and the partial dexterity which I acquired under his tuition, he remained far above reach of rivalry, so far as I was concerned.

Yet I did learn a gpod deal from him, and what is more, I derived pecuniary profit from my accomplishments ; for if Jerry wasno better than a thief in theeyes of magistrates, juries, and judges, he was as honest as the day in his dealings with a confederate, and outof every five shillings that he made, half-a-crown duly found its way into my pocket. I do not know (though I mav have had suspicions) who took the game off his hands. He opined, and I daresay he was right, that I had better not know. Apparently, however there was no difficulty about obtaining a market. A considerable portion of our ill-gotten gains was expended in the purchase of ferrets, with which animals I remember that we were singularly unlucky, losing many through various accidents ; most of the balance was laid out on sweets and ginger-pop, delica-

cies of which we were both inordinately fond ; and I have since thought that the donations which Roundell, the head-keeper, was not too proud to accept from time to time at my hands ought to have been classed under the head of hush money. But I did not think so at the time ; such a view would have spoilt the fun and excitement of the whole thing. There was a piquancy about poaching one’s own preserves (for in a certain sense 1 might regard my grandfather’s preserves as being my own) which would have been obviously lacking if one had done so with the connivance of one’s own paid servant. As a matter of fact, Roundell was probably neither a good keeper nor a strictly honest one ; he had little encouragement to be either, seeing that he was in the service of a gentleman who had never cared for shooting, very seldom entertained guests, and only insisted that there should always be foxes in his coverts when the hounds drew them. Still, the keeper went his rounds, and we knew very well what they were, and we avoided him with infinite precautions and subtlety. For the rest, our depredations extended to neighbouring properties, and on many a cold, clear winter’s night have I crept noiselessly in Jerry’s wake through the undergrowth in Lord Sedgmoor’s woods, while those who should have been on the watch were comfortably asleep or toasting their toes before the fire in the village public-house. I came and went exactly as I pleased ; there was no nurse or other domestic in authority to look after me, and I knew (doubtless some of the young footmen at Morden Court knew also) how to effect an entrance through a certain scullery window without making any noise about it. The stairs, up which I had to make my way, bare-footed, to reach my bedroom, used to creak horribly ; but no remark was ever made upon the subject. In that great empty house the ancient timbers were bound to creak, with or without discoverable cause, and as my grandfather did not believe in ghosts, whereas the servants believed most strongly in them, investigations were not attempted. My grandfather, whom I sometimes saw in the middle of the day and always for a few minutes at dessert in the evening, had invariably the same greeting for me. ‘ Well, my boy. and what have you been about.' He did not listen to my reply, which indeed, in order to be truthful, would have had to be lengthy, as well as rather startling. He was a silent, absent-minded old man, of whom I was afraid, although I had no particular reason to be afraid of him ; I doubt whether he had any definite ideas about me, except that I was an orphan, that I was the child of his dead second son, and that 1 had to spend my holidays somewhere. He was not upon good terms with my uncle Charles, his eldest son, who never came to Morden in those days. Well, it is not everybody who has the gift of thus find ing his own company all-sufficient, and what would have become of me during my long, irresponsible vacations without Jerry Bartlett I cannot imagine. But Jerry suited me to perfection. Not only was he my master as regarded woodcraft, but upon every ether subject under the sun he willingly owned himself my slave, and I believe I rewarded his modesty by patronising him without mercy. He had a very receptive mind. He loved reading and eagerly devoured the books which I lent him—especially’ those relating to adventure ; he listened in open-mouthed admiration to my accounts of the valiant deeds that I had performed at school, and when we exchanged vows of eternal friendship, cementing them (by the aid of a penknife) with our blood, it was clearly understood between us that our relations must be rather those of knight and squire than of two equals. The harmony of our relations, after remaining uninterrupted for upwards of eighteen months and surviving periods of separation which at our age must have seemed very long indeed, was disturbed at last in the ancient, time - honoured fashion. Her name was Nancy Gibbons. If she was not the loveliest and most bewitching of her sex (and. looking back from my present standpoint of calm impartiality, I feel sure that it would be an exaggeration to speak of her in such terms), that did not prevent us from thinking her so, nor her from treating us as Providence appears to have decreed that every girl or woman shall treat a couple of simultaneous admirers. It was on a certain still, moist night of January that the EwigWeibliche descended upon its inevitable mission of discord into two hitherto harmless little lives. The appropriateness of the adjective will doubtless be disputed when I add that the occupation upon which we were engaged at the moment was the shooting of roosting pheasants by alternate shots from an old muzzle-loader, filched by Jerry from his father’s lumber-room. 1 quite admit that that was a very vile thing to do, and that we ought to have been whipped for it ; yet the moral guilt involved in such poaching as ours was not, I venture to think, excessive, while our small souls, had they been laid bare, would at least have been found free of envy, hatred, malice and uncharitableness. The above pleasing emotions were stirred up within us very soon, I suppose, after the apparition of a bare-headed, laughing girl, advancing through the misty moonlight, caused us to shrink together and draw in our breath apprehensively. * Well,’ said she, ‘ you are naughty boys !’

She was evidently a year or two older than either of us ; she had an abundance of curly brown locks, her eyes were bright and merry and her teeth singularly white ; I well remember that my budd'ng acquaintance with Ovid and the classical dictionary enabled me to compare her to a woodland nymph or dryad. We began, I believe, by assuming an attitude of surly defiance ; but that sort of thing could not be kept up. She knew who we were and what we had been about ; she called us by our names, forced us to exhibit the contents of our bag, and was presently kind enough to say that she would not betray us that time. Only we were to understand that, if she consented to do violence to her conscience by telling no tales, we must comply with her conditions —which were, firstly, that she should be allowed a pecuniary share of the spoil, and secondly, that (like Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, upon a celebrated occasion) she should be admitted as a third party into our unholy alliance. Where I found the precocious impudence to propose that

this treaty should be sealed there and then with a kiss 1 cannot.imagine : but I did make that bold suggestion, and Nancy replied, with smiling condescension that as we were such very little fellows she really didn’t mind. Thus we became her slaves, while she became our con federate ; and from that day forth neither Jerry nor I derived one penny of personal profit from the sale of what did not belong to us. In truth, we had never cared very greatly for those shillings and half-crowns. If we learned to value them now, it was because dear Nancy had a pronounced taste for ribbons and cheap gewgaws, and because each of us. in handing her over the whole, instead of the half of his moiety, flattered himself that

he was stealing a march upon the other. These divisions did not, of course, take place when we three met by day or by night in the woods ; she was clever enough to arrange separate trysts, and clever enough (though perhaps that did not imply any vast degree of talent) to hoodwink the pair of us. As far as I can recollect, we asked her no questions as to her origin or abode—who would think of putting a goddess into the witness-box ? —and I hardly know how or when it was that I discovered her to be the orphan niece of Lord Sedgmoor’s keeper, who had somewhat reluctantly provided her with a home. All that was of importance was that she was able to give us certain valuable pieces of information as to her uncle’s whereabouts, that the snaring of game was a pursuit which enlisted her sympathies, and last, not least—that she liked me a great deal better than she did Jerry. So, at all events, I had her own authority for stating, and a great shock it was to me, when at length I was provoked into openly making that statement, to be told that my former friend was authorised by her to make a directly contrary assertion. Alas ! he was only my former friend by that time. The coolness which had sprung up between up immediately after Nancy's advent was ripening fast into enmity ; and what could I do, when the low fellow dared to insult me thus, but respond, with energy and promptitude, ‘ You lie !’ Jerry pulled off his coat, and cast it down upon the grassy glade of the woods where we were standing. ‘ Come on !’ said he, setting his teeth Well, it was a very pretty fight ; and upon my word and honour as a respectable, middle-aged mail, I am not at all convinced that I should not have licked him if I had been allowed to persevere to the bitter end ; though I must admit he was getting rather the best of it when Nancy emerged from a neighbouring thicket ami separated us. She said we ought to lie ashamed of ourselves ; she forced us to shake hands, to comjiose our quarrel—the cause of which she declared that she could not guess—and to promise that it should not be renewed. Afterwards we really did make friends, mingling our moans, avowing our common sorrow, ami agreeing, like knights of old, that, since we conld not both wed the fair lady, the one who should ultimately win her favour by doughty deeds should be adjudged the victor. But although we loyally did our best to act in the spirit of this compact, the difficulties of observing it were obvious and well-nigh insuperable. For instance, I could not help pointing out to Jerry that my social position gave me advantages to which he could scarcely venture to lay claim ; while he replied, courteously but

firmly, that Nancy belonged to his class, not to mine. Probably we should have fallen out again, had not the end of the holidays constrained me to leave him in possession of the field. I took back to school with me, by way of consolation, a lock of Nancy’s brown hair, together with the memory of her parting words, which were of a nature to encourage the most sanguine convictions. She said, however, that she was quite sure I should forget her long before she forgot me. How long or after what fashion pretty Nancy Gibbons may have remembered me I cannot pretend to say ; but it would indeed have been something like a miracle if my callow adoration for her had survived through the many years which were destined to elapse ere I revisited the once familiar coverts of Morden Court. My grandfather’s death, and the succession to the property of Uncle Charles, who felt himself under no obligation to look after me, put an end for ever to those pleasant holiday ramblings and unlawful raids ; and it was not until I was a young undergraduate at Oxford that I was invited by my relative to go down to the old place for a week’s shooting. It is not at the age of two-and-twenty, when no danger seems quite so terrible as that of being laughed at, that one is likely to confess the follies of childhood, nor was I was then disposed to take a lenient view of so grave an offence as a breach of the game laws. Still, I did contrive to ask after my comrade of former years, and on the morning after my arrival he came up to the house to see me. In appearance he was scarcely altered, notwithstanding the imposing stature to which he had attained ; indeed, I should have recognised him anywhere, and I told him so. He laughed a little in an embarrassed way, twirled his cap between his slim, brown fingers, glanced shyly at me, afid said', ‘ Would you, sir ?’ It was probably my fault rather than his own that he remained awkward and ill at ease throughout our interview. I tried to be friendly, and only succeeded, I dare say, in being offensively affable. Anything like a renewal of our intimacy seemed to be out of the question, especially as I entertained somewhat absurd scruples about inquiring whether he still knew the tracks of every hare in the neighbourhood and had as keen an eye as of old for the discovery of partridges’ eggs. However. I made some jesting allusion to the fair Nancy which brought a flush to his dusky cheek ; and I gathered from his murmured reply that he remained faithful to the Dulcinea for whose sake I was no longer in the least inclined to challenge him to deadly combat. ‘Oh, young Bartlett?’ my uncle said, in answer to some question which I found an opportunity of putting in the course of the day. • I don’t know much about him, but I’m afraid he’s no good. A useless, loafing sort of fellow, by all accounts. And it’s a nuisance, too ; for his father is getting past work, and I suppose I shall have to let them renew their lease. There’s plenty of sympathy for farmers in these days but deuced little for the poor landlord, upon whom, after all, the loss is bound to fall. You have a little money of your own, I believe, and somebody told me you had a fancy for agriculture. Well, if you’ll be advised by me, you’ll put your money into any mortal thing—South American securities, or worked-out gold mines, or what you please —sooner than that.’

I did not invest my modest patrimony or employ such small talents as Heaven has been pleased to vouchsafe to me in the manner against which I was cautioned by my uncle. I thought myself uncommonly wide-awake at the time, and I now think that I have been uncommonly lucky ; although, after fifteen years of hard work in distant lands, I am very far from being a rich man. My personal fortunes, however, are but indirectly concerned with this little sketch. It is enough to say that, as soon as I had taken my degree, I carried out the intention which I* had formed of emigrating, and that the best years of my life were over and done with before I was in a position to return to my own country. During my long absence I was, of course, forgotten, and, equally, of course, I did not forget. That is the common fate of exiles, who, when all is said, are not so very much to be pitied, since they have always hopes and illusions, as well as memories, to cheer them up in moments of discouragement. Anyhow, if they will but come back with pockets tolerably well filled (so as not to alarm their relations), they are not unlikely to be remembered and welcomed ; and I had not been more than a fortnight in London, wondering what had become of everybody, and somewhat forlornly reconnoitring thejwaste places where everybody used to be, when I received a very cordial invitation from my uncle to visit him at what, in my secret heart, I still called ‘home.’

I found Morden Court unchanged, and Uncle Charles not more so than the passage of time warranted He was a stout, grey-headed old gentleman ; his children were grown up, married, out in the world ; his wife and he, left to themselves in a house which they could not afford to fill with guests, were glad enough—or at any rate they said they were—to be enlivened for a while by the society of one whom they were pleased to call young. But they did not manage to make me feel young ; they only managed (ah, how easy that is in dealing with the middle-aged !) to make me talk about the days of my youth ; and what could be more natural than that, in the expansiveness of after-dinner conversation, I should seek to entertain them with accounts of my early poaching adventures under the skilled guidance of Jerry Bartlett ? ‘ Bartlett !’ exclaimed my uncle. ‘ God blessmysoul ! that must be my rascal of a tenant. Only what one might have expected from him for the matter of that. Well, my dear fellow, I am sorry to tell you that your old friend has got himself into a tight place--the county gaol, in point of fact, where he is awaiting his trial on a charge of arson Set fire to his premises in the most barefaced way, finding, I suppose, that it was a choice between that and bankruptcy. Sorry for his wife, who is a capable sort of woman ; though, upon my word, I don’t know that she isn’t well rid of him. But for her, I should have had to turn him out long ago ; for a worse farmer I never met with.’

His wife, I presently learnt, was no other than my old flame Nancy. Uncle Charles spoke highly of her, and laughed at my aunt, who gave it as her opinion that Mrs Bartlett was • too dressy for her station.’

‘The truth is,’said he, with a wink, ‘ that Mrs Bartlett is a devilish handsome woman, and we know how charitable other women are apt to be to those who are blessed or cursed with good looks. There has been some gossip, I believe; I shouldn’t wonder if she had amused herself a bit—and small blame to her! Precious poor fun it must have been for her to live with that longlegged, melancholy, useless husband of hers, and watch him letting things go from bad to worse every year ! Rent ?—oh yes, they have paid their rent hitherto —with remissions and reductions. But I suspect Bartlett was pretty near the end of his tether; so what must the fool needs do but try to swindle the insurance company ! Hadn’t a word to say for himself when he was brought up before the magistrates, and I don’t suppose there will be any defence worth speaking of when he stands his trial on Thursday. Meanwhile,’ added my uncle ruefully, ‘ I’m rebuilding the premises, and I shall be very much surprised if the whole cost doesn’t have to be defrayed out of my pocket. This was indeed a sad tale, and the worst of it was that a fuller narration of particulars made it almost impossible for me to doubt that poor Jerry was guilty. That the conflagration had been the work of an incendiary seemed to be pretty certain ; that the farmer alone had been about the place when it broke out had apparently been proved ; and what gave the affair a very black look was that he had quite recently insured his belongings for their outside value. I did not gather that there was anything definite against his previous character ; but he passed, I was told, for being morose, eccentric, and utterly inefficient as a farmer. Indeed, I well remembered that, in the old days, he had often spoken with distaste and disgust of the wearisome monotony of agriculture. Some days later I accompanied my uncle to the neighbouring assize town where the trial was to take place, and when the prisoner was brought into court I experienced one of those shocks which we all experience occasionally, and for which our looking-glasses ought to, but do not, prepare us. Poor old Jerry ! Was it possible that that elderly, round-shouldered man, whose black hair and unkempt beard were so plentifully sprinkled with grey, could be the lithe, active lad for whom I had once been no match either in wind or limb ? Perhaps in that rank of life people age earlier than they do in ours, and perhaps I was less altered than he ; for as his lack-lustre eye wandered vaguely round the building they met mine, and paused for a second, with a quick light of recognition in them. I nodded and smiled to him ; but he dropped his eyelids at once and never looked again in my direction.

The case for the prosecution, which occupied a long time, rested necessarily upon circumstantial evidence, but seemed to be tolerably conclusive against the prisoner. The upshot of it was chat, on the day of the fire, he had taken very good care that the farmhouse should be deserted. The two domestic servants whom he employed had been given leave to attend a neighbouring fair ; Mrs Bartlett had left at eleven o’clock to do shopping in the county town, it being understood that she would not return until the evening ; he himself had set out at an earlier hour, upon the pretext that he wished to attend a sale of beasts some ten miles away, at which sale it was shown that he had never put in an appearance. On the other hand, several witnesses were called to swear that he had been seen lurking about his own premises between ten and elven o'clock ;S

that was immediately before his wife had driven off in her gig. In the course of the afteriftjon clouds of smoke had been seen rising from his ricks, near to which a half-empty box of matches had subsequently been discovered ; a strong wind which was blowing at the time had caused the house to become ignited, and before the flames could be got under, the whole place had been burnt almost to the ground. There was some difference of. opinion as to the precise moment at which the prisoner and his wife had appeared upon the scene of disaster; but it seemed to be clear that both had returned rather earlier than they had been expected. I gathered, from the line of cross-examination which the young gentleman who represented Jerry took up, that he wished to suggest collusion ; though how that, if established, would help the accused, it was not easy to see. But when it came to the turn of thisbewigged and selfconfident gentleman to state his client’s case, it appeared that he had a very much better defence than that to offer to the charge. It was no business of his, he said, to explain how the fire, which might have been caused bv accident or by design, had originated ; all he had to show was that the prisoner could not possibly have had a hand in it, and this he would do without unnecessary waste of words and time. He then proceeded to call his first witness, a smart, impudent-looking youth in a loud check suit, who carried his left arm in a sling, and answered the questions put to him with a certain air of jaunty defiance. His name was Edward Smale —commonly called Ned. He was the son of a farmer ; was well acquainted with Bartlett and his wife ; couldn’t say that he was upon the best of terms with the former ; as for the latter, it was always difficult, according to his experience, to tell where you were with a woman. Some discursive observations of his were here sternly checked by the judge, and he was ordered to confine himself to direct replies. The examining counsel had some, trouble with him owing to his loquacity ; but what he affirmed upon oath had the appearance of truth, and was quite sufficient for the examining counsel’s purpose. Briefly, his assertion was that at the time when the fire was suoposed to have broken out he had been engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with Jerry Bartlett in a wood rented by his father, which, as everybody knew, was situated some six or seven miles away from the spot. He did not consider that it had been a fair fight ; because his antagonist had attacked him with a thick stick, and had indeed broken his arm, as well as his head, with that weapon ; but he admitted that he had received a tremendous thrashing, and believed (though he remembered nothing about it) that Bartlett must have carried him to the edge of the wood, near his own door, where he had susequently been found. Some corroborative evidence was adduced.

Under cross examination, Mr Smale displayed no reluctance to avow the cause of the quarrel, but was again warned against making irrelevant statements. Asked why he had not come forward when the prisoner had been brought up before the magistrates, he replied that he would have done so if he had not been ill in bed at the time and unaware of what had taken place ; adding, for the benefit of those whom it might concern, that if any woman thought she could make a dam fool of Ned Smale, he hoped she knew better now.

Practically, that ended the case. The judge, in summing up, told the jury that if they believed the witness male, the y must acquit the prisoner ; and presumably they did believe him, for a verdict of Not Guilty was at once returned. Soon afterwards I was walking across the fields on the outskirts of the town with my old comrade, whom I had caught up as he left the court, and who seemed pleased to see me, though not quite so pleased as one might have expected him to be with his recovered liberty. ‘ I don’t know that we’re at the end of this trouble yet, sir,’ said he; ‘I don’t know that we’re at the end of it yet. There’s that matchbox, you see, which cook can swear was one that we used in the house. I can’t think but what the insurance people will want to know more about that matchbox. Whatever Ned Smale wanted to come and give evidence for—and after I’d pretty well pounded him to a jelly, too—beats me. I wasn’t going to call him, Lord knows ! Nor yet I hadn’t no idea as that lawyer chap who defended me meant to call him.’ ‘ In other words,’ I remarked, ‘ your intention was to sacrifice yourself in order that the person whom you suspect of being guilty might escape. You are neither logical nor moral, my poor Jerry. First of all you suspect your wife of arranging a rendezvous with that very objectionable young cad, and without waiting to satisfy yourself that there is the slightest ground for your suspicions, you proceed to break his bones. Then you jump to the conclusion that she has deliberately burnt your house down, and, instead of taking the measures which self-preservation requires and your opinion of her appears to justify, you attempt to screen her by virtually acknowledging yourself the culprit. It is lucky for you that a sharp young barrister thought it worth his while to undertake your'defence. Jerry gazed at me in wondering admiration. ‘ You were always most extraordinary clever, Master George !’ he ejaculated. ‘ To think that you should know all about it, without ever having been told 1’ • But I don’t know all about it,’ I modestly replied ; ‘ I know no more than must be obvious to the meanest capacity. Suppose, just for the sake of old times, Jerry, you were to tell me all about it ? Then perhaps I might have a chance of proving how extraordinarily clever I am by advising you what to do next. For that, I

imagine, is the question that is perplexing you at the present moment.’ He confessed that it was, and that he hardly anticipated a very warm welcome home from Mrs Bartlett, who, it appeared, had not cared to be present at his trial. The tale which he unfolded, as we plodded along across the fields and through the woods was one which is common enough in all ranks, and is the more pathetic because it is so provoking—the tale of an indulgent, inefficient, jealous husband and a handsome, selfish, pleasure-loving wife. It is all very well, in these cases, to say that the husband is an ass and deserves what he inevitably gets; but if the husband be, as he almost always is, a good fellow, it isscarcely consolatory to have no practical consolation to offer him. Poor Jerry, I gathered, had had a rough time of it with the woman whom he adored. He had worn out her patience by his inability to farm at a profit and his consequent inability to supply her with millinery ; he had forfeited her respect by alternately ignoring her flirtations and upbraiding her with them ; there had been quarrels and scenes from which he had not emerged victorious, and the approach of bankruptcy had coincided with a silent conviction on his part that Nancy contemplated eloping with the flashy young Ned Smale. ‘ I don’t know, sir,’ said he despondently, * but what she may have promised to meet him that day, and managed to let me guess she had promised to meet him, so as to put me off the scent. All I can tell you is that he expected her and found me ; and as soon as ever I got back home I understood why she had made me insure our place. I couldn’t do nothing but hold my tongue —nor yet I can’t do nothing else now. And we’re ruined, anyway, for the insurance company won’t pay, you’ll see.’ I thought it best to reply that the company would be forced to pay, and to scold Jerry roundly for assuming, upon insufficient evidence, that his wife was a criminal, If, I sagely remarked, she, on her side, had assumed him to be a criminal, he really had only himself to thank. I then made certain pecuniary proposals which my means, luckily, enabled me to make to an old friend, adding that I meant to go home with him and see thata reconciliation took place. He was very grateful and ostensibly penitent, but not, I think, very sanguine. Probably he saw through me, and was not taken in by the rather boisterous cheerfulness with which I chose to regard his case. However, I contrived to raise his spirits a little by reminding him of our bygone nocturnal expeditions, and he owned that even now—‘ though I’m an old man, sir, and seldom care to take my gun down from the rack ’ — he sometimes felt tempted, through sheer force of habit, to set a wire upon his neighbour’s land. So, chatting about the Ground Game Act (which he condemned) and the other changes and innovations that had come to pass since our young days, we reached at last the end of our long walk, and knocked at the door of the temporary dwelling wherein Mrs Bartlett had found shelter after the catastrophe. An astonished, rather than a delighted, woman gave us admittance. ‘ What, you ?' she exclaimed, starting back, when she recognised her husband. ‘ Have you given them the slip, then ? It’s no use your coming here, so I give you fair warning. Why, you silly fool ! —don’t you know that this will be the very first place where the police will come to search for you ?’ I took it upon myself to explain. I related as succinctly as I could, and without special regard for Mrs Bartlett’s feelings, the circumstances which had led to Jerry’s acquittal. I watched her face, which grew paler and paler while I was reporting Ned Smale’s evidence, and I ended by congratulating her with much heartiness upon a denouement, ‘ which,’ said I, ‘ it is very evident to me that you did not venture to hope for. ’ ‘ It’s all a pack of lies !’ was her defiant rejoinder. * I know nothing about your Ned Smale or your trumpedup stories. If I changed my mind about going shopping that day it was only because something seemed to tell me that I should be wanted at home. But I didn’t get back before the whole place was in a blaze, and nobody can say I did. And who are you, I should like to know, to come meddling with what don’t concern you ?’ Time, which had dealt so hardly with poor Jerry Bartlett, had been wonderfully lenient to his wife. Her brown locks were unstreaked with grey, her eyes were as clear and bright as of yore and, but for a few scarcely perceptible lines about the corners of her mouth, she might have passed for a young woman. Certainly she was a strikingly handsome one. ‘ My dear madam,' I replied mildly, ‘one would really think, to hear you, that some accusation was being made against you. Whereas, of course, we all understand perfectly well that you were no more capable of making an assignation with that fatuous young Smale than of—what shall I say ?—destroying your own premises by fire. As he himself said, you simply made a fool of him—and serve him right !’ I then told her who I was, assured her that her husband was anxious to beg her pardon for having, in a moment of mental aberration, misjudged her, and went on to mention the pecuniary arrangements above alluded to, which appeared to meet her views. I may have been clumsy—l am told by those who ought to know that I am apt to be clumsy in my dealings with a sex which Ido not pretend to understand ; but at least I appeared to be successful, for she was both gracious and grateful in her reception of my remarks, and she waxed quite coquettish when I alluded to the conquest that she had made of my juvenile affections. Perhaps she was a little frightened ; probably she was a good deal relieved ; in any case, she played her part well enough in the reconciliation scene which I had mentally rehearsed, and I left her and her husband seated hand in hand, after the approved fashion on the fall of the curtain. But the epilogue was, I suppose, inevitable. Jerry overtook me before I had proceeded a couple of hundred yards on my line of retreat, and had one or two breathless questions to ask. Did I really think that the insurance money would be forthcoming? Was I sure that his wife stood in no danger of being arrested ? Might he take it that my uncle would consent to renew their lease of the farm, whatever happened? I comforted

him to the best of my ability. I could not, of course, answer for the insurance company ; but I felt justified in telling him that, as regarded other matters, he had nothing to fear, and I strongly advised him to forget the past and make a fresh start.

‘ There’s two parties wanted to that bargain, Master George,’ said he with a sigh. ‘ I don’t need to tell you how it is between me and her ; you could see for yourself. She don’t care a brass farthing for me, nor ever will. So long as she’s safe and well provided for, that’s all I wanted, and all I shall get. I’d as soon have gone to prison for herasnot—aye.orswung for her, if it had come to that. Hanging isn’t such a bad death when you come to think of it, and when you remember that we’ve all got to die some day. You’ve seen me kill hares and rabbits before now. Crack ! —all’s over in the snap of a finger and thumb. Well, good night, sir, and thank you kindly for all you’re doing for us. ’ To speak quite frankly, I deserved some thanks, and I had a good deal of trouble that evening with Uncle Charles, who was naturally anxious to get rid of a hopeless tenant; but, being a good-natured sort of man in his way, he ended by yielding to my representations, and I dare say he may have felt that Providence had bestowed upon him his just reward when news was brought to us on the following morning that Jerry Bartlett had been found suspended by the neck to one of his own apple trees, stone dead. * I am not in the least surprised,’ my uncle declared. ‘ Depend upon it, if that fellow wasn’t guilty himself, he knew very well who was ; and though I’m sorry for his wife, I can’t help thinking that she is lucky to be quit of a good-for-nothing scamp.’ The coroner’s jury, taking a more merciful view, found that the deceased had committed suicide whilst labouring under temporary insanity ; and, for my own part, I am quite of one mind with those enlightened citizens. What, indeed, can be more insane than to die for the sake of a woman who dislikes and despises you ? Nothing, perhaps, except to attempt to live with her. What, I confess, went a little against the grain with me was that, in view of the promise that I had made to the friend of my youth, I had to make certain disbursements for the benefit of his widow. But I buttoned up my pockets when she espoused Mr Edward Smale, who subsequently took the farm, and who, I believe, is doing well with it. Mrs Smale, my uncle tells me, is much respected in the neighbourhood, and much admired. One says to oneself in the depths of one’s wicked heart that possibly Jerry’s successor may yet be made acquainted with the revenges of time.