“Poachers!” exclaimed Dimbleby in a horror-struck voice.
“Poachers it was, sure enough,” said Daniel; “an’ he’s stone dead, James White is. They shot him right through the heart. Seems a pity such a brave chap should die like that.”
“An’ him such a good husband!” said Mrs Wishing. “An’ the baby an’ all as we was just talking on,” said Mrs Pinhorn; “well, it’s a fatherless child now, anyway.”
“The family ought to allow the widder a pension,” said Mr Dimbleby, “seeing as James White died in their service, so to speak.”
“They couldn’t do no less,” agreed the cobbler.
The idea of fetching Mrs Greenways seemed to have left Daniel’s mind for the present: he had now taken a chair, and was engaged in answering the questions with which he was plied on all sides, and in trying to fix the exact hour when he had found poor James White in the woods. “As it might be here, and me standing as it might be there,” he said, illustrating his words with the different parcels on the counter before him. It was not until all this was thoroughly understood, and every imaginable expression of pity and surprise had been uttered, that Mrs Pinhorn remembered that the “Greenways ought to know. And I don’t see why,” she added, seizing her basket with sudden energy, “I shouldn’t take her up myself; I’m goin’ that way, and she’s a slow traveller.”
“An’ then Dan’l can go straight up home with me,” said Mrs Wishing, “and we can drop in as we pass an’ see Mrs White, poor soul. She hadn’t ought to be alone.”
Before nightfall everyone knew the sad tidings. James White had been shot by poachers, and Daniel Wishing had found him lying dead in the woods.
As the days went on, the excitement which stirred the whole village increased rather than lessened, for not even the oldest inhabitant could remember such a tragical event. Apart from the sadness of it, and the desolate condition of the widow, poor Jem’s many virtues made it impressive and lamentable. Everyone had something to say in his praise, no one remembered anything but good about him; he was a brave chap, and one of the right sort, said the men, when they talked of it in the public-house; he was a good husband, said the women, steady and sober, fond of his wife, a pattern to others. They shook their heads and sighed mournfully; it was strange as well as pitiful that Jem White should a been took. “There might a been some as we could mention as wouldn’t a been so much missed.”
Then came the funeral; the bunch of white lilac, still fresh, which he had brought from Cuddingham, was put on Jem’s newly-made grave, and his widow, passing silently through the people gathered in the churchyard, toiled patiently back to her lonely home.