“The feeling is reciprocal, I am sure,” returned the magistrate. “Your very good health, Mr. Ashbrook. By the way, you observed just now that you knew the prisoner. Will you be kind enough to tell me under what circumstances you made his acquaintance?”
“Sartinly,” said the farmer, “I med his acquaintance by the merest chance.”
He then proceeded to give his companion a succinct account of all those events which the reader is already acquainted with—the meeting of the young man at the “Old Carved Lion,” his taking him to his own house, and the base ingratitude of his guest.
The magistrate was surprised at the narrative, as he well might be. It was a history he was quite unprepared for.
“So you will see, sir,” observed the farmer, when he brought his narrative to a conclusion, “that it aint at all likely I bear him any good will; on the contrary I should loike te see him behind the bars of one of her Majesty’s prisons.”
“Of course, that is but natural, since he served you so badly.”
“An audacious, impudent, lying, circumwenting, young jackanapes,” exclaimed the farmer. “A wretched impostor, who passed himself off as a gentleman, and sent a challenge to me by a sham captain, who was no better than himself.”
“It was a piece of impertinence, I admit.”
“That beant the proper term; it was oudacious, beyond all bounds.”
“It was so.”